Fanfic / Fargo

Warning- it is highly recommended that you watch Puella Magi Madoka Magica in its entirety (including The Movie) before going any further. As this fanfic contains spoilers up to and including the original anime's current ending, all spoilers not contained within the fanfic itself are unmarked. Proceed at your own risk.

The Rebellion has ended. The Incubators have been overthrown. Magic has returned to the world, and Magical Girls continue to do battle with wraiths to protect mankind and prevent the end of the universe via heat death. From her throne in Mitakihara City, Homura Akemi, the Adversary of God, oversees the system and ensures that it runs ship-shape, the debatably-loyal Kyubey at her side. Being a Magical Girl is still a horrifying and dangerous job, but with the witches gone, it's infinitely better than before.

However, across the Pacific Ocean, the winds of change are brewing...

In the snowy flatlands of the American Midwest, snarky, jaded Sloan Redfearn resides in Fargo, North Dakota as its resident magical girl. It wasn't always this way, however- seven months prior, Sloan was the head girl of the "Minneapolis Seven" (A loose team of magical girls that protect the Twin Cities area in Minnesota) before being ousted by her treacherous second-in-command and Only Friend, Clair Ibsen. Now, Sloan lives alone in Fargo, nursing a grudge towards her former friend, while her Soul Gem grows darker and darker every day thanks to the slim wraith pickings in the city. When Kyubey offers her a unique opportunity —to travel to nearby Williston and quell a wraith infestation that has recently sprung up— Sloan jumps at the chance to recharge her Soul Gem and seek revenge on Clair.

When she gets there, the situation immediately begins to grow complicated. Sloan has unexpected teammates to collaborate with in the wraith hunt: cheerful but sociopathic Delaney Pollack, bitter and obstinate Erika Dufresne, and "Omaha", a mysterious Wild Card who appears and vanishes at will and knows a lot more than she's letting on. The plot thickens as tensions between the girls rise and an Ancient Conspiracy that threatens to topple the magical girl system begins to gradually trickle in through the cracks- and for reasons unknown to her, Sloan is at the very center of it.

Fargo is an ambitious Puella Magi Madoka Magica fic that introduces a Cast Herd of OCs and details the fallout of Rebellion. Notable features include its fast-moving story, large, well-developed cast, and increasingly-complex plot. As of now, the story is complete at 43 chapters (and a credits page).

As of 2018, Fargo now has a sequel, titled Chicago, which focuses on the Legion of Chicago in the aftermath of the events in Mitikihara City and features several returning characters from the original story. It can be found here.

All spoilers from the first arc, and some of the second, are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

---

Tropes from Fargo include:

• Action Girl: Everybody. You basically have to be a bonafide badass to survive in the Crapsack World that is the Madoka Magica 'verse.
• Alien Geometries: All over the place in Williston, which is infested by reality-warping miasma. The entire town has been bloated to massive proportions, no doors lead where they should, and during the girls' first trek into the Williston Inn the walls start corkscrewing like a top and nearly crush Sloan when they suddenly close together.
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: The final stage of the battle with Abraxas in Chapter 11 takes this form, as the archon panics and begins to warp reality at a rapid rate, dying the arena all sorts of zany colors.
  • Clair inverts this trope in Chapter 19 by using her illusions to drain the area of color, making it impossible for Sloan to tell where to shoot.
• A Million Is a Statistic: Kyubey, as usual, doesn't show much concern for the lives of individual people (or indeed, entire cities and regions) so long as his energy quotas get met. When Yaldabaoth awakens in Minneapolis, he discusses the ensuing massacre as if it were a pleasant picnic, not even batting an eye as he discusses the gruesome and prolonged death of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people courtesy of the archon's actions. Ironically, the exact same speech is what convinces Hennepin to help the other surviving girls.
• And Then What?: Delaney constantly asks as much of Sloan regarding her desire to kill Clair. It never works.
• Angels, Devils and Squid: Like in the source material, Magical Girls, wraiths, and the Incubators are the angels, devils, and squid, respectively.
• Anyone Can Die: The author isn't shy from killing off important characters to establish that the setting is indeed a Crapsack World where Anyone Can Die. By the story's end, it's probably easier to count the important characters who haven't died: specifically, Mami, Hennepin, Kyoko, Anoka, Cicero and her legion, and Homura, and Madoka's comments at the end of the story straight-up say that all of them will eventually be killed by the Wraiths or taken by the Cycles.
• Apocalypse How: Homura's negligence towards the gathering of entropy is ever-so-slowly inching the universe towards a Class X-4. Kyubey (as well as Clair and Delaney, his Unwitting Pawns) is determined to prevent it.
• Arc Villain: The Williston archon (a.k.a. "Abraxas") for Arc 1. Clair Ibsen for Arc 2. Homura for Arc 3.
• Armor-Piercing Question: After a long period of being tortured and interrogated for information by Clair in Chapter 20, Delaney finally manages to ask a counter-question that completely throws Clair off her game: "Are you adopted?"
  • Omaha delivers a particularly effective one near the end of Chapter 41 to Homura: "Who is happy now: Her or you?"
• Attack Its Weak Point: The default method of dealing with archons. For Abraxas, it's the enormous pit of oil it both creates and drains, which Sloan sets on fire. For Yaldabaoth, it's the face.
• Badass Longcoat: Sloan's precious, precious coat, which she wears even while transformed. It's a filthy and ragged thing, but it's the only thing she has left of home. Mami buys her a new one while she's in Japan, which proves much nicer than the original.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: Magical girls can ignore standard biological needs (such as hunger, thirst, and yes, air) by burning energy from their Soul Gem to pick up the slack, though it's resource-inefficient.
• Batman Gambit: Clair's plan is a very drawn-out version of this. By betraying Sloan, she caused the latter to develop a profound hatred for her, and intensified that hatred by sending Omaha to interfere with the wraith extermination in Williston, and ultimately kill Erika. By that point, Sloan is so blinded with rage that the desire to kill Clair completely filled her being. And by finally killing Sloan now that she's back in Minneapolis, Clair hopes to commit a sin so terrible it spawns the most powerful archon ever seen- the spoils from which will empower her Soul Gem so much she'll be able to defeat Homura Akemi herself and wrest control of the Law of the Cycles before handing it over to Kyubey, whom she believes is the rightful controller over it.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Not a single girl whose wish has been identified seems to not regret making it. Sloan even lampshades the fact that contract wishes are more-or-less universally terrible in hindsight.
• Big Bad: Homura and the Incubators as a Big Bad Duumvirate. They operate and perpetuate the Magical Girl system, and as a result are the ultimate villains behind all or at least most of the story's happenings. They also hate each other with a passion, and much of the plot of Arc 2 serves as the arguable backdrop for their Cosmic Chess Game over who will remain in control over the magical girl system.
• Big Damn Heroes
  • Delaney's introduction in Chapter 2 is saving Sloan from a swarm of wraiths.
  • Omaha comes out of nowhere to rescue Sloan from wraiths in Chapter 10. She repeats the gesture twice, in Chapter 10 and then again in Chapter 11 (while also saving Delaney to boot).
  • After apparently dying in the battle with the archon, Delaney reappears to save Sloan from being killed by Omaha in Chapter 12.
  • Omaha, yet again, rescues Sloan and Delaney from an ambush by Sepulveda in Chapter 18.
  • Carmichael in Chapter 19, appearing suddenly to disrupt Clair's magic and knock out Hennepin while Sloan is fighting with the latter two.
• Big Damn Kiss: Coming somewhat out of nowhere, Sloan gets hers with Seraph!Erika in the final chapter.
• Big Good: Denver, while also The Ghost and a Bit Character at best, is arguably considered this for North American magical girls, as the administrator of the forum most American magical girls are a member of.
• Bittersweet Ending: The ending of Arc 1. The Williston Three defeat the archon, but Omaha kills Erika in the aftermath, Clair is still out there to ensure that Sloan isn't safe, and nothing about the Wretched Hive that is Williston has been changed by the miasma's dispersal.
  • The story itself also ends with one of these. So many girls have died or been taken by the Law of the Cycles, but Homura finally has her Heel Realization and returns Madoka's god powers to their rightful owner, ensuring the universe isn't going to die from heat death anytime soon- unfortunately, that also means the wraith system will have to persist for the foreseeable future, and perhaps forever.
• Bling of War: The Chicago girls are all decked out in shiny, golden armor. It isn't just for show, either- Cicero's armor, at least, is enchanted by the Empress of Chicago, and thusly tough enough to tank a hit from basically anything without breaking.
• Book Ends: Arc 1 begins and ends with Sloan hitchhiking. At the start, she gets a trucker to drive her partway to Williston, at the end, she accepts Delaney's offer to drive her to Minneapolis to face Clair.
• Boom, Headshot!: Delaney gets shot through the head by Bloomington, and it's not a pretty little headshot at all. Thanks to her Healing Factor, though, it's barely a minor inconvenience.
• Break the Cutie: All over the place. Much of the main cast is very much broken, some of them in the backstory (Sloan, Erika, Omaha) and some in the present story (Bloomington, Woodbury).
• Burger Fool: It's not a restaurant, but Sloan's job at a no-name convenience store at the start of the story is very much an example of this trope.
• Calling Your Attacks: Zig-Zagged. Most girls don't play by this trope (with Sloan lampshading that girls can become reliant on this trope to fight properly), though a few do, Erika and Woodbury being the primary examples.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Homura would desperately like to get rid of Kyubey permanently (his unhidden desire to reinstate the witch system being only the top of a long list of reasons), but needs him around to keep the magical girl system running with anything approaching efficiency. In the final arc, she seriously considers killing him even despite this, but ultimately never goes through with it.
• Chekhov's Gun
  • During her Motive Rant to Sloan in Chapter 7, Delaney briefly mentions that she gained a magical knife as part of her wish. It comes in handy during her fight with Omaha in Chapter 12.
  • Omaha is stated on multiple occasions to closely resemble Homura. In Chapter 22, she uses this likeness to her advantage to confuse the Clara Dolls Homura's sent to kill Sloan.
• Chekhov's Skill: Sloan's finisher. After going unused for most of the story (it only works while in sunlight, which can be blocked out by wraith miasma) it finally comes in handy against Yaldabaoth, courtesy of Delaney levitating Sloan above the clouds so she can access the sunlight.
• Civvie Spandex: Sloan deliberately keeps her Badass Longcoat on even after transforming. Exaggerated since said Longcoat obscures her magical girl outfit, something that has caused fellow magical girls to either mistake her for a civilian or think she has such a terrible fashion sense as to get that mangy thing as her magical outfit.
• Clothing Damage: It's never permanent since magic can just be used to repair the damage, but it pops up a few times:
  • Sloan rips open her jacket during her fight with the worm wraith in Chapter 6.
  • Delaney's dress gets positively shredded courtesy of her numerous injuries during the Abraxas battle, by the end, it's little more than rags.
  • Something of a Running Gag with Anoka. Every time she fights, her outfit accumulates more and more damage, especially during her fight with Sloan at Clair's house in Chapter 26.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Clair puts Delaney through it after capturing her, repeatedly dunking her Soul Gem into boiling water as a workaround for Delaney's pain resistance. She doesn't really get anything out of it, aside from the revelation that she and Delaney are, somehow, related.
• Crapsack World: Unlike canon, Fargo makes no effort to hide the fact that being a magical girl is dangerous and traumatic. Death is violent and commonplace, and many girls have to stoop very low just to scrape by.
• Curb-Stomp Battle
  • Sloan takes down Bloomington in a matter of seconds when the two throw down in Chapter 16. Later on in the same chapter, Sloan and Delaney have their asses handed to them courtesy of a surprise attack by St. Paul.
  • Calling Sloan and Ramsey's confrontation in Chapter 24 a 'fight' would be a major exaggeration. The power and skill gaps between the two are readily apparent, and the only reason Ramsey stands a chance at all is because Sloan's also fighting with the Clara Dolls at the same time.
  • Kyoko mops the floor with Sloan in their first meeting in Chapter 30, though that can be partially attributed to Sloan being exhausted and low on magic.
  • Any fight Homura gets into has a tendency to be this for the other side. Sayaka is the only person who demonstrates the ability to fight her one-on-one with some level of success, and even she gets overpowered eventually.
• Darkest Hour: The beginning of Chapter 27. Clair is dead and Yaldabaoth awakens as a result, immediately wrecking havoc and killing St. Paul. The rest of the surviving girls (Sloan, Delaney, Hennepin, Ramsey, and Anoka) are all beaten up and low on power. Only by working together do they manage to beat the archon, and even then only just.
• Dead Guy on Display: The room in Williston that the girls rent has a recently-Driven to Suicide man hanging from a rope on the closet. Erika eventually tosses his body out the window when she gets sick of looking at it.
• Deconstruction: For anyone who believed that the original anime wasn't a Deconstruction of the Magical Girl archetype, look no farther than Fargo. The story exemplifies how the need to stay alive and keep hunting for cubes can make girls do some very nasty things to stay alive, not to mention how the physical time taken up by hunting wraiths can very rapidly distance girls from their friends and family. And unlike in the anime, there are no classically heroic characters to contrast the anti-heroes, and trying to use magic for pure-hearted purposes will almost inevitably end up in a case of No Good Deed Goes Unpunished- just ask Bloomington and Woodbury.
• Despair Event Horizon
  • Sloan crosses it after Erika is murdered by Omaha in Chapter 12. It's only the overpowering hope in her newly-charged Soul Gem that keeps her going; as Kyubey points out, you can miserable and still feel hopeful.
  • Bloomington goes over it after Woodbury's death. Her speech patterns change to little more than monosyllabic answers (to the point that her continued repetition of "nah" comes close to becoming a Madness Mantra) and she only seems capable of moving with significant effort.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Woodbury is taken by the Law of the Cycles in Chapter 22 while still in Bloomington's arms.
• Due to the Dead: Sloan tries to find Delaney's buried body after the latter is seemingly killed during the battle with Abraxas, rationalizing that she owes Delaney that much. Then it turns out that Delaney is Not Quite Dead.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Erika's death. Despite being exhausted and nearly out of magic, she still manages to hold her own against Omaha and unleash her Finishing Move a second time before her Soul Gem turns completely dark and she's taken by the Law of the Cycles.
  • The death of St. Paul too. She goes up against Yaldabaoth alone, and manages to prove it can be beaten by simultaneously attacking its weak point and turning its own attack back at it. She gets killed for her troubles, but it's still awesome.
• Dynamic Entry: Sepulveda is first introduced when she fires a bullet through Sloan and Delaney's hotel window and steps through the ensuing wreckage.
• Dysfunction Junction: The cast is a veritable buffet table of psychological issues. Sloan is single-mindedly determined to kill Clair, Delaney is sociopathic, Bloomington shows elements of Shell-Shocked Veteran... yeah, there's a lot of this going around.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Lynette appears very briefly in the background when Bloomington and Woodbury are visiting the Ibsen house in Chapter 14. She has a formal introduction much later on in Chapter 21.
  • An unnamed girl scuffles with Sloan in Chapter 1. In Chapter 26, the same girl reappears and turns out to be Anoka.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: The Final Battle climaxes with Homura leveraging all of her divine power to obliterate the entire planet in one-last ditch effort to keep Madoka from awakening and regaining her godhood. Fortunately for all the good guys, it's that same decision that ultimately convinces Homura that she's in the wrong, and she rewinds the mistake not long afterwards.
• Eldritch Abomination: The wraiths as per usual, though Abraxas is a standout example. It's an enormous plant bulb with roots that dwarf the girls themselves, and when Sloan and Delaney figure out how to Attack Its Weak Point, its subsequent One-Winged Angel form includes an enormous humanoid head, the appearance of which varies based on who's looking at it.
  • The Minneapolis archon spawned by Clair's death, Yaldabaoth, is even stranger. It has a literal star (as in, a miniature sun) for a head, numerous eyes covering said star that appear and vanish at random, and an enormous multi-armed body that's covered in ink-black feathers.
• End of an Age: The story takes place after the end of Goddess Madoka's reign over the Magical Girl system. Kyubey's actively seeking to defy this trope by preparing Clair to defeat Homura and revert the system back to its pre-Episode 12 version.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Whether it's wraiths, fellow magical girls, the Law of the Cycles, or even regular humans, if you're a Magical Girl you can guarantee you're fighting for your life every second of the day.
• Exact Words
  • As usual, Kyubey uses it with abandon. A statement he uses multiple times to trick or mislead various characters is how Omaha's invisibility makes her "hard to track". Hard, not impossible.
  • Everything Bloomington tells Clair during their conversation in Chapter 23 is Metaphorically True. Woodbury's not doing well, but she doesn't need cubes... because she's dead.
• Foreshadowing
  • See Early-Bird Cameo above.
  • While trying to remember what Bloomington's weapon is in Chapter 16, Sloan briefly thinks it's a whip, before dismissing the idea, saying the whip is the weapon of "someone else". Said someone else turns out to be Ramsey when her weapon is finally revealed in Chapter 24.
• Food Porn: As in the additional media, Mami's cooking talents get quite a bit of loving attention.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Aside from the wraiths, no character is purely good or purely bad. The protagonists are anti-heroes while the (human) antagonists are anti-villains, with both sides having legitimate reasons for what they do.
• Helping Would Be Kill Stealing: Invoked Trope. Omaha only helps Sloan's quest to kill Claire in a tangential way because Sloan has to kill Claire herself to summon Yaldabaoth from the negative energy involved, which Omaha intends to have Sloan kill so she can have enough energy to challenge Homura. Ends up partially subverted when Omaha ends up taking Yaldabaoth's cubes for herself instead.
• The Hero Dies: In the final arc, Sloan bites it twice. The first time, she's murdered by Homura but later retconned back to life as an unintended consequence of the latter's time-rewinding. The second time, after the Final Battle, she willingly allows herself to be taken by the Law of the Cycles and enter the afterlife with the newly-awakened Madoka's help.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: Kyubey is shown to employ some magical girls (Sepulveda being the most notable) in this capacity, known as "specialists" and sometimes the more colorful term "Terminatrixes". They're normally sent to dispatch other girls who have grown problematic in some fashion, especially those who kill fellow magical girls for sport.
• King Mook: Archons, for the wraiths. They're incredibly powerful and can spawn more wraiths at will, but they're (thankfully) also incredibly rare. One being formed in Williston is what prompts the beginning of the story.
• Language Barrier: Comes up when Sloan jets off to Mitakhihara despite not speaking a word of Japanese. She and Kyoko (who can't speak English) end up getting into a fight due to neither being able to understand the other. Mami, who has limited fluency in English, manages to set them straight.
• Minor Living Alone: Most of the girls in the story live alone as a result of their circumstances. Clair and Bloomington are the only notable exceptions (and Sloan, before she left Minneapolis).
  • The Mitikihara characters also avert this trope aside from Mami and Homura, who were this in the original media as well.
• Mêlée à Trois: Pops up frequently during Arc 2. Specific examples:
  • Sloan and Delaney vs. the Minneapolis Seven vs. Sepulveda vs. Carmichael in Chapter 19.
  • Sloan vs. Ramsey vs. the Clara Dolls in Chapter 24.
  • Sloan vs. Sepulveda vs. St. Paul in Chapter 25.
  • Sloan vs. Clair and Anoka vs. Bloomington vs. Delaney vs. a Naga wraith in Chapter 26.
  • The entirety of Arc 3 is basically one big conflict between Homura, Omaha and Sayaka and Nagisa, Cicero and the Chicago Legion, the rest of the Mitikihara Six, and Sloan, who's trying to stop all of the aforementioned factions from killing anyone else.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • The story starts mostly seriously, but has an unexpected moment of comedy when Sloan gets sick of Kyubey's ramblings and punts him into the horizon.
  • Sepulveda's interlude teeters continuously between horror and absurdist humor, as it becomes clear to the readers just how incredibly screwed up her mental state is.
• Mook Lieutenant: Cicero's legion has two of them: Berwyn, the legion's official Number Two, and Darien, the toughest fighter of the bunch.
• No Body Left Behind: The fate of those taken by the Law of the Cycles, as seen in Erika and Woodbury's deaths.
• The Oldest Profession: What a lot of magical girls end up turning to pay the bills. Ramsey and a few deceased members of the Minneapolis Seven are confirmed ex-teen prostitutes, and Delaney and Erika are implied to be as well.
• One-Word Title.
• A Party, Also Known as an Orgy: Sloan wakes up in the aftermath of one at Ramsey's house in Chapter 21.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Both non-finale arcs end in one of these. In Arc One, the girls defeat the archon but are unable to improve the town's awful conditions, and Erika dies in the process. In Arc Two, Sloan manages to kill Clair, but in doing so inadvertently causes the death of nearly the entirety of the Minneapolis Seven, along with Delaney and Lynette.
• Riddle for the Ages: As does the original anime, the story gradually answers a lot of driving questions but also leaves quite a few unanswered in the end. Specific examples:
  • How exactly did Kyubey manage to clone Omaha from Homura, and clone Delaney and Clair from itself?
  • Who exactly is the Empress of Chicago, and how did she manage to acquire so much power and control in the first place?
  • What and where is Mitakihara? The fact that all of the city's Bizarchitecture and Where the Hell Is Springfield? elements from the anime are held over here doesn't help, and how much of it's odd elements can be chalked up to Homura's influence is debatable.
• Shameful Strip: Played for Laughs. Hennepin has her clothes stripped by Ramsey's goons after she gets captured by Carmichael. It's partially Ramsey's version of quid pro quo, Hennepin being the Insufferable Genius that she is, and partially just a embarrassing prank at her expense.
  • Later on, it happens again after Cicero's soldiers abduct her as a hostage, as a form of punishment for Hennepin being a "whore". This time, it's very much not played for comedy.
• Shoot the Dog: Sloan's murder of Sepulveda can definitely be viewed in the vein of this trope, even if the latter was trying to kill her. Killing Madoka in the final arc is a much straighter example, albeit part of an elaborate plan to force Homura's hand and get time rewinded to revive the other girls that had died up to that point. It works.
• Super Special Move:
  • Erika's finisher, "Borrasque Denouement", has her clone herself to the point of filling a massive cavern to the brim and then perform her usual katana wind slash. This results in a gale so potent it could be considered a force of nature. Each Erika copy is made of wind and imbued with Erika's soul, so they have all of her expertise wielding a katana. With this, she's able to shred through the Arc Villain's defenses.
  • Sloan's finisher move requires the sun, courtesy of her machine gun firing literal light, and is for all intends and purposes, just her normal attack on steroids. A metric ton of steroids. Her turret's barrel supercharges with solar energy and then unleashes an unholy amount of light bullet rounds it looks like a blinding solar flare from afar. Looks like More Dakka is indeed effective at getting rid of Final Boss-level Wraiths. Other than the sun, Sloan is powered by two hundred cubes, i.e., three months' worth of magic.
• Those Two Guys: Bloomington and Woodbury, loath as the former is to admit it. While not particularly evil, they work for the antagonistic Claire and are almost always together, and Bloomington goes off the deep end in a major way after Woodbury's death.
• Total Party Kill: The events of the Saskatoon archon battle in Delaney's backstory. Fifteen magical girls arrived to fight it, and Delaney emerged as the Sole Survivor. She's understandably a little traumatized over it.
• Trivial Title: In what's probably a Shout-Out to the film of the same name, only the first chapter and a few cutaway segments thereafter actually take place in Fargo.
• Wham Episode
  • Chapter 11: The girls fight and destroy Abraxas, but Delaney is seemingly killed in the process.
  • Chapter 12: Omaha kills Erika and is subsequently revealed to be a minion of Clair, while Delaney turns out to be Not Quite Dead.
  • Chapter 26: Sloan and Clair finally have their long-awaited face-off. Sloan wins and kills Clair, subsequently spawning a new archon, and Lynette and Bloomington die over the course of the battle.
  • Chapter 27: Sloan kills Yaldabaoth, the new archon, but St. Paul and Ramsey die in the process, Anoka and Hennepin are left in states of Uncertain Doom, and things aren't looking too good for Sloan and Delaney either.
• Where It All Began: In the final chapter, Anoka takes up living in Fargo and becomes the new resident magical girl, replacing the now-deceased Sloan as the city's protector.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Averted. All of the locales in the story (including Williston) are real-life cities, though they aren't necessarily depicted in-story as they are in Real Life.
• Wolf Whistle: Delaney's sole response to Sloan and Erika's Big Damn Kiss in the final chapter is to whistle the two-note glissando.
• Wretched Hive: Williston, and not entirely because of the wraith infestation. The girls discover a man hanging from a noose in the closet of their hotel room, a majority of the city's populace live in tents in an abandoned airplane hangar, and during the trek back to the inn in Chapter 13 Sloan and Delaney pass a bus that's selling women like merchandise.

---