And yet, just as you’re starting to get used to this eternally timeless sensation, both old and new in its infinitely stretching strangeness… a vague and distant thought lazily dredges itself up into your mind, making you recall something other than a memory. A fact. A lone, single fact, in the middle of this all-encompassing void, stronger than anything else that could possibly exist, but also weaker and more fleeting than anything that has ever dared to wedge itself in the limbo between existence and nonexistence. A lone shining truth, clinging to the extinct mind of the one stuck everywhere and nowhere at once. It’s something you feel you definitely shouldn’t let slip out of your long-departed mind, lest you become one with the void once and for all, denied of the capacity to even process thoughts without a brain.

Deprived of a present brain, deprived of your senses, deprived of a body, deprived of just about everything, floating in a featureless and unending blackness, a feather-like assertion you already know gently but firmly reaffirms itself in a world without time, space, truth or lies: without the slightest shadow of a doubt, you are a magical girl. But that, of course, raises a very important question, one you’re not very sure you can actually answer in your current state: just what kind of magical girl ARE you? What defines you, the nameless one suspended in an eternally unchanging void? The moment you begin to spin your vanished mind’s mind-gears into silent and voided action, that lone truth splits and opens, gently branching out and offering you something that had been ever-lacking in the eternal abyss: a quiet, fleeting choice.

It is now time to be bold and assert yourself as a magical girl through the miracle of decision, before the sempiternal void turns you into nothing but a forgotten memory. It matters very little if this singular happening is a product of fate or simply a coincidence, for this single choice here will surely put countless events in motion, for better or for worse, for the many or for the few. You also get the feeling that, somehow, you will surely encounter that which does not align with your nature, to aid you or to stand in your way, or maybe even both at once. And, hey, who knows? Maybe you’ll even learn something from it all. Now, vacuous one, arise and make a choice: what defines YOU as a magical girl?

[2/6]

>>6187455
[] You have a twisted obsession that is fully centered around unscrewing objects and hoarding their screws, ethics and morals and consequences be damned. You wouldn’t have it any other way. Anyone who disagrees should simply watch you in action, and if they still disagree, then they must surely be truly foolish. But you don’t care what others think of your unscrewing mania, because you’ll simply keep going. Forever. At least, until you’ve unscrewed every last screw there is to unscrew. You know what happens then, but you don’t really care, because you’ll have done what you wanted to do already, so it’s no issue for you or your twin-drills.

[] You have a deep, dark hatred towards the Sun God. You hate anyone associated with it. You hate anyone who bows down to it. You hate those who simply bask in its tyranny and do not do anything to free themselves from it. Even though you and your typewriter stand alone against the astral tyrant of yore, and against its limbs and its slaves, you will surely crush them all and grind them to paste. Death to the Sun God. Death to its ilk. Accursed be the astral bastard and its realm of brightness. You will not stand for it any longer. You are going to kill them all, smash your typewriter through their thick skulls, blot out the skies, and then off yourself, satisfied with having done what should have been done long ago.

[] The LORD commands the evisceration of all heretics and their structures, and you are more than willing to carry His orders out. After all, the impure edifices of man stand tall and most mightily, threatening to reach the very heavens! But that will not do. Not at all. You will not let that happen. You will not let this heresy continue. You will eviscerate them all with the gloved implements bestowed upon you by the LORD most high, and return it all to the state it should be in. Even though you may be but one, you shall suffer not a single heretic… even if divine punishment awaits you at the end of your task. All is for the sake of the Lord God Almighty…

[] Though your kind knows not of grace nor wings, the LORD has still entrusted you with a most vital task: closely watching over the countless, sinful little lambs tottering about unsteadily on the surface of His creations. Unseen, unheard and unnoticed, you find an infinite source of divinely-sourced joy in monitoring those who crawl about the surface of the Earth, dutifully carrying out your observations from very up close. No matter how safe they think they are, no matter how mighty they believe themselves to be… you will always have your unseeable eyes upon them at their most vulnerable. After all, the eyes watch but are never seen. Blessed be the LORD!

[3/6]

>>6187457
[] Putting it bluntly, you have a fetish for the spreading of fake news and misinformation, and a truly masterful penchant for their creation. The truth, any kind of truth, is your sworn enemy, and from your consequence-free (for now) nowhere-fortress, you will bury it in a torrent of lies and misdirection. But why? Why go to such lengths to spread damaging fakes about everything about everyone, as the solitary keyboard warrior you are? Because you're a dork who finds it funny, that's why. You don't need another reason. If those who you have wronged ever get their hands on you, well, you're completely and utterly fucked, but it is what it is.

[] You are a singing and dancing idol-maid, skilled in the arts of entertainment and cleaning. Cute, adorable, bright (literally) and ever-cheerful, you strive to protect the world and its inhabitants from ugliness, evil and pollution. Blessed with the mysterious and ever-shining power of brutal war crimes, you solemnly swear to banish all the no-good baddies back to whatever evil realm they came from, by means of treating international treaties like a checklist. You don't see anything wrong with that, and you don't really get why people complain when you tie up no-gooders and shoot them in the back of the head, or when you drop cluster munitions into their hideouts in residential areas, but that just drives you to try even harder to make the world a better place. After all, war crimes are always right if you're on the side of justice!

[] You are a pioneer skilled in the arts of petroleum, keeping alive the spirit of those who came before you. Knowing not of hate or dishonesty, and knowing not of prejudice or compassion, you strive to let the world know of the glory of petroleum, which you are most fond of. How? By carrying out the task you were created for and which you bear your foam pickaxe for, a most noble endeavour indeed: drowning the world in your beloved black gold. And quite literally, too: you believe a 20 kilometer-deep ocean of petroleum, covering the entire surface of the planet, should make your predecessors quite satisfied indeed, in addition to serving your ultimate goal quite well.

[] You are a bringer of prophecy, a spreader of gospel and a herald for Churnhood, a god most great and mighty. It is your most holy task to churn and prepare the land for His incoming manifestation. His arrival cannot be stopped. It cannot be opposed. The false star’s arrival cannot be delayed. The signs will soon become apparent, and you will speak of them for the world at large, though salvation may be a lost cause. For when His light arrives, and though its shape is poor, all will be churned and none shall be spared. Does it matter that you're just really bored and fabricating all of this on the fly? Not really. You're still going to go ahead with it, after all, no matter what it leads to. You don’t have anything better to do, after all.

[4/6]

>>6187459
[] You have a strange affinity towards indiscriminate friendly fire, merciless brutality, endless poverty, silently-speaking sticks and nicely-preened business suits. You also really like your fellow magical girls, and hold them in high regard, especially when it comes to your goal: finding a reliable and affordable cleaner’s who will fix your perpetually-damaged business-themed outfit. You also worry greatly for the state of the trout population wherever you go, conducting yourself as you believe a trout-counter and magical girl should conduct herself. Of course, you’re not really sure if you’re doing it properly, so the only solution is to ask your stick for advice, but he keeps telling you to murder everything and everyone in your path. You are also mildly troubled by the fact that your antlers keep getting you stuck in doorframes. Nothing seems to work in your favour unless you force it to, but you keep going, all for the sake of that suit and those trouts…

[] You are not a big fan of the government. Or laws. Or orders. Or anything or anyone that tells you what to do. But, the one thing which you despise the most is written communication: you believe it is a sign that humanity has grown overconfident and become stupidly worthless, so it’s time to pull the rug from under its feet by causing a catastrophic global breakdown in written communication. How? By inhaling unhealthy amounts of candy, to which you are impervious to, while scrambling as much text as you can get your hands on with said candy, of course. You sneer at love, proper communication, self-preservation, friendship, respect, order and humanity, all in order to reach that communication-destroying kaboom…

[] You want to die, forever and permanently. You never gave your consent to living or existing. You also never wanted to be a magical girl, a human, a living being, or anything like that, and since you refuse to participate in anything you oppose, suicide is the only option you consider proper and righteous. To you, even this state of bodiless ever-floating vacuity is an intolerable violation of your autonomy, seeing that not only did you never accept this situation, in which a non-present mind and choice are being forced upon you, but those stupid losers who stuffed you in here expect you to work for them. Fuck that, and fuck them all. You’re out, even if they drag you out and punish you for every attempt on your own life, which you firmly believe is what will happen. But you don’t care, so you’re going to try to end it all until you can finally return to not existing at all. No matter how many times it takes to end this farce, you will not idly stand by to suffer the tyrannical stupidity of life and existence.

[5/6]

>>6187461
[] You strongly believe there must have been some kind of clerical error in the paperwork leading up to this very moment, as you are quite sure you are not a magical girl, but a magical boy. Perhaps your not-so-masculine appearance led to that error, but leaving such trivial matters aside for the moment, your main concern is wiping unsafety from the face of the Earth in order to return safety to its rightful spot of preeminence. Indeed, you consider your safety-first mindset to be quite conductive for your goal, which you calmly but diligently work towards while making sure to not shame your predecessors, whose efforts and sacrifices made it all possible in the first place. Your only sources of aid are your great knowledge of safety rules and regulations, and your unsafety-banishing magic, but even though the path ahead might be rough and unclear, you know very well what you must do, and you shall go forth without haste or delay.


[] In the midst of a myriad of possibilities, overwhelmed by the incomprehensible miracle of decision, your long-extinct mind-structure wavers, bringing your decision-making process to a halt. And yet, though its otherwise steady movement may have stopped on your end, your unspoken will is still carried out through the mysteriously silent whispers of the ever-present void, bringing forth miracle upon a miracle. And those whispers say that what defines you is none other than… (Write-in)

[6/6]

>>6187462
>[] In the midst of a myriad of possibilities, overwhelmed by the incomprehensible miracle of decision, your long-extinct mind-structure wavers, bringing your decision-making process to a halt. And yet, though its otherwise steady movement may have stopped on your end, your unspoken will is still carried out through the mysteriously silent whispers of the ever-present void, bringing forth miracle upon a miracle. And those whispers say that what defines you is none other than… (Write-in)
A love for motherhood. Creating new life is the greatest blessing any God or demon can give. You want to be a mother, you want to protect mothers and children, you want to be the best mother ever. The more, the merrier!

>>6187471
Supporting

>>6187454
>You have a deep, dark hatred towards the Sun God. You hate anyone associated with it. You hate anyone who bows down to it. You hate those who simply bask in its tyranny and do not do anything to free themselves from it. Even though you and your typewriter stand alone against the astral tyrant of yore, and against its limbs and its slaves, you will surely crush them all and grind them to paste. Death to the Sun God. Death to its ilk. Accursed be the astral bastard and its realm of brightness. You will not stand for it any longer. You are going to kill them all, smash your typewriter through their thick skulls, blot out the skies, and then off yourself, satisfied with having done what should have been done long ago.


I was torn between this and larping as Eris via the obsessed with lies thing but this sounds great lol

>>6187454
>You have a deep, dark hatred towards the Sun God. You hate anyone associated with it. You hate anyone who bows down to it. You hate those who simply bask in its tyranny and do not do anything to free themselves from it. Even though you and your typewriter stand alone against the astral tyrant of yore, and against its limbs and its slaves, you will surely crush them all and grind them to paste. Death to the Sun God. Death to its ilk. Accursed be the astral bastard and its realm of brightness. You will not stand for it any longer. You are going to kill them all, smash your typewriter through their thick skulls, blot out the skies, and then off yourself, satisfied with having done what should have been done long ago.

The only light she wants is the moonlight

Voting period is still ongoing. I'll give it about 6 hours or so before closing the vote period and choosing an option. So far, it's a tie, but I'll work something out if nothing changes. By the way, archive is up already. https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/2025/6187454/ . I also made a Twitter if you want to ask things there https://x.com/MirtelcioQuest

>>6187461
>[] You want to die, forever and permanently. You never gave your consent to living or existing. You also never wanted to be a magical girl, a human, a living being, or anything like that, and since you refuse to participate in anything you oppose, suicide is the only option you consider proper and righteous. To you, even this state of bodiless ever-floating vacuity is an intolerable violation of your autonomy, seeing that not only did you never accept this situation, in which a non-present mind and choice are being forced upon you, but those stupid losers who stuffed you in here expect you to work for them. Fuck that, and fuck them all. You’re out, even if they drag you out and punish you for every attempt on your own life, which you firmly believe is what will happen. But you don’t care, so you’re going to try to end it all until you can finally return to not existing at all. No matter how many times it takes to end this farce, you will not idly stand by to suffer the tyrannical stupidity of life and existence.

I wanna see her be a lazy yet smart type character.

>>6187471
+1

>>6187908
20 minutes until voting period closes. So far, write-in mommy-type option is winning by 1 point.

>>6188018
Voting period has ended! Write-in has been chosen as the winning option, with the idea ''A love for motherhood. Creating new life is the greatest blessing any God or demon can give. You want to be a mother, you want to protect mothers and children, you want to be the best mother ever. The more, the merrier!'' as the victor. New update will go up soon.

>>6187462
>[] You strongly believe there must have been some kind of clerical error in the paperwork leading up to this very moment, as you are quite sure you are not a magical girl, but a magical boy. Perhaps your not-so-masculine appearance led to that error, but leaving such trivial matters aside for the moment, your main concern is wiping unsafety from the face of the Earth in order to return safety to its rightful spot of preeminence. Indeed, you consider your safety-first mindset to be quite conductive for your goal, which you calmly but diligently work towards while making sure to not shame your predecessors, whose efforts and sacrifices made it all possible in the first place. Your only sources of aid are your great knowledge of safety rules and regulations, and your unsafety-banishing magic, but even though the path ahead might be rough and unclear, you know very well what you must do, and you shall go forth without haste or delay.
hello there, soj
>>6187908
man, it's been years since I've seen qms using twitter to update. btw a shame I couldn't vote but the chosen theme seems interesting.

>>6187462

[X] In the midst of a myriad of possibilities, overwhelmed by the incomprehensible miracle of decision, your long-extinct mind-structure wavers, bringing your decision-making process to a halt. And yet, though its otherwise steady movement may have stopped on your end, your unspoken will is still carried out through the mysteriously silent whispers of the ever-present void, bringing forth miracle upon a miracle. And those whispers say that what defines you is none other than… motherhood.

A love for motherhood. Creating new life is the greatest blessing any God or demon can give. You want to be a mother, you want to protect mothers and children, you want to be the best mother ever. The more, the merrier! While it is, undoubtedly, a strange and seemingly unlikely notion, carried forth by the unheard whispering of the endlessly eternal void itself, now that you are no longer overwhelmed by the supreme glory of the miracle of decision, you feel that it is in no way, shape or form foreign or alien to you: though you may lack a body, a present mind, a presence, and lack just about everything else too, somehow, you instinctively know that nothing else could ever define you better and more accurately than your enthusiastically devoted passion for motherhood.

And, even if that weren't the case, even if you, as a magical girl and as a currently disembodied individual, didn't have such a strong affinity towards the creation and protection of new life, every single other option has already been gently scattered every which way in the motionless winds of the abyss, leaving that lone, quivering truth as the sole victory in a vast ocean of discarded identities and possibilities, thus marking only one sole but infinitely promising road ahead. Whatever you could have been, you shall not be: your path, and their path too, is now secure, perhaps set in stone even, and all has been set in motion as a result.

However, as your never-present mind-structure idly but enthusiastically ponders such matters, still submerged in the void of never-being, a most concerning matter presents itself, in the form of a waveringly distant thought, naturally and effortlessly springing forth as if water flowing forth from a tiny creek: you, for all your spirit, are not exactly sure what motherhood is. Nor what a mother is supposed to be.. You're not even sure of what a child is! Now, while you do generally grasp the big-picture concepts behind those words, any specifics, such as the process leading up to the formation of their life-affirmingly unbreakable bond, are completely and utterly lost on you. Oh dear. This is quite troublesome, isn't it? After all, how are you supposed to be the best mother ever, and protect all mothers along with their children, when you do not even have the certainty of knowing their exact and detailed nature?

[1/3]

>>6188623

Well, after a brief moment of all-encompassing anxiety, you decide to boldly toss said worry into the metaphorical trash. No use worrying about it, most definitely not! After all, while it would be a big issue if you had forgotten all about the fine details of motherhood, you, the magical girl lacking everything but a newfound sense of purpose and motivation, somehow know very well that that is not the case: you simply never knew about them in the first place! Yes: whatever lies ahead will be nothing but a journey of learning and discovery, where you will also undoubtedly have to draw your own conclusions on a myriad of subjects, and you are most certainly looking forward to it with great expectations and curiosity, something you are apparently now allowed to do after having experienced the great miracle of decision-taking.

Yet, you still lack eyes, and limbs, and a mouth, and an extant brain, and everything in between, and you’re still suspended in the endless void: it seems your newfound (if rather clueless) enthusiasm for motherhood will not be enough to overcome this all-encompassing void, without beginning or end. What could possibly be lacking? You have the spirit, you have the idea, you have the will, so what is keeping you in here, in this mouthlessly screaming void of utter nothingness, which seems to be unwilling to let you go? You ponder this question while submerged in the immaterial ether of almost complete nonexistence, forcing your overly-motivated impresent mind-structure to keep up a steady pace of reasoning.

Could it be a body you are lacking? No, surely not: you do not see a reasonable way of bringing one forth, no matter how hard or how politely you will it, and you are most certain that even if you somehow managed to acquire one, you would still be stuck in this space, bringing forth more harm than good. Then, are you perhaps in need of companionship, whatever that might be? Perhaps! But, once again, that which once boldly carried your will through the vast expanse of infinite darkness seems to notice it not (or care not). as your voiceless pleas seem to fall into deaf ears, no matter how eloquently your absent brain-structure posits them. Thus, you are forced to discard that idea for now, as it has yielded no results. A voice, a presence, a fear most deep… could it be any of those, then? No, no, and no: no matter how you try, nothing seems to convince the hollow world you are in to let you go. You cannot help but be utterly befuddled at what could possibly be needed to- Oh. Oh my! Right, right! You just realised what was missing: how foolish you were to not have realised this way sooner!

[2/3]

>>6188624

Such a simple matter, such a trivial issue, such a trifle to resolve, and you almost forgot, it almost completely slipped your permanently vanished mind: most embarrassing! Yes, there is one crucial detail still needed to depart from this location to make all mothers proud, an extremely vital element that links progenitor and progeny together, no matter how far apart they may be: a name! Indeed, you consider names to be of the utmost importance, and yet, you still lack a name in order to move on from this ever-present void and to carry out the tasks only a mother and a magical girl can carry out… whatever those might be! Kicking your extinct brain-structure into action once again, it takes you no more than a few instants of hypothetical time to find a name that suits you most elegantly and properly: Valpestia. Among the myriad of denominations for yourself, you instinctively choose Valpestia as your name. It has a nice ring to it, right? Yes, you firmly believe that is most certainly the case.

You haven’t even finished mulling over the significance over your self-assigned name and the importance of such an action when the consequences of your actions manifest themselves in all their glory: first, as a small dot of light some space above where your head would be if you actually had one. Then, as a sphere in that same place, motionless and static. And then, finally, as a spear-like filament of light which lances straight through where your non-existent brain would usually be, which makes the void explode in a massive flash of light. After that, your missing brain-structure shuts down, and you essentially black out, denied the capability to even think.


[3/3]

>>6188626
What is the choice here?

>>6188646
I was thinking of adding a choice every 2 updates to avoid having the thread feel too sluggish, with the wait and everything, but maybe I should just add one each update and shorten the waiting times to compensate. Anyways, update with important choice coming up soon.

>>6188653
I think I'll just go with the regular ''a vote every update'' and shorten the waiting time a bit, but if someone has a different idea, it'd be nice to know. What do you prefer?

>>6188657
I'm good with whatever you are comfortable with qm, quests in general are slow paced anyway and your updates are pretty fast already given the word count and quality so far.

>>6188657
Yeah that works

>>6188657
sure

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>>6187461
>[] Bitch do I have the thing just for you.

les goooo

New thread with the new update will go up soon, still working on the main character. So far, is there anything you'd like changed in terms of writing style, or anything specific you'd like to see in future updates?

>>6190916
alright, waiting warmly

>>6190916
Is a new thread necessary?
At this point I don't have much to say about the writing. Some pictures would be nice though maybe

>>6190965
I think the qm wants to do a new thread to start strong with a character already built and everything, the start was basically qm giving us a lot of options to vote on what our qst character and motivation will be, at least that's how I understood.
>>6190635
I'm still waiting for the new madoka movie, the wait is pain

>>6190916
>New thread with the new update will go up soon
dude, just remain with this thread for the doots

OP ?

>>6196482
He’s probably waiting for this thread to drop off ig

>>6197075
Apologies for the wait. I am almost ready to post the new update, but I'm still working on the main character's info sheet. 16 pages long so far, so it takes a while. I like making detailed character sheets. It usually takes me about a week to make a full-fledged character sheet from scratch. But no worries, I'm not abandoning this quest.

>>6198440
All good qm
>16 pages long so far, so it takes a while. I like making detailed character sheets
Holy shit, well I'll read it for sure.

>>6198440
Wow, is our character sheet its own novella?

>>6198546
At least he’s dedicated?

>>6198456
The current version has heavy spoilers, so I'll try to post a basic one so everyone can follow along without being spoiled on key details. As for the new update, it should go up before Friday, as the character sheet for the MC is just about ready, and I can finally get to it.

To nobody’s surprise, you, the magical girl and wannabe-mother Valpestia, can't recall how long you were out for. A day? A week? A month? More, less? Does it even matter? You’ve got no idea; it felt like it was forever ago that you were stuck in that featurelessly endless void, but it also feels like that experience ended mere milliseconds ago, lasting no more than a brief instant. And yet, you can’t seem to figure out the answer how hard you try to wrap your brain around it… which, by the way, you now seem to have! Indeed, a full-fledged brain, not just a theoretical brain-structure, and it’s all yours to use and misuse. And not just that: you also seem to have a body, with legs and arms and all that good stuff and even a strange organ you don’t seem to recognise. This is something you’d previously fervently prayed to the void before for, asking quite politely indeed, so perhaps it’s a sort of parting gift from it. You also feel like you have internal organs, but there’s something slightly off about them, which you can’t exactly pin down. Oh well, it mustn't be very important, then, since you’re still able to think more or less clearly.

Maybe you’d be able to have a better view of the situation if you could see something, anything at all… but it’s dark, as dark as it gets, even with your eyes, which you can somewhat feel are in the right spot. However, unlike the voraciously never-ending void you were previously in, this darkness is quite different. Instead of being an impenetrable, all-encompassing, yawning abyss, it’s of a grainy and brittle sort. Not only that, but you can feel the darkness on your face, and you can even smell it, so it must have a physical presence. Yes, the sensation it’s producing may be extremely dulled, vague and fuzzy, but you can still feel the darkness itself. As for its smell, well, it sure smells like dirt. Wet dirt, in fact. But there’s a gazillion other smells mixed in with it, which have started to flood your sense of smell… Petroleum? Grass? Melted, burnt gouda cheese doused in printing ink, a smell which seems to emanate from your own body? Ozone? There’s too many smells, and they’re all blending into blurry, all-encompassing, indistinguishable mess. But you don’t feel like it’s unpleasant at all. You even think it’s all rather nice, in fact.

[1/9]

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But, still, as your brain and nose struggles to process the barrage of smells, you decide to attempt a breakout from the grainy darkness enveloping you. You have a body, and you’re going to use it to become the best mother and magical girl out there, whatever that might entail. Thus, filled with an oddly muted sense of enthusiasm, you use what you believe to be your arms and legs to push yourself up, up from this weak, dirt-like darkness attempting to hold you back… and succeed without much effort. For some reason, though, you feel like there’s something heavy on your back, that your legs are doing most of the work in lifting you up and that said legs with their connected feet are not playing nice with the ground, but that’s not very important right now. For now is the moment when darkness gives way to light, a light that goes from blinding to manageable to non-issue in a matter of seconds. With that done, you can finally see the origin of that ever-so-brittle and brief darkness: it was, indeed, dirt and grass. You seem to have been lying face-first on some dirt and wet grass, which had managed to completely cover your face, but you are now free from its dark tyranny, and are standing up without any apparent issues apart from your legs weirding you out a bit. And, even though you'd been lying face-first in dirt and grass for who-knows-how-long, you don’t feel the need to breathe, at all. It’s not strange to you, though, and it feels only natural.

Talking about natural, the first thing you do, driven by a powerfully primal mix of instinct and curiosity, is take a look around, without moving from your standing spot, simply swiveling your head and body around a bit to get a better look at your surroundings. A few seconds pass, and you finally more or less understand where you are: it seems like you’re in some kind of big-ish, fenced-off grassy lot, containing a bunch of leaf-deprived trees, a few parked cars with one of them looking completely mangled as if stuffed into a powerful washing machine, and a small brick shed with a pair of flimsy but rust-free metal doors, perhaps related to power supply. There’s a space for a gate too, but it seems to be missing at the moment. For whatever reason, there’s also a few large-ish puddles of petroleum in different spots of the lot, as if they had spurted from the very ground. Petroleum aside, to the left of the lot is a big salmon-coloured hotel, from which you can faintly hear some youthfully indistinct singing. You can’t really comprehend the lyrics from where you are, but for some reason, your instinct tells you that whoever is signing them must be a very special person indeed.
[2/9]

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To the right of the lot, a bunch of garden-bearing houses, completely silent at the moment, even though it seems to be early morning judging from the light entering your senses, and judging from the temperature, you’d guess it’s late February, too. Driven once again by curiosity, you take a moment to examine the sky, and see that it’s mostly clear, with some traces of black storm clouds drifting about. Perhaps they had been the ones to wet the soil and grass of the lot you’re currently on. That aside, past a small wall beyond the shed, in an area you’d consider the back of the lot due to your location, you spot a white and rust-coloured hotel. There seems to be some chatter coming from it, but you can’t tell what it’s all about, curious as you are about it.

And then, at what you can safely consider the front of the lot, past the missing gate and all, you can easily spot a bunch more cars parked around, on the side of a small downhill road. Every once in a while, a passerby or two will walk past the lot at an accelerated pace, bearing a nervous expression, completely ignoring you and instead glancing at the hotel ahead, and even less frequently a vehicle will zoom down the road as if trying not to linger in the area for too long. Every time one of said vehicles passes by, it completely occupies your full hearing range, leaving you unable to hear just about anything else, but you’re not bothered at all by it. Beyond the gate area, a bunch of cheap-tacky looking hotels and apartments, scattered here and there, with the closest one, a dirty-looking but still towering block of apartments, being under repair after having partially collapsed.
[3/9]

And, somewhere, not that far away, the sea. While you can’t see it, you can hear it, and you can smell it, somewhat, as it overpowers even some of the bizarre smells coming your way. It smells quite nice, and you feel the instinctual pull of the vast ocean in the distance, but you manage to stop yourself from just skipping away into the unknown: if you’re going to be the best mother ever, you’re going to have to take it easy, and not rush things.

Trying to extrapolate the big picture just from your immediate surroundings, you blankly stare at the sky while considering where exactly you are, and well… it’s not working very well, you know that much. The partially collapsed apartment block has a couple of big ol’ horizontal signposts reading TORRE SALOU in big black letters, yes, you know that much, but you don’t know what a Torre Salou is or what it means. Nor where it’s located. You’re not even sure if the language it’s written in is Spanish or another language. But it’s still a clue, and it only makes the muted enthusiasm bubbling about in your core stir even more. Now, you've had quite a good look around, and found your bearings, so it’s time to deal with some matters closer to yourself. Because, for all your nosing around in the same spot, and for all the little clues you’ve picked up just from observing the area, you, Valpestia, still barely know who you are, apart your (dully muted, for some reason) enthusiasm for motherhood and your status as a magical girl.

You want to know more, much more, not just about yourself, but about this world too, in order to truly excel as a future mother and as a magical girl. So, full of a light and fluffy sense of curiosity, you, Valpestia, take a few heavy steps (heavy enough to regrettably crush the grass beneath your feet) towards the closest petrol puddle, taking your time and not rushing it. Three steps is all it takes to get to it, and, having found yourself a bit closer to the fence and the parked cars beyond it, you peer down at the murky liquid. And you see, reflected upon its still surface…

[4/9]

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Yourself. The one you see reflected is, undoubtedly, you and nobody else. You can tell that much, and do not feel even the slightest hint of doubt.

But what exactly do you see in that reflection? What do you look like, in detail? Well, you can see you’re wearing a blank, expressionlessly absent look, which does not change even after you jab and flick one of your armoured fingers into your cheek. You don’t feel much feedback from doing that, to be fair. Seeing yourself, you estimate you're about 175 cm tall, with your skin being a monochrome pure white. Your hair is short, coloured pinkish-red and black, styled into two small but densely extra-fluffy twintails and accompanied by short, fluffy sidelocks. Your eyes are pinkish red, too, and you don’t feel the need to blink even after gently jabbing your left eye with the same finger you poked your cheek with. It does not hurt, surprisingly. You’re not very sure if you can even feel pain, after all. Under your eyes, you spot war paint, in the form of a single vertical line of black paint under each eye, with your left eye’s line being longer than its right side equivalent. There is also a black war-paint line going down from the right corner of your right eye, down your cheek, then through your chin, up your left cheek and ending on the left side of your left eye, and a bunch of pinkish-red war paint above your eyes, with a bit around them too. On your head is a black metal helmet with a horned skull decoration in front, plus two holes for a pair of black, twitching mouse-like ears with a pinkish-red interior. Your helmet also holds a single pair of opaque black goggles, right below the skull decoration.

For a second, you slip them down onto your eyes, feeling everything dim a bit and your eyes become slightly less assaulted by the dirt, pollution and chemicals in the air, but you rapidly plop them back into their holding spot in your helmet: they’ll just get in the way if you need to jab your eyes again for whatever reason, so up they go.
Having poked your face around for a bit, you proceed to jam one of your armoured hands right into your mouth, holding it open for a moment. You feel like you should be able to taste the metal your gauntlet is made out of, but the sensation is so distant you honestly can’t tell. It does smell though, like burnt and melted Gouda cheese bathed in printing ink, and you can somewhat tell it apart from the other smells that blur it all into an unclear olfactory mass. But the rest of your body, every single inch of it, smells like that too, and you don’t mind it, so it’s fine, apart from being somewhat curious as to why that exact smell.

[5/9]

Back to mouthy matters, your mouth is full of big sharp teeth, with four especially large incisors, plus a small-ish black tongue, but apart from that, it’s just your mouth. After all, it sure is your face. You don’t feel like it’s a face of evil or anything like that. It’s just your face, and seeing it simply makes you mildly curious as to why you look the way you look, but that’s about it. Moving your line of sight further down the oily puddle, you can see that your outfit is a black, armoured metal outfit with a stiff, conical neck-guard. You’re not sure where you’re getting this from, but you vaguely realise that, due to your white skull-themed cloth apron, your outfit vaguely resembles a maid’s outfit, which for some reason you seem to know quite well. However, the resemblance is only in spirit, as the similarities end there. For not only do you bear fully armoured hands and arms, which are encased in gauntlets, with skull decorations on your armoured shoulders, a black iron belt with a cross-shaped buckle-engraving, and metal side-pockets on your hips, but also below your waist, you lack a skirt, with a completely different element in its place.

No: where one would usually expect a skirt after seeing a vaguely maid-like apron, your outfit instead directly connects to a bulky pair of black, clawed, mechanical, dinosaur-like metal legs. Pretty gnarly for a magical girl, you think, feeling something of a warm sense of pride as you stretch them a bit and gently bang your gauntlets into the side of those legs, emitting a solid clunking noise as a result. They look like they could really hurt someone if used wrong, so you make a mental note to avoid that: after all, you believe that a good mother and magical girl shouldn’t hurt, only protect.

Mom-ethics aside, as a result of all that armour, you notice that no skin shows from below your neck, even through the hole in the back of your outfit, through which pokes out the strange organ you just realised you have, which you had felt before but had not been able to identify just from its feeling: a slender, pinkish-red, scorpion-like (but also vaguely rat-like) tail, clocking at a length of 175 cm, from partially black-armoured base to imposing stinger. It looks pretty dangerous, you think as you command your tail to swing about a bit, but you have no intention of using it to harm anyone. Why would you even consider that, anyways? That’s just not very nice. You’re going to protect all mothers and their children, and everyone will be safe and unharmed at the end of it… even if you still don’t really know what a mother or a child is.

[6/9]

As you consider such matters of great importance, slowly nodding to yourself while crossing your armoured arms, your massive tail, which is still waving about, gently bangs into the side of the last element of your outfit; it is none other than a massive, sturdy, rectangular, 100-cm-long, 50-cm wide, black metal box, placed on your back, extending from the top of your head to slightly past your rear, held in place through backpack-like metal shoulder-straps you’ve looped your arms around. It seems to have a thick metal lid with a handle, perhaps to make opening it easier. Out of curiosity, you take the box off your back, take a step back while holding it in your arms and plop the metal box down on the grass.

You don’t feel like it’s very heavy. Or maybe you’re just strong. You’re not really sure. Anyways, in no hurry at all, you also plop yourself on the grass, cross-legged, and arch your scorpion-like tail over your head, using the stinger to lift the lid just enough to see into the box. You take a peek inside and, surprise surprise, it’s empty! It does have a nice metallic luster, though, which you appreciate even as you plop the box onto your back once again with the aid of your tail, which you’re quite used to now, and rise again, once again staring blankly at the sky and the few dark clouds lazily drifting about. Doing so brings a sentence to mind, and you speak it fluently and easily, holding nothing back.

“Valpestia thinks she should take it mice and easy, squeak squeak.’’

A loud monotone with a mild Central Catalan accent, which occupies a good chunk of your hearing range as it is spoken. It would surely hurt your ears if you could feel pain at all. Pain aside, you feel like it’s only right for you to speak that way: it feels natural and not foreign at all. Indeed, you’re quite satisfied with how it all sounded, in fact. You don’t think there’s anything wrong there, after all! But just because you’re taking it mice and easy does not mean you’re going to stand in the same spot all day faffing about, especially when this muted enthusiasm of yours is pushing you to go out and do things, not to mention your instinct… but where should you head first? Wherever you might go, surely, you will learn much and walk the path of the protector of all mothers. You begin pondering such matters while heading towards the missing gate area at a healthy walking rate, curiously scanning the area once again for any pointers as to where to go, and as you think, think and think with all your might, your tail thumps once into the soil and grass behind you.

[7/9]

How strange: you didn’t will your tail to do so, and it acted on its own, which confuses you quite a bit. Still, you think it’s rather cool that it did that, and you have some choice words for it, turning your head at a bit of an odd angle to speak to your tail. ‘’Valpestia does not get it, but she still thinks that was very ratical, squeak squeak.’’ Couldn’t have said it better yourself, truly. You are about to turn back around and head for the exit once again, when your eyes pick up on something, something different in the soil and grass your tail touched. A chunk of it all, not very large but still noticeable, is missing, and in its place, as if replacing that which went missing, you can see and feel twenty pairs of small, beady, black eyes, quietly staring back at you.

Oh. Rats. They’re rats. Twenty of them, in fact. They’re all a dark grey, and about the same size (which is not very large), directing their black-eyes towards you and only you, with their heads tilted curiously at the same angle while quietly sitting on the soil. You’re not very sure, but you believe they’re all female, too, and their eyes shine dully with what you can only describe as great intelligence. The moment you lay eyes upon them, you realise something, and the muted enthusiasm inside you stirs once again as part of the doubts you were carrying about are blown away. At the same time, an odd pride begins to shine forth, and you cannot help but verbalise your thoughts while squatting a bit to pet one of the rats on its little head with one of your armoured fingers, earning you a simultaneous thankful little chirp-squeak from all of them.

‘’Valpestia thinks she gets it now. If these are her beloved children, this makes her a rat-mom. Pawsitively ratical. Valpestia will try her best to become the best rat-mom ever, then, and bring along as many rat-children as possible. The more, the merrier, or so Valpestia believes, squeak squeak.”

You're still not sure how, or why, this happened… but you instinctually believe your tail somehow created these rats. As expected from a pawsitively ratical magical girl, you think. And since your tail is part of your body, you are now a mother (a rat-mother, in fact), and these little beady-eyed girls are now your beloved rat-children, making you extremely proud merely by their existence. As a mother and as a magical girl, you want to protect them. You want to make them happy. You want to see them grow healthy, and you want to safeguard their rights and prosperity. And you couldn't be any more enthusiastic about it all, even if it's not reflecting on your face, still as blankly expressionless as ever.

[8/9]

But there is still much to be done, and much to be learnt, even if this does represent an important step forward in achieving your goals. Thus do you hold out your right arm to your expectant rat-children, and thus do they march up it in unison, with chirps you instinctively understand as being dutiful to the extreme as they rapidly locate their optimal seating arrangements. In no time at all, they have evenly distributed themselves between your armoured shoulders, the metal box on your back, and the top of your helmet.

After gently patting each of their little heads once, and receiving a chorus of cheerful squeaks in return, you’re ready to get moving once again, your tail swishing to and fro with your usual muted enthusiasm. Wasting no time, but also avoiding any sort of hurry, you make your way to the missing gate area, making sure to move carefully to avoid having your little rat-children fall off the box or your shoulders. Once you arrive there, you take the initiative and take one step outside the grassy lot, causing the pavement of the sidewalk beneath your armoured feet to creak slightly, and calmly survey your surroundings along with your 20 rat-children. Looking forward to whatever lies ahead and feeling quite enthused when it comes to the prospect of exploring the world, even if you’re not welcome by those you meet, you speak up once again. ‘’Valpestia thinks that it's only natural for a rat-mom to stick her whiskers where they don't belong. Because it's what good rat-moms do, squeak squeak.’’ It is quite the shameless statement, but you don’t really know what shame is, and even if you knew, you think it’d just bounce off your brain. Now, quality rat-mom ideals aside, it’s once again time to rely on the miracle of decisions and decide on where to go from here. Where will you, Valpestia, a magical girl rat-mommy, go now, with your beloved rat-children tagging along? It does not take you long to decide upon that after scanning the area, and thus do you decide to…

[8.5 / 9]

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[] Check out the big salmon-coloured hotel next to the grassy lot. The singing from before is still ongoing, even if you still can’t make out what is being sung, and now there’s even some kind of loudly upbeat music coming from inside, too. As far as you can tell, it’s the only thing you can hear from inside, which piques your interest quite strongly.

[] Go straight past the hotel, following the road downhill and turn left: while you can’t see its source, you can, through the blurry haze invading your sense of smell, pick up the stench of decay and abandonment all the way from here. Several decades of complete neglect, mixed in with a hint of freshly applied varnish, in fact. How about checking it out?


[] Go past the hotel, following the road downhill, and turn right: you smell quite a bit of activity in the area, which seems far busier than whatever is to the left of the road, so there could be something quite interesting in the area. Something smells good too, even if you can’t tell what it is, so it might be worth having a look around, even though you’re not hungry or thirsty in the slightest. Your rat-children are not complaining either, but you don’t want them to go hungry.


[] Check out the backstreets in the area: while you don’t smell anything particularly interesting around there, it’s all so quiet at this time you can hear a faint clanging and banging noise coming from one of them. You feel there’s something off about that noise, so it catches your interest enough to make you want to check it out.

[9/9]

>>6204226
>[] Check out the big salmon-coloured hotel next to the grassy lot. The singing from before is still ongoing, even if you still can’t make out what is being sung, and now there’s even some kind of loudly upbeat music coming from inside, too. As far as you can tell, it’s the only thing you can hear from inside, which piques your interest quite strongly.

>>6204226
>[] Go past the hotel, following the road downhill, and turn right: you smell quite a bit of activity in the area, which seems far busier than whatever is to the left of the road, so there could be something quite interesting in the area. Something smells good too, even if you can’t tell what it is, so it might be worth having a look around, even though you’re not hungry or thirsty in the slightest. Your rat-children are not complaining either, but you don’t want them to go hungry

>>6204226
>[] Check out the big salmon-coloured hotel next to the grassy lot. The singing from before is still ongoing, even if you still can’t make out what is being sung, and now there’s even some kind of loudly upbeat music coming from inside, too. As far as you can tell, it’s the only thing you can hear from inside, which piques your interest quite strongly.
glad to see you didn't abandon this

I'll give the voting period another 10 hours or so, and then I'll start working on the new update.

Alright, voting period is over, and the hotel option has won. I'll have the update done by the start of next week, I think. Thank you for voting.

Quick PSA. I'll have to take a 2-3 month hiatus from questing to focus on my career and on finding a job. I'm not abandoning this though! Have hope, and please wait warmly. I will return soon!

>>6207052
Good luck!