Quoted By:
<span class="mu-s">-----------------------Caballito--------------------
—------Labyrinth of the Witch of Peace----------</span>
卌 <span class="mu-s">A</span>: <span class="mu-i">(You can open your eyes now.)</span>
Helen dares: today can’t get any weirder, everything is always weird. But it did. Mouth gaping, arms stiff, the little girl beholds the weirdest place she had ever been in. It’s the hall of a shopping mall, but at the same time it’s not. Some of the automatic ladders lead nowhere, some of the manikins on the clothes exhibits have two heads, or a little head coming from over the first, there’s a food court on a wall, all of its tables and seats stuck to it as if gravity worked different there- the details pile up, and Helen ends up hiding her face on the side of A’s waist.
卌 <span class="mu-s">A</span>: <span class="mu-i">(Nothing bad will happen to you. Can you hear me?)</span>
Helen just looks at A in the eyes.
卌 <span class="mu-s">A</span>: <span class="mu-i">(Can-you-hear-me?)</span>
A just talked without moving her mouth. Is she a ventriloquist? Does she have a puppet too? Is Helen going to be the puppet?
卌 <span class="mu-s">A</span>: <span class="mu-i">(I know that you are a mute, but now you are a Magical Girl too. I didn’t want to scare you before, but you can talk now. You can’t talk with your /mouth/, but- you can talk with your mind now. Try it.)</span>
Helen had heard about this before. Telepathy, telekinesis, teletransparpoperrtation- it’s what espers do. Is she an esper now? Can I talk? ‘Can I talk?’, Helen thinks, flooding her mind with the question. She tries; Helen thinks ‘Hi? Hello? Hellooo! I can talk! I can talk, look!’.
But the Coordinator looks unphased.
卌 <span class="mu-s">A</span>: <span class="mu-i">(Helena?)</span>
‘I’m talking!’ Helen thinks, suddenly desperate, suddenly grabbing A’s hand and shaking it almost in anger. ‘I’m talking! Don’t make fun of me!’. Yet A furrows her brow.
卌 <span class="mu-s">A</span>: <span class="mu-i">(The effects of your magic are gone. Your Soul Gem is healthy now. You should be able to- this is worse than I thought.)</span>
Helen violently tugs at A’s sleeve and straight-up looks at her in the eyes, moving her little mouth, thinking hard as wet tears cloud her eyes. This is the worst prank anyone has ever pulled on her, Helen thinks, and the culprit wasn’t even a kid but one of the adults she’s meant to look up to. And she was even talking about Sunny doing the same thing just now!
卌 <span class="mu-s">A</span>: <span class="mu-i">(We don’t have time. Come.)</span>
A drags Helen further into the Labyrinth…
