Chapter 11: Dirge of the Dark Moon

Strawberry Sweetheart was still engaged in a fierce battle with the Darkmoon Queen, but the nature of their struggle was anything but calm. It was a war of words as much as it was a war of worlds.

“Moonstone,” the being that was once Strawberry Sweetheart said, her voice a cold, flat monotone that echoed with an almost cosmic authority. In her Nightmare Pudding form, she was no longer the soft, gentle girl she had once been. Compared to her usual, unbearably cute appearance, she now seemed more like… like Magical Girl Black. She was not fighting; she was delivering a final, irrevocable judgment. “You could have chosen to stand in the light. But instead, you chose the darkness.”

Hearing her true, forgotten name spoken aloud, the Darkmoon Queen threw back her head and let out a wild, hysterical peal of laughter. “Oh, you are truly, wonderfully amusing, Strawberry Sweetheart! To think you could still utter such naive, self-righteous words! You! From the very moment of your birth, you were bathed in the love and adoration of Crystal! From the very day you became a magical girl, there have always, always been people by your side, supporting you, cheering for you! The world itself gave you love! It gave you light! So of course, it is easy for you to stand so proudly in the light!”

“The love you received, do you have any idea how much of a luxury it was? So much so that even when I gave you the gift of Inversion, the gift of true power born from despair, there was still someone willing to sacrifice their own life to awaken you, to use their own boundless love to make you feel warm and safe again! What an incredibly, ridiculously lucky person you are!” As she spoke of the past, tears, hot and bitter, began to well up in the corners of her eyes. “The world treated you with tenderness, and so you, in turn, treated the world with tenderness! How wonderful! How beautiful! It sounds like a blessed, idyllic fairytale!”

A shimmering, dark moon materialized in her hand, pulsing with a malevolent energy. For the first time, she launched a direct, furious attack against Nightmare Pudding. “But what about us?! You, who were treated so gently by the world, can so easily give gentleness back to the world! You, who were so beloved, can so easily give love back to the people! The people gave you hope, and so you, in turn, repay the world with hope! It’s only natural! It’s perfectly, sickeningly reasonable! And if that’s the case—then why do you, why do you DARE to stand in our way?!”

“We! We were treated with nothing but cruelty by the world! We experienced nothing but the world’s endless, grinding brutality! You received love, and you repay it with love! We never once tried to obstruct you! So we, who received nothing but cruelty, nothing but pain, when we repay the world with cruelty, when we repay the world with pain! WHAT IS SO WRONG WITH THAT?!”

She finally, in that moment, seemed to descend into a glorious, righteous madness. “I AM MAGICAL GIRL MOONSTONE! AND THE MAGICAL GIRLS OF THE GEM GENERATION ARE NOT LIKE YOU! We do not exist to be soft, sweet, cloying little desserts! We are not beautiful, precious little things that everyone desires and covets! We are mirrors! We simply, perfectly reflect the true face of the world! What the world is, so are we! If the world bestows malice upon us, then we shall repay the world with malice! This is the natural order of things! The LAW OF HEAVEN!”

At that moment, her Dark Moon warped, hardened, transforming into something that resembled a massive, brutal weapon. With a furious roar, she swung it with all her might, aiming to smash Nightmare Pudding into a pulp.

However…

The dark, solidified moon could not even touch Nightmare Pudding. Something invisible, something that could not be observed or even perceived by mortal senses, blocked its path. The weapon, radiating an almost apocalyptic power, stopped dead in its tracks, a mere ten centimeters from Strawberry Sweetheart’s serene face, unable to advance even a single, solitary inch.

Strawberry Sweetheart simply and casually opened her right hand, and then, with a slow, deliberate motion, she closed it into a tight fist.

It was as if a giant, invisible hand had suddenly, brutally seized the Darkmoon Queen, and then, with an almost contemptuous ease, had simply, utterly squeezed her into nothingness.

The dark moon reappeared in the sky once more, and from within its shadowy depths, the Darkmoon Queen was born anew, her form looking even more haggard, more translucent than before. She was panting, her breath coming in ragged, desperate gasps. “You… you absolute monster! To possess such an unreasonable, godlike power, and you still dare to call yourself a champion of justice? A creature like you… if you ever truly desired to destroy this world, you would be more terrifying, more unstoppable than anyone, than anything! Does a being like you truly even have the right to exist?!”

“Moonstone, the more you complain, the more you whine, the more it only serves to reveal your own profound weakness,” Nightmare Pudding said, her voice still a flat, emotionless monotone. She began to walk, step by step, through the very air itself, her pace slow, deliberate, yet utterly, completely unstoppable. “To have encountered misfortune is a fact you cannot defy. But to use that misfortune as an excuse to inflict suffering upon others… that is nothing more than the pathetic method of a weakling.”

“I will not tell you to stop your quest for revenge,” she continued, her voice echoing with a strange, sad finality. “But I had hoped you would not be so completely, so utterly bound by your hatred. To face your own misfortune, and then to choose to turn your head away, to look instead for those who are even weaker than you were, and to take out your frustrations on them—that act, Moonstone, is fundamentally, unequivocally wrong.”

The words she spoke were, of course, absolutely, logically correct.

“I HATE IT! I absolutely HATE it when you heroes talk in those high-and-mighty, self-righteous platitudes!” the Queen shrieked, her own voice now cracking with a mixture of rage and despair. One Dark Moon was not enough, so she summoned two. Two was not enough, so she summoned three! The dark moons began to appear all around the Queen, one after another, layering and stacking upon each other, releasing a terrifying, suffocating pressure. “If you say my actions are wrong, then FINE! Then come and SAVE ME! Since you knew, since you always knew that I was treated with nothing but malice by this wretched world, why didn’t you save me when I could still be saved?! All those things that bestowed their malice upon me, upon Crystal! Why didn’t you subjugate them?! When I faced my own suffering, when Crystal faced the ultimate betrayal of the entire world, what were you doing, O great hero?! You were bathing in the warmth of Crystal’s love for this very same world! And so, you dare, you DARE to say that your own actions are the correct ones?!”

Nightmare Pudding just shook her head, a flicker of something almost like pity in her cold, empty eyes. “You should know better than anyone, Moonstone, that such words can no longer sway me. We have been rivals, you and I, for many, many long years now. If I had not hesitated in the past, then you would not still be alive today. But now,” her voice was a final, chilling whisper, “I have finally made my decision. And so, the end of the Darkmoon Coven is today.”

The Darkmoon Queen ground her teeth so hard it sounded like they might shatter. She roared, her voice filled with a final, desperate fury, “STRAWBERRY SWEETHEART! I am the last of the Gem Generation, and you are the first of the Dessert Generation! The Gem Generation still has magical girls who exist, those like Lapis Lazuli who were forced to retire! But your generation! There is only you left! IT’S BECAUSE OF YOU! BECAUSE OF YOUR EXISTENCE! Because of your impossible ideals, they refused to retreat! BECAUSE OF YOU—they all willingly, foolishly went to their deaths! And now, are you trying to make the Color Generation become the same? Are you trying to make Magical Girl Black become a being just like you? Are you trying to make all the other new magical girls… into nothing more than sacrifices for Black?!”

Magical Girl Red, who had arrived on the scene some time ago but had not yet made a move, heard these words, and a flicker of profound, undeniable doubt appeared in her eyes.

“Is that the message you wanted to convey?” Nightmare Pudding asked, her face completely devoid of even a shred of mercy. Her voice was laced with a profound disappointment. “I even went to the trouble of specifically calling Red over here to witness this. And in the end, this is all you have to say? Such pathetic, self-serving little things. It’s truly, truly disappointing, Moonstone. You fancy yourself as someone who has shouldered a heavy, tragic life, you believe you are burdened by all the pain and resentment of the world, and you want to enact your grand revenge upon that world. And this… this is the result? How… utterly, completely frail.”

She clenched her fist. And then, she swung it at the Darkmoon Queen.

An invisible force, a power that could not be seen or comprehended, collided with the Darkmoon Queen’s layered, overlapping dark moons. In an instant, the dark moons shattered like brittle glass, and the Queen herself was sent hurtling backwards, crashing into the ruins of the warehouse with a sickening crunch, raising a thick, choking cloud of dust and debris.

“How an entire generation of magical girls chooses to walk their path is not a matter for me to decide,” Nightmare Pudding said, her voice echoing in the sudden silence. “They have their own destinies, their own struggles, their own choices, their own wills. The only thing I can do, as their senpai, is to completely bury the dust of old, bygone eras like you, so that they can finally, freely tread their own destinies. To silently cheer them on from the sidelines, to give them the support they need… what else is required? You, Moonstone,” she said, her voice now filled with a cold, clinical pity, “you underestimate magical girls far too much.” She looked at the Darkmoon Queen, who was now staggering out from the dust and smoke, battered and broken. “As far as magical girls go, the only one as frail, as weak as you… is you.”

“STRAWBERRY… SWEETHEART!!!”

The Darkmoon Queen had almost completely lost her sanity now. She continuously, mindlessly launched attacks at Strawberry Sweetheart, but her offense was tragic, pathetic—because she couldn’t even touch the hem of Nightmare Pudding’s strange, rope-like dress. This long-standing, infamous leader of a fiend organization, this unbelievably powerful fiend, was, at this very moment, being completely, utterly, almost casually slaughtered.

Yes, from anyone’s perspective, it was clear: the Darkmoon Queen was being annihilated. And Strawberry Sweetheart’s expression was so calm, so serene, while the Queen’s state was so wild, so frenzied. And yet, the frenzied one was being suppressed by the calm one. For a moment, the people watching were no longer even sure who the true villain was.

This was the terrifying power that Strawberry Sweetheart possessed. The form known as Inversion: Nightmare Pudding had only ever appeared once or twice in the past. No one had ever been able to truly, accurately measure the full extent of this form’s power, and Strawberry Sweetheart herself rarely, if ever, showed it off. And now, facing the Darkmoon Queen, she was displaying its power without any reservation.

This power… it made people feel a sense of foreboding, a sense of dread. It was completely different from the warmth and splendor of her Sparkling Form. It made people feel like Strawberry Sweetheart was a stranger. Could she… could she really control this terrifying power?

She should be able to, right? After all… she’s Strawberry Sweetheart.

At this moment, no one was paying any attention to Magical Girl Black’s battle anymore. All eyes, all cameras, all hopes and fears, were completely focused on the final duel between Strawberry Sweetheart and the Darkmoon Queen. The Strawberry Sweetheart who was always getting into trouble, the one from people's memories—she always had to get beaten up a little first, and then make a dramatic comeback. For some reason, that version of Strawberry Sweetheart actually gave people a sense of reassurance.

But now, this one, this being who held a position of absolute, terrifying dominance, before whom even a fiend as powerful as the Darkmoon Queen was nothing more than a toy to be tormented… this unparalleled form, this absolute power, it only made people feel… fear.

“Hahaha!” The Darkmoon Queen’s body was covered in wounds, her blood staining her pale skin. “Do you feel it, Strawberry Sweetheart?! The hearts of the people! You, who wields the power of love and hope, you must also be able to feel the power of pain and hate! You should be able to feel it, shouldn’t you? The people… they are afraid of you now!”

Nightmare Pudding was silent for a moment. Then, finally, she answered, her voice still a quiet monotone. “You’re not wrong. The people are afraid of me. They fear the power I currently possess. They fear the form I currently take. But… so what?” Her gaze did not waver for an instant. “In the past, I symbolized love and justice, and I fought for the sake of the world. From the age of nine, when I first became a magical girl, until now, at sixteen. It is time for me to retire, Darkmoon Queen. A new generation of magical girls has already been born. The magical girls of the old era should exit the stage of history. And I… I shall be buried along with you.”

In her Nightmare Pudding form, for the very first time, she smiled. A small, sad, and strangely beautiful smile. “And so, I too should go and experience my own life. No longer as a symbol of hope, no longer as a symbol of love—but as an ordinary, plain, sixteen-year-old girl. A girl who has completed her mission, who can now pursue her own happiness, her own life. The new generation, Black and Red, they are both here. I have complete faith in their courage and their strength. So, surrender, Moonstone. I don’t want to kill you.”

The one-sided slaughter of the Darkmoon Queen was precisely because of Strawberry Sweetheart’s mercy. She wanted to arrest her, not kill her directly. And the result, ironically, was this scene of her single-handedly, brutally tormenting the Queen. From the very beginning, this battle had never been in doubt. Both Strawberry Sweetheart and the Darkmoon Queen, they both knew the inevitable outcome of this fight.

“HAHA! HAHAHAHA!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!” The Darkmoon Queen laughed maniacally at the sky, at the phantom of Nightmare Pudding before her. She then thrust her remaining hand into her own chest, and from within, she pulled out half of a crystal. A pitch-black, pulsating crystal.

“This… this is what you’ve wanted me to let go of all this time, isn’t it?” the Darkmoon Queen roared, holding up the black half-crystal for all to see. “Fine then! You can have it! You digest it! You bear it! You accept it! Strawberry Sweetheart! All of this hatred, all of this pain, that originated from Crystal!”

The crystal was crushed in her hand.

A terrifying wave of pitch-black energy instantly, violently erupted outwards, enveloping the entire warehouse, sweeping over everyone present. The Dark Moon, Strawberry Sweetheart, Black, the remaining fiends, and the newly arrived Red.

“This… this is the end, my dearest Strawberry Sweetheart.”