“Okay, once more, Kiwako.”

“Kiwa-chan!!” The little girl’s cheeks puffed out as she pouted up at Cecilia’s stoic, expressionless face. “Ahem.” She shook her head and composed herself. “Right! Soooo… as I said before, the only ones here are other magical girls like me. Us. Everyone else is gone, but Kyou-chan told me she can sense that they’re alive somewhere.”

“Was that her wish? To sense the life around her, or those close to her?” Cecilia sat forward on the park bench that the two were seated on, Cecilia in her deep blue Puella outfit, and Kiwako in her loose red hood.

Kiwako shook her head. “Nope! It’s just the power she has! But everyone that wasn’t a magical girl that used to live here is fine. Somewhere.”

Cecilia sighed, closing her eyes. “Perhaps I should take some time out of this city and track them down-“

Kiwako flailed on the bench next to Cecilia, her legs kicking the empty air as she cut the older girl off. “Noooo! That’s not why you’re here, Cece-chan! You’re here to learn about your Witch, remember?”

“…To reconcile my past as an Angel.”

“Thaaat, and to help deal with The Coven!”

Cecilia half opened her eyes and turned her head to gaze down at the beaming face of the smaller girl beside her. “You’ve not told me anything about them, other than they are a threat to you and your remaining friends. I can assume that because I am needed here, they are something which I can only deal with through combat. Correct?”

Kiwako’s tone, once again, softened from her usual cheerful demeanor. “They… stopped listening to me some time ago. At first, they seemed okay… they wanted to help everyone, or help the girls still here, or help find the others. I’m not sure anymore. But it wasn’t long that… that their power began to take hold. Now, they’re trying to create what they call the ‘ideal world’. Some kinda miracle, or something. But it’s nothing that anyone’d put down in a fairy tale! Their power is scary, Cece-chan.”

“Of course… a girl gains some kind of power and wants to rule the world.” Cecilia sighed again. “Nothing I cannot handle, yet a curse that follows me all the same.”

“You were like that once, Cecilia.”

“And I took myself out.”

“…Cece-chan is scary sometimes, too.”

“Forget it. But tell me… who are these girls?”

“So… a normal coven usually has seven witches in it, right? Or, so we read at the library once. But unless there’s someone behind ’em all, there’s… Masako-chan, Kotone-chan, Hinata-chan, Yoko-chan, and the twins, Riko and Rio.”

“No matron to guide them? They’re not very organized, are they?”

“W-Well… last time we met the twins, they said something about an older woman helpin’ ’em out. Only called her ‘Malefica’…” Kiwako shivers a bit. “Sounds scary…”

“…I don’t like the sound of that.” Cecilia closed her eyes as she thought to herself. ‘There can’t be another Angel at the helm of this Coven… I distinctly only saw four Angels in the space of my lifetime. Myself, Anisa, Kae and Yui. But… my sight does not work in Kamihama. Perhaps there is one, hiding in this perpetual veil of my vision. Maybe there exists other such locations, permanent blind spots to my vision…’

Kiwako waved a hand in front of Cecilia’s face. “Big sis is spacing out again…”

Cecilia leant back against the back of the bench. “Sorry, Kiwa-chan. So what do we do? Find these girls one at a time, fight them and weaken the Coven to prevent this… ‘ideal world’?”

“They’re together a lot, but they have their own houses and stuff. They don’t live together, and I don’t think they train together either. Too dangerous to let their Doppels out around each other, I think. They’d probably attack one another for power. That’s what happened when Sakura-chan was still with us…”

“…So then we find them while they are communing with their Witch half. They are dangerous, but I suppose it’s not much different than a normal Witch hunt. So… who is first, then?”

Kiwako poked Cecilia’s nose. “You, Cece-chan. We gotta get you in touch with your Witch first, right? Otherwise… you don’t stand a chance against the Coven.”