Tear Jerker / Sleepless Domain

Warning: Spoilers Off applies to these pages. Proceed at your own risk.

• The first page of the first interstitial details how nobody is even sure if there is anything outside of their town anymore, and that the protective field that only lets the monsters in at night is as good for keeping people in as danger out, basically giving an underlying Tear Jerker vibe to the lives of the whole city.

Chapter 2

• This chapter has a series of these, all worse than before.
• First is the fight about Tessa as a leader, which has happened before.
• Tessa staying at home.
• Undine tries to keep the group together, but fails, this being stressed by a picture of the girls from before their Magical Girl times (and the title of the chapter being "The team"), with all of them smiling.
• Come evening, Undine calls Tessa to make sure she didn't change her mind and to say not to pay attention to Sally and Sylvia, but Tessa, being mature, says it's a win-win: if they do well, they will gain confidence, if they don't, they will see they need Tessa.
• By the time Tessa, who decided to check on them, finds the girls, three of them are laying very limp and bloody in their normal clothes, and after Tessa defeats the Elite Mook, Undine confirms the worst: they are already dead and Undine is dying too- she only hung in there this far because of her water powers.
• She tries to encourage a tearful Tessa with her last words, saying that the city needs Tess, but Tessa is having none of it, and says any one of the other four girls deserves to live more than she does.
• The chapter ends without us seeing the results of Tessa trying to heal Undine, apart from seeing Tessa's hair turn from pink to the original colour it had: brown.
• The last words are not at all encouraging: "On that night, before any of us knew what was happening, our team went from five members to one."
• Tessa's shocked expression when she discovers most of her team bleeding and dead in their normal clothes, with Undine hanging on for dear life. It gets worse with the realization that if Tessa had listened to Undine about paying Sally and Sylvia no mind, and had accompanied her team on their nightly patrol, Tessa could've prevented this from happening.
• Sylvia left two younger siblings behind.

Chapter 3

• Page one: A news broadcast confirms the fact that Gwen, Sylvia and Sally are indeed dead.
  • Tessa, Brought Down to Normal with her old brown hair, is sitting numbly in a hospital bed. The look on her face is heartrending.
• Page two: Downplayed compared to everything else but the colour of Tessa's speech bubble text went from reddish-pink to plain black to further signal she is no longer a magical girl.
• Page three: Undine describing the funeral: "Everyone said a lot of nice things... though there was also a lot of placating nonsense. (...) Though, to be fair... I didn't actually hear most of it."
  • The last panel of the page shows Undine at the funeral being surrounded by the dead and bloody Sally, Gwen and Sylvia, with Sylvia and Gwen roughly standing where Undine's probable parents were.
• Page four: The title page of the chapter, named "Sinking", shows Undine standing with her head underwater.
• Page five: Turns out not only did Sylvia have two yonger siblings (a brother and a sister), as shown when the girls were passing the time before their last patrol; she was also the sole breadwinner of the family, and now that she died, her mother will have to go back to work eventually, even though Sylvia saved up most of her earnings.
• Page six: Tessa is going back to a normal school, but Undine is not, because she says she still wants to fight even though she's alone.
• Page seven: Tessa, after the three deaths, calls Undine wanting to keep on fighting suicidal, and though Undine claims to have her reasons, Tessa says she cannot accept that.
  • Undine's answer? "Well, then... Thankfully, it's my decision to make. It's probably about time I made one for myself.", implying that even though she was supportive towards Tessa and defended her at the start of chapter 2, she wants to be free of her orders. She even says this as she is standing up and turning to leave.
• Page 9: a magical girl memorabilia store's reaction to the deaths of three magical girls is to put all their merch at half price. Which is very bleak when you think about it: the minute a team becomes unprofitable, their merchandise is discounted heavily to make room for more profitable teams.
• Page 15: Undine getting flashbacks to the last moments of Gwen, Sylvia and Sally when revisiting the site of the tragedy for answers.
• Page 16: The flashback goes on to show the three dead girls. It is also implied Undine forgot something very important about the whole incident.
• Page 20: Undine blaming herself for everything, as evidenced by her sentence "We always relied on Tessa to finish off ones like this. But now she can't... because of me.".
• Page 26: Heartful Punch has no idea what happened to Team Alchemical and Undine would "rather not talk about it". The Alt Text implies Undine also considers it better not to tell ("You can't punch the news, so...")
• The third interstitial has a tiny bit in the left bottom corner scribbled on a paper: "I miss you, Ellie."
  • Whoever wrote that journal, they have to keep moving as each day describes a different room.
    • It is actually describing the colours of the Inner Barrier, but the fact the writer describes where they most likely live as a base is saddening enough.

Chapter 4

• Page 4: Heartful Punch lives in a boarding house. This would be innocent usually but with the fact that the city is barriered off and nobody from the outside ever comes or could come in, this practically makes the Future's Hope Boarding House an orphanage for magical girls.
  • Later it is explained why: Her mother died shortly after childbirth and her father was against HP fighting. That was seen as enough reason for the place in a dorm.
• Page 6: Undine to herself in the mirror: "You are okay." The Alt Text describes it as a daily ritual.
  • The mirror has the team picture we saw before as the cover for chapter 2.
• Page 7 and Page 8: HP finally finds out what happened to Team Alchemical and fears Undine hates her for being Innocently Insensitive.
• Pages 9-12: Zoe being harassed for not going to the nightly patrols but going to Future's Hope and feeling it justified. Undine tries to be supportive and says she, Undine, fights because she would regret not fighting more.
• Page 15: Undine is eating outside because the others have been avoiding sitting near her.
• Page 16: Undine is feeling guilty about trying to move on and not moping all the time.
• Page 18: HP admits fighting alone is scary but says there's things that she would find much more scary.
• Pages 22-24: Tess comes by to clean her locker, and says things wouldn't be the same with her around and she herself has changed... then asks that if Undine really IS hell-bent on still fighting, she should search for a new team, saying "I wouldn't be able to sleep if I knew you were out there alone." Undine apologizes, and Tess tells her not to blame herself: as it turns out, their powers all leave one day anyways. Tess even cries when Undine promises her to ask around at the teams.
  • The bit about their powers not being for forever bears repeating. Imagine you're used to having them and find them kinda cool despite all the dangers, and somehow manage to survive night after night with your friends. Then one day, they are gone. You've lost a skillset you relied on, you lost the way you were used to thinking as the one to be useful with to the city, and now you've no choice but to wait at night knowing others are out there risking their lives just like you were before and there is nothing you can do to help them.
• Page 24: Tess blaming herself because, "if I was a good friend none of this would have happened."

Chapter 5

• Page 1: aka the cover card for the chapter, Drifting. It has Undine with arms just hanging by her side while a black hand is reaching out for her from the back and several colourful arms try to grab her from the front.
• Pages 2-4: Undine tries Team Forte, a musically-themed team, asking to join, but they refuse. Her timid "I'll just go" is heartbreaking.
• Page 8: Right when it seems everyone is on board with her joining, Team Blitz has to reject Undine too, because their leader, Pop Blitz/Steffi, has still trouble controlling her electricity powers and would shock Undine or others by accident.
• Page 13-15: The mysterious girl reappears and teases Undine about her lack of team. Undine demands her to come out and fight, but the girl answers, "how could I kill something that's basically already dead?" then laughs when Undine wants an explanation before leaving. It ends with Undine asking to know what she's done to deserve this and crying.
• Page: 30-31: Undine and the nameless man she saves talk about the life of magical girls, the very real burden on them, and Undine saying that even if she knew some of her friends would die she would have still chosen to be a magical girl, because someone has to do it, and saying she and the others are not kids, they are magical girls.

Chapter 6

• Page 1-2: Tessa crying at her friends' graves and blaming herself for their deaths.
• Page 20: Undine finally takes a night off patrol... and ends up crying herself to sleep.
• Page 29: Tessa's so triggered by seeing a poster promoting registering as a magical girl featuring Sylvia that she ends up tearing it down when no one's looking.

Chapter 7

• Undine tells Heartful Punch everything about her experiences with the Purple One and how she thinks that she's the reason everyone died. On top of that, since the Purple One seems to have a grudge against Undine specifically, Undine worries if that means their deaths were her fault and, at this point, breaks down into tears. Heartful Punch believes her and consoles her, telling her things are not her fault, no matter how much it seems like it.
• HP is the first person Undine has told any of this to. The reason she hasn't gone to the proper authorities on the matter is because she expects one of two outcomes: They think Undine is having some trauma-induced hallucination, since Undine is well aware only she has seen the Purple One, or they believe Undine and sideline her for her own protection while they figure things out. Undine actually fears the latter more, because she feels that being forced to sit and wait while other people figure things out will actually drive her crazy.
• Heartful Punch begins to explain that she gets where Undine is coming from, but can't get farther than "It's not on your level, but..." before the announcement that it's time to transform interrupts her. That sentence, combined with other small hints and the fact that HP has, without question, been the most empathetic to Undine's problems, heavily imply she's got something rough in her own history.
• Forced to figure out a way to finish off monsters she's captured, Undine uses her own version of the attack the monster from chapter 2 used to kill her friends, lifting one water-trapped monster over the other and crashing them into each other. HP congratulates her on the brutal finish, only to immediately spot something is wrong. Undine plays it off as minor and opts not to talk about it.

Chapter 10

• Remember how HP lives in a boarding house? Turns out the reason is connected to why her eyes are blue instead of pink as would be expected- her mother was still a magical girl when giving birth and died shortly after. The blue was HP's mother's colour.
• When talking about why the higher ups would keep the fact that giving birth while still having your powers transfers them to the baby in a way, HP says the higher ups don't want to acknowledge the possibility of a Teen Pregnancy among magical girls because that would not mix well with the pure image they have and want to have of the girls, and if they admit the magical girls have faults like everyone, that means the girls don't just exist to fight and die for the higher ups.
• HP's father was adamant about HP not fighting. In the end, HP was offered a place in the dorms, which she took. HP, though, has no illusions on why she was offered the place at all: "No sense letting a girl go to waste."
• How Mitsuki, HP's mother died. One night, her mother's former temmates, Starlight Spear and Sunlight Spear, see an emergency flare. Starlight Spear hurries ahead on the off chance there is still someone she can help. Slowly, she realizes she is in the vicinity of Mitsuki's home. She stops at a house full of ice — Mitsuki's. Mitsuki's mother, still clutching the flare's empty cylinder, is dead on the doorstep. Starlight Spear cautiously goes in, calling for Mitsuki, unknowingly walking over the body of Mitsuki's father, frozen under the ice, then hears the inconsolable wailing of baby Kokoro. In the nursery, she sees Mitsuki, half-embedded in ice, slumped against a chest of drawers, turned sideways, and pushed in the way of the wardrobe where the crying is coming from. Mitsuki's dying act was making sure her daughter lived. As Starlight Spear goes to Mitsuki and touches her body, she starts a Rapid-Fire "No!" as we are treated to pictures of Mitsuki in her life, smiling, blushing, holding her baby... then starts crying as the picture shifts to her dead face. Oh and the kicker? Starlight Spear/Mingxing was the one to tell HP what happened when she was old enough to ask, as the first on the scene.
• While she's moved past it by the present day of the comic, Heartful Punch reveals that, for a long time, she blamed herself for her mother's and grandparents' deaths, as her birth robbed Mitsuki of her powers and made them vulnerable. In other words, Heartful Punch believed her being born killed her loved ones.
• During the above conversation, Undine recalls how quickly everyone else seemed to move on from the deaths of Sally, Gwen and Sylvia, and she flashes back to when she looked on in horror at the poster advertising Team Alchemical merch at half price.
  "When it happened, everyone seemed shocked...for a few days. But then everyone moved on, and there was that sense of... 'well, these things are bound to happen'. I guess it's natural, but...I would be lying if I said it didn't get to me."

Chapter 12

• Tessa...isn't in a good mental state right now. She hasn't spoken to Undine in weeks, her parents are concerned that she's staying out later and later (likely at the cemetery where her friends are buried), and she watches silently as Rue is getting along with Will better than she has. It starts really showing when all of Tessa's comic panels start getting fractured.
  • The only time the panels are not cracked? When Tessa is in the graveyard.
  • They weren't kidding about the weeks either: if the Alt Text on page 24 is to be believed, the flower growing^note Blink and you miss it but it is definitely shown as planted, not as a cut flower, not to mention it was shown as only a sprout the first time their graves are shown at Sally's grave is an amaryllis. At minimum, it takes six weeks for one of those to bloom.
  • Tessa called Undine earlier too, but was told that Undine was away (practicing with HP). This time though, she is relieved when Mrs. Wells tells her Undine is out, like she called at a time when that would be the case on purpose. She also doesn't answer or is always away when Undine calls.
• And to top it off, she may have driven away Rue, the only real friend she has at her new school, by accusing her of faking her magical girl status. Rue isn't. The next chapter shows her transform.
• When Anemone appears to Tessa in the cemetery, apparently hoping to find some actual information on the Purple One, and later testing Tessa's knowledge by asking her if she knows the identity of the statue in front of them (very obviously modeled after the Woman in White) it quickly becomes clear that Tessa has no idea what she's talking about. Instead of becoming frustrated or upset, Anemone seems to be more resigned than anything else, even claiming that she's used to people not believing her. How long has Anemone had to carry at least one Cassandra Truth with her? How long has she been trying to find someone who knows something, anything, about the Woman in White? How long did it take for it to become just another part of her routine?
• When Tessa gets home, she overhears her parents fighting, helpless as to how to help their daughter. The cracks which symbolized her mental state reappear as she puts on a facade calling for her parents that she is home after closing the door louder than needed so they don't suspect she overheard them.
• When Tessa remembers what Anemone says about the Purple One lurking outside her window, she steels herself and pulls the shade open. When she sees the message the Purple One left for her - "I'll be here whenever you're ready" - Tessa just breaks, crying and smiling at the same time. End chapter.

Chapter 14

• Cassidy has the gall to declare that she, and pretty much everyone else at least in the Training Club, is convinced Undine killed Team Alchemical and depowered Tessa herself. This after weeks, if not months, of training together.
  • Before refusing to tell the whole story and explain herself, Undine says that under other circumstances, she may have opened up to Cassidy and the others too, and "we might have even agreed that it was my fault".
• Undine's struggle to respond to Cassidy's Armor-Piercing Question about why, if she's worried about HP facing the same fate as the rest of Team Alchemical, she still spends time with her.
• While the rest of the Training Club coming to Undine's defense is initially a heartwarming moment, it quickly turns sour when Undine becomes overwhelmed by the group's in-fighting and flees the scene - but not without shouting an apology over her shoulder. The kicker? Right before doing so, she recalls Kokoro telling her what the Purple One told her over the phone. It's very likely that Undine believes if the Training Club becomes too heavily invested in either defending her or uncovering her role in the Team Alchemical massacre, they'll be targeted as well.
• The interstitial gives us a glimpse into Cassidy's thought process before getting the dream: she desperately wanted to be special, to help, like HP... and falls asleep begging for a chance. In that view, her powers being activated by her cutting herself in half with her scissors seem like a cruel twist.

Chapter 15

• HP's expression after Vedika shares her perspective of the night's events, as she looks to Cassidy and asks for confirmation that she attacked Undine with her weapon. Cassidy frantically claims they were just sparring, and HP stares at her as if seeing her friend for the first time.
• HP's calm but firm words to Cassidy: "... you're right. Maybe I don't [understand]. And you don't understand Undine. Or me. So please just leave both of us alone." Cassidy's face says it all: she knows how much she messed up.
• HP finds Undine sitting on a roof overlooking the memorial for the fallen members of Team Alchemical. The memorial still has flowers and plushies, and the offerings have been arranged in a heart shape.
• Undine remarks how weird it feels now the street has been repaired and is back in traffic and says once the offerings for the memorial peter out, it'll be just like any old street and people will forget what happened there... then adds it may be all for the best if they do.
• Even her own team doesn't seem to like Cassidy much: they didn't seem to care much that she hadn't shown up for patrol, going on without her.
  • On the other angle, one of her teammates says Cassidy is probably "hanging with her cool club friends", and Lettie, the team leader, chides her for the attitude. This coupled with the fact that even Cassidy's official bio says her team is "pretty whatever" shows the poor relationship in the team from all sides.
• Both of Cassidy's clones are destroyed at the same time, causing Cassidy to die without leaving any trace of what happened.
  • Given that much of Cassidy's motivation was the desire to be special and important, the fact that she dies alone, no one even aware that she was in any sort of danger, without even a body left behind, is upsetting.

Chapter 16

• Lettie, the leader of Team Flash (who we last saw telling off a teammate who was voicing resentment over Cassidy's plain preference of the training club to Team Flash), drops the bomb that Cassie never made it home and it was reported to the police and the school. Undine, Vedika and Kokoro's shocked faces speak for themselves.
  • Which means Undine's worst fear came true. Someone else has died because of her (or she thinks that anyway). Undine's seen shaking as Lettie talks to Vedika until Kokoro places a hand over Undine's.
  • And the way Vedika said "You don't think...she was pretty upset" makes it sound like she thinks Cassidy killed herself.
  • Lettie blames herself for Cassidy's disappearance as much as Undine blames herself.
• Vedika reveals she knew about Goops after accidentally seeing her in Undine's mind during their time practicing...and she never said a word because seeing into people's minds is all she can do, so she felt there was nothing she could do to help.
  • And what did Vedika tell Cassidy that got her suspicious about Undine and her role in the deaths of Team Alchemical? A very innocuous comment that Undine might be dealing with things she can't talk about. Cue Cassidy, who already hates Undine, jumping to conclusions...
  • Unfortunately, all the revelations leaves Bud hurt that she didn't know about any of this, feeling that no one trusted her with it, and a fight starts. This causes Undine to flash back to the fight Team Alchemical had before they died...thankfully this leads to her Moment of Awesome in which she gets everyone to talk it out before the infighting tears them apart.
• And then the final tearjerker, combined with Nightmare Fuel: Tessa has responded to Goops.

Chapter 17

• We see Team Flash being badly shaken by what happened to Cassidy: The member who was flippant about Cassidy's absence is seen crying, with Lettie and the white-haired teammate trying to comfort her. As Kokoro passes them, Lettie just asks Kokoro not to worry about them.
• Many had suspected it since the flashback to Mitsuki's death, which cut off as ice started going up Mingxing's arm, but this chapter confirmed it: Mingxing lost an arm the night Mitsuki died. She's seen with a prosthetic.
• Kokoro's relationship with her father is so fractured that she'd rather be interrogated about Cassidy's disappearance than talk about him.
• Kokoro nearly froze to death the night her mother died. She looked so small and pathetic when Mingxing and Leana finally got to her (and no longer had the strength to cry) that it brings tears to one's eyes.
• Mingxing burnt out the rest of her magic in order to get Kokoro to a hospital, and this was literally moments after losing her arm. At least she thought it was Worth It.
  • And then there's Leana/Sunlight Spear. In a few moments her (technically former) teammate was killed and her other teammate lost her powers. She was as alone as Undine initially was.

Chapter 18

• Just the title page is enough to get the tears going. Undine is frantically reaching out toward a falling Tessa, who doesn't seem to care at all that she's falling. Then there's the name of the chapter: "Distributary". A distributary is defined as 'a branch of a river that does not return to the main stream after leaving it'. So it's clear right away this chapter will be about the fracturing relationship between Undine and Tessa, and how Tessa feels Undine has 'moved on' from Team Alchemical.
• Undine finally tells Tessa about Goops, and Tessa is horrified at the idea that Team Alchemical was targeted. Then she asks for a description of Goops, and the fractured frames start appearing again as she realizes she's still being targeted.
• Tessa's thoughts as she sneaks downstairs to the door: she blames herself for all of Undine's troubles, feels like she's dragging everyone down, and is just so tired of it all. No wonder Goops came to her.
• Tessa thought Goops was lying about being able to give her powers and was just trying to lure her out to kill her... and she stepped out anyway.

Chapter ???

• It's revealed Tessa was the last one to awaken as a magical girl, with her dream showing her being left behind by her friends.
• The reason Tessa was the last to get her powers is because the Woman in White saw how strong her potential was...but also knows it's Lonely at the Top for magical girls as powerful as Tessa. Tessa just points out she's already isolated because she's the only one without powers. This makes so much of Tessa's story arc Harsher in Hindsight as her own arrogance led to her going right back to square one: a girl isolated.

Chapter 19

• Take a good look at Tessa-Goops's face when Kokoro blames her for the deaths in Team Alchemical. There's almost two reactions on that face: the side with the covered up eye is grinning as she claims it (presumably Goops being proud of that), but the other, with the visible eye...the mouth looks more like it's grimacing. Tessa still blames herself for her friends' deaths.
• It's implied Anemone is quite literally a Barrier Maiden, aka the source of the inner barrier: when we see her, her inner room, all the objects in it, even her hair and clothes are the same color as the barrier. And she looks asleep, but Tessa Alter firmly believes Anemone can still hear and see her.

Chapter 20

• Tessa Alter suggests Anemone isn't as immune to the Woman in White's Psychic Static as she thinks she is. And based on the Wham Shot of static in Anemone's eyes, she's right.
  • A later comic confirms this: Anemone doesn't remember the Woman in White's name.
• A monster grabbing Vedika's ankle and inadvertently activating her powers leads to a startling revelation: the monsters are sentient, might very well have once been human, and are screaming to be saved. And the worst part is Vedika almost immediately forgot about it thanks to the memory block.
• Chapter 20's Interstitial focuses on how Kokoro got Kicks, which all starts when Kicks's mother was killed by a monster when she was a tiny kitten. Kokoro clarifies that although monsters are not known to attack animals stuck out at night deliberately, strays can end up at the wrong place at the wrong time, or (as was implicitly the case here) a mother might attack a nearby monster to protect her young ones. This gives another level to the connection she has with Kicks, a fellow orphan whose mother died protecting her. What's more, the Catfe lady concludes Kicks can't be very old, given she can't open her eyes fully yet, so maturity wise she's about the same age as Kokoro was when she lost her mother.

Chapter 22

• Kokoro talks about her falling out with her father, how scared he was about her becoming a magical girl (especially since he knew it'd be inevitable, given the circumstances of her conception), how she chafed under his constant concern and questions when she just wanted to do her job, and how eventually it got to be too much for her and she moved to the dorm.
  "But every night when I'd go out, he'd look at me like I was going to die. Maybe he always looked at me like that."
  • She has thought about moving back in with her father, but things are still so awkward that she's hesitant to even bring up the idea, and figures it will be moot when she ages out of being a magical girl anyway.
• Undine talking about how, even with all the drama and tragedy going on in her life, life is continuing on and she also has to worry about mundane things like a math test. And how upset she is that this is what's worrying her.
• It's implied that Anemone got so unsettled from her encounter with Tessa Alter that she's unable to concentrate fully on the inner barrier, given how it seems to be multiple smaller barriers that Tessa Alter, a few monsters, and HP easily ripped open.

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