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I used to be a magical girl, before I took an emotional breakdown to the Soul Gem.
I guess that I was about average, as these things go. Shit happened, I met an alien cat-thing, fought giant monstrous creatures made of human grief, met up with others in the same boat.
God, we were good. Everyone says that whatever team they had while alive was the best. Of course, we can’t all be right-though God herself sometimes says otherwise, But that’s just Madoka being Madoka. Probably.
I suppose that her team was the actual best, what with one of them ascending to godhood. Two of them. Or does the Devil cancel things out, in this case, making them average?
Anyway, I made friends, kicked wraith ass, had a mental breakdown, got whisked away by an all-loving goddess to Magical Girl Valhalla, reclaimed the memories of a version of myself from another universe that ended up becoming a magical abomination worse than the wraiths, as you do.
Then I got the memories of myself from another universe, one quite similar to the current one, with wraiths and all. Then the memories of myself from yet another universe, one ruled by a devil and haunted by nightmares.
It's honestly pretty terrifying, how many times the universe has been remade according to the whims of teenage girls. Like, I’ve been a teenage girl four times now, and I definitely shouldn’t be trusted to recreate anything more complicated than a pancake recipe…if that.
So. Magical Girl Valhalla.
That’s what I like to call it, anyway. I’ve heard it called a lot of different things-Heaven, Elysium, Madoka’s throne, the Garden of Lilies (this last comes from Gayle, a friend who Madoka collected before me, who claims that her Magical Girl ability is a gaydar and assures me that it never stays quiet up there).
It’s nice.
…That’s unfair of me, really. It's a paradise.
I can’t really say for sure what it looks like, as a whole-everyone sees something different. A great mansion, a garden, a tropical beach, a giant muffin, an endlessly huge tree…me, I see it as a sprawling forest, with cities built among the branches.
But you don’t see the big picture very often, anyway.
Everyone gets their own little…apartment, I guess. Or a big one-physical space doesn’t matter too much, here. With a yard.
Yes, apartments with yards. Its the afterlife, we can have the closeness of citylife with the space of country living if we want it.
Everyone’s apartment-with-a-yard conforms to their own design-and I’ve seen some crazy designs. Some girls like to recreate their witch’s labyrinths.
Oh, witches? Yeah, that’s a previous universe thing, I can explain later. Just know that some girls like living in a fever dream.
Then again, I guess that they might not actually spend too much time in them-we don’t need to eat or sleep, though we can and most do. A lot of us prefer the more communal areas anyway.
Oh, my place? It’s pretty boring…based on a friend’s place. No, she isn’t “up” there too. No, she’s not alive either.
…
What do we do all day? Anything.
There’s a library there with every book ever written, plus some that never were. There’s even some stuff written by the residents there-a lot of us take up some form of art, now that we have the time.
For my part, they say that I can kill a man with an oboe. I’m still not sure if they mean it in a good or bad way, though.
Right. Art, hobbies.
A lot of us have pet projects going on-cataloging every star in the universe, poking at black holes, creating a family tree for all of humanity.
There’s a theater, playing every movie ever, plus edited segments of real life-the Goddess’s ascension is practically required watching. Most of us watch the Devil’s story too, though no one mentions that out loud.
I didn’t say that out loud, this is a dream. How else did you think a dead magical girl was talking to you about the afterlife?
Anyway, there’s always something to do. There’s even a full-blown gladiator arena. I know that most of us weren’t really fighters going into this life, but some of us were…and some others acquired a taste for it.
Sometimes we’ll even have witch hunts, where one of us cuts loose with our inner demons against a group of us. It might be the most controversial thing we do up there-a lot of girls get…flashbacks. So we’re careful to make sure no one wanders in without forewarning.
The goddess avoids the arena on those days, or whenever we do something much bloodier than contact sports. Her right-hand will play the witch sometimes, though.
Yeah, I spend a lot of time in the arena. I guess that you could say I’m bloodthirsty.
Really, I need to do something. Playing the oboe or reading or anything…they’re nice, but if I stay there too long it starts to feel…constricting. Like the whole world is a plastic bag trying to smother me.
Fighting helps. Having a purpose helps more.
Luckily, there’s plenty of jobs for someone who wants to make herself useful-though I suspect that some of it is just busy work the goddess gives us to help us feel special.
First off there’s community stuff-people that organize events, help newcomers get around, check in on girls that haven’t appeared in a while…there’s generally enough of this to keep a few of us busy.
Second, and more numerous, you have the Watchers. Madoka is great, but not quite omniscient. You can actually help her out a lot by hanging out in the mortal realm and reporting in on what you see. There’s this whole bureaucracy built up around this, to make sure that she gets important news fast and to record everything.
I’m part of a third group, the Guardians. To be honest, we’re just Watchers who spend all our time with one subject, usually a Magical Girl. Madoka will get you in the end, but she likes having someone keeping an eye on you before that. We also get to give you a tour of the afterlife.
Oh, and She lets us enter your dreams. Hence this whole conversation.
I’m not your guardian, actually. I’m doing this as a favor for…someone who is watching over you.
Right, looks like you’re about ready to wake up, now. Yeah, you won’t quite remember this…but enough of it should stick with you. An impression, at least.
So that you can make an informed decision.
You’re about to get a visit from my…counterpart. She’ll have a proposition for you.
What? No, you aren’t getting invited to the goddess’s harem. She doesn’t have one…we just like to pretend she does, to annoy the devil.
Just…okay, you now know that there’s life after death, at least for Magical Girls. It’s a pretty sweet deal, but not for everyone.
Oh, and good morning.
I shook myself. It always felt weird, slipping out of someone’s dream, the nonsensical logic of the unwaking world suddenly falling away. Reality reasserts itself.
I suppose that the effect would be much stronger, if I were alive.
As I gained my bearings, the other girl did much the same. She stumbled out of bed, groggy, running her hands through her steely hair.
Kuroe, I think her name was. Not one of mine, as I said to her-my own charge was a bow-wielding pinkette…no, not that one.
The magical girl made her ungainly way out the door. I didn’t move to follow.
I sensed the demon behind me, creeping up.
She pounced, arms pinning mine to my side, mouth wide open to bare sharp teeth.
She paused, mouth to my ear.
“Oh, you’re no fun.”
I grunted. Turned a bit, to see her from the corner of my eye. “I did what you wanted, she’s heard my part.”
She pouted. “Don’t I get a good morning, Angela?” She drew out the Angel and paused before the “a,” probably trying to be clever.
I sighed, rolled my eyes, did everything to disguise my smile. “Good morning, accursed hellspawn.”
“Carys.”
“Accursed hellspawn Carys.”
That got a chuckle from her, at least.
I started walking. She squawked at the sudden movement, but recovered quickly enough.
I didn’t really need to walk to travel, but it felt right. Carys seemed to disagree, floating lazily besides me.
I didn’t really have a destination in mind, I’ve just always found that walking helps me think.
The demon by my side was annoyingly tall, when she bothered to stand up. Lanky, long dark hair always disheveled. Eyes bright, grin sharp. Ring on her finger used to be a Soul gem-maybe still is.
We traveled for some time before I spoke, ending up in some park somewhere.
“You think she’ll stick it out?”
My demonic companion scoffed, rolling around to float on her belly. “She wished for a date with her crush. She’s not even dating them anymore.”
I nodded. I’d seen girls last longer on even less successful wishes-but that was definitely not the norm.
I also briefly considered asking about the crush, for Gayle’s study of Magical Girl sexuality, but decided against it.
My feet trod over the parkgrounds, never disturbing the grass. I suddenly felt nostalgic for the crunch of fallen leaves underfoot.
“I guess that you’ll be seeing her in hell, eventually.”
That sounded harsher than it really was-I’d been to hell, once or twice. I was delivering love lett-important messages from God to the Devil. Its a nice place, so long as you’re neither an incubator, nor Homura Akemi.
“So, how’s the Devil doing nowadays?” One perk of being friends-if that was the right word-with a demon was access to juicy hell-gossip.
Carys chuckled. “Oh you know, the usual. Tempting Puella Magi to renegade on their contracts, releasing hell-spawned nightmares upon the world,” her voice lowered “constructing elaborate schemes to get underneath the goddess’s skirt.”
There was a pond in the park. I walked across it, on a whim.
“I’m pretty sure she could just ask.” My mind briefly flashed to thoughts of the Goddess’s Devil-shaped, life-sized plushie, which definitely doesn’t exist and I know nothing about, if anyone asks.
Carys snorted. “If she could do that, she wouldn’t be the Devil. It's just not in her nature.”
I once again felt unease at the number of times reality has been rewritten by middleschool girls.
I shook my head. “Do you ever feel like most of this universe’s problems could be solved by locking those two in a closet?”
Carys chuckled, casually floating through a tree.
“That, or they’d destroy and recreate the universe out of sheer awkwardness.”
I shook my head, but didn’t disagree.