Fanfic / Resonance Days

We'll meet again, whatever comes next^note From left to right: Mami, Charlotte, Oktavia, Kyouko

It was supposed to be the end.

In one last act of redemption, Kyouko Sakura had resolved to end the suffering of Sayaka Miki, thereby freeing them both from the bonds of the Incubators. She had expected release. She had expected peace. She had hoped for a dream of happiness.

If only it were that easy.

Warning- the following description contains unmarked spoilers for Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Proceed at your own risk.

What comes after death for a girl who's sold her soul? Quite a bit, as it turns out, and almost all of it unexpected.

A Puella Magi Madoka Magica fic by Taker Foxx, Resonance Days picks up immediately after Kyoko sacrifices herself to destroy the Witch that was once Sayaka. Both girls suddenly find themselves in an afterlife populated exclusively by magical girls... and Witches. They must learn the rules of their new existence while on the run from the mysterious Oblivion, and her right-hand Incubator, Reibey.

Oh, and there's one other problem: Sayaka is, for some reason, a mermaid. A mermaid with no memory of her life, and who insists her name is Oktavia von Seckendorff...

Can be read here, commentary provided by Spacebattles here. As of 2023, the fic is being reuploaded chapter-by-chapter here on Ao3.

For better understanding of this story, read also First Time, the prequel which tells the story of how Mami and Charlotte coped with their inner demons and eventually got together. Another prequel story Gift of the Puella Magi also covers this time period. Finally, Ghosts of Christmas Past covers a previous timeloop where the main cast got to celebrate Christmas without the Call to Adventure.

In addition, there is Walpurgis Nights, which follows an alternate universe where Homura and Madoka witched out together in an early timeline. The spinoff is complete on the author's tumblr, but is currently being posted as a reworked version on fanfiction.net and archive of our own.

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Tropes used in Resonance Days include...

• Actually Pretty Funny: In chapter 44, when Charlotte manages to trap Mephisto in a web, Mami jokingly calls it Charlotte's Web. Charlotte initially acts unamused, but then says this instead.
  The witch's ensnared body towered over them, wrapped snugly by layer after layer of Mami's ribbons, while [Charlotte]'s wires tied it down and held it in place. She looked like a giant golden cocoon, from which would hatch a monstrous butterfly. If only that were the case.
  Mami looked their handiwork over. And then she let out a very unladylike snort.
  "Um," [Charlotte] said, watching Mami out of the corner of her eye as her wife kept trying a failing to hold back laughter. "Are you…okay?"
  In answer, Mami pointed up at the cocooned monster and exclaimed, "Charlotte's Web!" And that sent her dissolving into giggles.
  "Charlotte's…what?" [Charlotte] repeated, not understanding the joke. "Mami, what the hell are you-" And then her memory was jogged. "Oh." Her shoulders slumped, and she sighed. "Really? Really, Mami? That's-" And then she snorted as well. "Actually, that is pretty funny," she snickered.
• Adaptation Species Change: Some of the crossover characters who cameo as human magical girls and witches, like Fate and Vita, would have been different races in their original franchises (Fate being Mid-Childan and Vita being an Artificial Human), but are (presumably) humans in story.
• Adaptational Gender Identity: Natsuru from Kämpfer makes a cameo, having contracted with an incubator and since died, arriving in the afterlife as a girl. Word of Gay is that she identifies as a trans woman, so that part is not an issue.
• 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.
• Age Lift: In the Ghosts of Christmas Past oneshot, Momo appears in the afterlife and is actually in her late fifties, despite looking the same as she did in life, since she died about a year before Kyoko and that translated to over fourty years in the afterlife. Kyoko struggles a bit with adjusting to her little sister being that much older than her.
• Alas, Poor Yorick: At the end of Monsterland, a Dockengaut holds up the skull of a recently eaten Valk "like a Shakespearean actor".
• Alien Blood: As seen in a dream sequence, Oktavia had blueish black blood before she died.
• Alien Sky:
  • Spawn sites all have uniquely messed up skies, ranging from Genocide City's caleidoscopic fever dream to Velocity Terminal's pristine blue sky, orderly rows of fast-moving clouds, and distinct lack of ground.
  • The sky in regions taking after the Calliope homeworld are dotted with giant floating crystak clusters.
  • The sky in Dockengaut realms is ashy grey with occasional red or orange flares, like pustules or lava.
• Allohistorical Allusion: In Kyoko's dream sequence in Restless, she ends up dressing up with a fancy robe and her hair is put on fire, and she takes the name Ophelia, making her resemble her witch counterpart. The same happens to Mami in her dream, taking the name Candeloro with her arms replaced by her ribbons.
• All of Them: In Chapter 19, when Lily is informed that the covens are attacking and tells them to deal with it, the caller, Private Ambrose, clarifies that “all of them” are attacking.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Dockengauts are said to have sadism ingrained into their nature, and are described as “an entire race of cannibalistic sociopaths”.
• Ambiguously Related: Ticky Nikki and Annabelle Lee, despite calling themselves sisters, look nothing alike, and since Annabelle is a witch and a result has no memories of her past life, Nikki's less-than-trustworthy account is the only indicator that they're actually related. Annabelle knows this, but doesn't really care, seeing Nikki as her sister whether they're actually related or not. Annabelle does have a sister she made her contract with the Incubators for, per Elsa Maria, but the only source that this sister was Nikki is, again, Nikki herself.
• Anachronic Order: The Heist arc is written out of order, usually showing some event In Medias Res before jumping back to show how we got there. Each scene is timestamped, so the audience can follow along.
• And I Must Scream: Turns out that when no-one can die, you can get creative with the fates worse than death.
  • Annabelle Lee mentions a rumour about magical girls and witches who accidentally stepped into the loose soil of the Fezzinigo Swamps and sunk into it. Unable to die, they would remain there, unable to move or breathe. While theoretically the superhuman magical girls and witches would be able to get out eventually, the claustrophobic Annabelle Lee still doesn't like the idea.
  • Dockengaut Meat-Slaves and the victims of Leechers. Since no one in the afterlife can die, and regenerate any lost bodyparts and wounds nearly instantly, they can be Eaten Alive or drained of soul vapors (blood) again and again. Forever.
  • Though she completely deserved it for everything she had done, Lily does not get off lightly, even sans head, after the members of Persephone Protectorate are freed from her brainwashing and realize what they've been doing. She's placed in a cell where the wild girls had been kept, a steel cap attached to her neck so she can't regenerate properly to wake up, and stripped to her undergarments, all while under the effects of a drug that place her under constant nightmares and hallucinations. And since she's dead and unable to wake up...yeah, pretty brutal.
  • Mephisto the Ideal Witch slowly consumes her victims' souls over the course of centuries, which is constant agony with no escape or even ability to fight back. She can put them in a Lotus-Eater Machine while it happens if they accept her contract, but since she tends to offer that contract after tormenting them for an extended period not a lot of people accept it, and she doesn't give second chances.
• Ascended Fangirl: Kyoko had wanted to visit an alien world ever since she saw various movies where Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe. She finally does in the Monsterland arc... into the land of the Dockengauts, The Dreaded of the alien species.
  Long before Kyubey, when she had been a little girl (God, it felt like centuries ago), Kyoko had a certain fondness for monster movies, and aliens had been a particular favorite. Papa hadn't really gotten it, though he had at least been tolerant. Mama, however, had completely understood her young daughter's fascination with the weird and wonderful and had made sure to provide an endless buffet of cheesy delights, full of rampaging Kaiju and invading spacemen. And Kyoko had lapped it all up.
  Of course, becoming a Puella Magi had changed all that. All of the rubber suits couldn't compete with the monsters she faced regularly, and the special effects had ceased to impress. But as her life had grown harder and her younger self been buried deeper, she had to admit, she had missed that time of joy and wonder, sitting in Mama's lap while gaping as the visitors from above landed their strange ships in the middle of Tokyo. And at night, she had dreamed of returning the favor, taking a rocket to go visit the stars and meet those beings for herself.
  And now she had finally arrived.
• At the Crossroads: During a Dream Sequence in chapter 17, Annabelle is is pursuing Kyoko through a forest, but can't catch up with her until she reaches a crossroads. One path leads into a cave, one path leads up a mountain. At the crossroads sits Elsa Maria, who asks her why she thinks she seeks Kyoko. Annabelle Lee answers that she wants to deliver her to Oblivion so she can die, which Elsa Maria finds unsatisfactory, but still tells her that she will find Kyoko if she goes into the cave, but if she goes up the mountain she will find who she truly seeks. Annabelle Lee longs for the freedom and fresh air of the mountain, but choses the cave, where she is swiftly suffocated by the heat.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • When Charlotte offers to buy Oktavia an instrument, she suggests a violin, the instrument of the boy Sayaka sold her soul to. A bit later we learn that she chose a harmonica.
  • During Oktavia's dream in "Restless", the dream-version of Lily calls her Sayaka Miki, which she objects to as it's not her name. Lily then corrects herself to Sir Sayaka Miki, which she accepts.
• Battle Butler: Margot/Latria switches gears from (im)mortal combat to fetching tea and coffee on a dime.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: The wild witches of Etherdale are vaguely aware that the Wayhouse wants to help them, and occasionally come to them willingly. When the Persephone Protectorate assembles an army to destroy it, every single wild witch in the region come to their saviors' defense.
• Berserk Button: Just like in canon, Kyoko does not like seeing anyone throwing away unfinished food. And don't ever imply anything bad about Father Sakura's church communion when Kyoko is in hearing range.
• Beyond the Impossible: It's stated multiple times that anyone who's taken into a Dockengaut lair is lost and will spend the rest of eternity as a meat slave with no hope of rescue. Upon falling into one, Kyoko proceeds to make her way out of it alone.
• Big Bad: Reibey the Incubator is the true leader of the Void Walkers who uses Oblivion as his Puppet Queen and intends to capture Kyoko for his malicious plan to bring about Cessation of Existence for everyone in the afterlife.
• Big Damn Heroes: At the climax of the Monsterland arc, Kyoko and Charlotte are cornered by two Dockengauts, exhausted and unable to fight, thinking they'll never see their family again... when a legion of Calliopes appear to protect them, followed by a heavily armed border guard transport which threatens the Dockengauts away and rescues the two girls.
• Big Sister Worship: Ticky Nikki towards her sister Annabelle Lee and Oblivion for Kyoko.
• Big Damn Kiss: In chapter 8 after making sure that Kyoko knows of their relationship, Charlotte pulls Mami into a kiss that lasts maybe a bit longer than it needed to.
• Big "WHAT?!": Oktavia gives one in shock and horror in the Restless epilogue when she's told that Sayaka came back.
• Blatant Lies: In Gift of the Puella Magi, Mami claims that the bad mood she and Charlotte are in is because they forgot Vickie's gift to Natsuru and Shizuku back in Freehaven. Shizuku seems unconvinced, and later points out that she saw the gift in their luggage.
• Blood Knight: The girl Kyouko gets into a fight with in chapter 8 is at first dismissive of Kyouko for being weak and from Freehaven (despite Kyouko's objection that she's not from Freehaven), but takes a liking to her once Kyouko gets a solid punch in.
• Boom, Headshot!: This is how Mami greeted Charlotte the first time they met in Puella Magi afterlife, more specifically in Drop Dead City. She later did it to herself after learning the truth about her body's new nature, though Charlotte claims that was more about curiosity than self-harm.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The leechers working for Lily the fairy are all suffering from this, as their leader used her Compelling Voice to entice them to fall head-over-heels for her. The heroines call under the same spell when they meet her, and are even convinced to give Kyoko and Sayaka up to the Void Walkers. When the spell is broken, they are horrified to learn what they have done.
• Breaking Speech: The Madam gives one to Annabelle Lee in chapter 12, pointing out that Annabelle is overall nothing but a miserable hypocritical suicidal wretch who blames Kyoko and Oktavia for the simple act of defending themselves against aggressors, and who is now trying to take away their freedom despite loss of freedom being the one thing that actually horrifies and disgusts her. The dressing down genuinely gets to Annabelle, though she's too stubborn and depressed to change anything.
• Breast Attack: In the Hot Springs Episode while Kyouko and Oktavia are playfighting, Oktavia complains about Kyouko grabbing her boobs because Kyouko doesn't have any so she can't retaliate. Kyouko is not amused.
• Brick Joke: When Mami and Charlotte are told that Oktavia and Kyoko are captured by the Brothel, they are horrified at the implications, but are quickly assured that the Brothel is a criminal cartel and not an actual sex work organization. Later, Kyoko asks what the Brothel is and Oktavia starts to awkwardly explain before Kyoko clarifies.
• Bring My Brown Pants: In Chapter 36, Mundy the vaskegoros, a giant bat-monster of sorts, is still so terrified of the dockengaut Velken that after the confrontation is over, she is found to have soiled her overalls.
• Butt-Monkey: Annabelle Lee and Ticky Nikki constantly get humiliated by the heroines who they attempt to capture.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Elysians have slightly different shapelanguage (resembling eastern dragons) and have Hard Light wings, but are otherwise essentially extremely luxurious airplanes. Smaller ones are introduced later that more closely resemble science fiction spaceships, minus the space part.
• Call-Back: In Mami's Dream Sequence in Restless, there are two; Firstly she introduces herself to the punk hostess as "Mami, Mami Tomoe" which the hostess mistakes as "Mamimami Tomoe" just like Akia. Later, Kyoko remarks that Oktavia is laying more mermaid eggs than they can sell.
• The Cameo:
  • Spoilers for Imperfect Metamorphosis: Marisa Kirisame shows up here. Though she was initially claimed to be a different Marisa than the one appearing in the author's other fic, the manner of her later death is in line with how her cameo here describes it (and the relevant lines are directly quoted in the author's notes).
  • According to the canonization of a fanmade trivia, Yoshikage Kira's ghost may be trapped in Freeheaven. If that's the case, then it is a spoiler for Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Diamond Is Unbreakable. Too bad for all single Puella Magi/Witches looking for a het relationship, this ghost is asexual and just want a quiet afterlife.
• Came Back Wrong: Witches are arguably this. They have no memories of their lives as magical girls or humans, and what little they do recall (including their name) is entirely from the time after they became Eldritch Abominations, giving a very unsettling impression to those who may have known them in life.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: According to the Madam, if it wasn't for the fact that Reibey is the controller of the single most important resource the afterlife has to offer (true and complete death, he would have been disposed of long ago by vengeful Mahou Shoujo, due to the fact no one knows what would happen to said source if he did die. As such, this makes interactions between the two of them (from her side) more than a little aggravating.
• Cast Full of Gay: Surprisingly for a Puella Magi fic, it's a Justified Trope. Lacking the necessary hormones (being living souls and all), girls can actually flip orientations, and with no men around, most of them do exactly that. The ones who don't do so obviously can't demonstrate it, so all the pairings in the story are lesbian.
• Central Theme: The ongoing question, brought up across Resonance and Walpurgis, about if it is better to die with all of your memories and know what you've lost (to die a magical girl), or to die with none of them and start completely anew (to die a witch.)
• Cerebus Callback: In chapter 5, Oktavia accuses Charlotte of cheating at cards using her witch powers, which Charlotte brushes off because as far as she knows her witch powers are to conjure baked goods and turn into a giant toothy worm. Then in chapter 15, her internal monologue describes how she has never used her witch powers and refuses to even when in mortal danger, because she associates them with the guilt of having killed her wife.
• Cessation of Existence: Oblivion’s power is to completely destroy a girl’s soul. Her subordinates actually line up for this because they hate the afterlife that much.
• Chase Scene: In chapter 14, going into chapter 15, Mami and Charlotte pursue the former void walkers carrying the unconscious Kyoko and Oktavia through the intricate network of transport pipes between Cloudbreak's floating islands.
• Christmas Special:
  • Gift of the Puella Magi is a 19,000-word one-shot about Mami and Charlotte celebrating Christmas with their friends in Pinespire a few years before the main fic starts up.
  • Ghosts of Christmas Past is a 17,000-word one-shot about a previous timeloop where Kyoko, Yuma, Momo, Mami, Oktavia, and Charlotte celebrate Christmas together in the afterlife.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The afterlife has a mild property to this effect. The actions and emotions of its denizens influence the world around it, usually to a fairly minor but noticeable degree. Elsa Maria's tower, for instance, only exists because Elsa Maria needed a place to pray in solitude, and it crumbles when she's gone. Etherdale, which is infected by wild witches, looks almost like a witches' labyrinth.
• Cliffhanger:
  • Chapter 8 ends with the main quartet arriving at the Nautilus platform with Reibey and the Matriarch waiting for them.
  • Chapter 12 ends with Annabelle Lee and her gang of hooligans watching the main characters from a crowd, disguised as tourists, and chapter 13 ends with them kidnapping Kyoko and Oktavia.
  • The entire Restless arc ends with the reveal of the Ideal Witches who apparently want to use the main characters for some purpose, and that one of the heroes took Mephisto's deal and is thus somewhat under her influence.
• Commonality Connection: In the Ghosts of Christmas Past special, Kyoko sees a lot of herself in how Annabelle Lee has become aggressive and misanthropic because of the loss of her sister.
• Compelling Voice: Lily the fairy, leader of the leecher organization Persephone Protectorate, has this as her main power. She uses it to force others to follow her willingly, and they don't even realize they're really under her control. She got Mami, Charlotte, Kyoko and Oktavia with it, and while all of them eventually got free, that was after the later two were handed off to the Brothel. The only way to forcefully free someone is to kill her.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The spinoffs get a lot of play here, with Nie and Arzt and Margot and the Madam. Mami at one point references Michiru Kazusa as an example of someone who's probably dead as a result of her actions (she's right). The way Charlotte arrives into the afterlife (hooked into a mannequin with a tray covered in cake crumbs) mirrors the backstory in the production notes.
  • During the fight in chapter 15, Mami whips out a ribbon clone like she used against Homura in Rebellion.
  • When Kyoko and Arzt meet face-to-face for the first time, Kyoko recognizes her, because a single panel of Kazumi Magica showed that Airi and Kyoko met at some point
• Conveniently Interrupted Document: In Mami's Restless dream sequence, she works at "<name redacted>, located on the corner of <street name redacted> and <street name redacted>" et cetera.
• The Corruption: Though it's very rare, it's possible for a witch to revert to their pre-afterlife monstrous form. It's far simpler to reverse than it was in the series, since such a witch would have to battle an entire civilization of beings who are just as powerful, and killing them causes them to revert to their humanoid form.
• Crapsaccharine World: Think Genocide City and the Withering Lands are the only rough patches in an otherwise idealic afterlife? Oh goodness no. For example, slavery and prostitution (child prostitution by default) are things. Bertha's Brothel, for example, is a town that has more or less been taken over by The City Narrows. It is so bad in places that the Void Walkers, the antagonist group, are magical girls who got so sick of the afterlife that they desire Cessation of Existence.
• Creepy Twins: Nie and Arzt. Later we learn that this isn't the case because they're both really Airi and Yuri from Puella Magi Kazumi Magica.
• Creation Myth: Elsa Maria recounts the most common explanation for how the afterlife was created in chapter 3; Once, a girl learned the truth about the Incubators' accord before being contracted and becoming a magical girl. In an act of selflessness, she then took Kyubey's deal and used her wish to give all magical girls and witches a second chance at life, the afterlife seen in the fic being the result. Elsa stresses that this is just one theory, however, and there is no way of knowing for sure.
• Crossover: Several characters from Kämpfer, Lyrical Nanoha, and Touhou Project make appearances. As well as some characters from Puella Magi Oriko Magica and Puella Magi Kazumi Magica.
• Cure Your Gays: Inverted; being cut off from your hormones and surrounded with people of the same gender results in the opposite, previously straight girls becoming lesbian because there are no boys around.
• Curtains Match the Window: This is the norm among humans in Madoka Magica's world, and as such carries over to human magical girls and witches in the afterlife. Kyoko notes that Charlotte having blue eyes and pink hair is unusual and kinda weird.
• Cute Monster Girl: All witches who die are here too, but they're much more human-like, with a single trait marking them as not human. Kyoko at one point mentions as an aside that Oktavia's tail is kinda cute.
• Cuteness Proximity: The Twins, for Ticky Nikki. They always treat her like a pet, and their treatment of Nikki left her so traumatized that when they're around she hides under the bed.
• Deader than Dead: Oblivion has the power to completely render a soul non-existent.
• Dead to Begin With: Everybody. No exceptions, save for Reibey.
• Death Amnesia: Inverted for Witches, who have no memory of their Pre-Freak Out lives, and only a few snippets of their lives as a witch. A few characters have commented on how that, yes, this is probably for the best. Kyoko however, is of the opposite persuasion.
• Death Equals Redemption: Elsa Maria thinks so. And she IS kind of right, seeing how the Puella Magi afterlife works.
• Death Seeker: Although the characters are all in the afterlife, the Void Walkers are a variant in that they find the afterlife so awful that they actively desire Cessation of Existence, and so serve Oblivion who has promised to give it to them.
• Death World: The Dockengaut homeworld and territories derived from it takes after the species, which is to say a horrible place comparable to Hell, populated mostly by a diverse ecosystem of creatures that all want you dead. The tick-tock sisters spent two hours there shortly after arriving in the afterlife, and it's a big part of the reason they went to Oblivon as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Most of the Monsterlands arc takes place in one such territory.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Marisa is happy to befriend Kyoko after they get into a fight. Kyoko is kinda weirded out by it, but relents when she offers to buy her breakfast.
• Delayed Reaction: In chapter 10, when Annabelle Lee, Nikki, and the Twins are having a conversation and the Matriarch suddenly drops in, they respond to her before realizing who they are talking to.
  "All exiled failures accounted for," remarked the Matriarch. "Is everyone prepared to depart?"
  
  "Yeah, I think so," Annabelle Lee, casting one last venomous glare The Twins' way. "We're just about-" Then the Matriarch's sudden and unannounced arrival finally registered, and she went stiff. "Holy shit," she whispered.
• Demoted to Extra: Any of the magical girls who are still alive (Madoka, Homura) or became a witch (Sayaka) is reduced to The Ghost in the fic. The former can't be present in the afterlife without dying, while the latter is functionally dead.
• Dissonant Serenity:
  • The Twins react to a riot with a mix of amusement and boredom.
  In contrast to Annabelle Lee, both [Arzt] and her sister seemed to be utterly at ease with the turmoil going on all around them. In fact, they seemed to find it mildly amusing, as if they were just watching a fight between two combatants that they didn't particularly care about on pay-per-view.
  • Kisa the Brothel agent keeps a stoic tone even after getting her leg flattened by a hammer.
  Kyoko scowled. "You know, you're being way too calm for someone with a flat leg."
  "Again," Kisa said without a hint of concern. "Temporary inconvenience."
  And that Kyoko just found scary. People in Kisa's position or condition should not be that calm. They were all tied up and at the mercy of a hammer-wielding junkie that had literally just gotten done smashing her leg like a watermelon, and she was treating it like a trip to the Driver's License Office. Something was on its way, something bad.
• The Dog Bites Back: At the climax of the Etherdale arc, the wild witches, who up until then have been treated as cattle by the Leechers, see the Leechers attack the Wayhouse, the people who are actually trying to help them, and decide that they've had enough. The leecher army is swarmed by thousands of wild witches.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul":
  • Sayaka insists her name is "Oktavia", which understandably disturbs Kyoko. Turns out, Witches do not identify with their original, human names at all, and insisting on using their original names can eventually drive them insane.
  • Also, a more comedic example is Nikki who keeps calling her sister "Annabelly". It annoys her to no end.
  Annabelle Lee: Oh, and don't call me Annabelly.
• Do Wrong, Right: In Chapter 23, a girl is about to light a Molotov Cocktail and throw it at Starlight Motors (which has been exposed as being involved in horrific criminal activities), but is stopped by another girl:
  But before she could light the rag's tip, a hand closed over hers, shutting off the lighter. Looking up, she saw her roommate shaking her head at her. "No," her roommate said. "That's not the way."
  The girl growled. "Why not? Why the hell not? They deserve it, and you know-"
  "That's not what I meant. I mean you're doing it wrong. A Molotov cocktail? That'll get shot down and extinguished before it even clears the crowd. You want to send them a message?" Her roommate's finger started glowing. She touched it to the bottle, which was then transformed, becoming a bottle-shaped device made from platinum and topaz. A proper fuse now stuck out where the rag used to be. "Then think a little bigger."
• Dragon-in-Chief: Reibey is the right-hand Incubator of Oblivion, but the very first scene has him threaten to replace her, and it is made very clear that he is the one really in control of the Void Walkers, despite him being less physically imposing than her.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • In the Etherdale arc, the heroes end up with a group of mercenaries called Persephone's Protectorate, who've been hired to clean up a corrupted area and get help for the wild witches therein, but are struggling with a band of leechers and ask the heroes for assistance. The chapter immediately after reveals that Annabelle Lee's gang of hooligans are with the so-called leechers, who are actually a Wayhouse; a humanitarian group. Persephone's Protectorate are the actual leechers.
  • During an angry rant about the nature of the afterlife, Annabelle Lee rants that whoever created the afterlife screwed up majorly, good intentions or no. Unbeknownst to her, she's talking about Oblivion herself.
• Dream Episode: The vast majority of the Restless arc.
• The Dreaded:
  • To the Void Walkers, Reibey. Bringing bad news to him is treated with the same fear as Darth Vader. For members of The Alliance, their view on him ranges from this trope to simply hating him.
  • Dockengauts, one of the alien species in the afterlife, are treated with a great deal of fear by other species, to the point that a single dockengaut can terrify an entire room into submission. Given that dockengauts are cannibalistic sadists each and every one of them, this fear is very well-founded.
  • Leechers, people who kidnap magical girls and witches in order to extract their soul vapors for profit. They're similar to real-life slavers and organ thieves, except that their victims can't die so there is no easy way out. Charlotte goes pale at the mere mention that there might be someone nearby.
• Driven to Suicide: Not uncommon among magical girls and witches who've been in the afterlife for too long, sometimes out of despair and sometimes out of boredom. Obviously none of the attempts succeed. Mami Tomoe, unusually, attempted to kill herself on one of her first days in the afterlife, the long list of world-shattering reveals being too much for her. She's gotten over it by the present.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • Sidestories First Time and Gift of the Puella Magi both introduced elements of worldbuilding before the actual story. For instance, the alien races and the remaining Kämpfer characters make their proper debut in the latter, while the superstition of "dead together = destined lovers" was introduced in the former.
  • Hungry in the Persephone Protectorate Arc appears early on in Mami's backstory.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The Restless epilogue reveals that the souls that Mephisto had been tormenting and consuming for centuries were freed when Kyoko and Jerky "killed" her, and have been given the first proper death in the afterlife since Oblivion disappeared.
• Eating the Eye Candy: In the Hot Springs Episode, Kyouko does some bodybuilding poses naked as a joke, expecting Oktavia to make a snarky remark. When the remark doesn't come, she realizes that Oktavia is too preoccupied staring. Oktavia gets her back when she strips and Kyouko's joke dies in her throat.
• Eldritch Location: Areas with large populations of wild witches, like Etherdale, start to shift according to the twisted minds of its inhabitants. In Etherdale, the water turns iridescent like oil spills, trees grow hands at the end of their branches and grasp at passerbys, and everything moves in stiff, stuttering movements like a witches' labyrinth. Charlotte even thinks it's a witches' labyrinth when she first sees it.
• Elegant Classical Musician: Oktavia can play piano, harmonica, and possibly other musical instruments as well without learning how to play or remembering whether she can play or not in her past life. It is justified considering Oktavia von Seckendorff "full witch form" is a conductor, her witch barrier is a distorted concert hall, and her familiars "Holger" play music. Her favorite tune? "Symposium Magarum".
• Elite Four: The void walkers who pursue the heroes are four girls, lead by Annabelle Lee, Kyoko's personal nemesis.
• Enemy Mine: In the Heist arc, Mami and Charlotte team up with Annebelle Lee's gang in order to rescue Kyoko and Oktavia from the Brothel. The void walkers still want to capture them and bring them to Reibey, but crucially needs to do it themselves.
• Enmity with an Object: In chapter 5, Kyoko screams at the remains of the tart that made her vomit.
  "So what, you had a problem with my stomach, is that it?" she shouted down at the water. "Well, fuck you! That was a violation of your food contract! And I swear to God, I'm gonna find whoever made you and report your sugary asses!"
  
  Mami laughed. "You always did take your food seriously."
  
  "Still do, especially when they start pulling that crap. What, you think I'm just gonna let that fly?"
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • Since no-one knows that Oblivion is a Legacy Character and Puppet Queen under Reibey's control, the heroes' best guess as to why the Void Walkers are gunning for Kyoko is that someone Kyoko pissed off in her previous life gained Oblivion's favour and is hoping for revenge. The actual reason is that the latest Oblivion used to be close with Kyoko, and Reibey wants her as a means of control.
  • In First Time, Shizuku vaguely implies that Natsuru used to be a guy in life. Not knowing this, Mami assumes she was implying that Natsuru was lesbian, and remarks that she sometimes wishes she was too.
• Eskimos Aren't Real: Oktavia laughs when told of the existence of flying fish, believing it to be another made-up story.
  "Besides, fish fly. There's flying fish."
  
  "Oh, very funny," Sayaka snapped. "Look, my personal memory may be gone, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna believe every crap story you make up about the world of the living."
  
  A blanket of awkwardness descended on the group, during which Charlotte and Mami exchanged looks of discomfort. Kyoko, however, just cracked up.
  
  Then Mami cleared her throat and said, "Ah, Oktavia? She's telling the truth."
  
  Another silence followed, and then Oktavia slowly turned her head to stare at the blonde. "What," she said in a flat tone.
• Euphemism Buster: In Chapter 37, the Hot Springs Episode, Mami attempts to come up with some euphemism or excuse to sneak off and have sex with Charlotte, only for the latter to just say it outright:
  Kyoko: And what exactly will you two be doing there, hmmm?
  Mami: Just…you know, we need a little, um…
  Oktavia: A little…what? (snickering) A little what, Mami?
  Charlotte: (flatly) We're going to have sex. Laugh if you want, I don't care. But we need this, so don't you dare get in the way. Got it?
  Mami: (aghast) Charlotte!
  Charlotte: What? They know, we know, so why not just come out and say it?
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Annabelle Lee may be a Void Walker aiding the villains, but she dislikes the underground trade of soul vapors, intoxicating vapors from souls that are often forcibly extracted from unsuspecting victims.
  Annabelle Lee hated the whole business. She was not a good person by any stretch of the imagination, but damn it, there were limits.
  • The Incubators are an emotionless alien species willing to screw over other species for their goals, but Word of God is that Reibey was banished to the Puella Afterlife by the other incubators for unspecified reasons.
• Evil Counterpart: Each of the void walker Quirky Miniboss Squad serve as a direct counterpart to one of the main heroes. Annabelle Lee is Kyoko's Shadow Archetype, Nikki and Oktavia are both the youngest of their respective groups and beloved by everyone else, and the Twins have a deeply loving and intimate relationship like Mami and Charlotte.
• Evil Tainted the Place:
  • Spawn Sites, large empty cities where new arrivals to the afterlife first wake up. The places have some sort of bad energies to them that make people who spend too long there gradually lose their minds, and despite the stores all being stocked, eating the food is not adviseable. The fact that most girls who end up there either remember their deaths or have no memories of anything at all means that the percentage of girls going insane within their first few months in the afterlife is rather high.
  • This is not limited to spawn sites either, as the mild Clap Your Hands If You Believe nature of the afterlife means that areas where great evil has taken place are marred and tainted. The Persephone's Protectorate compound is so stained that the little nature that grows is blackened and withered, and it smells bad.
• Exotic Eye Designs: Jezebel, a witch seen in First Time, has pupils shaped like keyholes. In life, she was a key and lock-themed witch.
• Expy: Mephisto, the Ideal Witch of Dreams and a Nightmare Weaver who traps magical girls in nightmares to torment and kill them, is outright called a “third-rate Freddy Krueger wannabe” by Kyoko.
• Exact Words: A dockengaut uses this as an excuse to disobey orders and go toy with Janelle in Chapter 36.
  "B-Back off," she said, retreating a few steps. "Your leader told you to stay on the ship!"
  The dockengaut held up one dangling arm, a glistening white multijointed "finger" extended up to the sky. "No," it buzzed as it waggled its…appendage in admonishment. "Zzzhe zzzaid to go back to zzzhe ship, whichzzz I did, zzz. Zzzhe zaid nozzzing about zzztaying."
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: From Gift of the Puella Magi:
  Natsuru: Mami's a great girl. She'll understand, and oh crap she's right over there.
• Extra Eyes: The valks have a third eye in their forehead.
• Fallen Hero: The Madam views herself as one, describing herself as going from an upstanding Puella Magi who sought to bring peace and order to a brutal crimelord who rules over a slum. Given her prior appearance, it's not clear how much of this is true. However, it should be mentioned that this version of the Madam never got to do any of the things she did in said prior appearance because it's heavily implied Homura shot her dead.
• Family of Choice: The four main characters have lived together since Kyoko and Oktavia arrived in the afterlife and are very close, both platonically and romantically. Charlotte at one point outright calls the three other girls her family, and so does Oktavia. Mami cares deeply about her former students and of course her wife, and while Kyoko isn't the type to express it in words, she does clearly feel the same and wants to spend her afterlife with them.
• Fantastic Racism: Word of God is that there are regions of the afterlife where Witches are hated and oppressed, though it has yet to appear in the fic proper. Annabelle Lee and her crew did run into some backwater hillbillies, who assumed the witches (Annabelle Lee and the Twins) had kidnapped Nikki, off-screen before chapter 47, though.
• Faux Horrific: When she wakes up from a coma wearing pink pajamas with teddy bear patterns, Kyouko starts to reconsider wether she really is in Hell.
• First-Name Basis: Kyoko notes with some surprise that Mami calls her and Oktavia by their first names, instead of Sakura and Miki. Mami explains that, since a lot of Witches don't have more than one name, with ones like Oktavia being rare, using last names simply fell out of favour in the afterlife, and most people are on first name basis.
• Five-Man Band: Despite being only four, the main cast fit this trope very closely; Kyoko is The Leader, her actions and extremely headstrong personality is the cause of the main plot; Mami is The Big Guy, by far the most experienced and powerful of the quartet and the one who pulls most of the weight during fights; Oktavia is The Heart, she is friends with everyone and has the most positive and optimistic view on the world; Charlotte is The Lancer, who frequently butts heads with Kyoko thanks to their similarily strong personalities, but also plays double duty as The Smart Guy who generally knows the most about the world they're in and keeps everyone up to date.
• Flat World: The afterlife is a "soft edges" type. It resides in a hypothetically infinite plane, with the edges consisting of malleable reality that is shaped into "proper" reality based on the expectations of new arrivals. If one were to walk out far enough, one would eventually get to a white void, and walking further after that would lead to a non-reality. The fact that you can reach the edges also implies that there is a center, though where that is is anyone's guess.
• Flipping the Bird: Arzt is implied to do this with one of her syringe-hands to Charlotte in Chapter 24.
• Floating Continent: Cloudbreak, the capital of the New Life Alliance. Rather than the traditional design with a single landmass, Cloudbreak is made up of hundreds of smaller islands connected by a twisting network of rails and tubes, arranged in three discs revolving around a central axle resembling a thin white stone spire. The city is anchored through a transparent tube that pulls water from a nearby lake, giving the impression of an upside down waterfall.
• Florence Nightingale Effect: Mami admits that a non-romantic version of this set up is how she always imagined she and Kyoko would meet again. Kyoko finds it hilarious, very Mami, and asks if it would be more romantic. Mami shuts the idea of that sort of reunion hard.
• Foregone Conclusion: The story has a bit of a timer counting down over it: At some point, Madoka in the living world will make her reality altering wish. What consequences this creates for the afterlife can only be speculated upon ( and for the characters it won't come up for a few years), but the fact that there will be consequences is probably inevitable.
• Foreshadowing: Aside from internal examples, there is one bit here for the author's other fic (spoilers for that, obviously): Marisa Kirisame appears here, in the afterlife, and describes the exact manner in which she would much later die.
• Forever War: The cold war between Oblivion and the New Life Alliance used to be this, before both parties agreed on the Free Life Compact. Since no one can die, it turned into a trudge real fast.
• Four Is Death: Anabelle Lee and her squad, consisting of herself, Tikki Nikki, and the Creepy Twins Arzt and Nie.
• From a Single Cell: Any being in the afterlife has Complete Immortality, and even reducing them to nothing won't kill them. In the case that they are completely destroyed, the largest and closest remaining chunk of anything, including skin cells or floating soul vapors, will regenerate in time, though it takes a while.
• Gallows Humor: In chapter 12, Kyoko and Oktavia make a Hurricane of Puns more or less entirely based on the fact that they are both dead.
• Gayngst: The main plot of the prequel First Time centers on Mami trying to come to terms with her feelings towards Charlotte.
• Gender Bender: Natsuru, born male, was contracted by an Incubator who decided to get around the issue by turning him into a girl as part of her Transformation Sequence. Upon entering the afterlife, she was Mode Locked into his female form. Word of Gay is that she identifies as a trans woman, so it works out.
• Gender Flip:
  • In-Universe. Per Word of God, there's a substantial industry in the afterlife of remaking movies from memory, with all-female casts for obvious reasons.
  • Charlotte at one point makes a Simon Says joke, but replaces Simon with Simone.
• Ghost Amnesia: Witches cannot remember anything from their lives as humans, and only vague things from their life as witches.
• Gilligan Cut: Gift of the Puella Magi has Charlotte and Ammonia sit down to plan out a way to defeat Mami only to then cut to Charlotte tied up in a tree pondering how she should probably stop making plans.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: As outlined under Nigh-Invulnerable below, every single character in the story can regenerate from just about any wound. Annabelle Lee shows this off aptly in her first fight with Kyoko- the former gets gutted, then has her throat slashed by the latter. She gets back up from both wounds with barely a scratch in a matter of minutes.
• Graceful in Their Element: Oktavia's tail renders her nearly helpless on land, but underwater, that same tail makes her a powerful swimmer.
• Graceful Loser: After Kyoko kicks her ass, Marisa treats the whole thing like a friendly match and compliments Kyoko on her skill.
• Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: In Gift of the Puella Magi, Mami and Charlotte roll off a cliff and have time to remark that the fall will probably hurt before they start screaming.
• 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.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Charlotte's dream in Restless takes the form of one, each loop starting with her (in doll form) and Mami in Nautilus platform, followed by Mami being eaten by Charlotte's worm-self ridden by a rider who seems different each time. Each loop ends with Charlotte being put through reliving a different trauma. In the final loop, the rider is Homura Akemi, revealing that the entire dream was a microcosm of the timeloop that they're all stuck in because of her.
• Guilt-Induced Nightmare: Kyoko and Mami's nightmares in Restless are both themed around their guilt. Kyoko's guilt for (in her mind) causing her family's death and failing to save both Momo and Sayaka, and Mami's guilt for every time she was manipulated into doing horrible things for what she thought were heroic reasons.
• Happily Married: Mami and Charlotte have been hitched for three years and are going strong.
• Harem Genre: Natsuru was at the center of one when she was alived, pursued by Shizuku, Mikoto, and Akane. At the moment she's in a steady relationship with Shizuku, who's not too concerned when Mikoto and Akane show up since she expects them to develop feelings for each other soon.
• Herbivores Are Friendly: Averted with the bahemont, a giant brachiosaurus-like herbivore which will still aggressively attack small creatures bothering it. Kyoko, after being told it is a herbivore, is surprised to see it attack the miscus by biting them.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Elsa Maria sacrifices herself to save Kyoko and Oktavia from the Void Walkers during the battle at her lighthouse, effectively kicking off the plot.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Mami tends to criticize herself a lot, something which annoys Charlotte.
  Seriously, from what comes this latest trip down Beat Yourself Up Lane? Because the scenery's getting kinda familiar.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs:
  • A common saying in the withering lands is that All paths lead to Oblivion, reflective of how they think every being in the afterlife will seek out an end sooner or later.
  • In First Time, Charlotte lets out the rather creative expletive "Daughter of an inbred incubator".
• Horrifying the Horror: Kyoko gets captured by a cantavier, a giant worm that encases its prey in giant bubbles and devours them. The prey are shown terrified and struggling for their life. Yet, as Kyoko is able to deduce, even it fears the Dockengauts and structures its nest specifically to keep them out.
• Hotsprings Episode: In the first episode of the Restless arc, the main quartet find a cave containing natural hot springs and enjoy relaxing and playing together.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Oktavia takes a while to get the hang of her powers, as a consequence of both her amnesia and Kyoko's limited knowledge of what Oktavia could do. She doesn't figure out how to make her signature wheels until twelve chapters in.
• Human Resources:
  • The slave trade exists in the darker corners of the Afterlife. Soul essence is commonly extracted like a reusable, limitless supply of Soylent Green. Those that are taken into this life a generally stuck there for the rest of eternity. Assuming they still have the will to try and escape.
  • Pinespire practices a much more benign version with their main Christmas tree, made up of paid Calliopes who work in shifts.
• Human Subspecies: Or technically subspecies of any given species, humans are just the most common. While Puella Magi are effectively just their base species with some magic powers (especially since they don't have soul gems anymore in the afterlife), Witches are far enough removed from the baseline that they could be considered their own subspecies. Having no memory of their original selves, they are effectively born as Witches, have a strong psychological connection to that fact, and have some physical feature that clearly distinguishes them from Puella Magi.
• Hurricane of Puns:
  "Well, keep that up and you'll be dead to me."
  A moment passed. Then Kyoko slowly turned her head to glower at the smirking mermaid. "Really, Shark Bait? Really?"
  "Hey, it's not my fault your manners are dead and buried. I'd suggest you start taking some lessons on tact, but I think it's too late for that."
  Kyoko rolled her eyes. "Well, I was going to, but my chance passed away."
  "Huh, I guess that put the final nail in the coffin of you ever being a considerate person. No wonder you always wind up in grave peril, what with you letting loose with that killer mouth of yours."
  "Ha! Like any of them have a ghost of a chance at ending me! Every time they try, I just pound their faces until the danger has deceased to be!"
  "Okay, that last one was just forced," Sayaka said. "I think we should just kill the whole thing and scatter the ashes."
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: The Spawn Sites, where magical girls and witches arrive in the afterlife, rarely have inviting names. A few we hear about include Drop Dead City, Genocide City, Devil's Vista, and Widow Hills. The names are apparently there already, going by streetnames.
• Imprinting: In the Monsterland arc, a baby valk hatches and sees Kyoko, who offers it beef jerky. In the conclusion of the arc, the baby reappears and has imprinted on her, and is very happy to see her.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Tabitha and Celeste are so terrified of even speaking to a holograph of Reibey that they make the respective excuses of leaving food in the oven and turning the iron on.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Oblivion's eyes are often mentioned as being this color, and she certainly fits the type. Odd, given that she's supposedly the red-eyed Momo Sakura...
• Innocent Innuendo: At one point Kyoko jokingly threatens to eat Oktavia's fish tail, since it's the juciest piece of fish around. She only realizes what she said when Oktavia asks if she's complimenting her ass. Her attempts at rephrasing it as Tasty or Delicious are not much better.
• Innocently Insensitive: When Kyoko sees a Vaskergoros for the first time, she asks if it's "Another alien". Kisa, the Vekoo she's talking to, clearly doesn't appreciate being thought of as alien, especially since humans like Kyoko are just as alien as anyone else.
• Insanity Immunity: Ticky Nickki is the only person that Elsa Maria can't get a read on. The Madam has more success.
• Instant Expert: One of Oktavia's main powers is a natural musical talent, even with instruments she doesn't know how to play. Kyouko is disturbed by the fact that Oktavia's favorite song appears to be her own Leitmotif.
• Internal Reveal: Gift of the Puella Magi has Charlotte learn about Natsuru's gender situation when she comes out.
• Ironic Echo: Anabelle Lee and Ticky Nikki debate on the plural form of octopus, a few chapters later, and Kyoko muses on the same topic.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Anabelle Lee seems to be developing into this, especially given her actions in helping against the leechers. Granted, part of it was because there was no other way out, but of her team, she's the one who has the most moral qualms about abandoning the resistance and has the strongest reasons to help them.
• Join or Die: At the climax of the Etherdale arc, Lily offers the people of the wayhouse this choice; Surrender and join the Persephone's Protectorate, or be captured and thrown into the wild to become wild witches and used as livestock for the Protectorate's drug trade.
• Last-Second Chance: The Madam, after a Breaking Speech, offers Annabelle Lee an out. Transport to anywhere in the world she wants for her and her sister, and honest work once they get there. As a Fallen Hero herself, she wants to give Annabelle the chance to change before it's too late. Annabelle turns her down, too stubborn to change her ways and not entirely trusting that the offer is genuine.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: In the Heist arc, Annabelle Lee proposes splitting up to infiltrate Starlight Motors. Despite their Enemy Mine, Mami and Charlotte object to the idea because it means leaing Kyoko and Oktavia alone with AL and Nikki. They don't like the second setup much more, since it involves leaving Mami and Charlotte alone with Annabelle Lee and Nie Blühen Herze respectively.
• Literary Allusion Title:
  • The first Christmas special, Gift of the Puella Magi, is named after the short story The Gift of the Magi.
  • The second Christmas special, Ghosts of Christmas Past, alludes to A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
• Lost Food Grievance: As in canon, Kyoko hates people wasting food, and gets into a fight with a random girl over her throwing away her half-eaten hot dog.
  "Pick up the damned hotdog and either eat it now or eat it later. But don't you fucking dare just throw it away like that!"
• Major General Song: Lily the fairy sings this on speaker in Chapter 19 to test why her enemies are reacting in pain to her Compelling Voice.
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places: In chapter 3, it's implied that the twins were doing this off-screen in their boat.
• Malicious Misnaming: Arzt calls Annabelle “Assabelle” when the latter tries to make her apologize to Margot for attacking her.
• Meaningful Name: Reibey. Like Kyubey and Jubey, the first syllable of his name is a number, but in his case, it's "rei" - zero.
• Mermaid in a Wheelchair: Oktavia, a mermaid-like witch, is usually bound to a wheelchair on land and has to be wheeled around by the other characters. The rest of the time, she's being carried around.
• The Missionary: In the Monsterlands-intermission, a group of Void Walker missionaries visit the Wayhouse in Etherdale to proselytize. Janelle correctly deduces that they're full of shit, since Oblivion has no need for missionaries. True enough, they were using an imprisoned empathic Calliope to read Demmi's mind to see if she knows anything about Annabelle Lee and company.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: Nikki objects to being teamed up with Nie because she'll "touch [her]". In response to Mami's horrified reaction, Annabelle Lee clarifies that she means in the sense of hugs, doting, and cheek-pinching, which Nikki hates.
• Mordor: The Withering Lands, seat of the Void Walkers, is outright compared to Mordor, "only this time's Mordor's got prettier orcs and more guns." It doesn't fit the trope in aesthetics, however, as it is fertile enough to support a large population.
• Mugging the Monster: Kyoko liked to invoke this back when she was alive for her amusement.
  And even when she wasn't actively witch-hunting, one of her favorite ways of blowing off steam was to find the local tough guys and trick them into picking fights with her. The looks on their stupid faces when they realized that their "easy prey" was neither had never stopped being funny.
• Mundane Made Awesome: The snowball war in the Christmas Special Gift of the Puella Magi. Since all its participants are both immortal and possess magical powers, you get stuff like ice clumps thrown around like flails on chains, Calliopes picking up massive amounts of snow and dumping them on unsuspecting targets, and snow ball rifles. And while regular snowball fights are to first blood or to one opponent yields, this one is to unconsciousness.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: The void walker Zealand is a Calliope, a species otherwise defined by being exciteable, friendly, Genki Girls. She has the usual depressed and angry void walker outlook on things.
• Naked First Impression: Oktavia to Kyoko and Charlotte to Mami. This is apparently a regular occurrence. First Time mentions a superstition that any witch and Puella Magi to die together are destined to fall in love.
• Naked on Arrival: Evidently all witches when they first come to the afterlife. Then again, as they were mindless Eldritch Abominations when they died, they wouldn't have any clothes to base a mental image on.
• Necessarily Evil: How the Madam views herself in the now, as head of the Brothel. Her entire reasoning for becoming the Madam revolved around this, and all of her actions since have been dedicated to it. In her eyes, the only way to change the Crapsaccharine World for the better is to be willing to do whatever it takes, no matter her own personal sacrifice or that of others, to gain the real power to force it to change, the type you can't get from being a politician or revolutionary. It's also one of the reasons she puts up with Reibey. This is also why she is perhaps the one magical girl who doesn’t hate the non-Reibey Incubators- she sees them as Necessarily Evil, since they are trying to save the universe, and feels a sort of kinship.
  The power she had required was now hers, leaving her free to finally start changing things for the better. And, just as expected, that had required her to take on more unpleasant tasks than ever before. For the greater good. It was the way of things. She was the necessary evil and in a way always had been. She had done many horrible things to people who did not deserve them simply because they needed to be done. That was just how it was. [...] In a way, the Madam was an anomaly among the dead in that she held very little personal disdain for Incubators. Like her, they had a nasty job that needed to be done, and no one else would do it. True, the little guy (or girl, as was the case) was massively screwed over in the process, but that was just the way it was. The Madam bore them no ill will, even if it had cost her her life.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Katie, a mentioned character in the Etherdale arc, leaked the information about Lily's dealings to the public as an act of revenge after her death. While understandable, this had rather unfortunate consequences, as the sudden reveal of corruption in local governments and various powerful people having had dealings with Lily causes riots and unrest across the world, which means that the wayhouse has a very hard time getting support when they need it most.
  Janelle: Laughing Mad I am going to kill Katie. I am literally going to kill her.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In the Cloudbreak arc, Annabelle & co had very nearly escaped with the unconscious Kyoko and Oktavia when Arzt has had enough of Annabelle's leadership and starts an argument. They resolve it quickly, but it delays them enough that Mami and Charlotte can catch up.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: When Oktavia gets a harmonica, her favorite arrangement is apparently "Symposium Magarum", which has been stuck in her head. Kyoko wastes little time in asking her to play something else. This is justified, as that horrifying music can tear people's souls apart had they listen to it for long enough.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: People in the afterlife can still be damaged and feel pain, but since they're essentially souls in human form, literally everyone can regenerate from any wound given enough time, making permanently killing someone a borderline-impossible task.
• No Bisexuals: Downplayed. Charlotte is surprised at how fast Sayaka made the "switch" to being interested in girls after coming to the afterlife, openly flirting with Kyoko after just a few hours when she was interested in men in life. Apparently she didn't even consider the ideal that she might have been bisexual in life, which Mephisto outright says that she was.
• Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!: After stripping herself to show off her body, Kyoko gets Oktavia to do the same by calling her a chicken and doing chicken noises.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Mami delivered this to Charlotte when they first met at the Dead Drop City, thinking she was still inside the witch barrier. They reconciled, though.
• Non-Heteronormative Society: An expected outcome of this being an afterlife only accessible by girls. The vast majority of magical girls and witches are romantically or sexually interested in women, either because they were sapphic in their first lives or because there are no other options and they've adjusted. Homophobia is all but non-existent, and newcomers who do express prejudice against same-sex relationships are expected to get over it before long.
• Non-Indicative Name: Annabelle Lee muses that the Withering Lands and its capital, Twilight's Crypt, don't really fit their names. The Withering lands are fertile enough and have plenty of wilderness, and Twilight's Crypt contains no actual gravechambers.
• Noodle Incident: Charlotte and Mami refuse to stay at a friendly farmstead because last time they did the farmers turned out to be soul-sucking demons.
• Not Quite the Right Thing: Mami has a bad habit of doing this through the best of intentions.
  • When she first arrived in the afterlife, she got a lot of shocking revelations dropped on her at once, which caused her no end of emotional turmoil, mental anguish, and a lot of suicide attempts. Thus, she tries to let Kyoko learn about everything slowly, only telling her about the afterlife bit-by-bit. Thing is, Kyoko is not Mami, and would actually have preferred to get everything dropped on her at once. Mami keeping certain things from her only serves to damage their already fraught relationship.
  • In chapter 14, Mami and Charlotte fight off an attack from Nikki and the Twins, but Mami tells the Cloudbreak constabulary to not intervene. She does this because she knows that if Void Walkers were caught attacking Alliance citizens, it would cause a war, and Freehaven would be the first casualty. What she doesn't know is that the void walkers are Rogue Agents not officially acting on Reibey's orders, meaning that he can avoid a war through plausible deniability. Telling the constabulary to not intervene accomplished nothing but making it much harder to rescue Oktavia and Kyoko.
• Numerical Theme Naming: Following from Kyubey (Nine) and Jubey (Ten), the fic follows the trend of naming Incubators after a number followed by the -bey suffix. Reibey (Zero) is the most prominent one, while a Nanabey (Seven) is also mentioned.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: In a nightmare, Shizuku praises Mami for having kept Nautilus Platform running and expanded the business, and for not having gone of on a hopeless quest that endangered them all and destabilized world politics, which are things Mami did and feels extremely guilty for.
• Obviously Evil: Though the Void Walkers have a semisympathetic motive, they tend to veer in this direction when it comes to just about every design decision or name that they choose. The Madam thinks they need a new image consultant and that Reibey is an idiot for continually going for this choice.
• Older Than They Look: Almost everyone in the afterlife. Since magical girls look like they did when they died (or in Witches' case, before they became witches) and never age, and getting contracted by an Incubator reduces your expected lifespan to months, almost everyone looks like teenage girls (or younger), despite being decades, centuries, or even millenia old. Mami and Charlotte are both fairly mild examples, being in their 20s, but look 15. Hypotetically, a girl could have been born at the dawn of human civilization and still look no older than 10.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Charlotte complains that Shizuku will never let her live down that time she tried to smuggle string cheese.
• The One Guy: The Big Bad Reibey is the only male character in the story, and since he is an Incubator, which are indicated to be genderless, it seems that he just identifies as male. It's a Justified case, since the story takes place in an afterlife for magical girls and (humanized) witches.
• Only One Afterlife: No matter what kind of person you were as a magical girl, everyone ends up in the same place after their death. The possibility of Heaven and Hell existing is brought up, but it's more of a theological debate than anything directly provable.
• Our Ghosts Are Different/Our Souls Are Different: People in the afterlife are basically unconscious Energy Beings. Consequentially, they don't age, have no organs, regenerate from lethal injuries, and can understand any language. However, they still need to eat and sleep, can get poisoned, and retain a "phantom limb" sensation of what they've lost.
• Our Liches Are Different: Mami at one point corrects Kyoko that Puella Magi (when they're alive, at least) are Liches, defined as "a person that keeps their soul in some kind of outside container", not zombies.
• Patchwork Map: The afterlife is a plane of existence constructed entirely by magic, and is physically made up of enviroments familiar to its denizens. As such, it's made up of diverse landscapes from 12 (soon to be 13 once the Savians get settled) different planets which may be internally consistent but are patched together with little thought to consistency. The areas between the different enviroments also start bleeding into each other, resulting in strange and completely new landscapes that no one in the living world could imagine. Then there's the fact that the world is subconsciously influenced by its inhabitants, meaning that when a large amount of savage or insane magical girls and witches end up in the same place the enviroment will shift to match their mental state. Finally, there are also actual witches' labyrinths which are a whole mindfuck on their own.
• Peace Conference: One occured prior to the plot, putting an end to the war between the Void Walkers and the New Life Alliance. It resulted in the Free Life Compact, agreeing on borders, relations, and that all signatories would be protected from the other faction.
• Perspective Flip: In Restless, Oktavia's dream sequence shows the battle between her and Kyoko from her perspective, thinking herself a knight trying to protect the princess (Madoka) from the monster (Kyoko).
• Please, Don't Leave Me: In a dream, Charlotte sees Mami die in front of her and breaks down, begging her to not leave her alone.
  “Please,” she whispered. “Please, don’t leave me. I can’t do this without you. I can’t do this alone!”
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Brooklyn calls Oktavia a “fucking cripple” after throwing her wheelchair in her cell, and continues to repeatedly call Oktavia a cripple in a disparaging manner. This despite she herself having been crippled in life by a car accident.
• Power Perversion Potential: There is no other reason for Mami to blush when talking about how useful ribbons are. Definitely not.
• Private Military Contractor: The Brothel is a criminal cartel offering, among other services, hired muscle, but it's so extensive and powerful that it might as well be a mercenary organization. You don't go to the Brothel for goons, you go to the Brothel to overthrow a government.
• Psycho for Hire: Oblivion has a veritable army of these consisting of witches and magical girls who aren't happy with this afterlife, and want out. Ticky Nikki is an especially unhinged example.
• Puppet Queen: Oblivion is the nominal leader of the Void Walkers, but the very first scene has Reibey openly tell her that he can replace her, and she is more of a figurehead than anything else.
  But Oblivion was no tyrant, as much as the opposition would like everyone to believe otherwise. She served as an excellent figurehead, but her actual influence on matters of state began and ended with the yearly Releasing Ceremony. In the meantime, she was supposed to stay well out of sight. The last thing Reibey needed was for the wrong person to catch her whining like an elementary school child. Which, in fairness, she technically was, physical size notwithstanding.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: The small team of Void Walkers Reibey sends after Kyoko and Oktavia: Anabelle Lee, Ticky Nikki, and the incestuous, also maniacal Creepy Twins Nie and Arzt.
• Racial Face Blindness: Nanabey the Incubator wasn't too good at telling humans apart, which was how he ended up contracting the male Natsuru, putting her through Gender Bender to fix his mistake.
• Reality Is Out to Lunch: While there are normal parts of the afterlife by human standards, the stable parts of the afterlife are essentially stitched together based on multiple alien worlds forged by the memories and emotions of dead Magical Girls, and those are just the stable parts. Areas like spawn sights are collectively morphed by accumulated mental distress to a point highways in the sky are among the tamer features, with skies filled with eyes, mountains of flesh, and rivers of blood also being known.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Marisa gives Kyoko a much needed one in chapter 8, starting by asking if she thinks she's special and going on to deconstruct her whole cynical worldview. As Marisa explains, Kyoko is far from the first person who's distrusted the hereafter, or thought that the people living their afterlives are idiots for accepting it. Only those "idiots" have a lot more experience with the afterlife than Kyoko, and anything she thinks they should do has already been tried, failed, and made everyone miserable. She also points out that Kyoko's distrust of Freehaven is unfounded since Freehaven was built from the ground up by Magical Girls and Witches, and while it's not perfect, it's a lot better than any alternatives.
• Red Right Hand: Witches retain traits of their original forms, varying from a small tattoo to their entire lower body.
• Red String of Fate: A common superstition in the afterlife is the concept of Soul Resonance, that the souls of any witch and magical girl who die in the same labyrinth are bound together, especially if they killed each other. While it's not provably true, it certainly happens more often than not that such cases fall in love.
• Religious Bruiser: Elsa Maria is a believer in God, and also a witch who will use her powers to fight against the Void Walkers.
• Required Secondary Powers: Oktavia can speak underwater and has gills. Kyouko found the latter to be quite unnerving.
• Right Behind Me: After Kyoko runs away and Mami spends all day trying to find her, she dejectedly goes back to her wife and Oktavia and explains what happens. She's shocked that the two are taking Kyoko's disappearance so well, until they point out that Kyoko is standing behind her.
• Role Reversal: Due to dream-related schenanigans in Restless, the family end up switching who's the witch and who's the puella magi, identifying themselves as Ophelia, Sayaka, Candeloro, and Nozomi.
• Rousing Speech: Subverted twice in the Etherdale arc.
  • Even with a serum to counter Lily's magic, Annabelle Lee points out that the Wayhouse is hopelessly outmatched. Patricia tries to give a small-scale rousing speech assuring her that they've done the seemingly impossible before, but Annabelle Lee sees it as just a sad attempt at convincing herself.
  • Lily says that she considered writing one before leading her troops into battle, but got bored so she simply says to "let's get those bitches".
• Sadistic Choice: In her dream, Kyoko is told by Elsa Maria that she can only chose the Fallen Warrior (Oktavia) or the Unloved Child (Momo), but not both. Kyoko elects to save the Warrior, and then go back for the Child.
• Sarcastic Clapping: A pair of Dockengaut do this after watching Charlotte and Kyoko nearly kill an entire pack of valks.
• Scars Are Forever: Normally all wounds in the afterlife heal instantly with nothing to show for it. So when one of the Persephone's Protectorate soldiers show off a scar covering her entire cheek it is rather shocking.
• Scenery Porn: In written form: the description of Cloudbreak is... stunning, to say the least.
  Instead of a single large platform, there were hundreds of them arranged in three disks stacked on top of each other, two medium sized ones on the bottom and top and one double the size of the other two in the center. The platforms were tightly clustered near the center while spreading out more and more the further away they got, and were all making slow revolutions around a thin spire of white stone that acted as a stalk in this crazy pinwheel in the sky. And naturally, on the platforms was, well, a city.
  
  Buildings, parks, monuments, arenas, all were arrayed on that lazily spinning fleet of platforms. And apparently people here liked their plants, because the whole place was covered with them, to the point where most of the platforms were practically hanging gardens. Connecting it all together was a weird looking network of twisting rails and tubes that enveloped the city like a web. As Kyoko watched in wide-eyed awe, she could pick out the city's residents literally swinging their way around on the smaller poles, while large vehicles that resembled trolleys slid under the larger ones. Extending from the city to the ground below were several tubes along the outer edge, while in the center was…
  
  [...] a huge, clear tube that was sucking water up into the city. She looked down and saw that the tube reached down into giant spinning black sphere that sat on the surface of a sparkling lake.
• The Secret of Long Pork Pies: In Mami's Restless dream, she works at a café that secretly processes the teenage girl servers into cupcake icing. If the allegory wasn't obvious enough, the manager is Kyubey.
• Sherlock Scan: The Madam does this to intimidate Annabelle Lee's team upon their first encounter, expositing their names, purpose, and character traits in great detail, apparently with minimal foreknowledge. Subverted in that the Madam is Oriko, a powerful Seer.
• Shout-Out:
  • The title itself is a Shout-Out to a Touhou Project album, which the writer notes to be an unofficial soundtrack for the story.
  • Kyoko tells Mami in Chapter 7 that her “most wondrous ass of mine has probably turned more straight girls gay than Haruhi Suzumiya!"
  • The same chapter has Roseanne, a witch with bladed hands, reference Edward Scissorhands by saying that she’s had people call her that before.
  • A third from the same chapter is a group of girls at a beach that are clearly based on Nanoha, Fate, whose name is outright namedropped, Vita, and a Hayate who went witch and whose witch form appeared to be based on Reinforce.
  • The Fezzinigo Swamps. Complete with Rodents of Unusual Size.
  • Kyoko compares an asteroid field near the calliope planet to the ones from Star Wars.
  • Elsa Maria's compass works just like Jack Sparrow's.
  • The author notes in Chapter 14 reference the first line of "Escape From The City" and the GUN Truck.
  • In Chapter 12, Kyoko mentions The Lord of the Rings, specifically Mordor, when comparing it to the Withering Lands.
  • Also in Chapter 12, Kyoko compares Sayaka's wheel-summoning ability to Thomas & Friends.
  • In Chapter 15, Kyoko says that Oktavia looks like Vegeta. She later muses that Bilbo Baggins and Sun Wukong both had more dignified starts to their journey than her.
  • In Chapter 16, she calls Charlotte Charmander and cites The Force as an example of prescience.
  • In Chapter 19, Lily sings the Major General Song and “Singing In The Rain” and is about to sing “Matchmaker, Matchmaker”.
  • In chapter 29 (30 in the ao3 version), Kyoko goes on a ramble comparing her journey to The Lord of the Rings.
  • The narration in Chapter 30 (31 in the ao3 version) refers to Annabelle Lee and her gang as Team Rocket blasting off again.
  • In a flashback in Chapter 32 (33 in the ao3 version):
    "Right," Charlotte nodded. "There, you got your lion, tigers, bears-"
    "Oh my," Kyoko said automatically.
  • In Chapter 33 (34 in the ao3 version), Kyoko is mentioned as being a fan of the Jurassic Park film series. The narration also references Muldoon's memetic 'clever girl' line.
  • In Chapter 34 (35 in the ao3 version), after narrowly surviving a valk attack, Kyoko threatens to “ go all Gaston on your extinct asses!”
  • In Chapter 37 (38 in the ao3 version), Kyoko considers naming the baby valk Baragon, Ghidorah, and Godzilla.
  • In Chapter 38 (39 in the ao3 version), Kyoko is about to get sucked into a drain “like a goddamned Ninja Turtle.”
  • In Chapter 40 (41 in the ao3), Mami's dream seems to be a reference to Cupcakes (Sergeant Sprinkles). The chapter also ends with Ophelia telling Mami ""Wake the fuck up sempai. We got a dream to burn."
  • In chapter 42/43, Sayaka asks if they're partners, and Kyoko has to stop herself from saying "Oh my god they were partners."
• Shrouded in Myth: Bertha, the original founder of the Brothel criminal cartel and the town that bears her name, retired some centuries ago. Depending on who you ask, she's either living as a queen in the countryside, atoning for her sins in a monastery, or is a pirate and the terror of the Amphritos sea.
• Silent Treatment: When Kyoko calls her Sayaka one too many times, Oktavia goes quiet and refuses to respond to any of Kyoko's attempts at apologizing.
• 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.
• Snuff Film: The dockengauts, upon first arriving and kidnapping people, made films of themselves devouring their victims, at least one from each species, and sent it to everyone else just to brag. They were able to get away with no consequences for this because everyone is too scared of them to bother fighting them. Years later, the video is shown to young magical girls and witches stupid enough to consider visiting Dockengaut territories.
• Soiled City on a Hill: Reibey's Genocide City and it's associated areas may be depressing, but it's a High Living Standard sort of corrupt evil you'd expect from The Empire. Bertha's Brothel however, is less a city and more of a morality black hole, one so far into the red that even the worst of crimes are openly carried out on the main drag, and anyone who willing goes there has crossed the Moral Event Horizon, the Despair Event Horizon, or both.
• Sssssnaketalk: Dockengauts speak like this, though half the time replacing s sounds with z sounds.
  "Mind yourrrr tongue, sssssscum. The Masssssster only ssssssaid we were to ezzzzzzcort you to the palazzzzzz. He ssssssaid nozzzzzing regarding yourrrr condizzzzion."
• Starfish Aliens:
  • The calliopes, bubble-like life forms with changing shades and tiny, multicolored lights in their bodies that move when they speak (though they can speak the Earth languages). Kyoko is dumbstruck the first time she comes across them.
  • The ai'jurrik'kai are another strange species.
    She (if it was a she) had an impossibly thin body and flexible that had to be over seven feet tall, a round bulge at the top from which sprouted eight arms as long as her body, each with three spindly fingers, and a head suspended on a skinny neck that looked like a closed flower bud. The whole creature seemed to be made from smoky volcanic glass.
  • Dockengauts are tall, shadow-like reptilians with six-fingered hands and “faces” that do not resemble any kind of face. As revealed in the Monsterland arc, they are actually Hive Minds of spiders who come together to form a body.
  • Butontikos are gelatinous aliens that can become nearly transparent under the right circumstances.
  • The Miscus as well:
    Their bodies were long and serpentine, at the end of which was a sucker-like mouth, lined with row after row of sharklike teeth, with four bladed feelers creeping out of their maw. Extending out in all directions from their eyeless heads were eight long limbs, each ending with a skeletal three-fingered claw. Stretching between those limbs and from the claws to the tip of the tail were black, leathery membranes. The creatures swooped this way and that, opening and closing their sails to gain or lose speed, emitting piercing cries that abruptly rose and fell in pitch.
• Status Quo Is God: In-Universe. Marisa told Kyoko that there was a full-scale war between New Life Alliance (or simply The Alliance)^note A group of Puella Magi and Witches who distrust Reibey and Oblivion and Void Walkers^note A group of Puella Magi and Witches who pledge loyalty to Reibey and Oblivion, but since no one can truly die in this afterlife, the war kept going for years without any casualty and legitimate result other than small portion of land being taken over by The Alliance. After back and forth battles without definite outcome, both sides signed the armistice treaty Free Life Compact so they could at least keep their own territory.
• Stealth Pun: Kyoko in life was in trouble with the mafia, and she is currently dead and in a relationship with the mermaid Oktavia. In other words, she's sleeping with the fishes.
• Supernaturally-Validated Trans Person: Incubators contract with trans girls and the non-gender conforming all the time. However this is by no means something they do to make a point about the validity of their existences.
• Superpowered Evil Side: Witches, if they suffer enough emotional distress, can turn back into their Eldritch Abomination forms, losing their minds and becoming savage monsters just like they were before they died. If beaten, they turn back to normal, and retain their memories.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: When Charlotte acts upset and seems desperate to get away from Mami for a bit in Gift of the Puella Magi, Mikoto accuses her of having forgotten Mami's gift and is now trying to sneak away to find a new one. Charlotte, not wanting to admit that she was going to propose and has lost the ring, goes with the explanation, despite Mami pointing out that she remembers seeing her gift in their room.
• Swapped Roles: During the Etherdale arc. As a result of Lily, the heroes we normally follow are unknowing bad guys working with slavers and drug dealers, while Anabelle, Tikki Nikki, and the Twins are on the good side because Even Evil Has Standards.
• The Syndicate: Bertha’s Brothel, despite the name, doesn’t just operate brothels but has hands in many criminal enterprises.
  In short, it was a weapons seller and mercenary organization, one that charged highly for its merchandise and the service of its girls. But with that hefty price tag came the promise of quality and increased chances of success. They were not a group of thugs looking to perform violence for whoever would pay them. If you needed a few extra hands backing you up in some kind of grudge match, there were plenty of other places to go. But if you were looking to stage a coup, you went to the Brothel. If you needed the head of a major corporation and all of her supporters removed and disgraced so you could take over, you went to the Brothel. If you found yourself in need of a high-profile terrorist attack but felt that your own people were not up to the task, the Brothel stood ready to get the job done.
• Teleportation: Some Magical Girls and Witches are noted to have this ability, though it's very rare and usually fairly limited. The Matriarch who serves Reibey is an unusually powerful example, able to teleport herself and open portals for other people anywhere in the world.
• Temporary Blindness: This happens to Kyoko due to a valk's venom. She heals eventually, but not before having to cut out her own eyes...
• That Came Out Wrong: When Mami asks what Charlotte and Natsuru were doing in the forest alone at night in Gift of the Puella Magi, she phrases it in a way that sounds like she's accusing Charlotte of cheating, much to her horror.
• That's No Moon: In Chapter 31, the heroines try to escape a group of miscus and reach a shaggy-looking hill with brown grass. Then the “hill”, actually a bahemount, gets up:
  Sayaka had come to a brief stop near the foot of a weirdly shaggy looking hill, one that was covered with thick brown grass. She beckoned to her friends to hurry up.
  [...]
  They were only a few meters away from Sayaka when the hill started to move.
  It rose up behind the mermaid, leaving a long and deep impression in the ground beneath it. Kyoko gaped up at it. Holy shit, it wasn't a hill at all. It was an animal.
• Third-Person Person: Ticky Nikki and Oblivion. Much to Annabelle Lee and Reibey's displeasure.
• Time Abyss: According to the author, the afterlife was created shortly after the incubators first made contact with humans, at the end of the Mesolithic era. As such, any magical girls who died then and haven't accepted Oblivion would be over eleven thousand years old in real world time, and roughly 980,000 years in the afterlife (assuming an average of 80 years in the afterlife to one year in the real world).
• Token Human: Tikky Nikki is the only non-witch member of Reibey's Quirky Miniboss Squad. Ironically for this trope, she's actually the least sane among the four of them.
• Tomato in the Mirror: In Oktavia's Restless dream, she dreams of herself as a knight going to save a princess from a monster... only to find herself as Oktavia the Mermaid Witch, realizing that she's the monster.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Marisa Kirisame who makes a cameo. She is still brash and likes fighting a lot, but notably nicer than she was in TakerFoxx'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.
• Tough Love: The strange punk girl in Restless frames Oktavia's nightmare like this, forcing Sayaka/Oktavia to confront her identity issues by recognizing that she is a person with many facets; She is the courageous Knight, a champion of justice, but she is also the wicked Witch, born of nightmares, and the innocent Princess, in need of a savior.
• Translator Microbes: People in the afterlife can understand each other regardless of language because magic. Marisa admits that it makes a lot of puns fall flat unless everyone present has the same native language. It does appear to distinguish between normal speech and specific terminology, as Puella Magi is not translated.
• Twincest: Nie and Arzt are very affectionate with each other. Though they claim that they aren't twins, nobody believes them. They were telling the truth.
• Unfortunate Names: Gift of the Puella Magi has Ammonia the Calliope, who Charlotte figures probably chose her name based on pretty sounds rather than any particular knowledge of what ammonia is.
• Unholy Matrimony: Arzt and Nie, and possibly Margot and the Madam, who have both long since consummated their Les Yay.
• Verbal Tic Name: Hungry, a wild girl, is called that because it is the only word she ever says.
• Villain Has a Point: In the finale of the Restless arc, Mephisto traps the four girls in nightmares and gives each of them a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about their horrible mistakes and selfish deeds in life. Despite how cruel it is, even the narration describing Sayaka and Kyoko's thoughts admits the criticisms given are accurate.
  Tears were streaming down Sayaka's face. Part of her screamed that Mephisto was lying, that she was just saying whatever hateful thing she could to get into Sayaka's head.
  But where was the lie? What part of what she was saying was untrue?
  [...]
  [Kyoko] sat there, holding Jerky close while she thought on the mess she was in. Can't go back, can't stay in one spot, can't go forward. She was stuck, her friends were stuck, and it was all her fault. Mephisto might have been a sadistic, sociopathic monster, but she hadn't been wrong.
  Kyoko was the one responsible for everything that had happened to her. Kyoko was the reason she had lost so much. She had been the one to push Papa into doing what he had done. She had been the one to drive Mami away. She had been the one responsible for Sayaka's downfall. And after all that she had cost them, it was a miracle that Mami and Charlotte were sticking with her.
• Villainous Incest: The Twins, two Void Walkers, spend nearly every scene they are in being uncomfortably affectionate to each other.
  Their lips met in a very un-sisterly manner. Both Mami and Charlotte gaped. This had gone beyond creepy. This had jumped off the creepy rail and plowed merrily into downtown Debauchery City.
• Villainous Rescue: The main cast have so far had to been bailed out by Annabelle Lee and company thrice; First in "Help", where they kill Lily and save Mami and Charlotte from her brainwashing; second in "The Heist", where they help Mami and Charlotte rescue Kyoko and Oktavia (albeit double-crossing them later); and third in "Monsterland", where they call the border guard to rescue them from a Dockengaut territory.
• Warrior Heaven: The afterlife is technically this, since it's limited to Magical Girls and Witches, who almost universally die in combat (being too resilient for disease, age, or accident). Mami even mentions that some cultures to the north call the afterlife Valhalla.
• Warrior Therapist: Elsa Maria's power is very useful for this... if the people she tried to use it on weren't suffering from Death Amnesia.
• Wham Line:
  • From chapter 1:
    "'No, I know my name,' Sayaka said. She smiled in triumph, happy to have remembered that at least. 'It's Oktavia. Oktavia von Seckendorff.'"
  • From chapter 6, revealing that Reibey is aware of the timeloops.
    "Tradition. You see, my dear marionette, this isn't the first time this sequence of events has happened. And as I just learned, in each and every reiteration, Kyoko Sakura and her mermaid companion have always refused the Compact."
• What the Hell, Hero?: Oktavia gives Kyoko a royal chewing out in chapter 24, furious that despite having been told multiple times how important Oktavia's name is to her, and the consequences of not using it, Kyoko still can't get over her issues and use the right name.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: One of the big themes, and a major point of contention between the Void Walkers and everyone else. Void Walkers are magical girls and witches who have grown tired of the afterlife, either due to seeing it as a Crapsack World or sheer boredom, and think that everyone will feel the same eventually. During a rant, Annabelle Lee points out that making a happy life will only keep you content for so long, and there are only so many times you can start over from scratch without it getting old.
• Wild Child: Feral/Wild Witches and Madwomen are Puella Magi and Witches who couldn't accept their death and went insane, turning feral. They often band together in covens and their mental state influence the world around them, making them a hazard when travelling.
• Wistful Amnesia: In her Restless dream sequence, Oktavia sees the train station where she turned into a witch and remembers that something bad happened there but can't remember what.
• With This Ring: The main drama in Gift of the Puella Magi comes from Charlotte losing the ring she was going to use to propose to Mami with during a snowball fight, and the stress it causes her during what was supposed to be the most important day of her life. It turns out Ammonia the Calliope ate it on accident and returns it to Mami none the worse for wear, unaware of the significance. Mami ends up showing it to Charlotte and putting it on in the snow outside of Natsuru and Shizuku's cabin, at the same time as she reveals that she was also planning to propose that Christmas.
• Word Salad Title: Neither "days" nor "resonance" figure much in the story. The story takes its name from a music album.
• World of Symbolism: The dream sequences in Restless are all this, of course.
  • In Kyoko's dream, she tries to chase after her father, who always walks just out of reach, while there's an abandoned and unloved child crying in the background. It is representative of her guilt for, in her mind, causing her family's death, and her continuous failure to save her sister from the Void Walkers.
  • In Octavia's dream, she's a questing knight going to save a princess from a monster, only to find herself becoming a monstrous mermaid, before being rescued by Kyoko while wearing a princess dress. It is symbolic of her identity crisis, asthe punk gatekeeper tells her that she must reconcile the fact that she is at once a heroic knight, a monstrous witch, and a damsel in distress.
  • In Mami's dream, she works at a café teaching new hires the ropes before sending them to the basement, where she ultimately learns that they are killed and processed into cupcake icing. It is symbolic of her guilt for leading countless girls to their deaths as magical girls.
• Wretched Hive: Bertha's Brothel, a hive of scum and villainy where magical girls and witches who can't or won't handle the more "civilized" regions, but don't want to leave civilization entirely. The vast majority of its population deals in illegal enterprise, there's a massive slum populated by lost and broken girls who are regularily preyed on by slavers and drug dealers, and the closest thing to a voice of authority is a crime boss called the Madam. It's even located on the edge of a swamp.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: Mami and Charlotte have been in the afterlife for seven years by the time Kyoko and Oktavia show up. The time between the two death events was a couple weeks in the real world.
• You Are a Credit to Your Race: Reibey calls the Madam an “exceptional specimen” of her kind (humans). The Madam clearly doesn't take it as a compliment, but is too stoic and polite to say anything.
• You Cannot Grasp the True Form: The narration in the Restless arc epilogue describes communication between the Ideal Witches as being incomprehensible to humans.
  What happened next cannot be adequately explained using anthropomorphic terms. No one actually spoke. No words were used, no actual sound was made, no conventional means of communication was employed. Trying to fully quantify how such inexplicable beings conversed among themselves would require several natural laws to be rewritten and multiple groundbreaking theses to be published.
• Your Head Asplode: Arzt has a poison that causes the victim's head to explode within five seconds. She uses it to kill Lily, freeing everyone from her Compelling Voice.

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