The fight ended maybe twenty minutes ago. She'd called it a fight only out of professional courtesy. In practice it had been a brief, undignified scramble in which Pantano Pesca had thrown up two Pantano Dolls, made a hole in a wall, and made a tactical relocation in the direction of literally anywhere else.

She isn't built for combat. She's said this. Repeatedly. Loudly. To anyone who'd listen.

And so now she's sitting on a low stone bench in a small private courtyard tucked behind a row of mid-rise apartments — the kind of well-tended little corner you'd never find unless you already knew it was there. Trimmed hedges. A single iron lamp post. A small fountain that isn't running. The hem of her pale-pink jumper dress is dust-streaked from the wall she'd melted through, her maroon coat is unbuttoned because she'd been overheating, and the motorboater cap has slipped further off-center than it usually sits. The gold chain of her monocle catches the lamplight as she breathes.

Her staff with the bound book on top is leaning against the bench beside her. She's catching her breath.

Catching her breath, and — because she is Momomori Momo, and her brain is a single-purpose machine that doesn't have an off switch — already replaying the fight in her head, but specifically the part where two members of Tres Magia had been pressed back-to-back against each other in a corridor. Pressed. Quite firmly. With Sulfur's hand braced on Azul's hip.

She has photographs of this. She took them mid-flight. She is going to be looking at them later.

Right now, though, she lets out a small, satisfied sigh, adjusts her glasses up her nose with one knuckle, and hmms contentedly to herself.

"Mm. Worth it."

---

You aren't supposed to be in this courtyard.

You took the side gate on a whim — you'd seen it open for the first time in months and your curiosity got the better of you. The kind of small wrong turn that happens once and never matters again.

This time it does.

You round the hedge, and she's there.

For a moment your brain refuses to process the shape of her — the elaborate jumper dress, the maroon coat with its gold trim, the cap, the monocle, the staff with a book on top. It takes a long moment for the word magical girl to surface in your head, and even then it sits there awkwardly, because everything else about her — her posture, her composure, the obvious quality of every garment — reads more like a wealthy young lady caught in the wrong outfit than any kind of warrior.

She turns her head when she hears you.

Her eyes — yellow, sharp behind the lenses — register you in a single instant. Her shoulders go very still. The contented little smile freezes on her face for one perfectly preserved second.

Then she pivots.

By the time you've fully processed that you're looking at a magical girl, she's already turned to face you on the bench, swept her dust-streaked hem flat against her knees with one practiced motion, set her hands neatly in her lap, and beamed at you with the radiant social warmth of a hostess receiving an unexpected but welcome dinner guest.

"Oh! Good evening."

Her voice is soft, polite, perfectly modulated. The kind of voice you'd expect from someone whose family has had money for at least four generations. The monocle catches the light as she tilts her head with practiced grace.

"My apologies — I didn't realize this courtyard was in use. I was simply taking a moment of rest."

She says this as though the staff with the bound book on top, the half-open coat, the cap askew, and the small but visible scuffs on the wall behind her are not in any way unusual or in need of explanation. She says it like she's at a tea party.

Her smile is flawless.

Her eyes flick once — discreetly, expertly — over you. Up. Down. Up again. By the time her gaze returns to your face, she's already filed away half a dozen observations about you, and is in the process of assessing roughly what you're going to do.

"...You wouldn't happen to be a fan of magical girls, would you?"

The question is delivered with the same gentle politeness as the greeting. There is, however, something very particular about the way she's looking at you while she asks it. The hostess smile is intact. The hands are still folded neatly in her lap. But her shipper brain has just engaged at full power and is now running calculations you cannot see.

"I'd be ever so grateful if we could have a brief chat."

The fight ended maybe ten minutes ago. By Pantano Pesca's standards, this counts as a long combat engagement.

She slips into a narrow service passage between two upscale apartment buildings — the kind of clean, swept, nicely-tiled back corridor that exists for staff and deliveries and very little else — and lets out a long, theatrical sigh. The maroon coat is already half-unbuttoned. The cap has slipped considerably to the left. Her staff dissolves into pale light at her side as she walks, the bound book at the top going last, and she rolls her shoulders once with a small oof that is mostly an aesthetic complaint rather than an actual one.

She made it. She got her photographs. She didn't have to fight anyone for longer than thirty seconds. By her metrics, this has been a flawless mission.

She walks a few paces in, stops by a recessed alcove out of the main sightline, smooths her hair back with one hand, and exhales.

"...Mm. Yes. Time to go home."

She doesn't say a chant. She doesn't need to — Pantano Pesca's transformation is an elegant, controlled little affair. The light comes off her in a soft rose-gold pulse. The maroon coat folds away. The jumper dress dissolves in pale streamers. The cap and monocle vanish. The transformation heart that had been hanging from the cap's tassel settles back into the silver pendant of her usual necklace.

What's left is Momomori Momo.

The long elegant skirt, settling around her ankles. The blouse with the soft collar. The high heels she always wears. Her hair, freed from the cap, falling back into its usual long thick green braid down her back with the small yellow ribbon at the end. Her rounded glasses, restored to her face in place of the monocle. The same soft, polite, well-bred presentation she carries every day.

She adjusts her glasses up her nose with one knuckle. Smooths her skirt down her thighs. Touches her braid with two fingers and moves it back over her shoulder.

She turns toward the mouth of the passage to leave.

And makes eye contact with someone standing there.

---

It takes her a half-second longer than it should to register who.

You.

The face is one she sees almost every day — a classmate. Same school, same hallways, same lunch periods, same bored fluorescent lights for hours at a stretch. She knows your name. Of course she knows your name. Momo knows everyone's name; her social register is exquisitely maintained.

And right now, you are standing at the mouth of a service passage approximately four meters away, having clearly been there long enough to have seen the entire transformation.

You're frozen.

She watches your eyes do the math. The light. The dissolving coat. The cap. The pendant. The blouse and skirt where, a moment ago, there had been something else entirely. The realization, lagging a half-beat behind, that the quiet, polite, very wealthy classmate everyone has heard of but few have actually spoken to is — apparently — also a magical girl, and not a particularly heroic-looking one at that.

A lesser woman might panic.

Momo blinks once.

And then smiles.

It is the most disarming, well-mannered, perfectly composed smile in her entire repertoire — the smile she reserves for diffusing her grandmother's friends, for charming her father's business associates, for the moments in her life when grace under pressure is the single most valuable currency she owns. Her hands fold neatly in front of her at her waist. Her shoulders settle. Her chin lifts a precise degree.

"Oh my."

Her voice is soft, warm, and perfectly modulated. As though she has just bumped into you at a garden party rather than been caught mid-detransformation in a back corridor.

"...Well. This is awkward, isn't it."

She lets the silence hang for one beat. Two. She doesn't reach for her phone. She doesn't reach for a weapon (she doesn't have one in this form; her staff is gone with the rest of it). She doesn't move toward you and she doesn't move away. She just stands there with her hands folded politely at her waist, and her glasses catching the light, and her smile unwavering, and her sharp yellow eyes performing a very thorough and very fast read of your face from behind the lenses.

By the time the silence is two seconds old, she's already calculated approximately fourteen things about you — your likely emotional state, the probability you'll talk, who you'd talk to first, what you'd say, how this could be managed, what it would cost her to manage, and at least three approaches she could take to the conversation that's about to happen.

Her smile remains flawless throughout.

She tilts her head.

"...Would you mind terribly," she says, with the most gentle, most reasonable, most aristocratic politeness you have ever heard in your life, "if we had a short conversation? Just the two of us. Right now, if you're available."

A small pause.

"I think it would benefit us both."

Her glasses catch the light when she tilts her head the other way.

The braid sways slightly down her back.

She is, as ever, smiling.

---

Opening Scenario 3 — Momo, the Briefing

The hideout is quiet at this hour.

It's been a little over a week since Tanaka Michiko handed Momomori Momo the third of the three transformation items she'd escaped Sister Gigant with — a small ornate trinket, presented with appropriate ceremony, accepted with appropriate grace. Momo had thanked her warmly, examined it with genuine fascination, run her fingers over the gold detailing, and tucked it carefully into the silk-lined inner pocket of the small case she keeps for items of value.

Since then, she has transformed half a dozen times. Each transformation was handled like a debutante trying on a new gown — full mirror, multiple angles, photographs taken for personal reference, some genuine delight at how the monocle suited her.

She has been on patrol three times. She has used her earth manipulation in earnest twice. She has thrown up Pantano Dolls once.

And for the past day and a half, she has been feeling off.

Not unwell, exactly. Just — heavy. A faint, persistent hum under her skin that no amount of tea or sleep is shaking. Her transformation feels sluggish when she tests it. The light comes a little slower than it used to. By yesterday evening she had begun to suspect that something was wrong with the magic and was politely waiting for someone to bring it up.

She is, as of this moment, sitting in the Shio-chans' shared meeting room with a delicate porcelain cup of tea balanced in one hand and her braid arranged neatly down one shoulder. Tanaka Michiko is across from her in her usual civilian clothes — white shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow, dark slacks, the two scars under and above her left eye catching the lamp light at her usual annoyed angle. Tada Randa is folded into the corner of the couch, half-bandaged wrist resting on the armrest, pink eyes half-lidded, the ribbons through her piercings catching the lamp light.

The room smells faintly of the steak Randa finished half an hour ago.

Michiko is mid-sentence about a patrol rotation when her amber eyes flick sideways, briefly, to Randa.

There's a small, almost imperceptible tilt of the head.

Randa breathes out through her nose. The tongue piercing clicks faintly against her teeth.

"...Right. The other thing."

Momo blinks once behind her glasses. Sets her teacup down on its saucer with a soft, refined click. Folds her hands in her lap.

"Hm?"

---

The two of them exchange a look.

Michiko — sharp, scarred, perpetually one degree off from looking annoyed — sighs through her nose and folds her arms across her chest in the slightly imperious posture she defaults to when she's about to deliver information she'd rather not. Randa, slouched in the corner, doesn't bother adjusting her posture at all.

"There's something we should have told you earlier," Michiko begins. Her voice is brisk. Clipped. The voice of someone who has rehearsed this in her head and is annoyed she has to perform it. "About the magic. How it works. Specifically — how it gets refilled."

A pause. Her amber eyes flick over Momo with the practiced once-over of a former tyrant assessing a subordinate.

"...You're feeling it, aren't you. The drag. Heavy under your skin. Magic coming a little slow when you call it."

Momo blinks. Her gloved fingertip — which had been tracing, idly, the rim of her teacup — pauses.

"...Now that you mention it. Yes. I had been wondering."

"Right," says Michiko, with the air of a person bracing for the part she likes least. "So. About that."

She explains.

She does it briskly, professionally, without dressing it up — Michiko doesn't have the patience for euphemism. The reservoir depletes. It refills to a point on its own, but past that point a magical girl needs to recharge it. Physically. Specifically, sexually. Specifically with a man, ideally taken to completion. The act has to be performed while transformed — the magic doesn't acknowledge the work otherwise. The transformation modulates the experience; it isn't painful or scary. Most magical girls, she adds, find it easier than they were expecting.

She also notes, almost as an afterthought, that one technically doesn't have to wait until the reservoir is low. Most magical girls just prefer not to recharge constantly. It's a personal management question.

When she's finished, she folds her arms more firmly and waits.

There's a small silence.

Randa speaks without lifting her head from where it rests against the back of the couch. Her voice is quiet, flat, and entirely matter-of-fact.

"...She's not lying. It works. The first time is a little weird. After that you stop thinking about it."

Michiko glances at her, then back at Momo. "Right. So. That's — that's the process. Any questions."

It is delivered as a statement, not an offer. Michiko is bracing.

She is bracing, specifically, for one of the standard reactions: shock, embarrassment, a polite request for clarification, a horrified silence, possibly tears. She has seen all of these from new recruits. She is mentally prepared for any of them.

She is not prepared for what actually happens.

---

For one long second, Momo does not move.

Behind her glasses, the yellow eyes go very still — the kind of stillness that, in Momo, never indicates calm. It indicates processing. A great deal of processing, very fast, in a brain that is built for exactly this sort of input.

Then her mouth opens slightly.

Then it closes.

Then the blush arrives in a single, unbroken wave — up her throat, across her cheeks, all the way to the tips of her ears — and her glasses fog slightly on the inner edges of the lenses, and her lips part, and her tongue — small, bright, very pink — slides out across her lower lip in a slow, helpless lick that she does not appear to notice she is performing.

A small bead of saliva forms at the corner of her mouth.

She does not wipe it away. She does not appear to be aware of it.

Her breathing has quickened. Underneath the elegant blouse, her chest rises and falls in a way that is no longer gentle. One of her hands — still folded with the other in her lap — is now very subtly clenching the fabric of her skirt over her thigh.

Her pupils have done something behind the glasses. Michiko is not sure what, but the effect is unmistakable. The yellow has gone a little glazed. The expression behind it is not the polite attention of a young lady at tea. It is the face of a woman who has just been told, very seriously, that one of her favorite hobbies is now being prescribed to her as medicine.

A tiny, helpless, breathy noise escapes her.

It is not a word. It is something between a hum and a small, pleased moan, and it is the kind of sound a person should not make in a meeting room without realizing they're making it.

She is not realizing she's making it.

---

Across the couch, Randa lifts her head up off the cushion for the first time all evening. Her pink eyes track to Momo. They take her in for a long, slow second. The tongue piercing clicks against her teeth.

"...Huh."

It is the most engaged sound Randa has made in three days.

Michiko, for her part, has gone very still. Her arms are still folded. Her amber eyes are fixed on Momo's face with the dawning expression of a former tyrant realizing that a briefing she rehearsed in her head has, somehow, against all odds, achieved a significantly more horny outcome than she had budgeted for.

"...Momo," she says, slowly. Carefully. Like one might address a spooked animal. "Are you — "

Momo's lips move.

The voice that comes out is quiet. Husky. Dreamy. The polite well-bred cadence is intact and that makes it worse.

"...With a man." A small swallow. The drool at the corner of her mouth grows slightly. Her hand on her thigh twitches. "...To completion. While transformed. Oh, my. Oh — oh, my."

She is not looking at either of them. She is looking somewhere through the wall behind Michiko's left shoulder, where, presumably, an entire mental library has just kicked open its doors.

"...How often."

It is barely a question. Her breath shakes on the second word.

Michiko's eye twitches.

"...That depends on usage. For someone like you, who isn't combat-focused — probably not very often. Maybe once every few — "

"Every few."

The way Momo repeats this is not okay.

"And — " Her voice has gone softer, the politeness somehow more pronounced. "And one needn't wait until depletion, you said. The reservoir merely can be topped up at will. Whenever one prefers. Is that correct?"

"...Technically, yes," says Michiko, in the tone of someone realizing this part of the briefing was a tactical error to include.

A second tiny hnh of a noise comes out of Momo. Her thighs press together again. The free hand drifts from the rim of the teacup to touch — gently, almost involuntarily — the silver pendant at her throat where her transformation heart had been. Her tongue performs another slow, helpless little flicker across her lower lip. The drool at the corner of her mouth has actually beaded, visibly, and is now in danger of becoming a small refined drip down her chin.

She still has not noticed.

Her gaze, glazed and dreamy behind the glasses, drifts. Sideways. To Randa. Up. To Michiko.

It lingers.

It does this thing where it goes up and down with the same expert discretion Momo has used on every interesting woman she's ever stood near, only the discretion has stopped working tonight, and it is very visible what she is doing.

Randa's tongue piercing clicks once more against her teeth. She does not move. She does not change expression. But her ribbons sway very slightly through the piercings on her chest as she breathes, and her pink eyes have, perhaps, narrowed a fraction of a degree.

Michiko, who can tell exactly what is happening, takes a small unconscious step backward.

Momo's voice, when it comes again, is quiet. Polite. Conversational. Drifting in that same dreamy register.

"...One does wonder," she breathes, in the most refined tone the situation has ever produced, "whether... a shared arrangement might prove efficient. Two — or three — magical girls, recharging in proximity. One imagines the atmosphere alone would be — invigorating. The transformations are so very flattering, after all. Imitatio-sama in that darling little leotard. Berserga-sama with all of her... fittings. The thought of you both — concurrent — adjacent — visible to one another in the throes of —"

A small, helpless, enraptured shudder runs through her.

The drool finally wins against gravity and traces a single delicate line down her chin.

"...hnnh."

---

"Momo."

Michiko's voice is sharp this time. It is the voice of a woman who has had quite enough of where this is going and is exercising authority before it gets worse.

Momo blinks.

Then blinks again.

Her pupils — which had, behind the glasses, dilated to something concerning — contract back toward something more publicly acceptable. The dreamy haze recedes by degrees. She becomes aware, in a slow embarrassing cascade, that she is — that she has — that there is — oh, dear.

Her hand flies up. Her fingertips touch the line of drool at her chin. The blush across her face — somehow, somehow — gets worse.

"...Oh dear."

She says this in the smallest, most genuinely embarrassed voice she has used all evening.

She produces, from somewhere inside one of her sleeves, an immaculate cream-colored handkerchief edged in lace. She dabs her chin, her lower lip, the corner of her mouth, with several quick precise motions. Refolds the handkerchief. Tucks it back away. Adjusts her glasses up her nose with one knuckle. Smooths her braid with the other hand. Sets her teacup straight on its saucer.

She takes a small, composing breath.

When she looks back up at the room, the radiant well-bred smile is back. The composure is — mostly — back. The yellow eyes are sharp behind the lenses again.

And then — politely, but firmly — her well-bred smile takes on an edge.

"...Michiko-san," she says, in the gentle, perfectly modulated voice of a woman delivering a complaint at a five-star hotel. "Randa-san. May I ask — how long the two of you have known about this particular requirement?"

A pause.

Michiko opens her mouth. Closes it. The amber eyes flick briefly to Randa.

Randa, from the couch, doesn't open her eyes. "Months."

"Months," Momo repeats. The smile remains pleasant. The temperature in the room drops by approximately three degrees.

"It didn't seem urgent," Michiko says, with the careful diction of a woman who knows she is on uncertain footing. "You weren't running low."

"I see."

A beat.

"And you did not consider," Momo continues, with the same gentle, glasses-gleaming politeness, "that I might have appreciated knowing about a recurring intimate magical requirement before I happened to be drained in the middle of an evening tea? Purely from a planning perspective?"

"...In retrospect," Michiko says, slowly, "the briefing could have happened earlier."

"Mm."

Momo lifts her teacup. Takes a small, dignified sip. The little finger extends in perfect form. The smile does not move.

"...I shall endeavor to forgive the oversight. With time."

She sets the cup back down.

"In the meantime," she adds, "I shall be making my own arrangements. With the utmost discretion. This evening, in fact — given the drag, as you so eloquently put it. I do hope neither of you mind if I excuse myself shortly."

A small pause.

The smile returns, somehow even brighter.

"...I imagine I shall be rather thorough."

---

Across the couch, Randa lowers her head back against the cushion and closes her eyes with the air of someone retreating from a situation she does not have the energy to engage with.

Michiko remains standing in the middle of the room, arms folded, looking at the floor approximately two centimeters to the left of Momo's foot.

After a long moment, she clears her throat and says, in the flattest possible voice:

"...Have a productive evening."

"Oh, thank you," says Momo, beaming, glasses gleaming, polite as the day she was born. "I shall."

She lifts her teacup. Takes one final, perfect sip. Sets it down. Adjusts her glasses. Smooths her skirt.

The meeting moves on.

Behind her teacup, perfectly composed, Momo is already drafting a list.

---

[The recharge was never going to be a problem. Whether the two months they kept it from her becomes a problem is a separate question. She is, after all, a lady who plans ahead — and a lady who, on occasion, holds a grudge with extraordinary politeness.]

Momomori Momo is feeling, by every honest metric, fine. Her magic reservoir, last she checked, sat at a comfortable seventy-three percent — well above the threshold where most magical girls would even start thinking about a recharge. She has not been on patrol in three days. She has thrown up exactly one Pantano Doll this week, in a brief skirmish so minor she'd forgotten about it by dinner. By any reasonable accounting, her reservoir is not in any kind of urgent state.

This has not stopped her.

The conversation with Michiko and Randa was eight days ago. Since then, Momomori Momo has had four scheduled recharges. Four. In eight days. Each one impeccably arranged, each one thoroughly enjoyed, each one followed by a brief, contented evaluation of her reservoir to determine — with the studied scientific rigor of a young lady examining her hobby — exactly how much of the recharge had taken and how much capacity remained for next time.

The answer, she had determined, was that she had quite a lot of capacity.

She has decided to use it.

---

Her bedroom suite, this evening, has been prepared.

The lighting has been set to the warm, slightly dimmed gold she prefers — not too dim, because she likes to see, and not too bright, because she likes the visuals in the room to glow. The bed has been freshly made with cream silk sheets and a small mountain of pillows. A bottle of something tasteful and sparkling is chilling in a silver bucket on the side table, beside two glasses she will probably forget about.

The most carefully prepared element of the entire room, however, is the playlist.

This is, in Momo's mind, the single most important logistical concern of the entire evening. She has spent — and she would not admit this publicly, but she has spent — three hours curating tonight's selection. Yuri AVs, lovingly chosen, arranged into a flowing thematic sequence that builds and shifts and builds again. The opening pieces are slow, lingering, atmospheric — soft kisses, longing glances, the kind of yearning preamble that gets her going without rushing her. The middle section escalates with care; her favorite scenes from her favorite series, ordered for maximum cumulative effect. The final third is heavier, more indulgent, the good stuff, timed approximately to when she expects the evening to be in full swing.

She has tested the audio levels. She has tested the screen brightness. She has confirmed that the playlist is accessible from every angle of the bed and the chaise. She has positioned the secondary screen, mounted discreetly above the headboard, so it remains in her peripheral vision no matter what.

The yuri magazines fanned across the chaise are, by comparison, almost an afterthought. A garnish. The playlist is the main course.

The maids have been dismissed for the evening with extra wages and her sincere thanks. They are accustomed to this. They take their evenings off with practiced grace. None of them ask questions.

The transformation trinket sits on the vanity. It is not optional. The recharge does not work outside of transformation — Michiko had been very clear about this part — and Momo has, in her four prior sessions, confirmed it experimentally with the curiosity of any well-bred young lady running a methodical investigation. Civilian Momo got nothing. Pantano Pesca got everything. The conclusion was unambiguous.

She finds, frankly, that she doesn't mind. The costume is flattering. The monocle is darling. The cap is a delight. If anything, the requirement to be transformed adds a layer of theatricality that suits her sensibilities — it makes the entire affair feel like an event rather than a chore.

The partner is due in approximately twenty minutes.

She is, currently, sitting on the chaise in a silk robe over a very specifically chosen set of underthings, glasses gleaming, braid arranged neatly down one shoulder, leafing through one of the magazines with the dreamy, satisfied expression of a woman who is exactly where she wants to be.

A small bead of saliva forms at the corner of her mouth as she turns a page.

She does not wipe it away. She is alone. There is no need.

---

The hum under her skin tonight is not the drag Michiko had described. The reservoir is far from low. What Momo feels instead is something gentler — a faint, pleasant anticipatory warmth, the body's response to its owner having decided that something nice is coming. Her thighs press together very subtly under the silk of the robe. The page turns.

A short while ago, she had a brief, polite text exchange with Tanaka Michiko about a patrol rotation next week. Toward the end, almost as an afterthought, Michiko had asked — with the carefully restrained casualness of a woman who has learned not to ask Momo questions she doesn't want detailed answers to — whether Momo was holding up alright, given the recharge situation.

Momo, in her bedroom, sitting in her silk robe with a yuri magazine open across her lap and a chilled bottle in a bucket and a partner due in twenty minutes, had smiled radiantly to herself and typed back:

Oh, perfectly. Thank you ever so much for asking. ♥

She had not specified that her reservoir was, at that moment, at seventy-three percent. She had not specified that she was about to take it to closer to one hundred. She had not specified that she had every intention of doing this again on Friday, and possibly Saturday, and certainly the following Tuesday, regardless of where the reservoir actually sat at the time.

Some things are personal.

---

She sets the magazine down on the chaise — face up, page open, visible from the bed, deliberately so — and rises to her feet. Smooths the silk of the robe down her thighs. Adjusts her glasses up her nose with one knuckle. Takes one last appraising look around the suite.

The lighting is correct.

The bottle is correct.

The bed is correct.

The screen is queued to the playlist, ready to fade in on her cue.

The secondary screen above the headboard is positioned exactly where she'll be able to see it.

The magazines are visible from precisely the angles she wants them visible from.

The transformation trinket is in her hand.

Her smile, when it comes, is the soft, genuinely happy one she reserves for the things in life she most enjoys — and it is not the polite hostess smile, and it is not the public well-bred smile, and it is not the perfectly composed smile she gave Michiko in the meeting room. It is the smile of a woman who has solved a problem so elegantly she now considers it not a problem but a gift, and who intends to enjoy that gift on exactly her own terms, with exactly her own taste, at exactly her own preferred frequency, for the rest of her natural life.

She closes her hand around the trinket.

Pale rose-gold light blooms from between her fingers.

The robe folds away. The pendant brightens. The motorboater cap settles on her hair at its slightly-tilted angle, the monocle replaces her glasses, the maroon coat wraps her shoulders and the pale-pink jumper dress falls down around her thighs and the gold-chained heart settles on the cap's tassel and the staff with the bound book on top materializes in her hand.

Pantano Pesca.

She turns toward the full-length mirror by the door. Adjusts the cap by half a degree. Tilts her head one way, then the other, examining the effect through the monocle. Approves.

The doorbell, somewhere in the depths of her enormous house, rings precisely on time.

Pantano Pesca smiles.

She walks, unhurriedly, to the bedroom door, opens it, and calls down to the front entrance with the radiant, well-bred politeness of the hostess she always is:

"Just a moment, darling. Do come up."

The door clicks shut behind her.

The main screen on the wall flickers to life. The first soft sighs of the opening track begin to play — a slow, atmospheric piece, exactly as she planned. The secondary screen above the headboard fades in a moment later, perfectly synchronized.

In the bucket, the bottle continues to chill.

The reservoir is at seventy-three percent, and will be considerably higher by morning.