It was back at the Magical Girl HQ, not too far north of Mexico City, where Kyoko began to realize she was losing touch with the youth of today.

She first began to have these thoughts when she walked by the training room, where she saw a few of the newest magical girl trainees doing warm-up exercises. Because most of the girls only stayed here a few weeks before returning to their home Kyoko usually ignored them (yes, the UN did accuse the Magical Girl Squad of running ideologically-charged vigilante camps and planting sleeper agents across the world, but that was a story for a different time), but this time something struck her as odd, so she had to take a look. After the warm-ups were finished, each of the couple-dozen girls sat down and began using their smartphones. Nobody was talking to anyone else!

Now, Kyoko was clearly not one obsessed with smart technology, since she nor any other member of her team had ever used one in any of these stories so far-- fucking fact check me and prove me wrong-- but she did understand the appeal of them. Being able to look up clips of Minerva Mink at the touch of a button certainly had its appeal. But to ignore camaraderie and friendship to value apps instead? Well... that was more criminal than the time Kyoko threatened a McDonald’s employee because they didn’t have the Shamrock Shake.

Kyoko, deciding she really wanted to know what was up with all this, stepped closer to the trainees, up to two yellow-haired girls from Ethiopia who sat back-to-back as they typed away on their phones.

“Yo, what are you guys doing?” Kyoko asked.

they didn’t immediately respond, and that set her off. “Hey, I’m talking to you two buttercups.” Buttercups, really? You’re going for a hair color-based insult? That’s low, even for you. “I wasn’t asking you, Narrator.” Suit yourself then, Hot Tamale. “I actually kinda like those candies. Anyway, ladies! Look at me!”

“Yes, Deputy Kaname?” one of them asked after lethargically pulling her head away from her phone screen and towards her commanding officer. Everyone has priorities.

“What’s gotten into you all? It’s like your phones are suddenly more important than your training.”

“Actually, Deputy,” the girl said. “We’re focusing on our training right now. We’re talking about that big match between Miku and Davi yesterday in the group chat.”

“....Group chat? What’s what?”

Kyoko was only thirty.

Sure, she’d been married to Madoka for over fifteen of those and already had given birth to a child, but she was a millennial through and through. Getting out of touch this early was sending her into something of an existential crisis.

She was really craving some Hot Tamales now.

“You aren’t in any group chats, Deputy Kaname? How do you and your teammates communicate outside of missions?” She stood up and shoved her phone. There was a huge chatlog of messages from all sorts of magical girl trainees, past and present, and it looked like a new message was popping up every thirty seconds. “We keep up with everything here by talking about it on the chat.” For a group dedicated to organizing and training there sure did seem to be a lot of silly animated GIFs of sassy people snapping being posted.

“And you guys are... all in this chat?” Kyoko asked.

“Yep.” She motioned to the twenty-something other girls all sitting and using their phones. “Well except for Becky over there,” she said, referring to the girl with long blue hair sitting off in a corner of the room by herself. “She said Darling in the Franxx was a misunderstood masterpiece, so we’re excluding her from everything.”

Oh, kids these days...

Maybe thanks to getting exiled to Mexico and getting married at age fourteen on a whim Kyoko didn’t get to experience some of the same youthful flights of fancy so many teenage girls got to go through, which in this instance was a large clique-ish online chats that bully on an anime-themed basis.

“Can I join?” Kyoko asked.

The Ethiopian girls turned to look at each other and then to her. “Uhh... yeah.... sure?”

“Oh wait, but I don’t have a smartphone yet.”

“Oh, well then... uh--”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get one faster than you can say, ‘Not My Star Wars, Reeeee!’”

She was sure these girls thought her joke was very funny, and they were only not laughing because they were engaged in stimulating text message discussions.

“Sorry I’m late everyone.”

Hey, it was Madoka. Kyoko forgot that she was substituting for El Guante this week while he recovered from back surgery. Who knew having machine guns for hands could weigh someone down so much?

She was wearing some sexy gym clothes and her hair up in a smoking-hot bun. If they weren’t here in the middle of a room full of teenage girls, Kyoko’d waltz right up to her and rip--

Ahem.

“Hey, Madoka,” Kyoko said in a completely unassuming manner.

“You don't usually come here to the trainee gym,” Madoka said. “Is there anything going on?”

“No, not really.”

“Oh, so you’re just trying to help me out and get on my good side?” she winked and slyly smiled.

“Oh.... uh, well, I’m going to be pretty busy today.”

Madoka leaned in closer to Kyoko and said, “Please.”

“Wha?”

“These girls are so bad. Were we this sloppy when we were teens? How did we even survive? I can’t teach them.”

“Uh honey--”

“Shut up.” Madoka was crying, as she was extremely prone to do. Kyoko wiped the tears from her eyes. “oh, I’m sorry, it’s just... I’m so glad we have the Ryoshi Program...”

“I’ll help you out, don’t worry,” Kyoko said, now ensnared by the power of guilt.

“Thanks, Kyoko...” Madoka took a step closer to Kyoko. “After work, I’m going to tear into you so hard you won’t-- Ahem.”

Both of them were blushing, and the dozens of girls in the gym around them were starting to stare.

“Okay girls,” Madoka said. “We’re going to start our lesson today on the Law of Thermodynamics and how they no longer apply in cases when...”