Honoring Memory

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 What is your wish, Miyoko Hatano? 

What is the wish that will make your Soul Gem shine?

I wish for a family where I can be myself.

A searing pain, like hot glue had been pressed against her chest. She frantically grabbed at the invisible source, begging for the pain to stop. What was the price of her lifelong wish for it to burn her heart? 

The pain reached its peak and her eyes fluttered shut. With her Soul Gem in her hands, Miyoko collapsed to the ground in slow motion. The gem pulsed amethyst light through the gaps in her fingers. 

By the time that she was aggressively shaken awake, Miyoko Hatano had become both a Magical Girl and a Defender. The two things were so intertwined that when the group disbanded following the End of Days- later renamed The God Storm, like naming a rediscovered painting- the sense of loss was undercut by something else. A nagging feeling that part of her identity was lost in the destruction.

If she wasn’t a Defender anymore, who was Miyoko Hatano as a Magical Girl? What was the reason that she kept fighting, aside from being able to see Kohana at the end of the day? 

She couldn’t ask Kohana those questions, because Kohana had been a Magical Girl before joining the Defenders. Only for about a week, but she was still able to mess around with her powers and start to figure out what she was. Miyoko didn’t get that chance to be a Magical Girl when the world wasn’t in an imminent state of going to shit. 

Even though she didn’t want to admit it, Miyoko was jealous of the girls who found the Defenders without some redhead physically dragging them into the chaos by the ear. Not that she hated Enju, but Miyoko wondered: if she had been approached by Kyubey earlier, how would things have turned out?

The Miyoko Hatano who wanted to make a new impression among this batch of strangers, for the sake of the thing she had wished for, had been so desperately lonely that she was afraid to make waves. Miyoko Hatano, a brand-new Magical Girl at 15, who didn't want to make a fool of herself in front of her hopefully-found-family by making it known how much of a noob she was.

That never happened, of course. Miyoko almost lost Kohana to the volcano, but they clutched each other above the roaring magma and made a promise to each other. 

We will continue to live, to honor the memory of our Fellow Defenders.

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