Chapter 10

### Appearing

Undine, Ms. Wells, Heartful Punch, Zoe, Forte Bass, Bud, Cassidy, Harley, Vedika, Outrageous Lime, Outrageous Lemon, Outrageous Apple, The Purple One

### Referenced

Mr. Wells, Team Forte (as poster), Claire, Alex, Silver Strike, Suzy, Mr. Aichi, Moonlight Spear, Sunlight Spear, Starlight Spear, Mrs. Watanabe, Mr. Watanabe

Later in the morning of Wednesday, September 11th, Undine and her mother are eating breakfast at Dineys. They discuss Undine's recent team-up with Heartful Punch.

HP is then seen waking up in her room, where she has her own conversation with her cat, Kicks. After arriving at school, Zoe intercepts her and thanks HP for saving her relatives the night before. Before HP learns her name, Bud, Cassidy, and Harley arrive, scaring Zoe off. Bud uses her gossip powers to determine Zoe’s identity and that of her sister’s: it is revealed that Zoe’s last name is Blecher and the magical girl alias of her older sister was Silver Strike. Vedika joins the girls soon after, and HP thanks her for her help at the hospital the previous night. It is revealed that although Vedika is not a healer, her powers are noncombat, and she volunteers at the hospital to help others since she cannot fight.

After school is over, HP goes home to her dorm, nervous about the upcoming call with Undine. The phone rings, startling Kicks, and anticipating Undine, she goes to pick it up. Instead of Undine, HP hears The Purple One’s voice, who taunts her by saying that if she continues going down the path she’s taken, HP will end up like her mother. This statement shocks and alarms HP, who hangs up immediately. A few seconds later, the phone rings again. Seeing that Kicks has no reaction this time, HP answers; the caller turns out to be Undine. Shaken by The Purple One’s call, HP asks Undine to meet her at Future‘s Promise so they can talk in person, and Undine agrees. A few minutes later, they meet at the school and go up to the roof to talk in private.

HP reveals that the reason her eyes are blue instead of pink, and therefore don’t match the rest of her color scheme, is because her mother, who was a blue magical girl, gave birth to HP when she was 17 and still had powers. When HP’s mother gave birth to her, her power left her and flowed into HP, and manifested itself in her blue eyes, otherwise leaving HP as a normal baby. However, HP knew that she would become a magical girl because of her mother’s powers. HP believes that she’s an unusually powerful magical girl because of her mother’s power as well. HP also mentions that the CDD tries to hide this information about this process.

When Undine asks why the information that HP is sharing with her isn’t public, HP grows more solemn. She states that she believes it’s because the idea of pregnancy among magical girls interferes with the public image of magical girls as perfect warriors, and that the realization that magical girls are as flawed and human as anyone else means that they don’t exist just to fight and die for the city.

HP states that when her powers awoke, her father was terrified, and tried to prevent her from fighting. However, HP was determined to fight, and argued with her father about going out at night; when she told her magical girl counselor about her home situation, her counselor offered to move her to the Future’s Promise dorms, and HP accepted. HP explains that since she had always known that she would become a magical girl, she had been waiting for when her powers awoke. She knew that wanted to fight to protect people, and also wanted to understand her mother more.

Undine asks what HP’s mother was like, and HP sits up, eager to tell her. She says that from what she heard, her mother was pretty cool. Her name was Mitsuki, and her magical girl title was Moonlight Spear; her mother wasn’t really interested in the media circus, so not many people were aware of her. She was a member of the thematic Team Spear, which had two other members; Sunlight Spear and Starlight Spear. They had been a team for several years before her mother started dating her father.

When the CDD discovered Moonlight Spear was pregnant, they sent a government representative to explain to her what would happen with her powers; nevertheless, Moonlight Spear decided to carry HP to term and raise her as her daughter. Although everyone was initially surprised, Moonlight received support from HP’s father and her parents.

A few months later, Starlight Spear and Sunlight Spear were on patrol when they noticed a flare coming from a distance away. Thinking it could be a barrier breach, they go to investigate. Starlight arrives there first, and realizes the flare came from where Moonlight lives. She sees that the barrier had been breached by ice crystals that presumably came from the monster. Starlight looks down and, with horror, sees the dead body of Moonlight’s mother, Mrs. Watanabe, who had been stabbed with an ice crystal and sent off the flare moments before she died. Mr. Watanabe, Moonlight’s father, was also dead and trapped under the ice inside their house. Rushing inside, Starlight hears Kokoro’s cries and runs towards their source. She enters Kokoro’s nursery and, aghast, sees Moonlight’s body; in the last moments before her death, Moonlight had barricaded the closet where Kokoro, still an infant, was hiding.

### Trivia

* Diastole, the chapter title, is defined as "the phase of the heartbeat when the heart muscle relaxes and allows the chambers to fill with blood.”
* This chapter is the first since Chapter 2 that has not been titled with a water-related theme.
* This chapter is the first since Chapter 2 that has not been told mainly from Undine’s perspective.
* As of Chapter 10, Page 7, Zoe has officially been confirmed as transgender in-comic.
* HP’s mother’s silhouette is the shadow HP is casting on the chapter cover.