Resonance Days / Characters

Magical Girls and Witches, and what's worse, in Resonance Days.

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Main Characters

All four

Experienced Protagonist: Mami and Kyoko are both veteran magical girls with countless kills under their belt, making them the most skilled fighters and strategists of the team. Oktavia and Charlotte are decidedly not this, having never been in a fight prior to the start of the plot (Charlotte's first encounter with Mami does not count as a fight.
Five-Man Band: They fit the archetypes, despite only being four. Kyoko is The Leader (headstrong, central to the plot), Oktavia is The Heart (close with everyone, kind and innocent), Mami is The Big Guy (powerful and pulls her weight in battle), and Charlotte pulls double duty as The Lancer (always butting heads with Kyoko) and The Smart Guy (has the most knowledge about the overall setting).
Forced Transformation: During Restless, they're all briefly turned into true Eldritch Abomination witches. The experience, shown from Charlotte's perspective, reduces them to an animalistic mindset and is deeply unsettling.
Found Family: The four are as close as family, and often even refer to each other as such. Despite having a lot of internal conflict, they all love each other dearly and will go to great lengths for each other.
Pinball Protagonist: While they are tangentially following Kyouko's quest to rescue her sister, they spend most of their time being thrown between various locales and menaced by various villains with next to no control over where they're going.
Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits: A magical girl who retains her original identity and struggles to accept her death, the reincarnation of a girl she loved as a mermaid, her gun-toting old friend and former mentor with abandonment issues, and the mentor's introverted wife.

Kyoko Sakura

A magical girl who sacrificed her life to defeat the witch that was once her friend Sayaka. She wakes up in a strange world, with no idea where she is.

Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Alongside having to deal with her canon issues, she's stuck in a place that's apparently the afterlife, and looking after a mermaid who not only resembles her old friend Sayaka, but is actually Oktavia Von Seckendorff, the very witch who Kyoko had to destroy by sacrificing herself.
Adaptational Protagonist: Kyoko's not the main character in canon, being a supporting one and a minor one in the series and rebellion respectively. While Resonance Days is an ensemble story, Kyoko has by far the most focus and development of the group.
Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: The closest thing to a relationship that Kyoko had with Oktavia was as a magical girl who had to hunt her down, with her being the witch form of Sayaka complicating things. While the two start out not getting along, especially on Kyoko's end, the longer they stay together the more they start to enjoy each other's company.
Afterlife Angst: Kyoko doesn't mind being dead all that much, but she's not very happy about the afterlife she's stuck in. A lot of it comes down to being thrown into some otherworld she knows nothing about without being given a choice in the matter, not helped by feeling that the afterlife is too good to be true and has to have a hidden fault somwhere.
Amnesiac Dissonance: Played with. As Ophelia during Restless she doesn't actually lose any memories, but she acts like her witch counterpart would have, and is a lot more patient and gentle than Kyoko would have been.
An Arm and a Leg: It grows back, but Kyoko's arm is eaten by a Dockengaut during the Monsterland arc. She suffers phantom pain even after it regrows, and her jacket's sleeve is lost forever.
Awesomeness by Analysis: Kyoko is good at picking up on what makes people tic, most notably when she correctly deduces that Brooklyn was disabled, based on her insistance on calling out Oktavia's disability and unnaturally large size most likely gained through an incubator wish.
Badass in Distress: For being a girl very much capable of fighting for herself, Kyoko sure gets captured a lot.
- Chapter 3 ends with Kyoko unconscious, wounded, and not healing because of something one of the twins injected into her, with Oktavia trying to get her to safety in Freehaven.
- At the climax of the Cloudbreak arc, she and Oktavia are knocked out and kidnapped by Annabelle Lee and company, leading to Mami and Charlotte coming to their rescue.
- In the Etherdale arc, Lily brainwashes her and Oktavia into giving themselves up to the Brothel, and the next arc is about breaking them out.
- In the Monsterland arc she ends up in a Dockengaught cave system and is briefly held captive as a meat sleeve and gets one of her arms eaten.
Be Careful What You Wish For: Kyoko spends most of the fic wanting Sayaka back. She gets her wish in Restless, but it also comes with some caveats; Just Sayaka is back, not Oktavia, meaning that the close and bordering on romantic relationship she has built with Oktavia is gone, and Sayaka is just as aggressive and distrustful as she was when she was alive. Not to mention that in the time between, Kyoko has grown to love and care about Oktavia too, even if she is different than Sayaka, and she does not want to choose between them.
Berserk Button:
- Wasting food, like in the show, pisses her off something royally. She even gets mad at her own food if she has to throw up.
- Bringing up her father in any capacity, especially if it's negative, is a good way to get on her bad side. This is doubly true if she didn't tell you about him of her own volition.
Big Eater: Having been homeless for most of her life, Kyoko knows what it's like to starve and doesn't like it, leading to her eating whenever she can. Though given that she needs to eat to keep using her powers for her and Oktavia's protection, it's hardly unjustified.
Big Sister Instinct: The second she realizes that the void walker Reibey is talking about is her sister, Kyoko abandons all reason to kill him. Once Charlotte has managed to calm her down, she outright begs them to help her save her, abandoning all her principles and agreeing to do whatever they want from her if it means they'll help her save her little sister.
Broken Ace: While not quite as powerful as Mami, Kyoko was a very skilled and experienced magical girl in life. That experience, however, came with being a lonely delinquent so depressed that she killed herself for the sake of the first person in ages she actually liked. And the afterlife's not much better for her, with the constant pain that befalls her and her friends due to her quest.
Character Focus: While Oktavia, Mami, and Charlotte are all main characters, the story centers around Kyoko, her feelings for Sayaka, and her enmity with Oblivon and Reibey.
Character Tics: She tends to hold around the necklace Oktavia gave her whenever she's upset or in a bad mood.
Commonality Connection: She was happy to leave Brooklyn to her breakdown until Brooklyn mentions her abusive father. Kyoko has some experience with fathers who hate their daughters, and decides to talk to her for a bit.
The Cynic: Kyoko is a very glass-half-empty person who believes that the afterlife situation is too good to be true, constantly expecting it to turn into a nightmare at any moment. She is very annoyed about how every other magical girl and witch seem to be perfectly content with what she sees as a false paradise.
Determinator: Perhaps Kyoko's greatest strength is her stubborn belief that she can succeed, no matter the odds. If she has set her mind to something, she refuses to tolerate even the mere suggestion that it's impossible, and will go through with it regardless of how much it will take. In the rare case that she does lose faith in something, she will pivot and dedicate herself to its opposite with just as much determination.
Do Not Call Me "Paul": As Ophelia, she dislikesbeing called Kyoko. In fact she doesn't associate the name with her self at all, and doesn't realize that Ophelia was not her original name until Candeloro and Sayaka say it outright.
Everyone Can See It: Her crush on Oktavia and Sayaka is extremely obvious to anyone who spends any amount of time with them. Sayaka herself manages to pick up on it within a few hours of being brought back from the dead.
Everyone Has Standards: For all of her attitude, issues with religion, fondness of violence, and being stressed out with a desire for answers in a strange place, she isn't the type to attack or bother someone in the midst of prayer. So she waits for Elsa Maria to finish praying before questioning her, even lowering her weapon while she waits to not threaten her to hurry it up.
Faux Horrific: The only time she entertains the notion that she's in Hell is when she wakes up wearing pink pajamas with teddy bear patterns.
Fiery Redhead: Kyoko has bright red hair and a tendency to jump to violence as the immediate solution to any problem.
Fighting from the Inside: While being compelled by Lily into giving herself up to the void walkers, a part of Kyoko realizes that something is wrong and is screaming at the rest of her to realize. Alas, there is nothing she can do to stop herself from going along with whatever Lily asks of her.
Flaming Hair: During a dream sequence she gets burning hair as her Witch Remnant.
Flat-Earth Atheist: Kyoko takes much longer than Oktavia to accept that she's dead and in the afterlife, despite remembering her death clearly. Ironically, her reasoning is based on religion; Since she's protestant, she doesn't believe in purgatory, and thinks the afterlife is only Heaven and Hell. She knows she's bound for Hell, and there isn't enough fire around for that, ergo she's not in the afterlife. She accepts that she's dead after meeting Mami, but still isn't sure it's not a dream.
Freudian Excuse: Kyoko's cynicism is understandable given the hellish life she's had, while her controlling attitude towards Oktavia stems from her difficulty accepting that she's not Sayaka. Her problematic desire to restore Oktavia to Sayaka is rooted in feeling indebted to Sayaka and wanting to save her, since the rookie once saved her.
Gut Feeling: Kyoko tends to trust her gut feeling above anything else, having learned from experience that it's the best source of judgement. Lily points out the flaws in this thinking.
Has a Type: Kyoko admits to herself that a big reason for her attraction to Sayaka is that Sayaka is rude, aggressive, and stubborn, which reminds Kyoko a lot of herself, and is something she admires (while also finding it annoying at times). That said she is also attracted to Oktavia, so above all her type seems to be Sayaka.
In the Blood: After giving a motivational speech, she jokes that it's in the blood since she's the daughter of a pastor.
I Owe You My Life: How she feels about Elsa Maria after being saved, making it her goal to save her from the Void Walkers, despite this being whatever the afterlife equivalent of suicide is.
I Shall Taunt You: Knows fully well how to use Brooklyn's own anger issues to get her to focus on her and not on Oktavia.
It's All My Fault: She blames herself on all the misfortune that has fallen on her and her loved ones, going as far back as her father's murder-suicide. Despite the obvious presence of malicious forces like Kyubey and Annabelle Lee as the more direct cause of misery, Kyoko feels like it's her fault that bad things happen regardless.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Kyoko's cynicism, aggressiveness, and disrespect for any kind of authority or advice makes her very hard to get along with for anyone not named Oktavia or Mami, and even they get frustrated with her at times. In the vast majority of circumstances, her first impression with someone will be negative and remain that way for a long time. This is noted to be more a result of her trauma, however, and the rare times when she's in a good mood she makes friends rather quickly.
The Leader: Her role in the main quartet's Five-Man Band. While the actual leadership of the group fluctuates based on the circumstances, Kyoko's goals is the driving force of their entire quest, as the other three are helping her save her sister. Kyoko is also a very headstrong and determined person who more often than not ends up pulling the others along through sheer force of personality.
Logical Latecomer: Deconstructed. Kyoko initially thinks this is what's going on, that everyone in the afterlife is stupid and complacent for having accepted it and she repeatedly tries to argue that there is something wrong that everyone is seemingly fine with. Except that those things she points out are things that everyone knows about already and have accepted, because there is no hidden fault of the afterlife, Kyoko is just too cynical to accept it.
Love Epiphany: Kyoko realizes that she's in love with Sayaka in chaptrer 43, after a Freudian Slip about kissing her. She starts thinking about how she does find Sayaka cute and is fiercely dedicated to her. While she's not sure if she wants a relationship with anyone, the idea of being with Sayaka is not unappealing.
Loving a Shadow: Kyoko is all but stated to have been in love with Sayaka, and sees Sayaka and Oktavia as the same person sans memories. Unfortunately, they are not, and Oktavia is not entirely comfortable with how Kyoko sees her.
Mundane Utility: Since her spears can be of any size, and she can telekinetically direct them, a large one works just as well as a boat.
My Greatest Second Chance: It takes her a while, but eventually she comes to see the Afterlife as a second chance to live and be a good person, even have a family again.
Nay-Theist: Kyoko believes in God, Heaven, and Hell, but doesn't worship, and considers herself a sinner bound for Hell.
The Nicknamer: Kyoko is practically allergic to calling people by their given name, unless that name is very short and easy to pronounce. She quickly dubs the void walkers "The Emos", she has a whole array of nicknames for Charlotte whenever she wants to insult her, and her nicknames for Oktavia are so many that it'd take a whole page to list in their entirety. In the last case, it's less out of affection or disrespect, and more because she can't bring herself to use her new name, but also knows that she hates being called Sayaka. Oktavia has noticed this, and has become rather annoyed by it.
Oxymoronic Being: In Restless, Ophelia has all the traits of a witch - a new name and identity, notably different personality, a witch remnant in the form of burning hair - but retains her memories of life completely, with no change aside from thinking her name as always been Ophelia, which should be impossible.
Pop-Cultured Badass: Kyoko is a seasoned magical girl and skilled warrior who stares death (and what's worse) in the face on a regular basis. She's also a fan of Star Wars and Disney.
Rage Against the Heavens: After a particularily harrowing series of events, Kyoko goes on an angry rant directed at God, asking why her and her family seems to suffer even more whenever she tries to do the right thing, and accusing Him of being a pretty rubbish protector of children considering how many of them were conned by the Incubators.
Seeks Another's Resurrection: Kyoko wants to bring Sayaka Miki's memories back, effectively resurrecting her. She is not particularly keen to hear that Oktavia, the person Sayaka became after losing her memories, has no interest in that herself.
Series Goal: For Kyoko, her main overarching goal is to find a way for Oktavia to get her memories back. This is not necesarrily a good thing.
Shell-Shocked Veteran: While Kyoko refuses to acknowledge it, Charlotte can tell that her very rough life and afterlife has given her severe PTSD, and she's never had the tools or help she needs to deal with that trauma. She is paranoid and always expects the worst, her insistence on never throwing any food away regardless of circumstances is an obvious trigger, and in the epilogue of Monsterland, she suffers auditory and visual hallucinations about recent events.
Single-Target Sexuality: Kyoko claims that she never cared much for neither men nor women when she was alive, but she certainly has strong feelings for Sayaka, and by extension Oktavia.
Spontaneous Weapon Creation: Kyoko can create spears at will, of any size.
Stepford Smiler: In a different manner than usual. She doesn't smile, far from it, but she has an unwavering belief that she will succeed in her current course of action, no matter how doomed it is. Oktavia quickly figures out that it's a coping mechanism.
Swiss-Army Weapon: Kyoko's spears can be summoned in any size and its shaft can be broken into segmented chains, but she can also change the spearhead to be several different shapes, or make it spin like a drill.
Sympathy for the Devil: Kyoko admits that she sympathizes with the void walkers' desire to die, and might even have joined them had it not been for their leaders being a fraud and a rat.
Token Religious Teammate: While she doesn't practice, Kyoko is the only member of the freehaven four who's shown to be religious and sometimes (rarely) prays. Her exact denomination goes unstated, but is likely Protestant or at least Lutheran (since her father was a married priest).
Toxic Friend Influence: Played for Laughs. Mami accuses Kyoko of being a bad influence on Oktavia. By which she means Oktavia is a lot more sarcastic and snarky than Sayaka.
Used to Be a Sweet Kid: When Kyoko and Mami first met, she was young and idealistic, asking Mami to teach her how to be a hero and help people. After the death of her family, she begun spiraling into cynicism and delinquency, becoming the selfish, apathetic girl seen in the show. Meeting Sayaka made her believe in heroism again, while Oktavia is helping her grow further.
Yank the Dog's Chain: Chapter 1 through 9 is pretty much nothing but this for poor Kyoko. While suffering immense Afterlife Angst and cynicism, she at several points gets close to accept her death and even toy with the idea of settling down with Mami, Charlotte, and Oktavia. Only for some new hidden fault or feature of the afterlife to rear its head and bring her cynicism back in full again. After getting a stern talking to from Marisa in chapter 8, it seems like she genuinely might have gotten over it and is genuinely thinking about settling down, if not in Freehaven then somewhere else... at which point Reibey shows up and reveals that Kyoko's sister, is in the void walker's possession, causing her to throw everything away to save her.

Oktavia von Seckendorff

The Mermaid Witch who was once Sayaka Miki. Oktavia remembers nothing about her previous life, and is very confused as to why the angry redhead is pointing a spear at her.

Adaptational Heroism: Oktavia was an antagonist in the canon series. In here, she's strictly on the side of good.
Affectionate Nickname: Charlotte calls her "Tavi".
Ambiguously Bi: Oktavia is certainly into women considering that her and Kyoko's relationship is the center of the story, but her feelings on men are more vague. She can barely remember what they look like, but Sayaka was at the very least bi so it's not clear if Oktavia if bisexual or fully lesbian. She also claims that she doesn't feel strongly attracted to anyone beyond aesthetic appreciation.
Amnesiac Dissonance: Oktavia is a lot like Sayaka, but unlike her passionate and stubborn predecessor, Oktavia is a lot more calm and willing to listen to reason. Word of God is that she is like Sayaka, but without the hang-ups. When Sayaka regains her memories but forgets being Oktavia, Kyoko remarks that part of the reason she loves Sayaka is that she is aggressive, rude, and stubborn, unlike Oktavia who's a Nice Girl.
Awesome McCoolname: Well, Nikki thinks it's cool at least, calling it a proper Witch name. Oktavia is notably one of the few witches who has a full name.
Came Back Wrong: Kyoko views her as this in regards to Sayaka. Though Oktavia's evidently quite sane and nearly identical to Sayaka in personality, this just makes the differences between the two even more painful to Kyoko. It's hard to accept someone when they look and act just like your Only Friend... only they don't remember you, they don't like it when you call them by their real name, they keep humming that really creepy song, and they're part fish.
The Cameo: She shows up in the Imperfect Metamorphosis spinoff IM: Rhapsody of Subconscious Desire, swimming around a fish tank in prime minister Kaguya's office. She doesn't say anything, but it's very clearly her.
As it turned out, yes: it was in fact a mermaid. Her lower body was a large, fish-like tail with bright scales in maroon, teal, and black. Her upper body was that of a young girl, around twelve to fourteen years of age, with short blue hair and large, inquisitve eyes of the same color. She wore a long-sleeved white shirt that featured a large, blue musical note over a pair of crossed cutlasses on her chest like a coat-of-arms.

"Oh my gods!" Body said, laughing in delight. "You've got a sassy little tomboy mermaid!"
Combo Platter Powers: Oktavia is a musical prodigy, a powerful swimmer, and can conjure wheels. While all of these have meaning individuality, they seem rather random when put together.
Cute Monster Girl: Oktavia is still a witch, but she looks like the teenager Sayaka Miki, only with a fishtail.
Deuteragonist: If Kyoko is the main character, then Oktavia comes immediately after her in importance.
Disabled in the Adaptation: Sayaka in the anime was fully able-bodied, while Oktavia in the fic can't use her legs on land (in fact she doesn't have legs at all) and needs either a wheelchair or someone to carry her.
Discard and Draw: She no longer has the distinctively efficient healing factor her old self had, or the ability to summon endless cutlasses. In exchange, she can conjure wheels, breathe underwater, and is able to quickly master music and instinctively play it.
Divergent Character Evolution: Initially, Oktavia was just going to be the same as Sayaka but without the hero-worship and black-and-white morality Sayaka was dealing with. As the fic went on, it became more and more apparent that Oktavia is a fundamentally different person from Sayaka.
Do Not Call Me "Paul": Oktavia does not identify as Sayaka Miki in the slightest, and in fact is distressed when Kyoko refers to her as such. While it starts out as only mild annoyance, it grows steadily worse until it's a full-on Berserk Button.
Drives Like Crazy: On a wheelchair! Oktavia can use her wheels to magically move her wheelchair, which she does at absurs speeds, up stairways, and around way too sharp turns. Mami resolves to give her a stern talking to after her first time.
Eating the Eye Candy: Since she's in a wheelchair, she spends a lot of time happily staring at her friend's asses.
Elegant Classical Musician: Oktavia can play a lot of different musical instruments, despite having no recollection of learning them (and Sayaka Miki certainly couldn't).
Emergent Human: Oktavia has the basic knowledge of a girl her age, but has only brief glimpses of memories from her first life (and nothing of being Sayaka Miki), and was effectively born the moment she was woken up by Kyoko.
Family of Choice: While all of the main characters see each other as this, Oktavia more so than the others. She has no memory of her old life, and hasn't been in the afterlife long enough to build a social circle. Kyoko, Mami, and Charlotte are, as far as she is concerned, both her only friends and her family. They all care deeply for her in turn, of course.
First-Name Basis: Despite being one of the few witches with a last name, Oktavia is rarely, if ever, called von Seckendorff.
Forgot About Her Powers: In Restless, Oktavia's wheelchair gets stuck in the mud and she asks the other to help her. A deadpan Charlotte points out that she can make her wheelchair fly.
Genki Girl: She can be sarcastic and snarky at times, but overall Oktavia is rather energetic and optimistic compared to most girls in the afterlife, not to mention boundlessly curious and excited about a world that is entirely new to her. Charlotte ponders if she's just naturally cheery.
The Heart: Oktavia is the one member of the main quartet who everyone gets along with. It's very rare that anyone has anything bad to say about her, her friends all want to keep her safe, she sees those friends as her family, and she has an endearingly optimistic view on the world around them.
Heart Is an Awesome Power: Her only known magic is summoning train wheels. At first she can only use them for blunt force trauma which, while useful, is fairly circumstantial. As she gets to experiment, however, she learns that she can change the shape, thickness, construction, and texture at will, letting her turn them into spinning sawblades, use as makeshift transportation, or superimpose them over her wheelchair to make it motorized and very fast.
Improbable Weapon User: Oktavia can summon and control train wheels, using them both for utility and combat. They pack a mean punch.
Instant Expert: Oktavia can immediately master any musical instrument, even ones she has never used before, and she can compose new music on the spot without even knowing the theoretics behind composition.
Ironic Fear: Oktavia is the only member of the freehaven four who, thanks to her wheels, can fly of her own accord. She also suffers crippling acrophobia.
Leitmotif: Oktavia often finds herself humming the Symposium Magarum.
Mermaid in a Wheelchair: Oktavia doesn't have legs, so unless she wants to crawl around using only her arms for movement, she needs a wheelchair to move around on land. When she doesn't have one, she usually gets carried by someone else.
Mundane Utility: Can use the wheels she summons as makeshift transportation when necessary, though they do require some experimentation to get right.
Our Mermaids Are Different: At the moment, Oktavia is a pretty standard mermaid. The unusual part about it is how she became one, having been a human magical girl who turned into a mermaid witch and then turned mostly human again, retaining her tail.
Popcultural Osmosis Failure: As a result of her missing memory and not having been in the afterlife long enough to catch up on it, she misses a bunch of references Kyoko makes. It later turns out that she does retain memories of a few details from pop culture, though not any details about what they're about, she just had some gaps in her familiarity in life. For instance, she recognizes The Lord of the Rings as a movie without knowing what they're about, but has never heard of Disney.
That Man Is Dead: Oktavia has no connection to her old life, and is frustrated at how Kyoko clearly can't see her as anyone other than Sayaka Miki.
Required Secondary Powers: Oktavia has gills (which Kyoko finds gross) and can speak underwater. Her mermaid tail wouldn't be very useful if she couldn't.
Unwanted Assistance: Oktavia appreciates how much Kyoko cares about Sayaka, but also has no connection to Sayaka's life, and doesn't care about regaining her memories like Kyoko is trying to help her with.

Mami Tomoe

A puella magi who mentored both Kyoko and Sayaka. Mami has settled down in Freehaven, married to the witch Charlotte, whom she arrived along with, and is quite shocked when two of her students show up at her door one day.

Abnormal Ammo: Mami's muskets usually shoot magically conjured bullets, but she can also load them with virtually anything, including snowballs.
Armor-Piercing Response: When dealing with Annabelle going on a long, cynical rant about how everyone gets tired of the afterlife at some point and wants an out, (Oblivion), at some point, including about how most marriages fall apart after decades due to that same point, Mami shuts Annabelle up by reminding her that no, she is not going to get freed by Oblivion. She was fired, and she's not getting the release she so desperately wants no matter what she does.
Berserk Button: One of the things that consistently gets Mami irritated, if not outright angry, is insulting or implying negative things about her and Charlotte's relationship. Kyoko even wondering about if Charlotte is good to her makes her more angry than Kyoko running off and yelling at her (Mami just gets petty vengeance on Kyoko for running off, Kyoko wondering if Mami kept the relationship quiet meant something about Charlotte made her voice firm and dead serious), while AL cynical rant eventually hitting marriage statistics is what got Mami to give her the aforementioned armor piercing response.
The Big Guy: Mami is immensely strong and resilient, even for a magical girl, is by far the most experienced fighter of the four, and has such fine control of her ribbons that she can create complex constructs with them. A single shot from one of her muskets is enough to blow off limbs and incapacitate a target, and though she's a little out of practice, she still retains the skills and reflexes from years of fighting witches.
Boob-Based Gag: Mami's rather ample bossom is a source of a fair bit of comedy, usually from other characters reacting with awe or jealousy, or having their faces shoved into them through comical circumstances.
Broken Ace: Mami is one of the most powerful magical girls around, to the point where even an elite team of void walkers consider running like hell to be the most valid strategy for dealing with her. She is also an anxiety-ridden mess with a massive pile of abandonment issues and guilt complexes, with a codependent relationship to all three of her family.
Closet Geek: Her Insistent Terminology that magical girls are liches, not zombies, implies that she has a hidden nerdy side.
Crippling Overspecialization: Mami is an excellent shot with her muskets. However, since her muskets are such a unique and personalized weapon, she's not nearly as good with other, more mundane firearms.
Cure Your Gays: Inverted. Mami Tomoe had no interest in women in life, and in fact did have feelings for the son of her father's boss, but in the afterlife, with no hormones to affect her feelings and having developed a very close relationship to Charlotte, she starts having romantic feelings for girls instead.
Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones: Mami is compassionate to a fault, even willing to give void walkers a chance. And she really hates Reibey.
The Face: She handles the people end of Nautilus Platform business while Charlotte handles the numbers.
Freak Out: She has quite a lot of them, generally as a result of her abandonment issues, guilt complex, or overall anxiety.
Happily Married: With Charlotte, whom she's called her Soulmate and the best thing to ever happen to her, going strong for three years. Their relationship serves as a contrast to Kyoko and Oktavia's much more complicated relationship.
Hates Being Alone: Mami has a bad case of abandonment issues. She gets close to having a complete breakdown when Kyoko and Oktavia get kidnapped before steeling herself to get them back, and she admits to herself that the main reason she's so dedicated to helping Kyoko is that she's terrified of losing her again.
Heroic Self-Deprecation: Despite being the powerhouse of the main quartet, and a terrifyingly powerful one at that, Mami often beats herself up over not doing enough, such as after the fight in Cloudbreak where she took longer than the others to recover because she overused her magic. According to Charlotte, her self-deprecation gets worse when she hasn't taken her anxiety medicine.
Humanshifting: As a variant on her ability to create copies of herself, she can also use her ribbons to change the appearance of herself and others.
Imagination-Based Superpower: Her ribbons are the most versatile power among the group, able to create everything from barriers to guns to shapeshifting to clones. They are limited only by Mami's imagination and experience, and she's had the most experience of the entire group.
Knows the Ropes: Mami's magical girl weapons are ribbons. She is extremely skilled with said ribbons, and can even conjure them into complex shapes like muskets, crossbows, or whole copies of herself.
Loved I Not Honour More:
- Mami loves the life she has with Charlotte and would like nothing more than to spend her afterlife living a simple domestic life with her at the Nautilus Platform, but when Kyoko has to leave to rescue Momo from Reibey, Mami feels obligated to go with her. Unlike most examples, Charlotte is understanding and goes with them as well, even if she's not happy about it.
- This comes back in her symbolism-laden Dream Sequence in Restless, where her family are having a cozy dinner and asks her to join them, but she insists that she's "on the clock" and can't.
Mama Bear: Mami is usually a kind and motherly person, but if the people she considers to be in her care are ever threatened she is merciless. Even Charlotte is surprised at how stone cold her wife is towards the void walkers who kidnapped Kyoko and Oktavia.
Me's a Crowd: Like during her fight with Homura in Rebellion, Mami can create ribbon constructs resembling and acting like clones of herself. An ability that Mami discovered after dying, they're useful distractions and can even fight fairly well, but she finds it freaky and doesn't do it often. In fact she found the ability so freaky she dropped out of the ability expansion classes she was taking where she accidentally discovered the ability.
Must Make Amends: Mami has a guilt complex the size of a mountain, and goes to often unhealthy lengths for the sake of those she feels responsible for. It's pointed out that by helping Kyoko save her sister, she's ruining the life she has built with her wife and can never go back. But if Kyoko needs help, she has to help her, wether she really wants to or not.
My God, What Have I Done?:
- Had one when she realized that the witch she had been pursuing was really just a terrified girl who knew even less of what was going on than her. And she nearly dropped her from a mountain.
- Another worse one came when she learned the truth about Kyubey, and that she had sent the dozens or hundreds of girls she convinced to Contract to a Fate Worse than Death.
- A third one comes when Lily's brainwashing is undone, and Mami realizes that she's been fighting for a Leecher and attacked a wayhouse, not to mention handed her friends over to the void walkers without resistance.
Not Quite the Right Thing: She meant well, approaching Kyoko's introduction to the afterlife with the caution and gradualness that she could have benefited from. The problem was that Kyoko is not Mami, and she'd have taken everything at once better than slowly explaining things to. While the two do patch it up pretty quickly, it's a backfiring of Mami's own (well meaning) making.
Power Perversion Potential: She uses her ribbons for bondage with her wife. She draws the line at creating ribbon clones for a threesome, though.
Retired Badass: Mami was one of the strongest and most experienced puella magi in life. In death, she had settled down for a peaceful life harvesting kelp with her wife, though she can still kick ass when needed.
Secretly Selfish: She admits that the reason she agreed to help Kyoko save Momo was because she doesn't want to lose Kyoko again.
Spontaneous Weapon Creation: Like in the show, Mami can use her ribbons to create simple weaponry. She usually creates single-shot muskets, but can do crossbows as well.
Sympathy for the Devil: Seeing how terrified Annabelle is of returning empty-handed, Mami takes pity on her and offers her the chance to defect. Charlotte thinks it's just like Mami to feel bad for a void walker.
Team Mom: Mami is motherly by nature, and tends to be the one to step in and resolve any conflicts when the situation arises. She will also go ballistic on anyone who threatens her family.
Thou Shalt Not Kill: Mami will kill if she needs to, but she doesn't like it and subdues whenever possible. When Charlotte points out that killing someone doesn't actually do anything but knock them out of commission for a bit, she gives her a Death Glare.
Trauma Button: It's mentioned that she hasn't been in a car since the accident that killed her family. She can barely avoid screaming while standing in a room full of car wrecks when she first arrives in the afterlife.
Unflinching Walk: While pursuing Charlotte in their backstory, thinking she was still a mindless monster. The narration describes her calmly walking down the hall firing shots after her quarry.
Wistful Amnesia: In Restless, she experiences a version where she remembers living in the afterlife as Mami, and that she told her friends about her life before dying, but doesn't actually remember her first life at all.

Charlotte Tomoe

Mami's significant other. Charlotte was once known as the Sweets Witch who killed Mami in life, but they have since reconciled and settled down together. While she doesn't know Kyoko or Oktavia, she is happy to help her wife's former students.

Affectionate Nickname: Mami calls her "Char". Natsuru calls her "Lottie".
Age Lift: This version of Charlotte was the same age as Mami when she died, compared to her canon counterpart Nagisa Momoe (who she predates) who's a preteen.
Alternate Self: Word of God explains that Charlotte is Nagisa Momoe, but was born a few years earlier to a different father as a result of For Want Of A Nail, explaining why she's older, looks different, and had a different name.
Been There, Shaped History: A minor in-universe case, Charlotte being attacked by Valks is the reason that exporting Dockengaut wildlife from their territories is illegal in several territories.
Broken Pedestal: Charlotte initially believes the New Life Alliance to be a shining utopia with only minor issues. After being framed for kidnapping Kyoko and Oktavia and subsequently becoming wanted by the NLA, she starts seeing them as horriby corrupt and almost just as bad as the Void Walkers.
Brutal Honesty: She's a bit blunt, and doesn't care for putting it gently. Case in point, she tells Kyoko that she has to stop calling Oktavia by her old name while she is stilk processing everything. She also shuts down Oktavia and Kyoko's teasing by telling them she and Mami are going to have sex.
Clingy Jealous Girl: Not that badly, the two do trust each other immensely and she doesn't get violent or particularly snippy at Mami about it, but Charlotte didn't particularly like Mami describing how 'limber' Kyoko could be, and neither was she happy when an escape maneuver left Oktavia with her head stuck between Mami's breasts.
"And watch those eyes. Those are mine."
Color Motif: Charlotte's hair and soul vapors are pink, which makes it very unusual that she has blue eyes.
Curtains Match the Window: Notable aversion. This is the norm in the world of Madoka Magica, so when Kyoko first meets Charlotte, she notes that it's weird for someone to have blue eyes and pink hair. She apparently had pink eyes when she was still alive, but for whatever reason they changed to blue when she became a witch.
Didn't Think This Through: In chapter 18, she tries to use her wires while wearing a high-tech gauntlet. Predictably, they get into the machinery and short-circuit it.
Emergent Human: In her backstory, she had it even worse than Oktavia. While Oktavia had Kyoko to help her, Charlotte woke up and was immediately attacked by a woman she didn't know.
Eye Colour Change: Nozomi had pink eyes before becoming a witch, while Charlotte has blue. When she phases in and out of being Nozomi in Restless, her eyes change to indicate who she is at the moment.
Given Name Reveal: In Restless, Charlotte dreams of herself as the magical girl she was prior to death, revealing that her name was Nozomi.
Good with Numbers: She handles the accounting for the Nautilus Platform while Mami deals with the people side of things.
Happily Married: With Mami, going strong for three years. Their relationship serves as a contrast to Kyoko and Oktavia's much more complicated relationship.
Heel: In Restless, the entire gang face Mephisto in a wrestling match, with the imaginary audience booing at them. Charlotte (or Nozomi), who's a fan of pro wrestling, decides to play into it by flipping them off.
I Hate Past Me: In Restless she's rather pissed to learn that her human counterpart wasted her wish on something as simple and minor as a cake. Her Nozomi persona for her part is ashamed and regrets her wish.
Irony: According to the creators of the series, Charlotte was a natural counter to Mami because her body made her impossible to tie down with Mami's usual tactics (restrain the target and then blast it with guns). As the afterlife shows, Mami can in fact tie down Charlotte as her wife, and with bondage. So Charlotte can in fact be tied down by Mami... just with unusual tactics.
Jerkass Realization: In the aftermath of Restless, Charlotte tells Mami that she realized how poorly she's been treating Kyoko. While Kyoko is certainly not an easy person to like, she is also a child thrown into a very fucked up situation and Charlotte yelling at and resenting her for handling it poorly is unfair.
The Lancer: To Kyoko, despite not being as close with her as the trope usually implies. Charlotte constantly butts heads with her, bearing a lot of resentment for the girl, is always the first to question her motives and goals, and tends to blame her for anything that goes wrong around her even if it wasn't really her fault. That said, while Kyoko has a habit of rubbing Charlotte just the wrong way, she respects her Brutal Honesty and the two will fight side-by-side if the situation calls for it. Charlotte for her part knows that her resentment of Kyoko is unfair, and is trying to work on it.
Liminal Being: In Restless, Charlotte and Nozomi seem to exist at once, switching in and out randomly, changing appearence to match whoever is in the front seat at the moment (Nozomi has her magical girl outfit and staff, while Charlotte is in civilian clothes and has a tail). Each has memories of a different life but retains vague recollections of her counterpart's life. She eventually decides to go by Charzomi to make it easier for her friends.
Little Bit Beastly: Her witch trait is a pink and black spotted tail.
Living Emotional Crutch: Charlotte is very good at helping with Mami's many emotional issues, both with deliberate actions and assurances and just being around her wife. Mami would be in a lot worse of a place without her wife, and it doesn't take long for Kyoko to realize this and appreciate Charlotte for it.
Master of Threads: One of her remaining magical girl powers which she discovers in chapter 15 is to conjure and control thin golden strings, similar to Mami's ribbons.
Mind-Control Eyes: Whenever she smells cheese, her eyes turn this, in yellow, blue, and pink, as a Shout-Out to Monty from Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers.
More Teeth than the Osmond Family: She can turn into a giant worm with a large jaw full of teeth.
Ms. Exposition: Fitting her role as The Smart Guy, she tends to be the one who gives the other the rundown about whatever strange afterlife phenomena they encounter.
My God, What Have I Done?: After Lily's brainwashing is undone, all Charlotte wants it to go home, get therapy, and hope that no one ever learns what they did. And then she remembers that she handed Kyoko and Oktavia over to the void walkers without resistance.
Never Heard That One Before: In Ghosts of Christmas Past, Kyoko asks if she can have milk considering her cheese problem. Charlotte's sarcastic laugh makes it clear that she's heard that one many times.
O.C. Stand-in: While Nagisa has quite a lot of characterization, when Charlotte was introduced in the fic the only characterization she had in the show was a Witch who liked baked goods and a vague backstory from All There in the Manual. As such, almost all of Charlotte's characterization is created from scratch.
One Head Taller: Charlotte's tall enough for Mami to easily rest her head against her shoulders. This is naturally seen as a net positive by the both of them.
Only One Name: Unlike Oktavia, Charlotte's witch name doesn't have a last name. She took Mami's last name when they married.
Open Mouth, Insert Foot: She has a bad habit of doing this, wether it be that she's Innocently Insensitive to people within earshot, or blurting out things she wasn't supposed to say immediately after being told not to say them.
The Smart Guy: Charlotte tends to be the one the others turn to to provide exposition and familiarity about the world. While the others are far from stupid, Kyoko and Oktavia are both Naive Newcomers, and Mami isn't particularly curious by nature. Gift of the Puella Mgi also shows that she's pretty good at coming up with plans on the fly.
Past Experience Nightmare: During her first few years in the afterlife, she suffered a lot of nightmares. Some of them were of her old life, and she couldn't remember those but they always left her feeling empty afterward. One she does remember is of Mami pursuing her through Dead Drop City on their first day in the afterlife.
Personality Powers: Once she develops her golden thread powers, they serve as a contrast to Mami's ribbons. Where Mami's ribbons are adaptable to a wide variety of scenarios due to experience from combat to 'softer applications' as befitting Mami's people friendly personality, Charlotte's sharper, less social personality that prefers routine is reflected in her sharp golden threads.
Prehensile Tail: Charlotte's tail can be used to wrap around things. This is usually used to embrace Mami affectionately with an extra limb.
Punk Rock: It turns out that Charlotte or at least Nozomi likes this kind of music, praising Mephisto for her music taste even while knowing she's a bad guy they have to fight.
The Resenter: Deep down she resents Kyoko for having unintentionally put an end to the long peaceful life she had before Kyoko and Oktavia showed up. She knows that this is unfair and tries to curb it, but she still ends up unfairly blaming Kyoko for things that aren't directly her fault, an attitude that is not helped by Kyoko's irreverent personality.
Team Dad: Compared to Mami's Team Mom, Charlotte cares about her family (and Kyoko) just as much, but tends to be the more authorative of them, having a much more decisive and headstrong personality than Mami's kind and gentle approach to things.
The Team Normal: She has magic like everyone else, but never uses it. She's a crack shot with a crossbow, however. In chapter 15, she finally gains some magic powers she's comfortable using.
Too Much Alike: Charlotte and Kyoko are both very blunt and brash, and they do not get along at all.
Trademark Favorite Food: Cheese, though it's less a favourite food and more an addiction. Just seeing it causes her to lose her wits and throw herself at it. Even fake cheeses, like board game props, will cause her to start chewing on them reflexively.
Trauma Button: A few years into her afterlife, Charlotte was attacked by an escaped Valk after protecting Mami from its mate. The incident left her in the hospital for a few days, and ever since she has had a pathological phobia of valks. This becomes a problem when she and Kyoko have to fight some in the Monsterland arc.
Unknown Character: Not Charlotte, but the magical girl who succumbed to despair and became her. There are no one around who knew her in life, and everything known about her can only be deduced from context clues; Judging by the way Charlotte arrived in the afterlife, it's implied that she had a sick loved one and made her wish on their behalf, and the wish might have had something to do with sweets judging by the theme of her witch labyrinth. Her magical girl ability was to create and control gold strings, and she died soon after contracting. And that's about it. Restless finally reveals who she was and what she wished for.
What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Her first witch power is to magically create deserts. Her other power, turning into a giant worm with More Teeth than the Osmond Family, is marginally more useful, though she never uses it. In Restless, she awkwardly admits that her magical girl aside from the strings was throwing around exploding toffees and skating, which she is a bit embarassed by.
Willfully Weak: Charlotte has witch powers but has never practiced them, and refuses to explore the extent of her magic. Her powers are what killed Mami originally, and she now represses them out of guilt. Even seeing her wife in danger is not enough for her to cross that threshold..

Jerky

A Valk, velociraptor-like creatures native to the Dockengaut homeworld, who imprins on Kyoko when she and Charlotte fall into their lair.

Beneath Notice: Implied to be what allows him to save the day in Restless. While Mephisto certainly knew about him due to her status as The Omniscient, she failed to consider him a threat, which allows him to get the drop on her.
Big Damn Heroes: Jerky saves the day in Restless by biting Mephisto's physical body. Turns out not even an Ideal Witch is immune to valk venom, as it causes her immense pain, breaking her concentration and allowing Kyoko to break out of her nightmare long enough to put a spear through her chest.
Loyal Animal Companion: Jerky has imprinted on Kyoko and sees her as its mom, and follows her everywhere.
Secret Pet Plot: After Monsterland, Kyoko tries to keep him a secret from her family, since she figures they won't react well to her having adopted a savage beast that Charlotte has a trauma trigger for.

The New Life Alliance

An alliance of independent city states populated by humans, jotts, calliopes, and ai'jurrik'kai, formed to combat the expanding influence of Oblivion. After a lengthy war which neither side gained much on, they signed the Free Life Compact, putting an end to the war and leading to the current tense peace. Presently, the alliance consists of the capital Cloudbreak, and the smaller cities Freehaven, Pinespire, and Orya's Furnace, as well as a number of smaller towns and settlements.

In General

The Alliance: A very traditional example. A group of free cities and races who all came together to combat The Empire.
Cryptic Background Reference: Cloudbreak and Freehaven are settings for major parts of the plot, and Pinespire appears in a sidestory, but Orya's Furnace is so far unknown.
Democracy Is Flawed: While the Alliance ultimately didn't accomplish all that much against the Void Walkers (just being the most successful), and has its own political headaches, it is ultimately shown as one of the strongest and most stable factions in the afterlife. Even with the original founding members having stepped aside or retired it still stands strong, and even with Reibey's grumblings about the newer leadership even he doesn't risk truly provoking them. The Madame is also upfront about how their ideals are both naïve, and how those same ideas make it hard to gain influence against them. Even the cynics won't disagree that it is better among the Alliance than in most places in the world, especially for new arrivals.
History Repeats: The New Life Alliance is far from the first group of magical girls who've tried to do something about Reibey and Oblivion, they're merely the most recent and most successful so far. Note that "most successful" still means that they accomplished little, but they got closer than anyone else.
The Idealist: To a fault, the NLA was founded on strong ideals of fighting evil (the Void Walkers specifically) and retains those ideals even a century later. The Madam at one point notes that, for as much as she considers their idealism naïve, it has prevented corruption from taking root in their government.
Obstructive Bureaucrat: The Senate and President can be a bit demanding and difficult to deal with, as Corrie complains about rather loudly. After Kyoko has a meeting with the Senate and pisses them off, Mami claims that she wouldn't put it past them to put Kyoko under surveilance just out of spite. According to Annabelle Lee, they did.

Freehaven

A port town located on the eastern coast of the Byronic Sea, across from Genocide City, and home of Charlotte and Mami Tomoe.

Corrie Linemann

A magical girl who has served as Freehaven's mayor for the last eighty years, part from competence and part because nobody else wants to do it.

Bald of Authority: Despite her young physical age, she doesn't have a hair on her head save for eyebrows. It reflects her authority and no-nonsense attitude.
Beleaguered Bureaucrat: When the heroes meet her, she is swamped in calls from every allied city asking for updates on Kyoko, she's spent the week trying to negotiate for Elsa Maria's release, and Reibey is stonewalling her. She is, needless to say, a tad overworked.
Black Boss Lady: The mayor of Freehaven is a black girl.
Happily Married: To Monica. Their first scene shows them cuddling in bed. According to side stories, they are also a case of a magical girl and witch mutually killing each other and falling in love in the afterlife.
Open Mouth, Insert Foot: While interrogating Kyoko on why Oblivion is after her, Corrie asks if it might have to do with pastor Sakura's congregation. Mentioning her father is one of Kyoko's berserk buttons, and it leads her to go from merelt irreverent to outright hostile.
Reasonable Authority Figure: She gladly welcomes Kyoko and Oktavia to her town and offers them protection despite them being chased by an enemy faction, she goes out of her way to help them figure out why Oblivion is after them, and even agrees to sue for the release of Elsa Maria, who had previously caused trouble in Freehaven and gotten her specifically whacked with a bird bath, a incident she personally still has a grudge over, because of Elsa's actions against Reibey and helping Kyoko and Oktavia. She does, however, step over a few lines with trying to handle the Kyoko-Oktavia-Oblivion situation however in well meaning attempts to figure out why Oblivion is after Kyoko and to offer the both of them protection.
Ruling Couple: Corrie, the mayor, is married to Monica, who runs the town's post office, library, and militia.

Monica Linemann

Corrie's significant other, a witch who runs Freehaven's post office, library, and militia.

Anime Hair: Monica has four braids that defy gravity and are tipped with small stars. In case it wasn't obvious, they're her witch remnant.
Happily Married: To Corrie, with their first scene being of them cuddling. According to side stories, they are also a case of a magical girl and witch mutually killing each other and falling in love in the afterlife.
Nice Girl: She is nothing but friendly and courteous to her visitors, even apologizing to Oktavia for being disabled by her witch remnant.
Reasonable Authority Figure: Like her wife, she's pretty reasonable. While she's not particularly happy with all of the civilians who went into Jezebel's Labyrinth instead of leaving it to trained professionals (trained being for mental stress, not combat skills), she also gets exactly why that happened and only gently reminds them not to do so again for their own sakes.
The Resenter: Played for laughs. She is a tad bitter about everyone thinking of her as the Mayor's wife, with her numerous other positions only coming up when there's a complaint.
Ruling Couple: Monica runs several of Freehaven's institutions, and is married to the mayor.

Dr. Young

Freehaven's best and only doctor, a tiny magical girl.

Bunny-Ears Lawyer: She's a tad eccentric with her ill-matching clothing and accent, but she's also good enough at her job that Freehaven has never had use of another healer. While she can't cure Kyoko's poisoning, she is able to diagnose it as harmless.
Living Lie Detector: She's apparently uncannily good at sniffing out when something is being hidden from her.
Meaningful Name: She is the smallest magical girl around, reflected by her name.
Signature Headgear: A green slouch hat she insists on wearing everywhere, reflecting her accent.
The Stoic: Her expression rarely goes beyond "Bored apathy".

Victoria

A witch, former void walker, and Freehaven's harbourmaster.

Commonality Connection: A small case. She is very happy to meet Kyoko, citing that anyone who are enemies with the rat is a friend of hers.
Defector from Decadence: Victoria used to be a void walker, but defected and brought with her a large amount of information before signing the Compact about 40 years ago. Reibey was furious.
Horned Humanoid: Her Witch remnant is a pair of slender horns.
Nice to the Waiter: Despite Mami and Charlotte having brought in a smaller haul than usual, due to taking care of Oktavia and Kyoko, Vickie still pays them in full.

Roseanne

A witch who runs Magi's Gift Emporium with her Jott business partner Beleg. Her shop is one of the favorite places to visit in Freehaven by visitors and residents alike.

Freakiness Shame: She's not quite fond of people pointing out her lower torso is a pincushion with needles for legs, even after becoming an established part of Freehaven.
Never Heard That One Before: Yes, she is aware that she has scissor-blades for her right hand's fingers. Yes, she knows who Edward Scissorhands is. No, you are not original for making the joke.
Younger Than They Look: Physically at least, her bob haircut and pointed spectacles, combined with her preference for business suits, have an effect of making her older in Oktavia's opinion that she actually was when she died.

Jezebel

A witch who Mami and Charlotte know. She was known in life as the Keyhole Witch, and witched out during the events of 'The First Time'.

Exotic Eye Designs: Her Witch Remnant is that her pupils are shaped like keyholes.
Foil: As a Witch whose actions directly hurt innocent people, she served as a in-universe one to Mami, whose issues let Mami reflect on some of her guilt over how her actions as a Magical Girl indirectly got people hurt and helped her go the final step with Charlotte.

Cloudbreak

The cultural and administrative capital of the New Life Alliance, constructed through collaboration between its four member species.

Akia

One of the two first Savians to arrive in the afterlife, having arrived a few months before Kyoko and Oktavia.

All Periods Are PMS: When Mami meets her, she's dealing with some kind of seasonal pain in her arm which supposedly happens every few months. Mami figures it's comparable to periods.
Comically Missing the Point: Since she's new to the afterlife and still dealing with everything, she doesn't quite have a grasp on human naming conventions. When Mami introduces herself as "Mami, Mami Tomoe", Akia asks if she's Mami of the Tomoe family, or if her name is "Mamimamitomoe".
Fish out of Water: Despite having been in the afterlife longer than them, she has this worse than even Kyoko and Oktavia. Akia came from a nomadic tribe inhabiting a desert which she had never left before dying. She has never seen mountains, forests, or oceans like the ones seen in the afterlife, not to mention the vast technological gap between her native tribe and Cloudbreak where she currently resides.

Berenko

A Dockengaut emissary currently residing in Cloudbreak.

Commonality Connection: Played for (mildly disturbing) laughs. When Kyoko gets into an argument with a woman about wasting food, Berenko shows up and agrees with her.
Establishing Character Moment: She serves as one for Dockengauts in general. While they've been seen before, Berenko is the first one Kyoko sees and gets an impression of, demonstrating just how feared and sadistic they are. As well as the surprising fact that they fear Savians.
Troll: She knows that everyone is uncomfortable around her, and has a bit of fun by lurching forward and yelling "Boo!"

Pinespire

A city in the New Life Alliance, current home to Mami and Charlotte's former mentors and friends.

Natsuru Senou & Shizuku Sango

A married Magical Girl couple, and the former owners of the Nautilus Platform. Shizuku was the first person Mami and Charlotte encountered upon arriving in the afterlife, and the couple gave them work and housing until they eventually moved to Pinespire and left the Nautilus platform to the younger girls.

Adaptational Gender Identity: In the original Kämpfer, Natsuru identifies as male and merely looks like a girl in his Kämpfer form. Gift of the Puella Magi establishes that she fully identifies as a woman, and the author describes her as transgender.
Ascended Extra: They were originally intended as only minor cameos when they were first introduced. However, being the first of these cameos, and a major part of Mami and Charlotte's backstory, they ended up having to play a much larger role.
Brutal Honesty: Shizuku dumped all the Awful Truths of their situation on the newly arrived Mami and Charlotte more or less as soon as she met them, figuring she should just rip off the bandaid. This made Mami's already bad mental state even worse, and it would take her years to recover, not to mention contributed to her mishandling of telling Kyoko about the afterlife years later.
Butt-Monkey: Natsuru will spend about half of her appearances being teased, joked at, getting people annoyed at her, or in some unpleasant situation.
Deadpan Snarker: In First Time, Charlotte asks if they can keep the money they earn from harvesting mermaid eggs while Shizuku and Natsuru are on vacation. Shizuku tells them that they're welcome to, as long they provide tools themselves, and goes on to list all the expensive equipment they'll need. Both of them also poke lightly fun at Mami's anxiety.
The Ditz: Natsuru is a tad airheaded, as seen when she adviced Charlotte to confess her feelings without considering that Mami might not have gotten that comfortable with being sapphic yet.
Endearingly Dorky: Natsuru, despite being kind of a ditzy airhead, managed to have three girls attracted to her while alive.
Expository Pronoun: In Gift of the Puella Magi, when Shizuku talks about her pre-death life, she initially uses They/Them pronouns for Natsuru, and at one point slips up and calls her "He" before correcting herself. Foreshadowing for anyone who's not picked up on Natsuru's Gender Bender situation.
Gender Bender: Natsuru was assigned male at birth, but turned into a girl as part of her magical girl transformation, and remained that way in the afterlife. Since she's trans, it works out fine.
Interrupted Intimacy: Shizuku apparently had a bad habit of doing this whenever Charlotte and Mami tried to get intimate while she still lived at the Nautilus Platform. It happened so often that they dubbed it the Shizuku Zone, and Charlotte accused her of having a sixth sense for when they were trying to fuck.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Shizuku may be a bit of a jackass, but when push comes to shove she cares about her friends and will give genuine and sincere advice when someone needs it.
Manipulative Bitch: Shizuku fashions herself one, claiming that she pushed Mami and Charlotte together and planning on doing the same with Akane and Mikoto just so she won't have competition for Natsuru's affections. Mami insists that she and Charlotte would have gotten together with or without her pushing.
Mentor Archetype: Natsuru and Shizuku took in Mami and Charlotte when they first arrived in the afterlife, gave them the lay of the land, and offered them job and housing, serving much the same role to them as they would later be to Kyoko and Oktavia.
Nice Girl: While she's far from the brightest crayon in the box, Natsuru is kind and friendly, willing to go out of her way to help friends and strangers alike.
Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
- They somehow realized the true nature of the Incubators while alive and worked against them.
- Their entire quartet also died as Magical Girls with none of them succumbing to despair. Given the various known continuities and teams of Madoka canons (the various Holy Quintets, the Pleiades, Arisa's team in Suzune and Yachiru's original team in Magia Record), its impressive in of itself.
Playing with Fire: Natsuru's magical girl ability is to conjure and throw balls of fire.
Queer Establishing Moment: While Natsuru's Gender Bender situation was known to the audience from her first apperance, Gift of the Puella Magi has her coming out to Charlotte by explaining that, over time, she started feeling more comfortable as a girl than she did in her original form, often transforming when alone just for comfort. While she's not sure if she would call herself a trans woman, having had little time to explore her gender identity before dying, she is happy to be a girl permanently.
Rape as Backstory: At one point when alive, Natsuru had to go to school in her girl form (posing as a transfer student) and was at the very least sexually assaulted by her female classmates. Years later, she clearly has a hard time recounting it.
Starting a New Life: Downplayed since they didn't assume a new identity or fake their deaths or anything, but some time prior to the story, they willed the Nautilus Platform to Mami and Charlotte and moved to Pinespire with the intent of starting over with something new. They still keep in contact.
Transplant: From Kämpfer, of course.

Akane Mishima & Mikoto Kondou

Close friends of Shizuku and Natsuru from when they were alive, who died and ended up in Pinespire some years before Kyoko and Oktavia. After hearing this, Shizuku and Natsuru moved there and left Nautilus Platform to Mami and Charlotte.

Badass Bookworm: Akane is described by Shizuku as a studious bookworm, but she's also a veteran magical girl and deadly in a fight.
G-Rated Drug: Played for Laughs. During Gift of the Puella Magi, Mikoto gets very drunk on eggnog. When Mami asks what Shizuku put in it, Shizuku claims that it's non-alcoholic, but she implied that it might have brandy, and Mikoto got drunk from the Placebo Effect.
Innocently Insensitive: While high on (non-alcoholic) eggnog, Mikoto asks a few too many uncomfortable questions about Witchhood and her death to Charlotte, not helped by Charlotte being in a bad mood already.
Let's Get Dangerous!: Akane is usually rather shy and nervous, but as soon as she enters combat she becomes borderline Ax-Crazy in how violent and dangerous she is. Natsuru later reveals that this is not just a quirk of her behavior, but something the incubator Nanabey did to her to make her more effective.
Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Like Natsuru and Shizuku, they figured out the Incubators' deception and worked against them, not to mention that they died without ever succumbing to despair even with that knowledge.
Shrinking Violet: Natsuru describes Akane as "Shrinking violet extraordinaire". Unless she's in combat, in which case she sheds any inhibition.
Transplant: Like their friends, they are the main characters of Kämpfer.

Void Walkers

A faction of puella magi and witches who have grown tired of the afterlife and seek an out. Their enigmatic leader, Oblivion, claims to offer this out to her most devout followers.

In General

Color Motif: Black. All its members wear black, Reibey has black fur, and some members even dye their hair to fit the motif.
Cult: Essentially what they are, though Elsa Maria points out that they are too widespread and influential to truly count as one (being more like a theocratic nation). Many void walkers directly worship Oblivion as a goddess, and they are all feverishly devoted to her.
Damaged Soul: All Void Walker' soul vapors turn black when they join, and defecting results in the vapors turning their original color again. Whatever Reibey does to them fundamentally affects the nature of their very souls.
Dark Magical Girl: Dominatrix-esque outfits aside, they certainly fit the bill, being magical girls and witches clad in black who are willing to resort to any length to achieve their goal.
Death Seeker: All void walkers want to end their eternal afterlives for various reasons, and joined because Oblivion offered that.
In-Series Nickname: Kyoko calls them "The Emos" based on their tendency to wear black and talk about death and self-harm.
Obviously Evil: They're a faction of pale, black-clad magical girls who believe that the afterlife is hell and want to put themselves out of their suffering. They are fanatically loyal to the point of worshipping a being named Oblivion. Also, a lot of them are some brand of insane, and they are called void walkers. Kyoko calls them almost comically evil, and the Madam thinks Kyubey should get an image consultant.
Praetorian Guard: The Elite Guards are the best of the best, hand-picked to serve Oblivion directly. Since not even they are allowed close to Oblivion herself, they mostly serve as bodyguards and escort for high-ranking Void Walker officials.
Stripperific: For whatever reason, void walkers except for Oblivion wear very little or very revealing clothing.
Transplant: A disproportionate number of Void Walkers are transplants from Black★Rock Shooter, since that franchise's character designs (black hair and clothes, pale skin, and cool weapons) are a good fit for the faction's aesthetic. These include the elite guard Mato Kuroi, and the missionaries Yomi Takanashi and Saya Irino.
Undeathly Pallor: While everyone in the setting are dead, Void Walkers are the only ones who look the part, universally having deathly pale skin (completely white for those who's natural skin colour is pale), and even non-human void walkers have their colour drained away. This is a result of something Reibey does to them, and void walkers who defect or are exiled have their skincolour returned to normal. It even extends to their soul vapors.

Oblivion

The leader of the Void Walkers faction, a magical girl with the unique ability to destroy souls, leading to many Death Seekers petitioning her for just that.

As revealed in chapter 3, Oblivion is a title that has been carried by several girls over the years, all chosen by Reibey. The latest Oblivion is someone close to Kyoko Sakura.

Driven to Suicide: The entire fic opens on the previous Oblivion comitting suicide to get away from Reibey's machinations. It's implied that the last three went the same way.
I Control My Minions Through...: Material gain. Oblivion, and Reibey through her, controls her minions by offering something that only she can give; true death.
Immortal Breaker: Her whole deal. She is believed to be able to break the Complete Immortality otherwise bestowed on everyone in the afterlife, though some critics think she's lying.
In the Hood: To keep with her mysterious image, Oblivion always wears a hood hiding her face, the only visible feature being her eyes.
Legacy Character: The current Oblivion is the sixth, all her predecessors having killed themselves. The prologue shows the previous Oblivion ending her life to foil Reibey, or at least get out of being his puppet.
Meaningful Name: "Oblivion" means a state of absolute nonexistence, which is what she offers to her followers.
Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The name Oblivion, while accurate, hardly inspires confidence.
Puppet Queen: Every Oblivion since the original are in reality just figureheads for Reibey, who is the true head of the void walkers.

Current Oblivion / Yuma Chitose

A Day in the Limelight: Chapter 47 is the first chapter so far that is at least partially narrated from her perspective.
Ambiguous Situation: Pretty much everything. While chapter 47 reveals that she's Yuma Chitose, not Momo Sakura, it only raises more questions. Apparently she ended up in the Afterlife without ever making a contract with an Incubator, at least to her memory, and once she ended up there she started recalling memories from a previous timeline, for no clear reason.
Big Sister Worship: Oblivion looks up to and admires her sister, Kyoko, and wants to reunite with her.
Canon Character All Along: She's identified rather quickly as Kyoko's sister. Chapter 47 reveals that this is Metaphorically True; She's Yuma Chitose, a girl Kyoko looked after in at least one previous timeline.
The Fog of Ages: She's been Oblivion for long enough to forget her original name, though she remembers most everything else from her life.
Hidden Depths: Despite having the mentality of a small child, Oblivion is perceptive and intelligent enough to have accessed Reibey's records without him knowing, and knows the inner workings of Palace Omega.
Inconsistent Coloring: Oblivion is originally described as having blue eyes, but they're emerald in chapter 47.
Innocent Blue Eyes: She is described as having these, despite Yuma Chitose having green. By the time of The Reveal, they're described as emerald.
Nerd in Evil's Helmet: Oblivion is ultimately just a young girl who is way in over her head and being pushed around by a much more malicious force. Part of the reason she makes few public appearances is to hide that she very much acts her age.
Red Herring: Most of the fic seems to foreshadow that she's actually Momo Sakura, Kyoko's younger sister, and that's the assumption Kyoko operates under as well. This is hinted at with how Reibey mentions a dish Momo ate once with Kyoko and Mami, and how she used to be a Third-Person Person like Momo. It ultimately turns out she's Yuma Chitose, Kyoko's adopted little sister from Puella Magi Oriko Magica.
Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: For whatever reason, Yuma can remember events of a previous timeloop where she was saved and looked after by Kyoko, which did not happen in the current timeline. In fact, this is apparently how Reibey learned about previous timelines in the first place.
Third-Person Person: She apparently used to be this, though Reibey "cured" her of it.
Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: She likes the moaning and screaming of the prisoners in Palace Omega because it fits her image of an evil dungeon. She does wish there were more chains though.
Womanchild: One of the many mysteries surrounding Oblivion is that she still acts like a young girl, despite Yuma having died years before Kyoko, which would mean she should be an adult woman in the afterlife. Chapter 47 seems to imply she's just underdeveloped from having spent the last years or decades with no meaningful interactions or life experiences outside of Reibey.
Younger Than They Look: Unusually for the afterlife, Oblivon appears fairly old by their standards, but is actually one of the youngest magical girls around.

First Oblivion

Ambiguously Evil: Very little is known about the original Oblivion and how much of the current Void Walker modus operandi was established while she was in charge, and how much was later creations of Reibey's. She and Reibey were supposedly friends, but had a falling out at some point for unknown reasons.
Didn't Think This Through: Her creation of the afterlife was well-intentioned, but came with a range of consequences she didn't think about or predict. Almost every part of the afterlife that sucks was caused by her not being careful enough in the wording of her wish.
Fallen Hero: Elsa Maria mentions a common belief that the original Oblivion was the same girl who created the afterlife in the first place. If so, then she fell a long way from an All-Loving Hero who wanted to give all magical girls a second chance, to a tyrant. Assuming this was her design and not Reibey's.
The Maker: Elsa Maria cites a common belief that Oblivion was the girl who first wished for the creation of the afterlife. According to Word of God, this is true.
Morality Chain: She may have been this for Reibey. He supposedly became a lot worse after their falling out.
Time Abyss: Word of God is that Oblivion was born sometime in the late Mesolithic era (nearly 12 000 years ago in real world time), and is still "alive" somwhere. Given the time discrepancy between Earth and the Afterlife, she could easily be hundreds of thousands of years old, if not more.

Reibey

An Incubator who was banished to the afterlife for reasons unknown. Reibey acts as Oblivion's right hand, but is in fact the true power behind her throne.

Animal Motif: Rats. Incubators are more cat-like, but Reibey is often compared to a rat, both by characters and narration. Like a rat, Reibey is left to live on the discarded dregs of humanity, in this case their souls.
Big Bad: Reibey, as the true power behind the antagonistic faction, is the biggest threat in the fic.
Blatant Lies: He does a lot of it.
- He claims that Oblivion wants Kyoko for perfectly innocent reasons, and that the Void Walkers who attacked her were simply overzealous and misunderstood the assignment. No one buys it. He is actually telling the truth, though claiming that he actually cares about Kyoko being treated fairly is a bold-faced lie.
- He tells Oblivion that the reason it's taking so long to get Kyoko is that the Alliance is being uncooperative and even refusing to let her leave. In reality, Reibey is the one being uncooperative, and Kyoko resists the void walkers of her own free will.
Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Kyubey. Kyubey is completely emotionless, treats everything with detached logic, and never expresses more than mild surprise, whereas Reibey is quite sarcastic, irritable, and prone to outbursts. Kyubey is initially presented as a benevolent Big Good before revealing his callous nature, while Reibey is introduced as the Big Bad and everyone in the story knows it. Kyubey genuinely sees nothing wrong with using and manipulating children, while Reibey hates having to work with puella magi and witches and enjoys tormenting them. Finally, Kyubey is white and Reibey is black.
Didn't Think This Through: To keep Oblivion from walking around and spilling his secrets, he provides her with entertainment to keep her occupied. Said entertainment consists of toys that would keep an average person busy for an hour at most, a rubix' cube that not even he can solve, and a decades old gaming console with no games, monitor, or power socket to plug it into. He admits in hindsight that he should've done more research.
Dragon-in-Chief: Publically, Reibey acts as Oblivion's Number Two and her voice to her followers. In reality, Reibey is the one really pulling the strings.
Establishing Character Moment: Reibey's introduction has him be sarcastic, irritable and callous of Oblivion's breakdown, and treating her like a pawn to be moved around. This immediately establishes him as the true Big Bad, and shows that he is a very different entity than previously seen incubators.
Evil Laugh: Reibey's laughter is described as a grating, chittering sound which sends icy fingers down the backs of those listening.
Fallen Hero: "Hero" might be stretching it, but there was a time when he was genuinely well-intentioned and saw his working with Oblivion as a noble purpose and himself as a good samaritan helping the poor girls who desperately wanted release. That time is long gone, however, and now he just sees it as a chore.
Faux Affably Evil: Reibey will act friendly and courteous to his subjects, prisoners, and even enemies, but it's always either a ploy, or for amusement. The moment he doesn't have the advantage or loses his patience, he gets mad.
Freudian Excuse: By implication, if nothing else. Reibey is noted to be extremely childish and emotionally immature, despite his extremely high age. Considering that he would have spent his childhood as the only person with emotions in an enviroment where that is considered a mental illness, it's unlikely that he was ever taught a healthy way of dealing with his feelings.
Gone Mad From The Isolation: While it's unlikely that Reibey was ever a good person, it's implied that spending hundreds of thousands of years in the afterlife with nothing but Puella Magi and Witches for company has had a poor impact on his mental state. He supposedly became a lot worse after his falling out with the original Oblivion.
Hated by All: Reibey's followers are terrified of and despise him, while his enemies wish he didn't exist. Those who don't know him hate him for being an incubator, while those who do hate him for being Reibey.
Head Desk: Humerously slams his head repeatedly in the ground in chapter 47 out of frustration from dealing with Oblivion.
Hypocrite: Reibey hates working with humans because of their emotions and admonishes Oblivion for her childish outburst. Reibey himself is extremely emotional, petty, and vindictive for an Incubator, and is prone to angry outbursts.
In-Series Nickname: Several characters describe him in... Colourful terms, but the most common nickname for him, at least in Alliance circles, seems to be The Rat.
Loophole Abuse: The Free Life Compact means that his void walkers can't attack Kyoko or Oktavia outright as long as they're in Freehaven or under the protection of any signatories, including Mami and Charlotte. Reibey is definitely not above working within the rules of the Compact to capture them, however. First by goading the volatile Kyoko into attacking him or his agents so that he can pressure the Alliance into handing her over, and then by exiling four of his most loyal to be Rogue Agents that aren't bound by the Compact while maintaining plausible deniability himself.
The Man Behind the Man: Or, the indeterminately gendered alien behind the woman, as it were. Reibey is the actual leader of the Void Walkers, with the various Oblivions serving as his figurehead.
Meaningful Name: "-bey" is a suffix used by all incubators (Kyubey, Jubey, Nanabey), while "Rei" means Zero. Since all incubators have Numerical Theme Naming, Reibey being named after the numerical value of nothing reflects that he is very different from his kin, and stands outside the usual system they are part of.
No Biochemical Barriers: Subverted, he mentions that inhaling soul vapours, which is a potent drug to Puella Magi and Witches, does nothing for him, either because he's alive or because he's an Incubator.
Not So Above It All: After subtly mocking Oblivion's inability to solve a rubik's cube, Reibey picks it up and fiddles with it himself, before tossing it aside when he can't figure it out.
Humans and their pointless self-inflicted challenges. Truly, there had never been such a masochist race ever to grope their way into sentience, if it could be called that.
Obviously Evil: Kyubey makes a point of playing up the benevolent and cute angle to get potential magical girls to trust him. Reibey has no such inclinations, having pitch black fur, a sadistic attitude, and little regard for social norms except for faux courtesy.
The One Guy: Reibey is not technically male, but he's the closest thing there is in the afterlife, and it marks him clearly as an outsider.
Rhyming Names: Rei-bey.
Stupid Evil: The Madam describes him as such. He models his empire like Sauron, if Sauron lost all subtlety, he acts like a complete and utter Jerkass even in situations where being friendly and diplomatic would serve him far better, and he keeps relying on his fanatic followers even when hired goons would be far more efficient. The only reason he hasn't been killed and his head mounted on a spike is that he controls the only source for true death, which is too valuable to get rid off. Even the author describes him as "incredibly emotionally immature and not all that bright".
Too Important to Remember You: He usually doesn't care to remember people unless they're very important, since he's been alive for a very long time and doesn't see the point. When Oblivion asks him about Kyoko in chapter 47, it takes him a while to remember who Kyoko even is, or why she was important in the first place.
Ultimate Job Security: Very few people like Reibey, even among his business partners and subordinates. Him constantly insulting them would be bad enough even if he wasn't the very species that pretty much everyone in the afterlife hates for very justifiable reasons. Yet because he controls access to an invaluable resource, true death, via Oblivion, no one can get rid of him or risk losing it forever. Thus, despite seemingly everyone but (some of) the Oblivions hating his guts, he remains in power.
Villainous Friendship: According to Word of God, he and the original Oblivion were apparently friends.
Would Hurt a Child: It's a tad complicated by the lack of aging in the afterlife, but at least four of Reibey's victims are at least mentally young children; He emotionally manipulates Oblivion, who's 11 at oldest, he violently tosses Nikki against a wall as punishment for failure, and he has put out a hit on Kyoko and Oktavia, who are both 14.
You Have Failed Me: Killing them is of the table, but Reibey is still fond of punishing failure in extremely painful ways. At worst, he can also exile void walkers, forever cutting them off from the death they crave.

The Matriarch

Reibey's second and speaker, a witch or magical girl who can telepathically communicate with him regardless of distance. Because of her ability to teleport anywhere in the world not under Alliance control, she relays his word to Oblivion's agents, and occasionally ferries void walkers, or even Reibey himself.

Combo Platter Powers: The Matriarch can teleport, create portals, and has some kind of telekinesis that can stop bullets mid-air and sling them back with as much power as a gun. Only the first two seem related.
The Comically Serious: Her lack of emotion is a comedic contrast to the very emotional Reibey, especially when she tactfully recounts his ranting.
Creative Sterility: Kyoko thinks the Matriarch gives off the impression of only reacting to the orders she's given, with no mind or thought of her own. When Reibey tells her to say hello, she does so in a way that implies she would do it to an empty room if he asked her.
Empty Shell: It's a matter of debate among voidwalkers if the Matriarch has her own will, or if she's just a vessel for Reibey's. She certainly doesn't handle being separated from him well.
Impossibly-Low Neckline: The neckline of her dress goes down to her navel. The fishnet top she wears under is not much better.
Mind over Matter: She has some kind of telekinesis precise enough to pick bullets out of the air, and powerful enough to send them back with equal force or break Kyoko's barrier in a single strike.
Mouth of Sauron: The Matriarch serves as Reibey's voice in places he can't be present himself.
Not So Stoic:
- It might have been Annabelle's imagination, but the Matriarch seemingly gives a smirk when reporting the team's failure to capture Kyoko.
- When she's severed from her connection with Reibey she loses her composure entirely.
Power Floats: Possibly. It's hard to tell because of her dress, but she certainly doesn't seem to walk.
The Stoic: The Matriarch never shows emotion, silently bearing word from her master with no commentary or remarks of her own.
Tactful Translation: Because of her stoicism, the Matriarch tends to summarize Reibey's outbursts in less vulgar terms, though the same idea comes across.
Walk on Water: She can stand on the surface of water as if it was solid ground.

Annabelle Lee's gang

A group of Void Walkers assigned by Reibey himself to the task of hunting and capturing Kyoko Sakura.

In General

Ambiguously Related: Twice over.
- Annabelle Lee and Nikki look nothing alike, and since AL is a witch, the only source that they're sisters is Nikki, who's mental state makes her a less-than-reliable witness. AL's decided she doesn't care though, and considers Nikki her sister either way. Worth noting is also that AL does have a sister, as scried by Elsa Maria, but the only source that this sister is Nikki is, again, Nikki.
- The Twins have the opposite problem of looking nigh identical, but claiming that they're not related. They're not, Airi's wish was to become Yuuri to carry on her legacy, which is why they look identical.
Costume Evolution: The Tick Tock sisters switch outfits in chapter 10 to make it less obvious that they're still Void Walkers, while the Twins change in chapter 17 after their old clothes are ruined.
Elite Four: Wouldn't you know, the gang who hunt the protagonists wherever they go is a quartet.
Evil Counterpart: To the main quartet. Like the heroes, the Void Walker quartet consist of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold leader, a person she cares about and wants to protect, and a romantic couple.
- Annabelle Lee is a cynic like Kyoko, though where Kyoko's cynicism either wore off or was counterbalanced by wonder that lets her see the good and bad of the afterlife, Annabelle Lee let it consume her and she can't see anything good about the afterlife at all. While both are prone to irritating all those around them with their attitudes, Kyoko has made more genuine connections than Annabelle Lee, who only has Nikki who truly cares about her prior to the Etherdale arc.
- Nikki is the cute and adored member of her quartet, like Oktavia, but where Oktavia is The Heart and genuinely sweet, Nikki is completely insane and rather unhinged. While Oktavia is usually happy with all of the kindness she gets, but could do without Kyoko's conflicting priorities regarding Sayaka Miki, Nikki would rather not have the Twins affections at all. Per Oktavia everyone knows her but her, while Nikki is the only one among the four to truly remember her past and is the one who knows about Annabelle's past (in theory at least, as even Annabelle Lee admits she might not be the best source).
- The Twins aren't just a couple like Mami and Charlotte with some 'interesting' backgrounds (a pair of 'apparently identical' twins and a duo with a history of mutual murder respectively) who now see each other as soulmates, but are debatably an even more stable couple than the Tomoes are. They never fight, because it seems like they are completely the same instead of two separate people. Where Mami and Charlotte's differences both help the other address or overcome their individual foibles while causing the occasional squabble between them, the Twins' bad habits feed into each other and make themselves worse. Where Mami and Charlotte care for others outside themselves, the Twins really don't care about anyone else except for Nikki.
Quirky Miniboss Squad: They resemble this, being minor antagonists that hound the heroes and each have clear personality.
Rogue Agent: After failing to apprehend Kyoko several times, Reibey officially exiles Annabelle and her crew, but adds that if they happened to capture Kyoko and Oktavia, Oblivion might be grateful enough to let them back in, and even award them true death. This also lets them circumvent the Free Life Compact, which prevents any members of the Void Walkers from attacking Kyoko or Oktavia while they're in Mami and Charlotte's protection.
Throw the Dog a Bone: After AL and her crew is treated as Butt Monkies for most of the fic, the Etherdale arc ends with them hailed as saviors and heroes by the people of the wayhouse and former soldiers of the Protectorate. And to make it better, it is entirely deserved as it was Annabelle Lee and Arzt's actions that caused Lily's downfall.

Annabelle Lee

The first void walker Kyoko encounters, Annabelle is a loyal agent of Oblivion who wants to capture Kyoko so she and her sister can die properly.

Alternate Self: Her counterpart in the Ghosts of Christmas Past timeline is known as Crazy Annie, Freehaven's local town troublemaker who keeps picking fight with anyone unfortunate enough to come close.
Anti-Villain: Annabelle is antagonistic, but ultimately it's just because she wants to die, and capturing Kyoko and Oktavia is the only way to do that.
Arch-Enemy: She is this to Kyoko, and the feeling is absolutely mutual.
Big Sister Instinct: Nikki is the only thing Annabelle has left to live for, and she will gladly face Reibey's punishment to keep her safe.
Born Unlucky: She certainly feels that way, feeling like everything she does results in failure because of things outside of her control.
Brutal Honesty: She doesn't mince words, even with people she mostly gets along with. In one case, she tells the head of a Wayhouse everything that's wrong with their approach to security, despite overally supporting their efforts.
Costume Evolution: After chapter 10, she drops her usual void walker outfit (a nun's headcover, a skirt, and a strip of cloth over her chest) in favour of something more practical, keeping the black skirt but switching to a white t-shirt, flight jacket, and headband to keep her hair up.
The Cynic: Annabelle Lee thinks everyone will grow tired of the afterlife eventually, and seek death through Oblivion. Hence, nothing in the afterlife matters except for getting into Oblivion's good graces as quick as possible. She also takes a dim view of marriage, thinking Mami and Charlotte are gonna fall apart eventually no matter how much they love each other now.
Detrimental Determination: Annabelle Lee's determination to capture Kyoko and company despite her constant failure has an increasingly obvious impact on her mental state, to the point where she at times acts more like a raving lunatic than her sister.
Do Not Call Me "Paul": Annabelle is annoyed when Nikki calls her Annabelly.
Even Evil Has Standards:
- Annabelle is far from a good person and mostly only cares about getting herself and her sister out of the afterlife, damn everything else. However, she is not fond of the soul vapour drug dealing business.
- She pities wild witches and supports the Wayhouse system that seeks to give them support and therapy.
Faux Horrific: She considers Lily mind controling them to be within reason, but when she starts singing show tunes? That's unforgiveable.
Freudian Excuse:
- Annabelle is a fanatically devoted void walker, desperate to obey any order that might give her and her sister true death. The reason for this is something unspecified that happened to them over the course of a week in the first year of their afterlife, which was so horrible that they would rather embrace Cessation of Existence than live in the afterlife forever.
- In the Ghosts of Christmas Past timeline, Annabelle Lee's (or rather Crazy Annie's) misanthropic and doomsaying attitude is motivated by having been sepparated from Nikki early on in their afterlife stay. Having spent the last 39 years looking for her alone, she's not particularily inclined to see anything positively.
Full-Name Basis: Annabelle Lee prefers to go by her full name, and is annoyed at people who call her just Annabelle.
Hypocrite: Annabelle hates imprisonment, considering it a Fate Worse than Death especially given that there is no escape by death in the afterlife. Despite this, her main goal is to capture Kyoko and Oktavia to hand them over to Reibey, and is furious at them for resisting that. She admits her hypocricy after the Madam points it out to her, but is too desperate to do anything else.
Important Haircut: While she initially wears a headdress hiding her hair, once she's exiled from the Withering Lands, she cuts it short to an uneven bob for practical reasons.
Meaningful Name: Annabel Lee is a poem by Edgar Allan Poe about a man and a woman who's love was so great that the angels of Heaven grew jealous and took her away, sepparating Annabel from her lover. Annabelle is a witch who is in large parts defined by her love for her sister, and who is very unhappy in the afterlife.
No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: At least part of her motivation, as revealed in Ghosts of Christmas Past. Since the afterlife has no real consequence for anything, as any injury is shortly healed, eating, drinking, and breathing is just done out of habit, and no one can die, there is no true point in living. At least when she was alive, getting injured or being hungry or dying meant something.
Oh, Crap!: When Mami (falsely) claims that Annabelle broke the Compact by attacking Elsa Maria, Annabelle is briefly so horrified she can't speak, then lets out a scream and runs away.
Only Sane Man: Between her childishly homicidal sister and the constantly horny Twins, Annabelle is the only void walker on her team who as much as tries to focus on their mission.
Power Floats: Annabelle lacks legs, but can make up for it by floating, akin to a djinn.
Surrounded by Idiots: Her attitude most of the time, deeply frustrated by her underlings inability to get through the simplest assignments without screwing up. That said, she's not that much better herself.
Shadow Archetype: To Kyoko Sakura. Both are cynical fighters with an intense distrust for the afterlife, both care very deeply about one person, and both are extremely driven to accomplish their goal regardless of the consequences and collateral damage. Unlike Kyoko, however, Annabelle Lee has completely given up on the afterlife and is suicidal, whereas Kyoko grows to accept it thanks to her friends.
Villain Respect: While she really doesn't like Mami Tomoe, she respects her for her skill. At one point when they have to team up for an Enemy Mine, AL describes herself and Mami has having the lion's share of competency among them.
Who Wants to Live Forever?: All Void Walkers have this view, but Annabelle Lee in particular believes that immortal life simply isn't something humans (or other species for that matter) are made to endure. She joined Oblivion in her first year of the afterlife because she reasoned that she'd grow tired of it eventually anyway so might as well get a head start.
Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Annabelle has claustrophobia, which first comes up in Bertha's Brothel where she has to take an underground tunnel.

Ticky Nikki

The first void walker Oktavia encounters, Nikki is Annabelle's sister and a magical girl. Unlike her comparatively sane sister, Nikki is mentally unstable and prone to violent outbursts.

Berserk Button: Nikki's friends call her Ticky Nikki. She gets very angry when people who are not her friends do it.
Costume Evolution: After chapter 10, she drops her usual skimpy void walker outfit and instead goes for a more childishly cute outfit, with a pink skirt, white-and-yellow striped blouse, white stockings, and a pink jacket, finishing the look with some hairties with plastic flowers.
Evil Counterpart: To Oktavia. Nikki and Oktavia are both the youngest of their respective groups, and the ones who are most reliant on the others. Both are also the one person in each group that everyone likes, even if Nikki isn't quite as appreciating of the Twins' affection.
First-Name Basis: She has a full name, but it's almost never used, not even by her sister. It's Nikki Cynthia Moffat.
Freudian Excuse: Annabelle thinks Nikki's mental underdevelopment and insanity can be blamed on the vague events of their first week in the hereafter. The events are not described in detail, but they were apparently traumatic enough for them both to join the Void Walkers in the hopes of permanent death after just one year.
Impostor Forgot One Detail: While infiltrating Cloudbreak, Nikki is disguised as a Swedish magical girl. To keep Mami and Charlotte occupied, she and Nie drag them into a conversation where Nikki asks, among other things, what snow is like. The fact that she's full of it should be obvious even if she hadn't just said that she loves snow.
Insanity Immunity: Elsa Maria's wish lets her see the past of even Witches, but she comes up completely blank when trying to read Nikki.
Ms. Exposition: Since she has no interest in killing Oktavia when they first meet, Nikki ends up being the one who tells her that they are dead and in the afterlife.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Nikki is usually scared and creeped out by the twins, but when Reibey is punishing Annabelle, she clings to Nie for safety.
Past Experience Nightmare: She suffers unspecified nightmares about their early days in the afterlife. Annabelle Lee suspects that a lot of them stem from the two hours they spent in a Dockengaut territory.
Psycho Knife Nut: Nikki is the furthest thing from mentally sane, and her magical girl weapon is an infinite amount of daggers, knives, and other handheld bladed weaponry she can conjure out of thin air.
Psychopathic Womanchild: Played with. Physically, Nikki is a young girl, but she's old enough that she should have matured. She still acts like a violent child, however.
Scary Teeth: Nikki had apparently not heard of a dentist prior to dying, and her remaining teeth are described as looking like tombstones.
Security Cling: While watching Reibey punish her sister, Nikki clings to Nie for comfort. Given that she has previously been shown to be terrified of the Twins, it shows just how much more afraid she is of Reibey.
Third-Person Person: Nikki mostly refers to herself in the third person, a trait that is apparently not uncommon. Given that almost everyone in the world uses the same pronouns, it leads to some confusion.
Token Human: Of the four void walkers assigned to hunt Kyoko and Oktavia, Nikki is the only magical girl, the others being witches. Unlike most cases, this makes her more unstable.
Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Implied. In Ghosts of Christmast Past, Annabelle Lee shows Kyoko a picture of Nikki presumably from before whatever trauma made her into a Creepy Child, and Kyoko thinks she looks like a sweet, even Cherubic, little girl.

The Twins

Two void walker witches, Nie Blühen Herze and Arzt Kochen. Despite claiming to be unrelated, they look completely identical, which makes it rather uncomfortable with how physically affectionate they are.

Both

Ambiguously Related: They insist that they're not related, but given how identical they look, few believe them. They're telling the truth.
Ambiguous Situation: While Annabelle and Nikki's motives for joining the void walkers are clear, the Twins are less so. The Madam describes them as hedonists, which one would think matches poorly for an organization dedicated to dying. Arzt implies that it might be because they idealize the idea of dying in each others' arms, and didn't get that chance in their first life.
Canon Character All Along: The Twins are really Yuuri Asuka and Airi Anri.
Costume Evolution: Unlike Annabelle and Nikki, the Twins keep their outfits after being exiled, but let their hair go back to normal blonde. They later do end up swapping outfits involuntarily, Nie to a red-and-black plaid buttoned shirt and overalls, and Arzt to a black-and-white striped shirt, grey shorts, and a black beret.
Creepy Twins: They look identical, are always seen together, act uncomfortably intimate, and are violent agents of the villain. They are not twins, however.
Cuteness Proximity: They find Nikki adorable, treating her like a pet. It is very uncomfortable for the poor girl.
The Dividual: The two look and act nigh identical, and are very rarely apart from each other. Even as they start getting their own point of view scenes, they are still extremely similar in thought process and personality.
The Hedonist: According to the Madam's generally accurate analysis, the Twins care for nothing more than living out a demented fantasy life. Why they joined the void walkers is anyone's guess.
Hot Witch: The duo both wear stockings, short skirts, corsets, and witch hats, giving this impression. They are in fact witches, though not the traditional kind.
Sibling Incest: The two are in a relationship despite looking like twins. They're actually not related.

Arzt Kochen

A Day in the Limelight: The Etherdale arc gives some focus on Arzt as she is vital to the development of a counter to Lily's Compelling Voice, and she's the one who kills the fairy in the end.
The Cuckoolander Was Right: When Arzt muses about why her and Nie look alike, she's actually more or less spot-on about their histories as Yuuri and Airi, only getting a few details wrong despite it being a wild guess.
"Maybe we were two young lovers. Her, my pure and beautiful princess. And me, her stalwart knight." She held her hands over her heart and sighted. "And when I fell, her broken heart drove her to wish for my face, so as to take up my mantle and avenge my death!"
Fallen Hero: While Nie was always a bit unstable, Arzt was once Yuuri, an All-Loving Hero who used her magic to heal innocents. Now, she's a dangerous and sadistic enforcer for Oblivion's regime.
Heart Is an Awesome Power: Arzt's power lets her generate enough of any given liquid to fill her syringes, as long as she's ingested a sample of said liquid beforehand. This is of fairly limited utility aside from making sure she always has enough poison on hand or to generate enough of the antidote against Lily's voice to inocculate an entire compound.
In-Series Nickname: Nikki calls her Pointy Sameface.
Past-Life Memories: When in a somewhat delirious state after overusing her magic, and hearing Nie praise her for being selfless, Arzt starts reflecting on her syringe hand, feeling that they are too small and that there are too many of them. Arzt is the witch form of Yuuri Asuka, who used her magic to selflessly help people and who's weapon was a single giant syringe. Later she makes a shockingly accurate guess about her and Nie's backstories, implying she may have some subconscious memories.
Poisonous Person: Arzt can create poisons from her soul vapors, and her syringe fingers can be loaded up with various nasty poisons. The ones she's demonstrated so far are one that slows down the healing process and puts its victim in a coma, one that causes the victim's head to explode, and one that makes the recipient unconscious through almost everything.
Redemption Demotion: Inverted as turning evil has made her notably weaker. As Yuuri, she had seemingly been able to fight Kyoko one on one and be a magical girl for a good while on her own. In her current status she is basically a mook.

Nie Blühen Herze

Big Damn Heroes: When Annabelle is pinned down by a Brainwashed and Crazy Charlotte, Nie appears out of the smoke to save her.
Nie: Annabelle Lee, Annabelle Lee. How in the world did you get yourself into this situation?
Boring, but Practical: Nie doesn't have any fancy magic powers, and her witch remnant is just a tattoo, but she has a pair of guns that never need reloading and that she can find anywhere in the world, which she gets a lot of use out of.
Discard and Draw: As Airi, Nie was able to fight an entire team of skilled Magical Girls several times and do well enough with a variety of powers. Turning into a witch removed these powers, replacing them instead with a few Witch abilities like infinite ammo guns that can never be lost, that unlike Oktavia's own power changes are a clear downgrade.
The Gunslinger: Nie fights with a pair of guns that never need reloading. They were with her when she first woke up in the afterlife, and she can always find them when they're lost. She correctly deduces that they were her weapon as a magical girl.
Identical Stranger: Subverted in that there is a reason for why she looks like Arzt, but they are not related.
In-Series Nickname: Nikki calls her Shooty Sameface.
Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Of a kind. Airi wished to become Yuuri, resulting in her transformed state looking identical to her dead friend. Since witches look like they did as magical girls, her witch self Nie still looks like Yuuri in the afterlife. She can't remember her original appearance, however, so she isn't bothered.

Bertha's Brothel / The Brothel

A Wretched Hive and home to the Brothel criminal cartel, which maintains close ties to the Void Walkers.

In General

Private Military Contractor: The Brothel is technically an illegal crime ring, but it's so extensive and powerful that it might as well be a mercenary organization.
The Syndicate: The Brothel is the largest criminal organization in the afterlife, dabbling in all sorts of illegal enterprise ranging from drug dealing to mercenary work.
Wretched Hive: Bertha's Brothel is a city in a swamp ruled by criminal enterprise, where drug dealers and slavers prey freely on the poor.

The Madam

The sixth and current head of the criminal cartel known as the Brothel. Having taken charge of the cartel by force a bit over a decade ago, the Madam is known to be reasonable and slow to anger, but shows no mercy to those who anger her.

Berserk Button: She barely emotes, but she gets notably angry when Reibey calls Latria/Margot a "pet".
Break Them by Talking: She is even better at handing out these than Elsa Maria, giving Annabelle a dressing down so throrough that the void walker barely manages to respond while all of her motives and actions are deconstructed and her hypocricy is pointed out.
Canon Character All Along: The mysterious and dangerous Madam is the titular protagonist of Puella Magi Oriko Magica.
Death by Adaptation: Obviously given the setting. Oriko's fate in any other timelines than the one shown in Puella Magi Oriko Magica is unmentioned, though it's implied that she rarely contracts, doesn't receive a vision of Kriemhild Gretchen, or is killed first. In the fic, she is most definitely dead, and given the manner of death she describes (killed by a bullet less than a week after contracting), it's heavily implied that Homura Akemi killed her.
Even Evil Has Loved Ones: She is more of a Fallen Hero or Well-Intentioned Extremist, but the Madam is a villain and cares deeply about Latria/Margot. Reibey calling her a "pet" is one of the few things that visibly makes the Madam angry.
Fallen Hero: The Madam freely admits that she's a monster, but wasn't born that way. In life, she genuinely believed in and tried to make the world a better place, and contracted with the goal of ending the pointless feuds between puella magi through peaceful cooperation. She was killed before she could do anything, and the place in the afterlife she spawned in wasn't exactly accomodating for that kind of ideals, leading her to adopt her current methodology.
Legacy Character: The Madam is a title carried by all of the Brothel's leaders. The current Madam is the sixth since the founding.
The Needs of the Many: The Madam subscribes to the philosophy that the ends justify the means, as long as the end serves the greater good. Unlike practically every other magical girl in the afterlife, she doesn't hate the Incubators, seeing their reprehensible actions as acceptable since it was in the service of extending the universe's lifetime.
Necessarily Evil: Her philosophy in the nutshell.
- She is very aware of the issues of the afterlife and wants to create real, positive change. It just happens that becoming a brutal crimelord with more blood on her hands than an average Incubator is the best way to do it.
- She also doesn't despite the incubators, seeing their job as tragically necesarry for the continuation of the universe, even though it means countless girls suffer and die.
The Omniscient: The Madam just knows things, even things she would have no way of knowing. Latria claims that the Madam "always" finds out, and she even knows Nikki's full name which she hasn't used in years.
Only Known by Their Nickname: The Madam is only ever referred to as such, despite being a magical girl who still knows what her name was in life. Reading between the lines, however, makes it obvious that her name is Oriko Mikuni. Latria finally uses her name in the Heist epilogue.
Secret-Keeper: Reibey entrusts her with secrets that he tells no others, like Oblivion's true nature. She's also aware of the hidden Savian colony.
Seers: Her magical girl ability let her foresee the future, though it's grown unreliable to the point of uselessness since she died, which she doesn't really mind.
Silk Hiding Steel: The Madam, head of a powerful criminal organization, is noted to look more like an office intern. She claims to think of herself as a businesswoman first and foremost.
Simple, yet Opulent: Very much her style. Her office is decorated sparsely, using almost entirely white as a colour scheme, and follows her utilitarian ideology, but is actually absurdly expensive.
Sins of Our Fathers: The Madam, according to herself at least, had done nothing deserving of death when some magical girl shot her from behind. One of her previous timeline selves, on the other hand, caused so much trouble that Homura would rather kill her than risk the small chance of her becoming a problem.
The Teetotaler: She doesn't allow alcohol anywhere on her property.
Unholy Matrimony: She and Latria/Margot certainly have something like this going on.

Latria / Margot

The Madam's most trusted agent and confidante. While she is the furthest thing from sane, she is closer to the Madam than anyone else, standing somewhere between confidante, lover, and enforcer.

Absurdly Sharp Claws: Appears to be her witch remnant, she has retractable hook-shaped claws that are sharp enough to cut up a living being in a single slice.
Adaptation Name Change: She's called Margot in the original fic on Fanfiction.net, based on a name seen in her witches' labyrinth. TakerFoxx later learned that her canon witch name is Latria, hence she's called that in the AO3 version.
Canon Character All Along: It's not that hard to figure out, but she's Kirika Kure, just as fanatically loyal to Oriko as ever.
The Dragon: She's the top enforcer and agent of the Madam, a feared crime boss.
Easily Forgiven: Inverted. Despite Arzt blowing her head up with a poison, Latria seems perfectly okay with her after she gives an Ordered Apology.
Signature Headgear: A tophat with an eye charm pinned to it.
Strange Minds Think Alike: She and Ticky Nikki seem to have a similar kind of madness, so once the initial hostility is passed they actually find themselves agreeing on a lot of quirks. At one point, Nikki says that it's polite to use clean knives when fighting someone, and Latria proceeds to take out her claws to examine them for dirt.
Time Master: Latria retains her original self's ability to slow down time for everyone except herself and those she targets.
Unholy Matrimony: She and the Madam clearly have something like this going on.
Your Head Asplode: She gets to be on the receiving end of Arzt's head-exploding poison. She's fine afterward, obviously, but it still hurts.

Achelonia

A territory to the north of the Alliance, home to scenic forests and mountains, the picturesque capital of Seagirt, and a large Brothel presence at all levels of society.

In General

Corrupt Politician: The Brothel and the Persephone's Protectorate have their claws deep into the Achelonian government, including some ministers on their payroll.
Dirty Cop: Same deal as the politicians, large parts of the Marsters constabulary are on the Brothel payroll.
Non-Indicative Name: Seagirt, despite the name meaning "Surrounded by Sea", is apparently landlocked.

Etherdale

A region somewhere between Achelonia and Cloudbreak located between two spawn sites, which has caused it to become overrun with wild witch covens and leechers who wish to take advantage of that fact.

Given the nature of the Etherdale arc, SPOILERS FOR CHAPTERS 16 AND 17 ARE UNMARKED

Persephone's Protectorate in general

A paramilitary group sent by the territory of Achelonia to establish order in the Etherdale region due to the unusually high number of wild witch covens. Or at least that's what they tell outsiders, as the Protectorate are actually ruthless leechers under the command of a cruel mistress.

Brainwashed and Crazy: The Protectorate soldiers aren't bad people, but have fallen completely under the sway of Lily's Compelling Voice, and would do anything she asked of them.
The Fair Folk: While they aren't literal faerie, the Protectorate are evocative of the archetype, being a faction of people with unusually advanced technology (as a standin for magic, which everyone has) who live in an isolated forest and who's leader is an inhumanly beautiful woman with gossamer wings. They also have the darker aspects of fairykind, such as kidnapping and utilizing hypnotic powers.
Human Traffickers: They are Leechers, the afterlife's equivalent, who kidnap wild witches and steadily drain them of soul vapours until they're dried out husks, let them regenerate, and repeat the process.
Keystone Army: The Protectorate consists entirely of people brainwashed by Lily. Once Arzt kills her, they are all freed and stand down.
Pragmatic Evil: They apparently let their victims go from time to time. This is not out of kindness, but because they need them to stay insane to make their specific brand of soul drops. After enough draining, the victims are generally so broken that they give up entirely. At that point they're released into the wild so the other covens and negative energies can make them go insane again, and then recaptured to repeat the process.
Private Military Contractor: The Protectorate are privately funded, with some goverment grants, and hired to solve an issue by the goverment of Achelonia.
There's No Kill like Overkill: Against the Wayhouse, the Protectorate brings an army 1,275 strong, with heavy duty hardware including 200 snipers, four gunships, and 80 mortars. Compared to the relatively small group they're going against, one of the soldiers compares it to napalm bombing an anthill.

The Wayhouse in general

Magical girls and witches who set up shop near Spawn Sites in an attempt at helping new arrivals before they succumb to madness, offering counseling and support through the difficult time immediately after death.

Being Good Sucks: They are well-meaning and kind, but when they are blockaded from receiving supplies by a band of human traffickers who would love nothing more than to brainwash their workers into subservience and turn the girls they try to save into livestock, a dedication to helping everyone they can and taking in lost and confused souls way beyond their capacity is very detrimental. Annabelle Lee calls them out on this.
Annabelle Lee: All that good karma ain't gonna matter for shit once the leechers come.
Frame-Up: Lily falsely claims that they're Leechers. Having no reason to not believe her, and under the effect of her Compelling Voice, the main characters all believe her.
Good Samaritan: They earn nothing on helping new arrivals, they simply do it out of the good of their hearts.
Non-Governmental Organization: They may receive funding, but overall they are simply charitable people working to help as many as they can.

Lily

The commander of Persephone's Protectorate.

And I Must Scream: The concoction of poisons Arzt gave her put her in a coma, regenerating extremely slowly, and experiencing constant nightmares and hallucinations. Most of her former victims agree that she deserves it, and she's stored in the cell she kept wild girls in for good measure.
Arc Villain: Of the Etherdale arc/"Help".
Asshole Victim: Arzt injects her with the serum that counters her voice, which causes her immense pain, headache, and paralysis. Arzt takes a moment to mock her for this, before injecting her again with a poision that explodes her head, and her former victims stick her in an And I Must Scream situation. After everything she has done, it's hard to feel sorry for her.
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Lily presents herself as a kind and gentle, but is in fact a ruthless human trafficker who uses her Compelling Voice to force people to commit atrocities in her name.
Compelling Voice: Lily's magic lets her influence people subtly with her voice. As Mary Anne explains it, a single greeting is enough to make people like her, a conversation gets them to agree with her, a day and they will think of her as the best thing that ever happened to them and they owe her anything. After a week, nothing will matter to them except her, and even if she confesses to anything they'll just accept her as being in the right anyway.
The Captain: She's the commanding officer of Persephone's Protectorate.
Didn't See That Coming: She only thought of the wild witches as barely sentient animals who had lost all higher thought, so she's utterly blindsided when they attack her forces in protection of the wayhouse. While she's able to recover from that, the second unexpected event that causes her downfall is a furious Annabelle Lee appearing out of nothing and dragging her into the burning ruins.
Eye Colour Change: Lily's eyes are iridescent, changing color as she moves.
Front Line General: Despite being the top commander of the Protectorate, she gets down and dirty whenever they're undertaking a mission, confident that her skill will keep her safe. This is ultimately her downfall, as during the Wayhouse assault, a number of events blindside her and she has her head blown off. While dying would be a setback for anyone, for Lily who needs to stay alive to keep her brainwashing going, it's devastating.
Hoist by Her Own Petard: Twice over;
- Lily's dismissal of the wild witches as savage beasts with no higher thought process means that she's utterly blindsided when every single wild witch in Etherdale comes to the wayhouse's defense, unwilling to let the people who helped them be destroyed.
- Lily has close to 1500 people under her thrall at once, so when Arzt blows her head off, there are now a rather large group of people who have very good reasons for wanting her dead.
I Control My Minions Through...: Mind control. Every single one of her followers is brainwashed by her hypnotic voice and will do anything for her.
Karmic Death: She's attacked by Hungry, one of the wild witches she treated like cattle, and Arzt uses it as a distraction to inject her with the antidote made from her soul vapors to combat her hypnotic powers. The antidote paralyzes her, and Arzt takes her time killing her.
Lady of War: Lily is a deadly fighter, but she doesn't let that affect her grace or inhuman beauty in the slightest, moving fluidly "like light given form".
More than Mind Control: Lily's compelling voice, more than simply forcing someone to obey her, works by subtly making them think that Lily is a trustworthy person, that meeting her is the best thing that ever happened to them, and that they should listen to what she has to say no matter what. By the time it has fully taken hold, a victim will fail to notice any contradictions to what Lily has told them, and even if she tells them to do something that goes against all of their values, they will accept it wholeheartedly.
Our Fairies Are Different: Certainly evocative of the archetype, being outright described as a fairy because of her inhuman beauty and gossamer wings. She's also the head of a faction that largely keeps to itself in the woods, named after the goddess of spring, and has a Compelling Voice she uses to force others into obeying her and kidnapping victims to be enslaved and forever drained of their soul vapors. Kyoko even compares her to a Fae.
Pop-Cultured Badass: She knows the Modern Major General song and several popular show tunes by heart.
Royal Rapier: She's the leader of a faction, and wields a bejeweled rapier with deadly precision.
Winged Humanoid: She has a pair of shimmering gossamer wings, like a massive butterfly.
World's Most Beautiful Woman: Lily is inhumanly beautiful, with perfect green hair, caleidoscopic eyes, white skin, and not a single flaw. Charlotte, who's been married for three years, admits that Lily is the most beautiful person she's ever seen, and Mami is inclined to agree.
Your Head Asplode: Arzt kills her by injecting her with the head-exploding poison. No one is willing to let her regenerate.

Janelle

Lily's second in command.

Actually Pretty Funny: She lets out a few chuckles at Kyoko's bad jokes.
Brainwashed and Crazy: Like everyone in the protectorate. Janelle's conditioning was so thorough that she was perfectly aware of what Lily had done to her, and she still couldn't do anything to resist.
Broken Bird: Very understandably, the aftermath of being released from Lily's brainwashing and having to deal with the consequences of her dealings being leaked turns Janelle into a very stressed and irritable woman.
Fighting Your Friend: Because of Lily's brainwashing, she's forced to fight the people she used to know and be friends with at the Wayhouse, including her former lover, Demmi.
Laughing Mad: She lets out a slightly insane sounding chuckle while jokingly (probably) declaring her intent to murder the girl who leaked Lily's dealings to the public.
No-Nonsense Nemesis: Janelle often uses the catchphrase "No fuss, no muss" and tends to see things done as practically and simply as possible. When Demmi tries to talk her down, Janelle simply shoots her.
Number Two: Lily's, serving as her direct subordinate and the highest commander of the Protectorate after her.

Demeter Orozco

The leader of the Etherdale Wayhouse. Goes by Demmi.

Blessed with Suck: Demmi has to spend most of her time coped up in her magically warded office because of her empathic abilities. When she can read thoughts, spending a lot of time around severely unstable teenagers is the last thing she wants.
It's Personal: Implied. Demmi certainly has a lot of reasons to hate Lily, but even more so when it's revealed that Janelle, Lily's second in command, was in a romantic relationship with Demmi.
Living Lie Detector: She's an empath who can detect thoughts. When she interrogates Annabelle Lee, AL has to make liberal use of lie by ommission to avoid her realizing who she works for.
Reasonable Authority Figure: She is willing to let Annabelle Lee and company stay without expecting anything in return, but also asks them to help if they can. She also knows that Lily's underlings were victims of her brainwashing, and doesn't hold it against them.
Token Adult: Demmi is one of very few magical girls who actually made it out of her teens, looking to be nearly thirty.

Patricia

An administrator at the Etherdale Wayhouse, known in life as the Class Representative Witch.

Handy Feet: Exaggerated. Her witch remnant is that her feet are literally hands.
Locked Out of the Loop: Patricia has no idea that Annabelle Lee, the girl she admires and invites to stay with them at the wayhouse, is a void walker, thinking she's a bounty hunter hunting two criminals.
Nice Girl: She's a very friendly woman who just wants to help people. Even Annabelle Lee's pessimism does little to hamper her positivity.
O.C. Stand-in: Since Patricia in the show is only ever seen as a Witch, her personality had to be created from scratch with just her vague description as the Class Representative Witch to go by.

Mundoroun

A vaskergoros who works at the Etherdale Wayhouse.

The Big Guy: Of the wayhouse, as demonstrated during the battle against the protectorate. She singlehandedly takes out one enemy gunship, takes out another with support, and tears her way through the leechers with no one standing a chance of stopping her.
Blade on a Rope: Her magical girl weapons are two chains with blades at both ends. She is devastatingly effective with them, using them both to close the distance between herself and her enemies and as a mid-range weapon.
Bring My Brown Pants: She wets herself after facing down a dockengaut, though to her credit manages to maintain a stoic facade until it's gone.
Gentle Giant: Mundy may be large and intimidating, but she's a kind soul who spends her day helping wild witches recover. And when Mami apologizes for having attacked her during the Wayhouse raid, Mundy's expression turns soft and she reassures her that it wasn't her fault.
Made of Iron: Vaskergoros are notably strong and resilient already, but Mundy takes it to a whole other level. She's able to make her way through army of people who are shooting at her without even slowing down. It takes Janelle shooting her with a bazooka to knock her down.
Only Known by Their Nickname: She is almost exclusively called Mundy, with her full name only being brought up when Patricia introduces her and when Mami and Charlotte talk to her.

"Hungry"

A young witch who couldn't handle her own death and went mad as a result. While she is first introduced as simply a feral danger, when she is encountered again she has been taken in by the Etherdale Wayhouse and is in recovery.

The Cameo: She's a subtle one of Rumia from Touhou Project.
Early-Bird Cameo: She's introduced early on in chapter 4 as part of Mami's backstory. 13 chapters later, and seven years in-universe, she returns as one of the wild witches in recovery at the Etherdale wayhuse.
Insanity Immunity: Possibly. All wild witches are resistant towards Lily's voice due to their madness, but Hungry seems completely unaffected. It's possible that she had been inocculated against it, and powered through the pain Lily's voice would otherwise cause her.
One-Word Vocabulary: She only repeats "Hungry" over and over.
Strange Minds Think Alike: She and Nikki are able to communicate fluently by just saying the words "Hungry" and "Ticky".
Patricia: I guess…you just have to speak the language.
Verbal Tic Name: The Wayhouse couldn't get her to say anything except "Hungry", so they simply started to call her that.
Wild Child: She's certainly not the only one, but she's the first example of a wild witch that audience is introduced to, a girl who couldn't handle her own death and regressed to a feral state as a result.

Marsters

A city in Achelonia, home to the Brothel front Starlight Motors.

Brooklyn McNally

A massive brute of a girl who's part of the criminal underground of Marsters.

Abusive Parent: Her father was a nasty piece of work who constantly abused her. Her first action as a Magical Girl was to get back at him for it. This got her killed when she focused too much on breaking his back further than breaking his arms to prevent him from shooting her Soul Gem.
Addled Addict: Brooklyn is addicted to soul drops, so when the Brothel's supplier is taken out and they can't sell her anything anymore, it becomes a problem. Kyoko notices that she shows a lot of signs of withdrawal, including short temper and nervous tics.
Arc Villain: Of the Marsters arc/"the Heist".
Boomerang Bigot: She was disabled by a car accident in life, and used her wish to fix it, making her ableism against Oktavia especially reprehensible.
Brutish Character, Brutish Weapon: Her magical girl weapon is a massive hammer longer than Kyoko is tall, with a head the size of a microwave, a spiked plate on one end and a single sharp spike on the other, reflective of her violent and brutal nature.
Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Lily the Fairy, the villain of the arc before Marsters who was the charming head of a large network of connections who drew most of her power from her ability to subtly turn anyone to her side, and who was noted to be an inhumanly beautiful Lady of War. Brooklyn is a violent brute who wouldn't know subtlety if it bit her in the nose, and who's power is drawn from sheer strength. Also in a more subtle way, while Lily the Fairy was ableist against the wild witches for their mental disability, Brooklyn is ableist towards the physically disabled Oktavia. Finally, Lily the Fairy was a monstrous villain with no redeeming qualities, while Brooklyn turns out to have a Freudian Excuse and is treated more sympathetically after it's revealed.
Didn't Think This Through: Kisa the Vekoo notes that poor foresight is Brooklyn's greatest flaw, as shown when she takes over her local drug suppliers with no plan and certainly no idea that they were a part of the largest and most dangerous criminal cartel in the world.
Dumb Muscle: She's noted to be powerful, but not all that bright. She's not stupid, per se, but she's not exactly a savvy schemer either.
Fall Guy: The Brothel pumps her full of drugs that make her think she's a Brothel leader, then have her take the fall for their crimes.
Freudian Excuse: Her father was an abusive bastard who constantly degraded, insulted, and beat her, especially after she was disabled. She eventually wished for the strength to right back, which did little to help. It's implied that she became a violent gangleader because she didn't know anything else to do.
Huge School Girl: Her exact physical age isn't specified, but she is most likely in her teens same as most girls in the afterlife. She is also two meters tall! Kyoko ponders if she used her wish to get magic steroids.
Oh, Crap!: She has an understandable freakout when she realizes that the drug dealers she's been antagonizing work for the Brothel, a criminal cartel not known for being forgiving.
Politically Incorrect Villain: She dismissively calls Oktavia a "fucking cripple". This is very much played to make her more hateable. She was disabled herself in life, making her a Boomerang Bigot.
Violent Glaswegian: She's a violent brute of a girl, has a clear accent, and her last name starts with Mac. Word of god is that she's Irish.

Others

Elsa Maria

A witch who lives by herself in a lighthouse out at sea, spending her days in silent worship of God. In life, Elsa Maria was known as the Shadow Witch who was killed by Sayaka Miki.

Damsel in Distress: Elsa is captured by Void Walkers, and the first Series Goal is to rescue her.
Dark Is Not Evil: She was the Shadow Witch in life, and can still conjure ghostly arms of shadow that make her a deadly opponent to fight, but she is a very kind and gentle girl.
Death Equals Redemption: As she sees it, being killed by Sayaka saved her from being a mindless monster, and gave her a second chance to live her life.
Death Seeker: She's already dead, but she's quite happy about it, considering it salvation from the fate of being a witch. When she meets Oktavia, who killed her when she was still a magical girl, she embraces and thanks her for saving her.
Distinction Without a Difference: Elsa refers to being killed in her witch form as divine salvation. Kyoko points out that she was killed, but Elsa argues that she was still saved from being a mindless monster, so it makes no difference.
Gone Mad From The Isolation: By the time we see her again after a lengthy stay in Reibey's prison, she is not doing well mentally. When Oblivion shines a flashlight at her, she scrambles away like a wild animal, and she can barely recognize her own name.
Hulking Out: When the Void Walkers refuse to let Kyoko and Oktavia go, Elsa Maria turns into her witch form and wipes the floor with them effortlessly.
I Owe You My Life: Elsa Maria is deeply grateful to Oktavia, the former puella magi who killed her, because she freed her from a life of mindless mayhem. She returns the favor by saving Oktavia and Kyoko's lives and holding of the Void Walkers while they escape.
Madness Mantra: When she meets Oblivion, she screams "WHAT ARE YOU?" again and again.
Ms. Exposition: As the first non-hostile person Kyoko and Oktavia run into, it falls to Elsa Maria to give them the rundown on where they are.
My Greatest Second Chance: She sees the Afterlife as a second chance at redemption after she succumbed to despair and became a Witch, and intends on using it to the fullest.
Noodle Incident: She is not welcome in Freehaven because of what she describes as poor decisions on her part. Chapter 5 explains that she destroyed a church, though the context is still vague.
O.C. Stand-in: Elsa Maria in the show is introduced as a witch and swiftly killed by Sayaka. Her personality in the fic is mostly original, only taking inspiration from the religious iconography of her labyrinth.
Oh, Crap!: When she realizes that Reibey is an incubator, and he has put a hit out on Kyoko, she has this reaction, realizing that there is nothing she can do to protect Kyoko and Oktavia, but Reibey must not reach them.
One-Woman Army: Elsa is powerful, even for a witch. She singlehandedly takes out three other witches and a mentally unstable magical girl with almost no difficulty, though she warns Oktavia that she can't do so forever.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: She gives one to each of the Void Walker witches chaising Kyoko and Oktavia, calling them out for having all made selfless wishes (Yuuri wanted to save her friend, Airi wanted to avenge her, and Annabelle wanted to have her sister back), but have since become agents of a dark power trying to separate other people from their loved ones.
Religious Bruiser: Elsa is a deeply religious girl and adherent of God, but she will not hesitate to lay the hurt on the agents of Oblivion, especially if they threaten innocents.
Spirit Advisor: Not actually supernaturally (presumably), but Elsa Maria tends to show up in symbolic dreams suffered by people who've encountered her, namely Kyoko and Annabelle Lee.
What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Elsa's wish was for Insight, which lets her immediately tell the names, wishes, and occasional other information about Puella Magi and Witches. Kyoko immediately points out that it's not really useful for anything. It does let her deduce pieces of witches' pasts though.
You Shall Not Pass!: She holds of the Void Walkers while Kyoko and Oktavia escape to Freehaven. Given the nature of the afterlife, she is presumably still alive.

Marisa

A magical girl Kyoko encounters in the "bad part" of Freehaven. After initially getting into a fight, the two hit it off.

The Cameo: She's Marisa Kirisame from Imperfect Metamorphosis, first merely being implied (having the same name and Verbal Tic), but confirmed in the author's notes for the AO3 version.
Eating the Eye Candy: She doesn't even try to hide that she's staring at Mami's boobs during their first meeting.
Defeat Means Friendship: After Kyoko beats her in a fight, she's happy to offer a hand in friendship. Kyoko is initially weirded out by this, but relents after she offers to buy breakfast.
Foreshadowing: The appeared in the fic long before her death in Imperfect Metamorphosis , and summarizes how she arrived in the afterlife in the same way that she died in that fic.
Took a Level in Kindness: She is still brash and likes fighting a lot, but notably nicer than she was in Taker Foxx's other fanfiction. She challenged Kyoko into a fist fight, but after that she paid for Kyoko's breakfast, gave her valuable advice, and escorted her to Mami's place. Without asking for any kind of payment! One can say that her being away from Mima's bad influence may affected her behaviour.
Verbal Tic: She ends a lot of her sentences with a noise transcribed as "ze", using it in a manner similar to "Innit" or "desu". She admits that she could stop if she wanted, but she's grown protective of it.

Sayaka Miki

A magical girl who became a witch and was killed in a murder-suicide by Kyoko. Sayaka is effectively dead, and only the witch Oktavia remains.

Afterlife Angst: Upon being told she's dead and in the afterlife, Sayaka spends a while in complete Heroic BSoD listening to the others tell her about the afterlife, then immediately attempts suicide by way of stabbing herself to death. When that fails, she tries to jump out a window.
Big Sister Instinct: Kyoko muses that this is probably the source of Sayaka's hero complex and protectiveness towards Madoka. She wanted to be a big sister, but was an only child, so she directed her fraternal instincts at her meek best friend instead.
Death of Personality: Oktavia is similar to Sayaka, but has some differences, and can't remember anything about being her, meaning that Sayaka Miki is for all intents and purposes dead.
Driven to Suicide: When she learns the truth about the magical girl system and her own death, she tries to stab herself to death, jumping out a window when that doesn't work.
Fish out of Water: No pun intended. In Restless, when she regains her memories but forgets having ever been Oktavia, she is left in a similar position to Kyoko at the start of the fic; Having absolutely no idea how she got there, what's happening, or why Mami is alive again.
Hair-Trigger Temper: As Kyoko puts it, "her sore spots were numerous and hard to miss."
Healing Factor: Her magical girl ability in life was that she could heal and recover abnormally fast. This remains in the afterlife, even stronger than the normal healing factor everyone has. The author decribes it as "cut her head off, another pops out like a pez-dispenser.
Heroic Self-Deprecation: Had a bad case of it, which is noted as one of the few things Kyoko doesn't miss about her. After regaining her memories, she several times spirals into self-deprecation and insistence that she is worthless and no one should care about her because she fails to live up to her own impossibly high standards.
Hero-Worshipper: She greatly admired and wanted to be like Mami when she was alive. She breaks down while apologising to Candeloro in the afterlife, but Candeloro assures her that Mami was not the flawless hero she thought she was and had many demons of her own, and that Sayaka's supposed failings are nothing worse than her own.
I Hate Past Me: When shown a vision by Mephisto of her argument with Madoka just before going off to turn into a witch, the current Sayaka angrily yells at her past self and her stupidity.
"Shut up, you idiot!" Sayaka yelled at her past self. "You don't know what you're talking about!" But her warning went unheeded.
Heroic BSoD: She suffers repeated ones in Restless, each for understandable reasons. When she learns that the Magical Girl system is a scam she curls up and rocks back and forth, reacting with hostility when Ophelia tries to approach. When she learns that she's dead and became a witch before death, she's briefly entirely silent, before trying to kill herself.
Innocently Insensitive: During Restless, having forgotten all of her time in the afterlife, she assumes that the current dream-world they're in is the work of a witch, thinking of the Eldritch Abominations. Candeloro and Charlotte, both witches, exchange uncomfortable glances.
Instant Runes: Her magic in live allowed her to create these, and she retains them in the afterlife. They appear to mostly work as platforms and increase her physical abilities.
It's All My Fault: Sayaka has a guilt complex almost as bad as Mami, especially in regards to what she considers letting Mami die because she didn't contract soon enough to save her.
Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: During the final battle of Restless, she's wearing a princess gown.
The Lost Lenore: To Kyoko. While she does grow to love Oktavia, she is still bothered by how Oktavia is fundamentally a different person from Sayaka.
Love Epiphany: She realizes that she may have some feelings for Kyoko during their fight against Mephisto's witch form. While she's not sure if she would call them fully romantic, she's willing to see where it goes.
Major Injury Underreaction: Her reaction to Mephisto snapping her neck is "Well that's a bother". Justified since her Healing Factor means that it wouldn't have killed her or even incapacitated her for longer than a few minutes even before she entered the afterlife.
Other Me Annoys Me: More like other me gives me an inferiority complex; Sayaka can tell fairly quickly that Oktavia was deeply loved by everyone around her, feeding into her insecurities by making her feel that even the person who took over her body when she died was better than her.
Parting-Words Regret: After regaining her memories, she deeply regrets that during her last meeting with Madoka she insulted and derided her. When Ophelia lies and claims they made up, she's still doubtful and asks if Madoka hates her.
Positive Friend Influence: Kyoko was spiraling into delinquence and apathy prior to meeting Sayaka. When Mami asks, she says outright that Sayaka made her believe in doing good again.
Posthumous Character: While her soul is still around in the form of Oktavia von Seckendorff, Sayaka is essentially dead by the time the fic kicks off.
Present Absence: Sayaka's death, for lack of a better term, hangs like an iron chain on the characters. Kyoko struggles to accept that Oktavia is not the girl she knew, Mami bears the guilt of having convinced Sayaka to contract and thus sealed her fate, Elsa Maria considers Sayaka her savior, and Oktavia bears the weight of an identity she cannot remember but everyone treats her like.
Replacement Scrappy: In-Universe. Charlotte/Nozomi is less than happy when Sayaka regains her memories but forgets being Oktavia during the events of Restless. Not only does Charlotte not like change in general, but she was close friends with Oktavia, whereas Sayaka is a complete stranger who's rather frustrating to deal with on account of her stubbornness and self-loathing.
Sixth Ranger: She joins the main cast (who are already a Five-Man Band) during the events of Restless. Slightly complicated in the sense that while Ophelia and Candeloro are happy to welcome her to the team, she also takes the place of Oktavia von Seckendorff, but decidedly not her role as The Heart.
Super-Speed: One of the uses of her Instant Runes is to increase her momentum.
Twitchy Eye: Gets one when summarizing how utterly absurd her current situation is.
Your Days Are Numbered: During Restless, she operates on the well-founded assumption that she will only exist as long as the dream lasts, and will go back to being Oktavia when it ends. She hopes to make amends with Mami before then, though Mami is sadly Candeloro at the moment and operating on the same principle.

Homura Akemi

A magical girl who appeared in Mitikahara a few weeks before Mami's death, and an associate of Mami, Sayaka, and Kyoko when they were alive. Very interested in Madoka Kaname. Unlike everyone else in the story, she is not dead, though her influence is still very apparent.

Ascended Extra: Homura does not appear at all in Resonance Days, though the consequences of her actions have a massive impact on the afterlife. In the spinoff Walpurgis Nights, Homura, by way of her witch self Homulily, is a main character.
Dramatic Irony: Homura goes to great length to keep Madoka Kaname from contracting, thinking that doing so will ultimately lead her to death or what's worse. Not only would Madoka's death as a magical girl simply mean that she'd end up in the safest place she could possibly be, but by preventing her from contracting, Homura is unknowingly ensuring that once she eventually dies, she will never see Madoka again.
The Friend Nobody Likes: Or ally in this case. While Mami and Kyoko will admit that she was, ultimately, on their side all along, and Kyoko is sure she'd protect Madoka, neither particularly trust or like her personally. Short of her dying and meeting them both again, this fact is unlikely to change, and Word of God is that she would get along poorly with Charlotte too if they met.
Homura would be that friend of a friend that you just don't like but tolerate for your friend's sake.
The Ghost: Ironically given that she's one of few characters who actually is alive. She is occasionally mentioned by the deceased, but, because she's still alive, she doesn't appear in the afterlife at all. A dream version of her appears in Restless as the target of Charlotte's anger at being kept in a Vicious Cycle.
Greater-Scope Villain: In some ways, Homura's constant timelooping is the source of endless suffering for the main characters, even if she doesn't know about it. When she (or at least a dream version of her) is confronted about it, she freely admits that she would have continued even if she knew how much pain and misery she was inflicting on her friends.
The Stoic: Mami notes that Homura is not really capable of being smug when she compares her to Shizuku, who has a slight similarity in appearance to her.
The person responsible for Charlotte's change in wardrobe lounged across from them. In many ways she reminded Mami of that mystery Puella Magi, Homura Akemi, in that she had hair of a comparable length and color, and her calm and collected manner of speaking was also quite similar. However, this girl was much taller, considerably more filled out, and had an air of arrogant smugness that Homura didn't seem to have been capable of.
Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Homura's actions cause problems for the heroes despite her lack of awareness of an afterlife to cause problems for.
- She is implied to have killed The Madam as a living Magical Girl, allowing her to take over Bertha's Brothel and menace the heroes.
- Reibey would be a lot less dangerous if her time resets weren't giving him access to shades.

Madoka Kaname

Sayaka's best friend and Mami's other protégé at the time of her death, Madoka is a girl with incredible magical girl potential who Homura Akemi has a keen interest in. Like Homura, she differs from the vast majority of the cast in being alive.

Ascended Extra: Like Homura, she has a much bigger role in Walpurgis Nights as Gretchen than she does in Resonance Days as Madoka.
Childhood Friends: Sayaka's, whose influence is enough that Oktavia has faint memories of her even in the afterlife, though greatly fuzzy.
The Ghost: Like Homura, being alive keeps her from appearing in person.
The Heart: As Oktavia is in the afterlife, Madoka is beloved by all around her in life. Mami cherished her as a star pupil whom the idea of being hurt by her actions is one of her many regrets, Sayaka cherished her as a best friend who had as one of her last regrets as Sayaka felt horrible for snapping at her, Kyoko respects her guts, and Homura's dedication to her is something Kyoko and Mami fully trust her on.
Mind Hive: A side-effect of Homura's wish is that any previous timeline version of Madoka are ripped out of the afterlife and added to the "current" Madoka, making her a gestalt of countless alternate versions of herself.
Out of Focus: Of the original main cast from the show, Madoka gets the least focus in the fic. While Sayaka's absence forms the basis for much of Kyouko's character, and Homura is notable in the consequences of her actions, anything Madoka does that will affect the afterlife is years in the future, and she's only mentioned when Kyoko (who didn't know her that well) or Mami (who has moved on) reminisce about her.

Mephisto (Unmarked Spoilers)

An Ideal Witch with power over dreams

Ambiguously Brown: Her ethnicity is not mentioned, but she has dreadlocks, which are typically associated with people of African descent.
The Blank: In her physical form, she lacks eyes, mouth, nose, and her body is just a psychedelic shifting of colours in the shape of a human (and also dreadlocks).
Character Tics: She seems to chew gum a lot.
Color Motif: Rainbows. Everything about Mephisto is rainbow-themed, from her hair, to her eyes, to the crystals covering her lair, to her powers. In a setting where almost everyone is defined by a singular color, it cements her as both extremely powerful and completely sepparate from humanity.
Didn't See That Coming: She is prevented from eating the main characters' souls by Jerky, Kyoko's pet valk, which wakes Kyoko up by biting her and then starts biting Mephisto's physical body, causing her enough pain that she loses concentration and the dream she is keeping the heroes in falls apart.
The Dreaded: For those who know about her. Just hearing her name is enough to cause Charlotte an Oh, Crap! reaction.
Eldritch Abomination: In the present she's more of a Humanoid Abomination or Physical God, but during the "fight" with the main cast she turns into presumably what she looked like as a living witch; A massive tree with metal plates and loudspeakers nailed or tied to the trunk, branches that end in humanlike hands, and a crown consisting of a stage with instruments playing punk music. The whole thing is on fire, and around the base are thousands of scarecrow-like familiars feeding it with chunks of wood.
Eye Color Change: Mephisto's eyes are caleidoscopic, shifting between every color of the rainbow.
Face: Her chosen method to finish of the heroes is through what amounts to a metaphysical wrestling match, with her cast as the Face.
The Friend Nobody Likes: Even the other Ideal Witches don't like her due to how much of a sadistic monster she is.
Humans Are Bastards: Mephisto, the only Ideal Witch who was human to begin with, is also the Token Evil Teammate who's sadism and cruelty disturbs even her fellows.
I'm a Humanitarian: Strictly speaking she only eats souls, but since everyone in the afterlife's physical bodies are their souls, the difference is academic.
Leonine Contract: She offers this to all her victims, a literal contract that, if accepted, will put them in a Lotus-Eater Machine while she slowly consumes their soul. She makes it clear, however, that the soul-eating will happen regardless, the contract will just make the situation less of a And I Must Scream situation. According to her, everyone who refuses has regretted it, but she doesn't let them change their minds.
Lotus-Eater Machine: Since she has power over dreams, she can obviously create these if she wants. She claims that she offers one to all of her victims, letting them live out whatever happy illusory life they want while they're being digested over the millenia. To the Freehaven four, she offers to give them a life where everything that sent them out on their current miserable quest never happened, and would even make minor adjustments (like pairing up Hitomi and Kyosuke so they won't be in the way for Kyoko and Sayaka).
Meaningful Name: She most likely gets her name from Mephistopheles, the devil in Faust. Like Mephistopheles, Mephisto offers her victims a contract for anything they want in return for their souls. Though she differs from her namesake in that she will take their soul anyway, the contract is just, as she puts it, painkillers.
Nightmare Weaver: Her modus operandi. She can weave nightmares specifically targeting the deepest fears and insecurities of her victims. Even if they learn that they are in a dream, they can't do anything to get out of it, as she will simply transition to being a more traditional Domain Holder.
The Omniscient: She knows everything about her victims, all the better to torment them with. This is not a case of mere mindreading, however, as she's somehow aware of things that her victims have forgotten about, or even didn't know in the first place; She somehow knows that they're in a timeloop, that Homura perpetuates it, and even her reason for doing so.
Punk Rock: Appears to like this kind of music, playing a lot of it in the dreams she puts the heroes through. Nozomi approves.
The Quincy Punk: She seems to favour this aesthetic, wearing torn, mismatched clothes with band patches, rainbow-dyed hair, more spikes than a porcupine, and enough piercings to supply the american military with metal for bullets.
Sadist: She freely admits that she just likes tormenting people for fun, and could make the Soul Eating painless if she wanted.
Soul Eating: Freely admits that this is what she does, consuming the souls, minds, memories, and lives of everyone who stumbles into her lair, including the main heroes.
Squishy Wizard: For all her power over dreams, Mephisto goes down fairly easily if any of her victims can break out of her domain. If anything she seems even weaker than an average witch or magical girl, as she was defeated by a bite from an adolescent Valk and a spear to the gut respectively, both injuries that the main quarted have shrugged off.
Token Human: She is the only Ideal Witch who was originally human. That said, calling what she is now "human" is a bit of a stretch.
Tough Love: She claims to believe in this, but she's full of it. While Oktavia's dream seems to at least attempt to make her confront her identity crisis and help her figure herself out, Mami's dream appears to be nothing but sadistically tormenting her with her own guilt, and she admits freely that she just wants to play with and eat them.
Troll: When the heroes compare her to Freddy Krueger, she sends a copy of Krueger's hand specifically to flip them off.

The Shades (UNMARKED SPOILERS)

Shades of Kyoko Sakura, Oktavia von Seckendorff, Mami Tomoe, and Charlotte from previous timeloops. Reibey keeps them imprisoned and consults them for information on his enemies.

And I Must Scream: While it's unclear if they are always conscious, they have been locked away for countless timeloops in a small rock and there is no way of saving them.
Geas: They are unable to attack Reibey, nor can they ignore his questions.
Haunted Fetter: They are bound to a small ziggurat in Castle Omega, from which Reibey can summon them for questionning.
Our Ghosts Are Different: While everyone in the afterlife is technically ghosts (or rather souls), the Shades fit the bill much better, being souls of those who are gone lingering. The different part is that they are not the ghosts of the dead, but of the double-dead from previous timelines.
Vengeful Ghost: At least the Kyoko shades would rip Reibey apart given the chance. It's hard to blame them.
Walking Spoiler: Everything about them is an enormous twist about the nature of the afterlife and Reibey's powers.

Species of the Afterlife

Humans are not the only species to be victim of the Incubators' manipulations. Regardless of where in the universe they are born, all magical girls end up in the afterlife eventually.

Puella Magi & Witches

While there are many species in the afterlife, they one common denominator is that everyone has at one point been fooled by an Incubator and become a Magical Girl as a result.

Puella Magi, or Magical Girls, are adolescent members of various species who have been contracted by an Incubator. Upon their deaths, their souls are sent to the afterlife, retaining all memories of their lives as well as any magical abilities they had, which they can no use without transforming.

Former magical girls who used up their magic or succumbed to despair become Witches. While witches look like they did in life when they arrive in the afterlife, they retain one trait from their living witch form and lose their memories of their old lives entirely, only having vague recollections of their time after becoming a witch.

Afterlife Angst: While most characters suffer this in some form or another, Puella Magi tend to suffer it worse than Witches as a result of retaining their memory of their old lives. It's not uncommon for magical girls to suffer mental breakdowns upon arriving in the afterlife, and a lot of them lose their minds entirely.
Emergent Human: Witches have no memory of their old lives, and effectively arrive in the afterlife as new people.
Gratuitous Latin: Magical Girls are often referred to as Puella Magi, which is just latin for Magical Girl. The two names are treated as interchangeable.
Human Subspecies:
- Or subspecies of any given species, really, humans are just the most common. Puella Magi resemble humans, but have enhanced physical abilities, can perform magic, and have their souls removed from their bodies and petrified in a soul gem.
- Witches are this to an even greater extent, being a step further removed from the "base stock" than magical girls. In addition to having a Witch Remnant which clearly marks them as inhuman, they also have no memory of being their original species.
Instant Expert: A trait of witches. If their labyrinths were themed around something specific in life, they tend to have a mastery of whatever skill was related to that theme in the afterlife, even without ever having learned it. For instance, Oktavia's labyrinth was themed as an orchestra hall, so she's an excellent musician. Charlotte's labyrinth was themed around sweets and baked goods, so she's a damn good baker.
Little Bit Beastly: Witch Remnants often take the form of animal traits, such as Oktavia and Charlotte's tails. This is far from the only thing they can look like, however.
Mythical Motifs: By sheer coincidence, a lot of Witch remnants make them look like creatures out of folklore and myth, leading to them being referred to as those mythical creatures. Of note is Oktavia, who's a mermaid, and Lily, who's a fairy.
One-Gender Race: Puella Magi and Witches from species that have genders are all female. It's unclear why Incubators only target adolescent girls, but it includes trans women.
Our Liches Are Different: Mami specifically states that Puella Magi are Liches, defined as someone who's soul is stored in an external container. They cease to be this upon dying, as their bodies in the afterlife are their souls and they have no use for a soul gem anymore.
Our Witches Are Different: Witches in Resonance Days share very few traits that are commonly associated with witches in folklore, nor do they have much in common with the Eldritch Abominations from the original anime. In the afterlife, a Witch is a magical girl who has crossed the Despair Event Horizon and become said abomination, and then been killed. Upon arriving in the afterlife, they retain no memory of being magical girls or their lives before that, and only vague memories of their lives as monsters. Physically, they look close to what they did as magical girls, but have one obviously inhuman trait, ranging from a simple tattoo to having large parts of their bodies removed or replaced.
Super-Empowering: Magical Girls gain superhuman strength, speed, resilience, and agility from their contracts, and retain this even after becoming witches. Admittedly, since this applies to everyone in the afterlife, the actual effect isn't all that noticeable.

Humans

Furless mammals with an inclination towards collaboration and socialization. Humans are one of the founding species of the New Life Alliance.

Curtains Match the Windows: Going by how this applies to every character in the show, the fic depicts this as a common trait of humanity. When meeting Charlotte, Kyoko notes that it's kinda weird that she has blue eyes and pink hair.
Humans Are Average: In the afterlife at least, humans are the most populous and influential species and thus are the default baseline for things that the other species are compared to.
Humans Are Special: The reason there are so many humans in the afterlife is that the Incubators have had the most success with humans of any species. Since Incubators want emotional energy, this implies that humans have greater emotional capacity than average. Not to mention that humans more or less created the afterlife in the first place. They also apparently are the only ones to have invented radio and air conditioning, according to Mami.
Most Writers Are Human: As noted above, the majority of the afterlife's population are humans, and most of the original cast are also human.

Calliopes

Floating spheres resembling bubbles with glowing lights that indicate their expressions. Calliopes are one of the founding species of the New Life Alliance.

Fantastic Diet Requirement: Calliopes get their main source of sustenance from water vapour. They can't process solid matter, but can carry it within them and expell it later when they want.
Foreign Culture Fetish: Calliopes are very curious and interested in human culture.
Genki Girl: It's not universal, but the general racial hat of Calliopes are that they are very friendly, curious, and fun-loving.
Living Gasbag: They don't appear to be floating using gas, but they are something similar. They also evolved on a gas giant.
Starfish Aliens: Calliopes are effectively bubbles, yet are somehow also fully sapient creatures with biology and civilization we can only guess at.
Starfish Language: It's implied that the shifting patterns in their lights are part of their language, which is obviously impossible for most other species to replicate. Their names, Calliopes, are simply what they call themselves since their original name is unpronounceable.

Ai'jurrik'kai

Tall beings with eight limbs and a single eyeless head and a mouth resembling a closed flower budd. Ai'jurrik'kai are one of the founding species of the New Life Alliance.

Blue-and-Orange Morality: The living Ai'jurrik'kai regularly disembowel infants as sacrifices to their death god and see nothing wrong with it — it's just a part of their culture.
Crystalline Creature: They aren't this, but their skincolour resembles brown obsidian, so it's easy to get that impression.
Human Sacrifice: Ai'jurrik'kai sacrifice, actually, but yeah. The Vel'yion Yip Yip celebration involves the ritual disembowelment of an infant to please the deity Ti'ya Yip, the Matron of Death. It was discontinued in the afterlife due to lack of infants and internal organs, not to mention that everyone's immortal anyway and there's a growing disillusionment with gods of death.
Non-Indicative Name: Ai'jurrik'kai celebrations tend to have this problem. The Night of Steaming Blood is actually a fairly wholesome celebration, while Vel'yion Yip Yip involves the ritual disembowelment of an infant.
Organic Technology: Their cities are "woven" using a crystaline material that is actually organic.
Sapient Eat Sapient: Not currently, but it took some convincing for them to stop seeing humans as prey.
Starfish Alien: Probably the first really weird species encountered by the main characters, as seen by the description. Among other things, they locomote using their arms, which each have three spindly fingers, and their single head has no eyes.
Tribe of Priests: Ai'jurrik'kai are the only species who's religion is mentioned and focused on. Several of their gods are named, and they also apparently have a religious reverence for Calliopes.

Jotts

Diminutive creatures resembling large furry mouths on legs who often live underground. Jotts are one of the founding species of the New Life Alliance.

Big Eater: The human art they enjoy the most are the culinary arts.
Klingons Love Shakespeare: Jotts are enjoyers of human artistic endeavors, and many are inspired by it in their own art.
Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Hairy, small, live underground, and the first Jott encountered by the main characters is a craftsman. They may not be called that, but they are dwarves all right.
Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Jotts are often called "midget yeti". How they feel about this moniker is unclear.

Vaskergoros

Massive cliff-dwellers with bat-like faces and four arms. They are renowned for their skill in construction, having originated on a planet with abnormally high gravity, and are slow to anger but dangerous when roused.

The Big Guy: Vaskergoros are the largest and strongest species in the afterlife, even without the magical enhancement all magical girls have.
Gentle Giant: Despite their fearsome appearance, they're patient and slow to anger. You don't wanna piss them off, though.
Heavyworlder: Their homeworld has greater gravity than average, which has led to them becoming abnormally massive and powerful.
Mix-and-Match Critter: They resemble four-armed gorillas with the faces of bats and tusks.
Multiarmed And Dangerous: One of the most fearsome species in the afterlife, and have four arms.
Our Giants Are Different: Vaskergoros are roughly 16 feet tall on average, and only vaguely humanoid in appearance.

Vekoos

Arborean carnivores who resemble pterodactyles of ancient Earth, albeit with snouts, six webbed arms, and quills on their back that end in inflatable bladders. Vekoo's homeworld is slightly behind other races in technological development, but they are fast learners.

Cool Airship: Vekoos are noted to be great at constructing dirigible airships, likely because floating with gasbags is part of their anatomy.
Living Gasbag: Downplayed. They are mostly normal creatures, but they have inflatable bladders that help in flight.
Terror-dactyl: They vaguely resemble pterodactyles, though they aren't any worse than other species.

Andalites

A race of warriors and scientists reminiscent of Centaurs from Earth's mythology, but with eyes on stalks. They are one of the rarest species in the afterlife, prefer to stick to themselves, and thus don't have strong connections to other races.

Amazing Technicolor Population: They have naturally violet skin.
Arcadia: Their homeworld consits of "flowering meadows, bizarre trees, and adorable animals, with the occasional unbelievably cool looking spaceport."
Eye on a Stalk: They are described as having four eyes, two of which are on stalks sticking out from their heads.
Our Centaurs Are Different: They resemble centaurs in body structure, but have tails ending in a sharp blade, no mouths, and eyestalks.
Proud Scholar Race: According to Charlotte, one half of their hat is being scholars, and the first one we meet is a Mad Scientist in Reibey's employ.
Telepathy: Andalites are one of the rare species in the entire universe with natural telepathy, using it exclusively to communicate since they have no mouths. In the afterlife, everyone technically already communicates with telepathy, it's just automatically translated to speech, resulting in a strange echo effect when Andalites are speaking.
Transplant: From Animorphs.

Coronians

An extremely rare species described as living cities, crackling with energy. Coronians are by far the most advanced species in the afterlife, second only to Incubators, and are willing to share their technology with other races, which they are fascinated by. Only two known Coronian territories exist, and only two individuals are known to dwell outside those territories.

The Ghost: So far have yet to appear outside a brief mention by Charlotte.
Higher-Tech Species: Their technology is described as "miraculous", and the only species that can be said to rival them are the Sufficiently Advanced Aliens Incubators.
Starfish Alien: Individual Coronians look like huge floating cities crackling with energy.

Savians

Short humanoids with digitigrade legs, claws, tails, and bristles in place of hair. Savians are the most recent species to show up in the afterlife, having only very recently come to the Incubators' attention. So far, the only two Savians are being helped through the adjustment period by the New Life Alliance and are studied in Cloudbreak.

Alien Hair: They have sharp bristles where humans would usually have hair.
Born in the Saddle: Implied, since their culture revolves around taming giant insects and at least Akia's tribe is native to a desert region.
Hidden Elf Village: There is one hidden Savian settlement in the afterlife, its location only known to a select few.
Horrifying the Horror: Savians are the only thing that Dockengauts are genuinely afraid of.
Mirroring Factions: To humans. Savians are the most human-like species in the afterlife, both in body and mentality, and they are currently being contacted by Incubators for the first time while in a very early age of technological and cultural development, similar to how humans were first contracted around the stone age.
Naïve Newcomer: Savian magical girls only started existing very recently, and the only two that have so far died arrived three months before Kyoko and Oktavia. There's also the fact that their civilization is still in the nomadic tribal stage, so the afterlife with its advanced technology and vastly varied landscape is completely unfamiliar to them.
Noodle Incident: Two species-wide ones.
- Why do the Savians terrify the Dockengauts?
- Per Word of God, the Savians have a complicated history with the Incubators. What that is, especially for a low-tech species, is yet unclear.
Only One Name: Implied to be the case, since the human concept of family names confuses Akia. Molder Asiriss throws this into question, unless Molder is a title.
Super-Speed: Assuming it wasn't part of her magic, Akia can move fast enough to get across a room before Mami even noticed that she was gone.
Rubber-Forehead Alien: Well, they have more than rubber foreheads, including digitigrade legs, tails, bristles for hair, feet consisting of webbed toes in every direction, and claws. However, they have humanoid bodies and features, which makes them a lot more humanoid than every other species in the afterlife. They even go through a painful process every few months similar to human periods.

Dockengauts

Huge, hulking creatures with long, vulture-like necks and arms that reach the ground. Most wear cloaks that conceal their entire bodies, and have strange, buzzing voices. Dockengauts are hated and feared by all other species, usually forbidden from leaving their territories except in rare cases.

Always Chaotic Evil: Dockengauts are said to have sadism ingrained into their nature, and are described as “an entire race of cannibalistic sociopaths”.
Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Individual Dockengauts are described as spiders, but they only carry a passing similarity to arachnids. Dockengaut spiders consist of a single non-segmented body with 12 legs, four antennae that can stab into their prey, sharp barbs on their legs, and a mouth on the underside of its body. Females are long, have four long legs, and a tail reminiscent of a scorpion.
Death World: Their homeworld is exactly the kind of place you would expect spawned a race like the Dockengauts, with deadly natural hazards and a deadlier ecosystem, and the dockengauts are at the top of the foodchain.
Discard and Draw: A single dockengaut can theoretically grow to massive size, but doing so has an inversely proportional effect on their intelligence. A building-sized dockengaut is only as smart as a wild animal. The slightly-above-human sized dockengauts seen in the fic are the optimal combination of intelligence and strength, as determined by Incubators.
The Dreaded: Every other species is terrified of Dockengauts, and avoid them whenever possible. Even Vaskegorros, who are on average 17 feet and much larger than them. They built walls around Dockengaut territories to keep others away from them.
Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: A common trait of dockengauts seems to be joking about horrifying things, such as accusing Janelle of "repressing [its] culture", the culture in question being eating people.
Horrifying the Horror: In a nutshell. The dockengaut homeworld is a planet of monsters, and dockengauts are the most horrifying apex predator of them all. Dockengauts, in turn, are terrified of Savians.
Sadist: Pretty much their racial hat. Dockengauts enjoy inflicting pain on other creatures, to the point of deliberately leaving their prey alive as they are being consumed bit by bit. Having victims that can't die doesn't bother them at all.
Sapient Eat Sapient: Dockengauts will not only eat other sapient beings when they must, but actively prefer it over other prey if they have the opportunity. Being a "meat-slave" to Dockengauts is considered one of the worst possible fates in the afterlife.
Sssssnake Talk: They draw out their S's, though it often turns into a sort of buzzing transcribed as Zzzzzzz.
Spiders Are Scary: The most sadistic, cruel, and dreaded species in the afterlife are hive minds of spiders, go figure.
The Worm That Walks: Dockengauts are actually swarms of spiders with a Hive Mind, forming a body by crawling on each other.

Ideal Witches (Unmarked Spoilers)

Beings of immense power, said to embody aspects of the afterlife itself. While little is known about them, they care rumoured to be seven in number, though only some of them are known; Mephisto, Ideal Witch of Dreams; Irn, Ideal Witch of Determination; and Nefflin, Ideal Witch of Love.

Abstract Apotheosis: Ideal Witches are magical girls and witches who have someone melded with the very fabric of the afterlife itself, somehow turning them into deities embodying those very aspects.
Deity of Human Origin: They were certainly human (or other species) at some point, though by now they have long since left anything resembling mortality behind. Supposedly they became what they are by travelling so far out from the "center" of the afterlife that they reached a point where reality became malleable, and then completely unstable and chaotic, and ended up sinking into and becoming part of it. Somehow they returned and now possess godlike powers over the fabric of reality itself.
The Exile: The Outcast, the only Ideal Witch yet to appear though Irn and Nefflin do talk about her. What happened to her is unknown, but they are apparently in need of rescue, which Mephisto has refused to help with.
Jerkass Gods: They are as close to gods as you can get in the afterlife, and they seem to have domain over rather unpleasant things, like Hate and Despair. Mephisto, whos domain is the rather neutral Dreams, is still a massive jerk and sadist who eats souls. That said this is not universal, as Irn and Nefflin seem to be at least not actively malevolent.
No Name Given: Most of the Ideal Wtches aside from Mephisto, Irn, and Nefflin go unnamed in their first appearance. The Outcast gets a title, and nothing else.
Non-Indicative Name: Despite the name it doesn't seem like being a Witch is required for becoming an Ideal Witch.
Our Gods Are Different: They are effectively the closest thing the Afterlife has to a pantheon of deities, and are actually originally mortals who, supposedly by traveling to the very edge of reality, merged with it and come to represent aspects of the world itself. They have immense power over their domain, and can consume souls for sustenance and/or power. Physically they can appar humanoid but seem to manifest in strange and inhuman form when interacting with each other.
- Mephisto, when outside of dreams, appears either as a multicolored flame or as a humanoid figure of caleidoscopic light.
- Irn appears as a field of silver starlight.
- Nefflin appears as pink mist with the subtle indications of tendrils.
- The as-yet-unnamed Ideal Witches appear as a field of prismatic cubes, a pulsing emerald bubbles with halos of electricity, and slowly spinning fan blades surrounded by smoke.
Shrouded in Myth: Charlotte describes them as folktales, the kind of stuff you talk about around a campfire far from civilization. Issue with living in a magical afterlife is that folktales tend to be true.
Time Abyss: Some of them imply that they've been around since before the first Oblivion disappeared, which would be thousands of years ago at this point.

Incubators

Catlike creatures standing head and shoulders over any other technologically advanced species. Being responsible for the creation of the magical girl system in the first place, and thus the reason why everyone in the afterlife is dead, Incubators are the single most hated species in existence despite there only being a single member in the afterlife.

Adaptational Deviation: As a result of Outdated by Canon. Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion reveals that Incubators are in fact a Hive Mind with every individual drone being an extension of Kyubey. Since the fic was written before that, when the only known incubators were Kyubey himself and Jubey who hadn't been revealed as a Rogue Drone yet, it depicts Incubators as individuals who happen to share a planetary hat.
Blue-and-Orange Morality: Incubators consider emotion to be a kind of mental illness, and as such are utterly devoid of empathy for the young girls they exploit as livestock. Reibey, a rare case of an incubator who can feel emotion, was exiled to the afterlife so the others wouldn't have to deal with him.
The Ghost: Reibey, who's stands apart from his kin and doesn't partake in their scheming, is the only incubator in the afterlife. Otherwise, they leave it mostly alone, though their machinations are obviously felt far and wide.
Greater-Scope Villain: The Incubators have no interest in the afterlife, and little direct impact on the plot, but the effects of their actions are felt everywhere, from being the reason everyone in the afterlife is there to begin with, why half of them suffered Death of Personality in the process, and having exiled Reibey there, leading to the current threat of the void walkers. The one thing everyone in the afterlife can agree on is that Incubators' are rat bastards.
Hated by All: Dockengauts may be the most feared species in the afterlife, but Incubators are the most hated. Most magical girls in the afterlife would kill an incubator on sight given the chance, and even the few who don't hate them see them as a Necessary Evil at best.
Jackass Genie: They all grant wishes that usually result in the girl who made them suffering more. Nanabey was apparently an especially foul one, magically changing his contractees physically or mentally to make them fit the ideal magical girl better.
Maker of Monsters: Incubators are the creators of Magical Girls and, by extension, witches, which can both be considered sepparate species from the "base" they were created from.
Manipulative Bastard: More or less their hat. Incubators lie to impressionable young girls to get them to contract, then lets them suffer a Fate Worse than Death so they can use the emotional energy they produce. Even Reibey, who has no part in that system, is manipulating an entire cult into doing his bidding.
Numerical Theme Naming: All mentioned Incubators follow a naming convention of a number in Japanese followed by the "-bey" suffix. Kyubey is Kyū, or Nine; Jubey is Jū, or Ten; Nanabey is Nana, or Seven; And Reibey is Rei, or Zero.
Odd Name Out: Nanabey is the only Incubator who's name is deprived from the Kun'yomi, or native, reading of the numeral 9, instead of the On'yomi, or sino-japanese, reading. This is actually Truth in Television, as Nana is the most common reading of that number among people who use a mixture of both.
Politically Correct Villain: While they target only women, judging by the Word of Gay and the existence of Natsuru, the Incubators accept trans women as potential magical girls. Word of God also confirms the existence of trans men and non-binary and gender fluid people who were born male or female. Though knowing them, this is more likely to be pragmatic than actual respect.
Sufficiently Advanced Alien: There is no shortage of Higher-Tech Species in the afterlife, but Incubators stand so far above the rest that they might as well be genies or gods. They can empower ordinary mortals with magic, grant any wish with no limitations, manipulate souls with casual ease, and create an afterlife for the souls of every magical girl in the universe. As far as we know, all sources of magic in the universe can be traced back to the Incubators, making it unclear if they simply utilize magic, or created magic.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: Their ultimate goal is to delay entropy, the steady degredation of the universe. Noble enough, but the girls who have to suffer and die for that cause aren't all that happy about it.

Characters / Resonance Days

Main Characters

The New Life Alliance

Freehaven

Cloudbreak

Pinespire

Void Walkers

Current Oblivion / Yuma Chitose

First Oblivion

Annabelle Lee's gang

Both

Arzt Kochen

Nie Blühen Herze

Bertha's Brothel / The Brothel

Achelonia

Etherdale

Marsters

Others

Species of the Afterlife

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Index

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Characters / Resonance Days

Edit Locked

Main Characters

The New Life Alliance

Freehaven

Cloudbreak

Pinespire

Void Walkers

Current Oblivion / Yuma Chitose

First Oblivion

Annabelle Lee's gang

Both

Arzt Kochen

Nie Blühen Herze

Bertha's Brothel / The Brothel

Achelonia

Etherdale

Marsters

Others

Species of the Afterlife

Previous

Index

Next