Chapter 8: Magical Girl Moonstone

“My Queen, if I may be so bold as to question your magnificent judgment… why didn’t you make a direct move on Magical Girl Red just now?”

Dark Butterfly—the girl known to the world as Yuki Kirishima—simply couldn’t understand it. In her professional, novelist’s opinion, the trembling, terrified, and clearly emotionally compromised Magical Girl Red had been the perfect, most vulnerable target imaginable. A lamb for the slaughter, already seasoned with its own tears.

The Queen let out a soft and deeply condescending chuckle. “My dear, naive, and ever-so-impatient Butterfly, if we couldn't definitively, overwhelmingly defeat her in a very short amount of time—and with a rookie of her unknown potential, there are no guarantees—then the likes of the brutish Magical Girl Black and the irritatingly resilient Strawberry Sweetheart would inevitably, and with much righteous, city-destroying fury, arrive on the scene. The potential, fleeting gains would most certainly not have been worth the certain, catastrophic losses, don’t you think?”

“But… but with your unparalleled power, my Queen, surely a single, decisive, almost contemptuous blow would have been more than enough to…”

The Queen stopped walking, her back still to her subordinate. Her gaze, when she turned slightly to look back over her shoulder, seemed incredibly, unnervingly deep, like staring into the abyss of space. “Oh, my dear, dear Butterfly! You must never, ever underestimate a magical girl. Any magical girl. They are a unique, and frankly quite troublesome, illogical species of creature. They are beings who can always, almost without fail, give birth to impossible, dazzling hope from the very depths of the most profound, soul-crushing despair. They are beings who can always, somehow, someway, mount a desperate, last-ditch, and often surprisingly, infuriatingly effective counterattack when you least expect it.” She sighed, a sound of ancient weariness. “Have we not, to this very day, experienced this frustrating, predictable phenomenon more times than we can possibly count? They are not the kind of simple, predictable targets that you can just… subjugate… simply because you decide you can. Besides,” she added, a thoughtful, wistful look in her crimson eyes, “a magical girl who wields the power of flames… it always makes one think of the legendary, mythical phoenix, doesn’t it? It gives off the distinct, and rather annoying impression of a type that can be reborn from its own ashes, more powerful than before. And I am simply not in the mood to deal with that kind of tiresome cliche today.”

It had to be said, the Queen’s logic, as always, was sound. Impeccable, even. But Dark Butterfly still harbored some lingering, unspoken doubts. After all… this uncharacteristic caution, this almost prudent hesitation… it wasn’t the Queen’s usual, gloriously reckless style. Not at all.

Seeing the conflicted, tormented expression on her subordinate’s face, that desperate, tell-tale look of someone who was dying to ask more questions but didn’t quite have the nerve, the smile on the Queen’s face grew deeper, more enigmatic, almost… kind? “Of course,” she purred, “that is the perfectly logical reason one could use to convince others. But it is not nearly enough to convince you, is it, my dear, clever Dark Butterfly? You are far too clever, far too perceptive for such simple, surface-level explanations. So,” she said, her voice dropping to an almost intimate, conspiratorial whisper that made the hairs on Dark Butterfly’s neck stand up, “I can tell you a little something more. A heartfelt, honest-to-goodness truth that I would not, and could not, tell anyone else.”

“My Queen…”

How could Dark Butterfly even begin to describe the feeling she felt at that precise, heart-stopping moment? She suddenly felt as if she were about to willingly, eagerly step into some kind of forbidden, sacred, and possibly very dangerous territory. The words the Queen was about to speak… she knew, with an almost religious certainty, that once she heard them, she would fall, irrevocably, into some kind of deep, inescapable abyss, never again able to extricate herself, never again able to return to her previous, simpler state of blissful ignorance. She was more certain of this than she had ever been of anything in her entire, strange life. From a purely rational, self-preservationist standpoint, she knew, with absolute clarity, that she should not pry. She should not attempt to know what a being as powerful, as enigmatic as the magnificent Darkmoon Queen was about to say. These were not words that a fiend of her relatively low, insignificant rank was ever meant to hear—

But the novelist’s instinct within her, that insatiable, pathological curiosity, that burning desire for a good, tragic story, was driving her absolutely mad. She had to hear it. She had to know. It was sure to be an incredibly, wonderfully interesting, and probably very, very tragic story. And she—she was an artist. She lived for tragedy.

She followed her Queen, as if in a trance, into a perfectly ordinary restaurant. They requested a private room. And ordered a great many, probably very expensive, dishes.

“Eating, I find, always makes one relax, don’t you think? It should make it easier for you to… accept… what I’m about to tell you,” the Darkmoon Queen said, a rare, gentle smile on her face. She rarely smiled in her daily, villainous life, but her smiles today, since her brief encounter with Magical Girl Red, seemed particularly frequent. Her mood, for some strange reason, seemed to be exceptionally, unnaturally good. Come to think of it, the Queen only ever seemed to truly smile, to show any genuine emotion at all, when she was in the presence of magical girls. Although those smiles were usually filled with a cold, aristocratic contempt, or a biting, cruel mockery, and were certainly not the kind of warm, reassuring smiles a good person would ever possess, but still—her smiles, it seemed, were reserved exclusively, almost sacredly for them.

“I am going to die soon, my dear Dark Butterfly.”

Dark Butterfly suddenly felt as if her very heart had seized in her chest, had stopped beating entirely. The Queen, without any warning, without any preamble, had just dropped a bombshell so massive, so completely, utterly unacceptable, that she immediately, violently, began to panic. “My Queen! How… how can you possibly say such a thing! Is it… is it because of the grievous injury you sustained from Magical Girl Black last time?!” Her terrified, pleading gaze fell on the Queen’s still-tightly-bandaged arm.

The Queen just shook her head, a gesture of serene resignation. She raised the bandaged arm, moving it freely, effortlessly. “No, it’s not because of this. Magical Girl Black, for all her brutish power, can injure me, but she cannot, at her current level, truly kill me. Not yet, anyway. However,” she added, her voice quiet but firm, “I am going to die soon. And it is indeed, very much related to Magical Girl Black.”

Dark Butterfly was even more confused now, her mind a chaotic swirl of fear and disbelief. “You mean… you mean that Magical Girl Black is going to kill you, my Queen?”

“Oh, my dear, Strawberry Sweetheart could have killed me a very long time ago, if she had truly wished it,” the Queen stated simply, as if she were discussing the weather. “She just… she just never had the heart to do it. The poor, sentimental fool. But Black… Black is different. Her will to see me dead, her resolve, it is absolute. Unshakeable. I am certain, with a clarity that is almost comforting, that she will use any and all means necessary to see me destroyed. And Strawberry Sweetheart, seeing this, seeing her resolve, will finally, inevitably make up her own mind and have her final, tragic reckoning with me. And so, the Darkmoon Coven… our glorious, beautiful dream… it ends here. It ends soon. My dear Dark Butterfly, when Magical Girl Black and Strawberry Sweetheart finally, inevitably make their move, we… we will be annihilated. Utterly. Completely.”

These were words, of course, that the Darkmoon Queen could never, ever let the other, less enlightened members of her Coven hear. If they heard them, if they sensed even a hint of her fatalistic despair, it would undoubtedly lead to a mass, panicked desertion. You simply couldn’t expect unwavering, ride-or-die loyalty from fiends like them; after all, if they possessed such noble, admirable qualities in the first place, they would never have become fiends to begin with.

“But… but why…? Why are you telling me all of this, my Queen?” Dark Butterfly whispered, her voice trembling.

“Because you, my dear, clever Butterfly, can survive this. Only you, perhaps, can survive this coming apocalypse.” A sad, weary sigh escaped the Queen’s lips. “That Magical Girl Black… should I really say, as expected of a cynical, world-weary, middle-aged corporate drone of an uncle? Her ability to act, her cold, hard judgment, and her almost terrifyingly ruthless decisiveness—she is on a completely, fundamentally different level from us, from the magical beings of this world. For a young, idealistic girl, or even a creature of pure darkness like myself, to try and truly oppose an uncle like that… it is simply, utterly impossible. If none of us had any of these ridiculous Esper abilities, if we were all just ordinary humans, it would be a perfectly normal, almost mundane state of affairs for a pretty young girl to be pinned to the ground and… ah… thoroughly disciplined… by a determined, surprisingly strong uncle like him. After all, there’s simply no way to resist that kind of raw, mundane power. It’s the unbridgeable, fundamental difference between a jaded, experienced adult and a naive, hopeful child.”

The Queen had, with a startling, shocking frankness, suddenly started talking about… lewd things. It made Dark Butterfly feel a little flustered, her cheeks turning a very un-fiendish shade of pink.

“She will show no mercy, my dear,” the Queen continued, her voice now a serious murmur. “She will, with a terrifying efficiency that I almost admire, annihilate every single fiend in the Darkmoon Coven. Your unique ability, however, will allow you to escape, to blend in, to survive. And more importantly,” the Queen’s gaze was surprisingly gentle, “you do, in fact, bear a truly remarkable, uncanny resemblance to that long-dead woman named Kaoru Shirakawa. Even if she, Magical Girl Black, eventually finds you, the absolute worst-case scenario is that you’ll simply be locked up in the Esper Prison, just like that pretty-boy fool, Darkstar Count. And the time you would serve for your relatively minor crimes would not be particularly long, because you, my dear, haven’t actually done that many truly, irredeemably evil things. That is why you are our last, flickering hope. That is why I am telling you these forbidden things.”

Dark Butterfly understood now, with a dawning, sickening sense of horror and responsibility. But it was still so hard for her to accept. “You… you want to place the entire future, the last hope of the glorious Darkmoon Coven, on my shoulders, my Queen? But… but I can’t do it! I’m not strong enough! I’m just a writer!”

“No, my dear. I know you can’t do it,” the Queen said simply, her words like a splash of cold water. “That is why I am not placing it on your shoulders at all.”

Dark Butterfly’s emotional outburst was cut short, deflating like a punctured balloon. She had already, in a fit of dramatic loyalty, stood up from her chair, ready to make some grand, sweeping, probably very foolish declaration of undying devotion. But now, she just meekly, confusedly, and pathetically sat back down. “Then… then what exactly are you planning, my Queen…?”

“Because the one who will bear this great, heavy responsibility, this glorious legacy of beautiful darkness,” the Queen said, a strange, manic light in her eyes, “is not you, nor anyone else in our Coven. It is, and always has been, destined to be… Magical Girl Red.”

Dark Butterfly felt her mind go completely, utterly, beautifully blank. It was as if her brain had just been wiped clean, formatted to its factory settings. What… what does any of this have to do with me? And what in the seven circles of hell does it have to do with that pathetic, sniveling little rookie, Magical Girl Red?!

Seeing her subordinate’s completely dumbfounded, comically vacant expression, the Darkmoon Queen couldn’t help but find it deeply amusing. “Alright, alright. I suppose I’ve confused you enough. Let me tell you one more little thing, then, my dear, dear Butterfly. A final, delicious secret. I am the Darkmoon Queen, yes. That is a name I chose for myself. But I have another name. My true name. The name I was born with. I am—Magical Girl… Moonstone.”

It was as if a massive, reality-shattering bomb had gone off inside her head. Dark Butterfly froze completely where she sat, utterly, completely, beautifully motionless, like she had been turned to stone, her mind a screaming vortex of pure, unadulterated shock. She looked as if she had suddenly, irreversibly become a simpleton. A drooling idiot.

The Darkmoon Queen, seeing this, slapped the table and roared with genuine, heartfelt laughter. “Haha! HAHAHA! Oh, this is priceless! I’ve always, always wondered what kind of interesting, entertaining reaction I’d get if one of my fiendish little underlings ever, ever found out the truth about me! And seeing it in person, oh, it really is quite, quite amusing! You look like a goldfish!”

Dark Butterfly finally, after what felt like an eternity, found her voice, her throat dry, scratchy, and full of ash. “My… my Queen… is this… is this really true?”

The Queen wiped a single, glistening tear of pure, unadulterated mirth from the corner of her eye. “Mm, yes. That’s right, my dear. It’s all true. This is the absurd, ridiculous, and often quite tragic reality of our strange little world. On the very same day that the legendary, and so very tragic Magical Girl Crystal fell, shattering into a million pieces… I, the very last, and perhaps most cursed magical girl of the ancient Gem Generation, was born. The one and only Magical Girl Moonstone. And at the exact same time, on that very same, fateful day that Crystal fell, the very first, and most hopeful magical girl of the new Dessert Generation was also born: the insufferably optimistic Strawberry Sweetheart. Our relationship, our intertwined, symbiotic destinies… do you finally understand it now, my dear Butterfly?”

“The… the last of the old generation… and the very first of the new?” Dark Butterfly murmured, her mind still reeling, struggling to process the sheer, paradigm-shifting weight of this revelation. “But… but how can that be? How is that even possible?”

“You find it strange too, don’t you? I know I did,” the Queen said, a wistful, melancholic look in her eyes. “How could I, Moonstone, have been born at the same time as her? Logically, if Moonstone, the last of the old, was born, then Strawberry Sweetheart, the first of the new, shouldn’t have been—at the very least, she should have only truly, properly been born after Moonstone, the last remnant of the old era, had finally, mercifully fallen. So why? Why did we both appear at the same, chaotic time?”

The Darkmoon Queen seemed to be recalling a distant, painful past. “It is because I myself, my very essence, was a magical girl born from… absorbing… a part of the immense, corrupted power that was shattered from Crystal in her final, agonizing moments. That poor, tragic, Inverted Crystal… the pure, selfless love she had forsaken, the love that had so cruelly, so completely betrayed her… I took it all in. The gemstone known as moonstone… it generally, in most cultures, symbolizes love, does it not? That is why I, born of that betrayed, corrupted love, became the Dark Moon!”

She paused, then began to analyze again, her voice an academic murmur. “However, to say I simply ‘absorbed’ it is not quite accurate. It would be more correct, more precise, to say we… resonated. In that single, cataclysmic instant, I, a young girl filled with my own despair, resonated with the agony of the Inverted Crystal. And so, at the very moment she was finally, mercifully destroyed, I accepted her will, her legacy, her beautiful, righteous hatred. She had been protecting this wretched world, she had sacrificed so much, so very much for it, and yet it was humanity, the very people she fought to protect, that had failed to protect her love… She had trusted this world so much, so completely, and yet the world, in its infinite cruelty and ignorance, had chosen to destroy her instead. I must say,” the Queen added with a wry, bitter smile, “that is a very, very heavy, very dark thought to have to bear. Even for someone like me, it took a very, very long time to fully accept and shoulder that immense, crushing burden. So, the birth of Strawberry Sweetheart, hmm, it was likely a cosmic, balancing act, wasn’t it? An antibody created by the world itself, specifically to erase a corrupted, vengeful existence like mine, perhaps?”

At this moment, Dark Butterfly finally, truly, with a dawning awe, understood. “So… so you and Strawberry Sweetheart… you are the true, destined arch-enemies?”

“Correct.”

“And… and does Strawberry Sweetheart know this?”

“Oh, of course, she knows. She’s not an idiot, that one. However,” the Queen added with a dismissive wave of her hand, “for the sake of Crystal’s precious honor, her untarnished memory, she has never revealed the full, ugly truth to anyone. She naively, foolishly hopes that I can somehow, miraculously, just… let it go. That I can let go of my own deep-seated resentment, and more importantly, let go of Crystal’s righteous, beautiful hatred, and become active in the world again as the benevolent, good-natured Magical Girl Moonstone. I must say,” she added with a sneer, “she is indeed very, very kind. And very, very naive.” She casually waved her hand again. “But Magical Girl Black… oh, she won’t think that way at all. Not for a second. Let me see, if she knew my story, she would probably say something like…”

Dark Butterfly watched the Darkmoon Queen, her expression rapt.

The Darkmoon Queen then, with a startling, almost perfect accuracy, began to imitate Magical Girl Black’s gruff, dismissive, almost thuggish tone. “‘What kind of sentimental, time-wasting crap are you spouting now, you crazy witch? If you harbor a petty grudge against the whole damn world, then I’ll just have to personally, and with great pleasure, send you on your merry way to the afterlife myself. And remember to kneel to me in whatever hell you end up in and thank me for my great, merciful benevolence, you got that?’”

“…That… that does, in fact, sound exactly like something Magical Girl Black would say,” Dark Butterfly had to admit, a shiver running down her spine. That was precisely the impression Black gave off. Unsettlingly so.

“Right? It’s perfect, isn’t it?” the Queen said, her normal voice returning. “So you see, that particular magical girl… she is a true anomaly. A bug in the system. There is a legacy among magical girls, a passing of the torch, if you will. The will of the Crystal of the past was passed on to me. And Strawberry Sweetheart, she also inherited Crystal’s will—the kind, the benevolent, the boringly good side of it. And now, this new anomaly, Black, has appeared. Strawberry Sweetheart, in her infinite idealism, probably wants to pass her own insipid will on to Black. Therefore,” the Queen’s eyes gleamed with a new, fervent light, “I… I must pass my will, my legacy of beautiful darkness, on to Magical Girl Red.”

“So, that’s why… that’s why you didn’t attack Red? But… but how can you possibly make Red inherit your will? How can you be so sure?” Dark Butterfly still didn’t understand.

The Darkmoon Queen just smiled. A sad, beautiful, and completely final smile. “I don’t have to do anything at all, my dear. When Strawberry Sweetheart and Magical Girl Black finally come to subjugate me, for the last time, Red will most definitely be there, watching. I just have to act according to my own heart. To have a proper, beautiful, and probably very tragic final reckoning with my dear Strawberry Sweetheart. To finally, mercifully bring an end to our long, tiresome era. The things left behind by Crystal, that pain, that hatred, that love… it is finally, finally time for them to completely, utterly dissipate. And at that moment, in that beautiful, tragic moment of my demise, Red… she will inherit my will.”

“But… but why are you so absolutely certain of this, my Queen?”

“Because, my dear, clever Butterfly,” the Queen said, her voice a soft, almost tender whisper, “Red is the same kind of person as I am. Just as I, in my own despair, resonated with Crystal’s pain and resentment, Red, in her fear and weakness, will surely, inevitably resonate with my pain and my resentment. It is the law of the heart. So, Dark Butterfly.”

The magnificent, all-powerful Darkmoon Queen, the last of the Gem Generation, the creature of darkness and despair, actually, unbelievably, bowed her head to her own, insignificant underling. “When I have fallen, and when Red has inherited my will, my legacy… I hope that you will assist her. That Magical Girl Black… she is a true, terrifying anomaly; I do not know why such an existence was ever born. But—you must help Red. This… this is my final, and only, request.”