Chapter Text
Suzi’s job might not have necessarily needed job security, but it certainly wasn’t a normal kind of workplace.
Being a housemaid for a mysterious woman on an ancient island was one thing. But knowing that this woman had magical abilities - and drew other girls with all kinds of magic to the island as well - was definitely not something she had expected. But Suzi was paid well and treated nicely, and she was far from the type to snitch to the Catholic Church. There was no problem here.
Her mistress, Lisa Lisa, was a cold yet kind woman who would not reveal her past. All Suzi knew was that her job was that of a “Coordinator”, a person who used her own magic to adjust the magic, powers, or minds of those who sought her help.
All of the girls who came, they had cute outfits and outlandish powers. They would give Lisa Lisa a small, black orb with grey decorations around it, and they would leave the island stronger or otherwise changed. It seemed to be a service hub for these magical girls.
Since the day she first started her employment, she came to know a little of magical girls. She knew that they fought monsters known as witches, saved lots of people, and made hopes and dreams come true. Lisa Lisa always kept on professional terms with the girls, never knowing them personally. Oddly enough, not one of those girls ever visited Air Supplena Island twice.
But Suzi paid them little mind, just as they did to her. No matter if magic existed or not, the island would not clean itself.
One day, Suzi was sweeping out the dust of one of the building’s front halls when she saw Lisa Lisa opening the door to the Hell Climb Pillar in the center of the island. She pushed two figures through the door and down into the pit below - two figures who Suzi couldn’t make out the exact features of, but she was sure they were both girls - telling them that the only way up was to climb the challenging pillar before closing the door.
As Lisa Lisa began to approach the stairs to the top of the tower, Suzi ran to catch up to her.
“Madame Lisa Lisa!” she called. The woman paused and turned as her maid got close enough to slow down. “Who were those two people? Are they new students?” she asked.
“Yes, and no,” Lisa Lisa answered. “We will be having them as guests for a while…if they survive the prologue to their trial, that is.”
Suzi turned to look at the looming tower beside them. The Hell Climb Pillar was a terrifying tool for training a girl’s magic, with its inside filled with traps and obstacles on the way up. A magical girl had to use all her agility, ability, and resolve to make it to the top. Many girls had perished in the tower - whenever that happened, Lisa Lisa called it “magic overuse" and went inside alone to deal with it. She always made it back up safely, but Suzi sometimes wondered what all that screeching down there was.
“Trial… So they are being trained? Who are the girls this time?” Suzi asked curiously.
“It’s Caesaris. She’s back for more training,” Lisa Lisa replied, and Suzi let out a gasp of excitement. “She brought another girl to be trained as well. Her name is Josephine Joestar.”
Suzi was usually excited to see new faces, to make friends with the students while they were living together, but she was practically over the moon to see one of her friends again. Magical girls who were undergoing Lisa Lisa’s training regimen stuck around longer, but just like anyone else who came to the island, Suzi never saw them again.
But Caesaris sent letters from Rome, letting them know how she was doing and any recent commotion that occurred lately. Suzi had really missed her. And now she brought a friend!
“Oh, what good news! But Madam Lisa Lisa, Caesaris already received her training. Why does she need more?” she asked.
Lisa Lisa stared at her for a moment, then sighed.
“Suzi Q. What I’m about to tell you can’t be made known. Even if no one will believe you, you aren’t to tell anyone. Are we clear?”
“Yes, Madam,” Suzi responded automatically. She felt her insides twist nervously. Lisa Lisa wasn’t one to mince words or say things without a reason, what could possibly be happening to bring her to such a grave state?
“Suzi, are you aware of what a witch is?” she began.
Suzi nodded. “They’re monsters that magical girls fight, right? They attack people, and you guys have to kill them.”
“Correct,” Lisa Lisa nodded. “witches are usually solitary creatures, hiding within their own barriers with their familiars. From there, they lure people inside or wait for them to wander in, and they feast on their souls. They cause unexplained disappearances…as well as influencing mass deaths. Accidents, murders, unexplained suicides - those can all be attributed to the doing of a witch. But there are those among the strongest witches that don’t need a barrier; they wander from place to place while only appearing as a storm to regular humans, leaving destruction in their wake. One such being, for example, is known as Walpurgisnacht. No one knows where it came from or what it actually is, but no one who faced it has survived.”
Suzi gasped, her hands flying to her face. “Don’t tell me that such a witch is coming here?!” she cried.
“Rest assured, she is not. However, the problem at hand is nearly just as dangerous.”
Lisa Lisa turned and began walking up the stairs on the outside of the Hell Climb Pillar. Obediently, her housemaid began to follow.
“As I said, witches are solitary creatures. But these three witches work together as a trio, sometimes merging their barriers when they come close to each other. They seem to have their own system of sharing food and causing calamity with each other, which is rare for witches. Their power together almost rivals Walpurgisnacht,” Lisa Lisa explained. “They’ve been alive for countless millennia, but for the last two thousand years, they had been sealed underground as a temporary measure by former magical girls. In their state of hibernation, they’ve subliminally influenced malice, disaster, and chaos across the land. Thus, they are called the ‘Pillars’, as they seemed to be the pillars of humanity’s despair.”
Suzi nodded as she listened to her mistress’s words. Those three witches sounded really scary, and Caesaris probably came with this Josephine girl to destroy them once and for all. If they’ve survived for centuries, that means no magical girl has been strong enough to kill them yet. They were only just able to seal them away, but their power hadn’t stopped there.
“You said they were hibernating…” Suzi began.
“Not anymore,” Lisa Lisa sighed. “I’m sure you know of the alliance Italy has made with Germany. That regime has a fascination with the occult, but they got in over their heads while researching the site of their hibernation. I’m not sure what they were planning to do with them…but it doesn’t matter. The witches broke out when the soldiers weakened the enchanted wall keeping them trapped. They were massacred, and Caesaris and Josephine were witnesses.”
“They were?!” Suzi exclaimed. “It’s a miracle they survived! I guess that’s the strength of a magical girl for you.”
“They survived, but barely. If they want to kill the Pillars, they need more training.”
Finally, the pair reached the top of the Hell Climb Pillar. Lisa Lisa walked over to the edge of the opening, looking down past the platforms and traps at her trainees. Suzi followed close behind, gripping her apron worriedly. She could see Caesar on one of the platforms, utilizing her light blue magic to keep something steady for her to get to another platform.
Further down, Lisa Lisa noticed something that Suzi couldn’t quite make out.
“What is that girl doing…?” Lisa Lisa muttered, peering down at the bottom. This was followed up with an “Oh, for the love of all the saints in Heaven,” as she pulled out a knife from her vest. She threw the knife down towards the bottom, where Suzi heard a yelp and a splash. Lisa Lisa yelled down, “Climbing the pillar using any method other than magic is desecrating it! The Hell Climb Pillar only craves magic - it repels everything else! You mustn’t forget that!”
As she stood up to leave, a desperate voice echoed from below, “H-Hey! Hold on! Wait, Lisa Lisa! I mean, Coach!”
Suzi didn’t recognize the voice. She assumed it belonged to the new student, Josephine.
“C-Could it be…that you…you’re not throwing me in here to kill me, are you?! You know I don’t have the strength to climb this time…” Josephine’s voice pleaded from the bottom of the pillar. “This is my first day here! You’re just trying to scare me by tossing me in here and you’re going to throw me a ladder or something later, right?”
Lisa Lisa did not answer the girl, only shooting a cold look towards her before turning and leaving the edge of the pit. Though far enough from the edge that the girls below couldn’t see her, Suzi smiled sympathetically before turning to follow. Her mistress’s training was cruel, but to those who could endure it, their talents always bore fruit.
Lisa Lisa went back towards the stairs. “They should probably be up by…I’d give them a couple more days, at least.” She turned back to her maid. “Suzi Q, when we get back inside-”
“Madam Lisa Lisa-” Suzi began at the same time, but her face went red in embarrassment as she realized what had happened. “Oh, I’m sorry!”
“It’s alright. What did you need?” Lisa Lisa chuckled.
“I, um…” Suzi shifted her weight from foot to foot. “Please make me a magical girl too!”
Lisa Lisa’s eyes went wide for a moment, but she schooled herself into a practiced calm quickly. “Might I ask why?”
“Why? Well, uh, I always see them coming and going from the island, even staying and making their magic better,” Suzi began. “They’re all heroes, protecting the weak and defeating evil! That’s more like ‘justice’ than the government claims they’ve done! And, and…I want to help keep this good in the world! It would give you more numbers to help you and Caesaris and Josephine fight those three witches, wouldn’t it? I think…”
She had more words to say, more reasons to fight, but the words were caught in her throat. She just didn’t want to sit on the sidelines anymore, just hoping for things to be alright while other people did the work and got themselves hurt. But she never voiced this, not wanting to seem incompetent in front of her mistress.
“Suzi Q…” Lisa Lisa sighed. “I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow.”
“Huh?”
“Your reasons are noble. However, the life of a magical girl isn’t something so idealistic or heroic. You shouldn’t jump into this world so blindly.” Lisa Lisa shook her head. “And if I sent you to be cannon fodder against a group like the Pillars, then I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.”
The energy Suzi held quickly disappeared, and her gaze briefly dropped to the ground. She must have looked more crushed than she had meant to let on, for Lisa Lisa took a few steps closer to her and a ringing sound started to emanate from her.
Suzi raised her head just in time to see the ring Lisa Lisa wore glowing briefly, and then transforming into a ball of light. That light molded itself into the shape of a decorated oval, which then lost its glow in Lisa Lisa’s palm. What remained was an egg-like gem with a glowing red light, decorated with golden decals with a symbol of the Red Stone of Aja she wore at the top. Yet in the center of the gem, there was a dark spot flickering with black.
“This is a soul gem, the source of my power and what holds my own soul,” she explained.
“Your own soul? But then, what happened to your body? Does it have no soul at all?!” Suzi exclaimed. Being a woman raised in a highly-Catholic country, the idea seemed outright terrifying.
“It doesn’t; this body is just a husk. But having our souls in this soul gem allows our bodies to take more punishment, and prevents us from dying easily,” Lisa Lisa went on. “However, if we don’t keep our soul gems bright, terrible things will happen. Every time we use magic or begin to fall into despair, they darken just a little more. You see that spot in the middle, right?”
“That really dark part…”
“That was an accidental result of my wish,” she explained. “I wished to preserve my father’s training techniques, and the coldness required for such strict training resulted in a curse appearing in my soul.”
“A curse…?”
“Magical girls are only made by forming a contract. In exchange for taking up the mantle of killing witches, they are granted one wish only. Even the impossible can be made possible with a wish. But wishes are made of hope, fitting for magical girls - curses, on the other hand, are more befitting for witches. My wish requires me to hold back my emotions and subject my students to this training, cutting off human connection and hope for myself. Have you ever wondered why so many girls come to this island?”
Suzi gave her a brief nod.
“If I were to fight, using my magic would make my soul gem darken faster and my curse fester further. So, in exchange for helping other magical girls using my own magic, they pay me in grief seeds for me to sustain myself.” Lisa Lisa closed her hand, and a bright light shone between the cracks of her fingers. When she opened them again, her soul gem had become a ring once more. “There is so much that you don’t know, that it would be better just to remain ignorant. This sort of life is not one you would want.”
“I’m not fully ignorant though! I know those grief seed things - those black orbs? - come from witches, since magical girls fight and bring them to you. I know that they use magic, and now you’ve told me more about that.”
Suzi knew it was bad to be insistent towards someone like Lisa Lisa, but she knew there was no choice to be made. Because the other option was waiting helplessly, not being able to affect an outcome that she couldn’t see.
Lisa Lisa looked something between slightly irritated and resigned, and Suzi was starting to regret saying anything when she suddenly spoke. “I suppose seeing what I mean is just better than being told it. When Caesaris and Josephine pass the prologue to their trials, you can shadow them when they’re hunting witches. But you wouldn’t be able to see them, just as no normal person can.”
Suzi’s eyes lit up. “Really?! You’ll let me?!”
“In the meantime, Suzi Q, we’ll need to have some rooms prepared for both of them.”
“Ah- Right!” Suzi exclaimed, and followed her mistress back down the tower’s stairs again.
A couple days later, Caesaris and Josephine made it to the top of the tower.
Lisa Lisa and Suzi were waiting at the top at a time the former had predicted, just in time to watch Caesaris save the other girl’s life and pull her up. They were both panting from exhaustion, unable to even get up off their knees. It took them a minute to notice the presence of the other pair.
Caesaris glanced at Suzi, her expression growing warmer when she realized who she was. Suzi remembered when she was a dangerous street rat just four years ago, and had since become an elegant woman who tried to keep her impulsive anger in check. Long, blonde hair cascaded down her back and framed her face, like sunny ripples. Her outfit was a light blue mixed with whites, a filly dress that looked like a young girl’s princess costume. It radiated a childish innocence - an innocence that Caesar no longer had, but desperately clung to the scraps of.
Josephine looked just as beautiful, but had eyes full of bold rebellion, a stark contrast to Caesaris’s controlled demeanour. A part of her brown hair stuck up at the front, but the rest of it was in a low ponytail down her back. Her outfit, dark green and brown, was reminiscent of a magician’s. Suzi didn’t know anything about her, but she seemed like an interesting woman. She usually got along with any students Lisa Lisa brought in, so this should be no different.
Josephine began smiling mischievously, and Suzi suddenly realized that she had been staring. She quickly looked away, her face starting to heat up.
Lisa Lisa took a few steps towards her new students, stopping right in front of them. “Use both of these to purify your soul gems,” she ordered, holding out her hands to show a grief seed in each of them. She did not bend down for them, forcing the girls to stand up in order to take them.
Suzi watched as they each held the seeds to their gems, letting the darkness inside be drained out. She noticed how they looked a little more rejuvenated afterwards, and how relieved they both seemed to be. Anyone would be, after surviving the Hell Climb Pillar.
“Prepare yourselves. Your training regimen will be a lot tougher than this tower,” Lisa Lisa warned them. The girls nodded, prepared to face the challenge. “One more thing. On nights I send you to the mainland, you will be bringing Suzi along. She will shadow your activities to learn what the life of a magical girl is like.”
“Whaaaat? Do we seriously have to-?! Er…” Josephine started to complain, but winced as Lisa Lisa’s eyes narrowed.
Caesar bowed at the waist. “We will take care of her while she’s with us, Master,” she promised.
“Yeah, sure,” Josephine added, looking away with a pout.
Lisa Lisa acknowledged their agreement with a slight nod, then turned back to Suzi. “Think this through carefully,” she warned. “Heroic it might seem, but the fate of a magical girl is nothing but tragedy.”
Hunting for witches wasn’t as exciting as her imagination made it seem, Suzi found out quickly.
“Most of it’s just walking around and hoping your soul gem picks up something,” Josephine explained. She and Suzi walked behind Caesaris as the latter held out her soul gem and led their way.
“Shut up back there,” Caesaris hissed. “You’re supposed to be on the lookout!”
Josephine let out a dismissive sound. “Psh, what’s gonna be so dangerous as a witch? You’re the only one tracking them right now, anyway.”
“What’s so dangerous?!” she repeated, incredulous. “If the rogues in the street don’t try to grab you, then the blackshirts will! So shut up, and keep an eye out!”
“Jeez, fine. So pushy…” Josephine complained, but did as she was told.
Sandwiched between them, Suzi felt a little frightened being outside this late at night. It was dark enough that even the streetlights couldn’t illuminate everything, and Caesaris’s assessment of the dangers were right. But being surrounded by two powerful girls made her feel a little less scared.
“You guys are really good at this…” she quietly commented. Looking behind her, she asked Josephine, “How long have you guys been doing this for?”
“Oh, uh, since I was thirteen. Plane jacking,” Josephine shrugged. “I handled that situation all fine and dandy, but it made me think. My grandfather and aunt are my only family, and I might not be able to protect them. So when I made my contract, I wished for them to always be safe.”
“Really…?” Suzi’s face and voice softened with sympathy.
“Mhm. Having to do all this work all the time is a pain in the ass though.”
Suzi turned back around to face Caesaris. “And you, I know you became a magical girl four years ago. What did you wish for?”
In the dim streetlight, she could still see how Caesaris tensed up at the question. She hadn’t shared that part of her while she had been Lisa Lisa’s student back then, but it typically didn’t matter. All magical girls were able to fight, so they barely needed to question each other’s wishes.
Nonetheless, she responded, “I wished for the power to get revenge on the Pillars.”
“Magic for the sake of magic, eh?” Josephine idly remarked. “Makes sense. It’s because of them that our grandmothers were killed, right? Fighting them alone would be a little tricky…”
That was a part of the reason, Suzi knew. But Josephine hadn’t been with them four years ago. She hadn’t seen how Caesaris had recalled her father’s death to Lisa Lisa and Suzi, visibly holding back tears as she learned of the burden her family carried.
The conversation between the trio died off there; Suzi didn’t know what to say, Caesaris refused to respond, and Josephine didn’t care to continue. They walked in silence, following Caesaris as she tracked witches with her soul gem.
Suddenly, she paused in her walk and stared at her soul gem for a few seconds, then began sprinting around a street corner. Suzi and Josephine let out equal squawks of dismay and chased after her, and kept going until they found her stopped in front of an orphanage.
“It’s here?” Josephine questioned, looking at the building. “But there’s no barrier. Is it inside?”
“I don’t know, it’s just where my soul gem led us!” Caesaris snapped exasperatedly.
Suzi strained her ears to find if she could hear whatever was inside, and her eyes widened. “I hear children crying inside!”
“Then there’s no barrier. It must be a familiar, about to turn into a witch.” Caesaris looked beside her. “Josephine, let’s go!”
“Got it! Suzi, stay put!”
The two girls sprang forwards, magic starting to coat their bodies and turn their civilian outfits into their battle outfits. As the girls went inside, Suzi ran up to one of the windows to try and catch a glimpse of what was going on.
Inside, she saw a shadowy figure trying to approach an array of cradles. But a giant bubble suddenly appeared and blocked its advance, and it pounded on the dome while hissing furiously. While it was distracted, Suzi could see other doors in the halls being blocked off by walls of small bubbles.
Josephine dashed into the room with the familiar, and Suzi took a few steps back from the window.
“Found you!” she yelled, and lashed her hand out at the familiar. Purple vines came out of her hand, wrapping around the familiar and digging their thorns into its skin. The familiar hissed louder and struggled within its bindings, but Josephine made sure to constrict it tightly before raising it up and slamming it on the ground.
Caesaris arrived at the scene shortly afterwards, and she took advantage of the familiar being stunned to fire magical bubbles at it. Suzi watched as the bubbles flattened themselves into discs and cut the familiar into pieces. The monster let out a dying roar as it seemed to dissolve into nothing. In its place, a small, dark orb was left - a grief seed.
“That was quick.” Josephine noted. She picked the grief seed up off the ground, looking at it with cold eyes. “I guess it managed to eat enough people to get a grief seed of its own?”
“I did a check of all the rooms before I got here. The rooms were all full, and no one was hurt,” Caesaris reported. “Everyone here is safe. We arrived just in time.”
“W-We should probably get out before the matrons call the cops!” Suzi cried from the outside.
Josephine and Caesaris startled and looked at each other, as if they hadn’t thought of that possibility, and left the building through the window. The bubble barriers popped on their own as the trio ran far from the orphanage.
Once several miles away and sure not to be discovered, they finally stopped running. Josephine and Caesaris looked like they could sprint for a few minutes longer, but Suzi was completely winded trying to keep up with them.
“That should be far enough…” Caesaris looked around, then turned her attention to her friends. “Are you alright?”
“Never better!” Josephine chirped at the same time as Suzi answered, “Give me a…a minute…”
Caesaris gave her a worried glance, but decided to leave her be and focus on her fellow magical girl.
Josephine reached into her uniform and pulled out the grief seed, holding it up. “Let’s split this up.”
“Right,” Caesaris agreed, getting out her soul gem. The grief seed sucked the impurities out of the soul gem as soon as the latter came close, and Josephine got out her own soul gem to purify it as well.
Once both soul gems were clear, Josephine closed her fist around the grief seed and chucked it down the street. Before it hit the ground, Suzi saw a small white creature come whipping around the corner to catch the grief seed into its back, which seemed to lift up. She let out a little gasp as it looked at her, but the white creature fled as Caesar fired a few bubbles at it.
She whirled around, aghast. “What are you doing?! Why are you shooting at it?!” Suzi exclaimed. “If it was a stray cat-!”
“It’s not a stray cat. It’s the thing you make a contract with to become a magical girl,” Caesar coldly told her. “And if you knew what it really was, you’d be shooting at it too.”
Josephine joined in, “If you can see it, it means you’ve been chosen to become one, possibly. But I don’t like it trying to backseat drive my fights, so I can do without it. We need it to dispose of our grief seeds, though.”
“I guess…I must not have been able to see them before, like witches,” Suzi realized. She looked back in the direction of where it had disappeared, but it had disappeared completely. She wasn’t sure of whether it was bad or not, but if her friends didn’t like it, then…
“If you can see the Incubators, then you can probably see witches too. Master won’t like that,” Caesaris half-muttered to herself.
“Whatever. Let’s go back,” Josephine decided, preventing them from being rooted to the spot this late at night. “I wanna just go to bed already.”
Caesaris fixed her with a glare, but when she noticed how Suzi was yawning, she relented. “Fine. We’ll go back, then.”
They turned to go back, with Suzi in the middle of the pack like before. What she witnessed tonight was a little scary, but it just made the idea of a magical girl’s life so heroic. Caesaris and Josephine were amazing, being able to maintain normal lives while still battling evil at night. If only she could do something like that, then maybe she wouldn’t feel so helpless.
“I wish I could do what you guys do,” she blurted aloud. Caesaris and Josephine turned to her with confused looks at first, then realized what she meant. She continued, “Really, you guys are amazing, doing things like this! People like you should be more well-known…”
“Aw, it’s just all in a night’s work!” Josephine laughed, revelling in the praise.
But Caesaris, on the other hand, didn’t have such a positive reception. “It’s better this way, to be hidden. Our lives are hard enough as is. We can’t even go back to a normal life, now that we’ve made our contracts.”
“Eh? But you seem to be keeping up with it fine,” Suzi wondered. “You still go on dates with all those ‘boyfriends’ of yours.”
Josephine let out a small snort. “Maneater,” she joked.
“And Jojo, you said that you lived a pretty relaxed life with your grandparents, right?”
“Idle rich brat,” Caesaris shot back.
“If you can keep that up, it shouldn’t be that hard, right?” Suzi asked. “I mean, you fight monsters all the time, but I’ve seen a lot of girls do that!”
“It’s still a tough job. We just make it look easy,” Josephine chuckled. “I mean, I’m only fighting to protect my grandad and auntie, so-”
“You protect other people too, idiot. I heard about Straizo. He took a hostage, didn’t he?” Caesaris argued.
“Well, I couldn’t just leave that woman to die!”
As the pair of magical girls bickered, Suzi followed them as she continued to think. Lisa Lisa had wanted her to follow them and learn from them, to discourage her from trying. But even as they were telling her that they had rough lives, she had achieved the ability to see these “Incubators” and familiars so easily.
She knew she had to listen, but-!
…Well, they’d be here for a month. That was plenty of time to think about it.