By the time you get home, Utena is in bed, having tightly shut and locked her diven the circumstances, you ’t bme her…

  it’ll take a lot to repair this retionship, after this point. You crossed a line as a parent, and misuood the whole situation. And more to the point, you’ve been ing Utena so much she’s gotten involved with shady pany. And you’d failed to teach her the ways of the world, like how to properly approach girls, or world domination.

  But you will fix it! You’ll fix it all! You’ll take over this ‘Enormita’, and turn it into an anization to be proud of! A money-making mae i on world domination guided by the strong hand of a mature, sexy adult woman who will defeat the magical girls with her own two hands! With her own two hands!

  (…somehow, you think, you strayed a little far from your inal goal, but you really aren’t sure why you would think that.)

  (Though that’s mostly because you’re still thinking of your e from earlier.)

  (And as you curl up into bed, you start to think of the way Kiwi’s body felt in your cables, the potential of rewiring her mind, reedug her…and the way Korisu g to you, so needily, after she picked her side.)

  (You have a wet dream that night. And already, you’ve fotten all your inal objes in the first pce.)

  (Just oransformation, and it’s already all starting to unravel…)

  The m, just before school, on a video call with a certain someone…

  “It’s so sweet of you that you’re taking time off to help out your daughter!”

  “And it was very sweet of you to call me to make sure everything would be okay!”

  You’ve been w for a certain pany ever since you graduated uy, and if you’re ho, it’s been a bit rough. Your field is rather oversaturated, and the pandemic saw a lot of downsizing. Your workload has shot as a result, and inftion has meant your sary hasly kept up with your needs. You’ve just about managed, but even so…

  But there’s ohing that keeps your heart alive at work, through all the crap corporate puts you through, through all the office politid all the terrible amenities and everything else.

  Your boss, Morino Mei.

  “It just won’t be the same without you! But I uand. Maybe I should take a vacation for my daughter’s sake, too…”

  You smile, but you know she’s lying.

  …well, not lyily, but you know corporate doesn’t feel anywhere he same way about you. Given your position and field, the ging national ndscape for employment, not to mention the pandemic’s fallout, your job security is hardly guaranteed.

  A, you’re all but certain Mei has goo great lengths to preserve your position. You’re not really sure why, but just seeing her breathes life into every single day.

  No matter what goes wrong, Mei is always willing to lend a hand. She’s the best manager you could ever ask for, and…and, um, she’s quite…

  okay, you’ll be blunt: she’s extremely hot. An absolute blonde bombshell, who mao seem way youhan you despite being at least half a decade older. She looks like you want to look, she struts like you want to strut, she is everything that you are not…

  As you try to think about what to talk about – aloime with Mei is very precious, after all – you get surprised by a certain someone wandering into the room that ynize very well after st night.

  “Oh! Korisu! e on in, this is mommy’s friend Naoko! e in and say hello!” Korisu? Really? Yes, as she approaches, this is clearly the girl you met st night, the ***** schooler that Venalita recruited into Enormita. Mei excitedly lifts a very blushy Korisu up into her p, who shyly waves at you.

  “Hello, Korisu!” you say, as if pretending this is the first time you’ve met. “Um, I think my daughter and her friend have been taking care of her, actually. I didn’t realize it was your daughter!” Although, seeing them right o each other, the resembnce is very strong…maybe you were a little too distracted to notice st night?

  “Really? You’re Utena’s mother? How sweet! She’s such a wonderful girl. She even fixed up Korisu’s doll for her! She and Kiwi have been helping out a lot.”

  “Ahah, yes, Kiwi…” Maybe it’s for the best you don’t bring all of that ‘hotel’ stuff up for now. “She and Utena are very close friends.”

  “Yes, I see. Just like you and I!” Mei nods to herself. Well, you’d like to be as close as Utena is to Kiwi, at least.

  (…though, you aren’t really sure Mei would appreciate being strapped up in an oversized lightbulb until her brain is fried into submission.)

  (She seems more the type to help you out with that than anything, really. She could help you reeducate Kiwi…)

  Korisu is very eager to spend more time with you, looking…well, a little more excited than normal. (You’re pretty sure she always looks pretty sleepy and stoic, admittedly.) But Mei lifts her off and pats her head. “You o get ready for school, honey! Mommy will be there soon, okay?” Mei giggles as Korisu, waving at you and blushing again, very relutly wanders off. “It’s such a joy to see her finally making some friends! They pamper her, too~ You know, Kiwi got her some G*np the other day. It was very sweet of her! You like that sort of thing, right, Naoko?”

  “Uh, I used to. That was a long time ago, though…” Yeah, you had a mecha phase for a bit as a teenager. After your, uh…actually, what was your phase before that? You ’t really remember. Virtual pets? Trading card games? J*nny and L*cca- dolls? For some reason, you remember getting some kind of ugly, pstic tacky thing that you hated so much you pai entirely in bd purple nail polish and gave it bat wings to repce the feathered wings it came with, and your parents decided pmo was a better use of your, um, ‘talents’…

  “That’s too bad. I’ve been watg a lot of the test G*ndam with Korisu tely before bed, since Kiwi got her ied. I bet she’d enjoy it a lot if you came over to watch it with us! I don’t really get it myself, you know?”

  You ’t help but blush a bit. Despite not being able to be home as often as she wants, Mei is such a loving, passioher who always supports everything her daughter does, eve’s not something she uands…

  Actually, e to think of it, isn’t that one about a couple? A corporate heiress and a naive, shy young student at some interpary finishing school where they have robot duels for some reason. You saw some CMs a while back, you think.

  (…despite yourself, you imagine yourself and Naoko in Astic*ssia uniforms, surrounded by feathers in an artificial sky on a G*ndam’s hand…)

  (“o meet you, my groom,” says Mei, as your uniform turns gold, and –)

  You shake yourself out of your fantasy. Ugh, are you really daydreaming about your bht in front of her? She’s a married woman! You could never make a move on her! You’re not a homebreaker, no matter how sexy she is, or how much fun you’re sure you could have together!

  “Ah, it’s almost time for me to go, I think. But, I almost fot! I need my fake wedding ring!”

  “Wait. Your what?”

  Mei blinks, and giggles a bit. “Oh…did I not tell you? I could’ve sworn I did, but maybe that was just a dream I had.” A dream? Why is she having dreams about you?! “No, I just wear this to stop my bosses from harrassing me. I’ve been divorced for years, you know? Keep it a secret~”

  “I – buh.”

  Okay, you’re pretty dense, but you’re not that dense. Why…why is your boss hitting on you? Has your boss been hitting on you for years? No, it ’t be that far back, it must be just a ret thing…

  Well, except maybe the delicious Christmas cakes she sends you every year.

  Or the fact that she somehow finds a way to make you handmade chocotes on Valentine’s Day and White Day.

  Or her occasional jokes that you should go to an oogether. With a couple’s dist.

  Or the oime you walked into her offid she was halfway through ging, and she just wi you as she put on her bra…

  …

  …

  …are you just, uh, stupid?

  “Gotta go! You should e visit Korisu and I ter~” Mei waves and ends her call, and you just…kind of sit there, staring into space.

  In fact, you sit there staring into space for a while. Long enough that Utena just sort of makes herself breakfast and slips out the door while you pte how you could have possibly missed the obvious romantid sexual aggression that Morino Mei had been dispying for so long. April showers bring Mei flowers, or something…

  (e to think of it, Utena doesn’t seem to get that Kiwi is gunning for her either. Does this level of stupidity just run in the family or what?)

  “Eeeeh?! You’re okay with quitting?!” Kiwi wildly filed her arms around in homeroom that m as Utena expio her that she was, in fact, totally okay with quitting.

  Really.

  Totally.

  “I was bckmailed into Enormita in the first pce,” she says, mumbling and blushing and looking aside as she sits on a pillow to ease her still-red tush. Mom really went to town on her…b-but this is exactly what she’s been doing to the magical girls, so she ’t exactly pin. “A-and keep your voice down!”

  “This isn’t like you,” Kiwi says, puffing her cheeks. “She tried to shock me, you know. There’s only one person allowed to do that to me!”

  ht, Utena did do that, didn’t she. She held Kiwi in her monster’s grip, and shocked and shocked and shocked her until she was the cutest girl in the whole wide world –

  No, absolutely not! Utena’s trying to turn over a new leaf! Now that she knows first-hand how goo–HORRIBLE it feels to be spanked like that, she ever, ever do such a thing to the magical girls ever agai alone more things that likely feel bett–WORSE!

  “Look, um…just put up with it, for now? I’m sure Mom will give up on it. She’s got a job to do, in the first pce. Her vacation days won’t st forever.”

  “And then you’ll be ba a as Magia Baiser, making those magical girls squirm! Right?”

  “Um…”

  “Right?!”

  “Uh, sure, why not.”

  “Yay! Utena, Utena, let’s go to a hotel to celebrate~” Kiwi makes more of her kissing faces, and Utena really wishes she wouldn’t tease her like that. A girl’s heart might get hurt that way! Like she was hurting the magical girls…

  But it’s okay. Utena just go back to her ordinary life, admiring the magical girls from afar, not watg them squirm and make their pretty little faces, not seeing new and cute sides of them. Her mother will stop this madness soon once she realizes world domination is silly, and everything will be back to how it was before all of this started. Just as it should be.

  …

  …

  …despite herself, Utena wiggles her butt against her pillow…