Decay stared in silence for a few seconds.

"Well?" asked Natasha. "Will you?"

"I... am confused," admitted Decay. "You are my enemy, forced into an armistice against your will, and yet you come to me for help? Your audaciousness is impressive, I'll admit, and yet even so, it's given a run for its money by your horrible abuse of logic. Yes, previous Banes have used human life energy to enlarge the rift, but the rift isn't a person. However did you reach the conclusion that the two are equivalent?"

"First, it wasn't against my will. As I already said, our last fight happened under false pretences. That being the case, I want to be friends rather than enemies."

"... And as I already said, your pretences were one hundred percent correct."

"Second," continued Natasha, ignoring the Bane completely, "I'm fairly sure you already poured some of the energy you took from Stacy back into Tracy. I'm no medical professional, but I'm fairly sure someone with four puncture wounds to a lung shouldn't be awake the very next day, needing no more medical intervention than an oxygen mask and some IV painkillers. Not to mention the way the doctors kept harping on about a miracle."

"... The agreement was that the four of you survived, and your damn emergency services were far too slow," complained Decay, whose black ribbons had staunched the external bleeding but done nothing about the blood pouring into the red magical girl's lung.

"Ah-ha. So you did!"

"That was to fulfil the terms of our agreement. I still fail to see why I'd want to help you now. The life of... what was her name...? Stacy, is not in any danger."

"It doesn't need to be for free. You can use my energy whenever I have some spare. I'm sure the other girls will chip in, too."

"I'm not," said Decay.

"As much as I hate to do so, I'm going to need to agree with the Bane here," said Natasha's backpack. "Please don't make promises on behalf of the others."

"It's not like my pocket money is enough to sway anyone. I can promise more games of scrabble, but I'm well aware I'm not interesting competition for you. Maybe Mary would play? I'd bet she could beat you."

"And again, please don't make promises on behalf of others," complained William.

"That wasn't a promise. I said 'maybe'!"

The backpack sighed.

"... I'm tempted to agree simply so that you'll go away," said Decay. "Alas, I have a horrible feeling that doing so will only encourage this sort of annoying behaviour in the future. I'll admit that energy is something I need, if I am to have any sort of long-term future here, but if I take enough from you to wake up Stacy, you're going to end up bed-bound yourself."

"So? I don't mind."

"I do! If your payment is supposed to be an energy supply, it would be years until you could start feeding me."

"Ah, right... You were thinking of yourself, not me."

"Of course I... argg! How can you be so frustrating?!"

"You think you have it bad? I've had to work with her for nearly a year already," said William.

"Hey!" complained Natasha. "I'm not at all sorry if I insist on thinking the best of people."

"Go away," said Decay. "Come back with the other two, if you must. If you all agree to contribute energy to Stacy, and to help keep me fed in payment, and at least one of you can beat me at scrabble, I'll help."

"Why the scrabble condition?" asked Natasha. "No, never mind. I'm off to fetch the others. I'll be back in a minute!"

----------------------------------------

"No," said Mary. "I told you, I quit. I never want to see that monster again, let alone spend my life as his personal larder."

"I'm with her," said Tracy. "I wouldn't mind sharing some of my energy with Stacy, but why should we have to help feed that thing when he's the one responsible for my sister's condition in the first place?"

"Because if he gets hungry, he's going to go on a mass murder spree and we'll all be powerless to stop him?" suggested Natasha.

"No longer our problem," said Mary. "Literally. We're banned from making it our problem. The military will just need to nuke him or something."

"Oh, for goodness' sake! You two are the serious ones! I'm the one who always wants to goof off. What happened to you?"

"If William has lied to us once, how can we trust anything else he's said? Maybe the reason he wants young girls to fight lethal monsters is nothing to do with compatibility with the power of the Earth, and because we're easier to control than trained military personnel would be."

"I would never!" denied William.

"Then show us some proof."

"You know that's impossible... Look, I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but I found out seconds before we needed to spring the trap. The opportunity was perfect, with no innocent bystanders around, and Decay walking right over the pitfall. We might have never had such good conditions again, and as we'd already discussed, Decay's existence here is not sustainable, whatever is in his heart."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"And so you made a unilateral decision to ignore our morality in favour of your own convenience."

"In favour of protecting the world, but yes. Yes, I did."

"And, in the same situation, would you do so again?" asked Tracy.

"Does it matter? It's not as if you'd believe me if I said no."

"That's beside the point!" yelled Natasha. "We're a team! One of us needs help, and we have the means to do so."

"One of us?" asked Tracy. "Have you forgotten your arm again? Where even are you right now? That's right; you're visiting us in a hospital. We all need help."

"I just don't understand why you're both so bitter at Decay. We tried to kill him. You can hardly blame him for not dying."

"... Perhaps," admitted Tracy. "I suppose that for the sake of family, I can make some concessions. But, aside from helping Stacy, I'm never giving him so much energy that it impacts my life. He leaves me feeling even the slightest bit lethargic and the deal's off."

"Yay! And what about you, Mary?"

"You keep calling us a team, but the two of us had barely spoken before William turned up. Stacy and Tracy, too. You had your circle of friends, and I had mine. If we're no longer defenders of Earth, what makes us a team?"

"We're still defenders of Earth! And even if we weren't, it's not like the past year never happened. How many Banes did we defeat? A few dozen? Then we suffer a single loss, and suddenly you're all sullen and mopy?"

"Still defenders of Earth? How can you say that when we have nothing to fight?"

In answer, Natasha fixed Mary with a stare and began to chant.

"I call upon the power of the Earth. Grant me the strength to protect your children. Grant me the courage to stand against your aggressors. Grant me the might to enact justice. Grant me the love to show mercy!"

The light show faded, revealing magical girl Gentle Breeze clad in her usual bright yellow, impractical glory.

A white ribbon, usually tied around her missing arm, floated forlornly to the ground.

"Right, my arm..." muttered Natasha. "Anyway, my point is that I can still transform, and even if Banes are off the menu, we can go fight robbers or something. But, more importantly, pay attention to the words we chant. We don't just ask for strength; we ask for courage. We don't only promise justice, but we also promise mercy."

"You think I'm a coward?"

"I think you're scared, and that's okay. You went through a horrific experience, and now I'm asking you to reconcile with the person that did it to you."

"You know, when we first started, I used to think you had no redeeming features. A complete air head. Not particularly athletic. Awful at schoolwork. The attention span of a caffeinated toddler. Incapable of taking anything seriously."

"Hey!"

"I said used to. For a while now, it's been obvious that out of our group, you're the one that exemplifies what a defender of Earth should be the best."

"Huh? But you're the intelligent one, who comes up with all our plans. Tracy is the serious one, always trying to get us to train and practice. Aren't you two far better magical girls than me?"

"How could I claim that when I've chanted that line about mercy a hundred times without ever having understood it? Come on. Let's go play this bloody Bane at scrabble, if only because it'll be nice to finally beat him at something."

"But you haven't been discharged yet, have you?"

"No, but only because they want me to see a psychiatrist. Personally, I think that's a terrible idea. Telling the truth ends up with me locked in a padded cell if he doesn't believe me, or us earning the attention of our political overlords if he does, while lying just wastes everyone's time for no reason. I'm going to discharge myself."

"What about you, Tracy?"

"I think it's a bad idea for me to leave hospital just yet, but Decay will need to come here anyway to help Stacy. I'll be waiting."

"Yay. Thank you!"

----------------------------------------

Decay sneered nastily, while Mary glared at her remaining letters, trying to force more valid words to pop out of them with sheer willpower.

Natasha watched helplessly, being so far behind that coming anything other than last was impossible.

"Dammit. This is the best I can do," said Mary, using up the last of her letters to earn a mere twelve points, leaving her three behind Decay, with the pair of them both out of letters.

"Looks like I win," he smirked as Agatha made her final move.

It not only used up all seven of her letters, but landed on a triple word score, causing her to leapfrog the other players by a good seventy points.

Decay's jaw dropped open.

Mary's eyes narrowed.

""Rematch!"" they both demanded.

"Uh... I think I'll just... uh... explore the garden," said Natasha, backing away.

Her backpack poked her.

"You join in too. I'll tell you what moves to make," it whispered. "This looks fun."

"But how can you see the board?" asked Natasha.

"Pardon?" asked Agatha. "I may be old, but my eyesight's not completely shot just yet."

"No, sorry, I meant... uh..."

"I can see out just fine," hissed her backpack. "The stitching on this thing is so old that you could probably poke your head through it."

"Uh... Maybe I'm a little older than I thought. I'd swear your backpack just spoke."

"Yeah, it does that," nodded Natasha, sitting back down. "It's getting it to shut up that's the trick."

Three more games later, and the tally was one to Mary, one to Decay and two to Agatha, with Natasha failing to compete even with William's help.

"I don't like this game anymore," pouted her backpack.

Mary and Decay looked at each other, then at Agatha. "I think I see why you got hooked," acknowledged Mary.

"See? Isn't this much better than fighting each other?" nodded Natasha.

"Fighting?" asked Agatha.

"Whatever. Well, you won one game, so I'll keep my end of the deal."

"Oh? Even though all three of us didn't show up like you demanded?" needled Natasha.

"The red one had a reasonable excuse, and the sooner I sort you out, the sooner I get what I want."

"Aww, what a softie."

"Don't make me cut your other arm off."

"Eep, no! I can cope with one, as long as no-one expects me to tie shoelaces, but none would be a nightmare."

Decay sniggered as he followed the girls out of the house. "I'll be back in a couple of hours," he called.

"I'll put some tea on, so I'll hold you to that," answered Agatha.

"I've been thinking," said Mary as the trio walked back to the hospital.

"Uh-oh," responded Natasha.

"Don't worry. It's not an uh-oh thought. More of a what-if. You said I'm the intelligent one that comes up with plans? Well, what do you think the outcome of this would have been had we relied on you to plan, instead? I can't help but feel that everything would have been resolved far more peacefully, everyone would be happier, and you'd still have all your limbs."

"I often wonder what the outcome would have been had the Devourer of Light not been such a gibbering fool," supplied Decay. "I suspect he'd be ruling the Earth by now, or else decided it wasn't possible and sealed the rift from his side."

"If the Devourer of Light manifested here in person, the restrictions around the power of Earth would be broken," supplied William. "The devourer would be contested directly, not via intermediaries. I cannot guess who the winner would be. If anything, I would guess there would not be a winner at all. The energy of the Earth would be spent either way. If the Devourer ended up 'winning', he would rule only a dead wasteland. A second Midnight."

"I agree," nodded Decay. "I've often wondered if 'Midnight' existed before he came, and if so, what sort of world it was before. What the Banes were before, if there was a time we lived in the light. He has not earned his moniker for nothing."

"I... err... have no idea what you're all talking about, but we're here," said Natasha, waving her hand at the hospital building. "Let's wake up Stacy."