2022-10-08 - Disaster Recovery 3
| Disaster Recovery 3 | |
|---|---|
| Summary: Mami, Eri and friends clear out a major infestation of Torpor Wraiths. Lives are saved. The village isn't, but life goes on. | |
| Who: Mami Tomoe, Fumiko Inoue, Mai Tokiha, Nori Ankou, Mikoto Minagi, Eri Shimanouchi, Kyouka Okazaki | |
| Where: Sanbu Village, Japan | |
| OOC - IC Date: 10/8/2022 - 01/16/16 | |
<Pose Tracker> Pink Moon Stick [Admin] has posed.
A mudslide all but erased the coastal village of Sanbu from existence, but much of its population can't accept the need to evacuate...
Friends and loved ones volunteer to bring supplies, but never come back...
Magical girls race to the village to save them...
NOW
It is as Mami suggested; the wraiths really don't care about the magical girls, until they're invited to do so. The horrible creatures will happily continue their meal until then. It's a funeral of a wait, even at under a minute. That minute stretches and contorts and how much consolation it is to know that the villagers have had these, these THINGS, attached to them, for weeks, and are still alive, so sixty more seconds for Rina, it probably won't matter that much?
It matters as little as it does that the bus driver stole the bag of chips from the konbini. There are more of them visible through the broken storefront window. The villagers couldn't loot it, because they could not acknowledge that the world had changed, had changed irreparably. That there was no going back.
But in the bus driver's world, the village was already dead. It isn't better. It's worse. It's upsetting, if you think about it, not that you should think about it at a time like this. The people of Sanbu are undoubtedly STARVING, they are wasting away on the withered vine of the village's existence, and this random man just trying to make a buck for the day waltzed in and just TOOK some of the only supplies they had? The only calories that could possibly survive the storm, prepackaged, preserved junk food? Would it even make it better if there were a few small coins left on the konbini counter, like offerings to gods, to spirits, or to ancestors?
Or would it make it worse--?
--!
Eri cracks her whip, but it's more like the starting gun going off at a sports event. In the least pleasant possible way. Kind of a weak analogy at a time like this. Especially because, as the Puella Magi know all too well, this isn't going to be a sprint.
Wraiths are a marathon.
The miasma explodes into motion. Into dozens of wriggling legs attached to one-sixth as many bodies, but still... many. Fourteen or fifteen at least. And there are eight legs each, aren't there -- a distant thought at a time like this, yet inescapable all the same, how the eighth pair of limbs are the bovine horns curling above each silent and staring face. They're much too much like the other six legs, just oriented in the opposite direction. If you flipped one over like a crab it could probably use them to flip back. And in fact, that's exactly what happens to Eri's; it lands with all those legs curling helplessly in the air, with its huge and somewhat hairy sack of a body, less plump-bellied than it is plump generally -- plump on suffering, to be sure. And then it digs its horns beneath it and is back on its feet in no time.
But there's no time at all left for this wraith, as Eri's whip rings out a second time, and finishes its bisection.
The corpse disappears, but it doesn't sublimate; which is to say, it doesn't disappear with a poof of smoke. It simply fades from view.
And it leaves something very small behind, but there's no time for that now.
The closest wraiths are actually the ones the group already knew about. Satisfyingly, Rina and Hanae's wraiths drop straight off their backs, abandoning them immediately, mindless in their instinct to go for the aggressor. A good thing too; it would be so much worse if this had been a true hostage situation. But Hanae keeps repeating herself. And the first aid kit is still stuck to her hand; Rina is still touching the traffic light.
Two more reveal themselves to have been attached to Naru and Umino. They skitter forward, towards the group, and close the last yards across the street in a great leap.
That's four. Add to it the one that came into existence, and was ambling around; like the rest of its kin every hair on its black body stand at attention the moment Eri attacked, and at the top speed its bony legs can muster, it rushes at the nearest magical girl -- Mami.
More appear in much the same fashion, materializing out of the miasma on the spot. It doesn't feel like they came from elsewhere; more that they were always everywhere, a sort of quantum waveform of potential that has distilled down into a horde of singular existences now that the matter has been forced.
And the miasma is still, indeed, everywhere; and the grief, the choking grief, the knowledge that nothing can stay the same forever, the terror of inevitable change, unstoppable change, unfixable change, it surges along with the wraiths, it closes in from all sides, like the jaws of a bear trap snapping shut.
COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick transforms into Major Wraith Infestation! COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Above And Below on La Sirene de Diamant. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Left And Right on Serpentina Ruse. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Back And Front on Mami Tomoe. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Above And Below on Eri Shimanouchi. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Left And Right on Kyouka Okazaki. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Head On on Mai Tokiha. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Head On on Mikoto Minagi. COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi counters 10 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Above And Below, taking 10 Fatigue damage! Eri Shimanouchi's Reverse and Tactician abilities activate! COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi's counterattack, Gardener's Trick, partially gets through, doing 23 Fatigue damage to Pink Moon Stick! COMBAT: Mami Tomoe fails to dodge Pink Moon Stick's Back And Front, taking 26 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Exhausted applied to Mami Tomoe! COMBAT: Mikoto Minagi counters 5 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Head On, taking 15 Fatigue damage! Mikoto Minagi is Quipped! Mikoto Minagi's Reverse and Tactician abilities activate! Mikoto Minagi is Taunted! COMBAT: Mikoto Minagi's counterattack, Obsidian Blade: Dynamo, partially gets through, doing 13 Fatigue damage to Pink Moon Stick! COMBAT: La Sirene de Diamant braces 14 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Above And Below, taking 6 Fatigue damage! La Sirene de Diamant's Block and Parry abilities activate! Diversion applied to La Sirene de Diamant! COMBAT: Serpentina Ruse perfectly counters 18 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Left And Right, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Critical Counter! Serpentina Ruse's Reverse ability activates! COMBAT: Serpentina Ruse's counterattack, Cobra's Hood, interrupts, doing 0 Fatigue damage to Pink Moon Stick! COMBAT: Kyouka Okazaki fails to dodge Pink Moon Stick's Left And Right, taking 19 Fatigue damage! Stagger applied to Kyouka Okazaki! COMBAT: Mai Tokiha fails to counter Pink Moon Stick's Head On, taking 21 Fatigue damage! Mai Tokiha is Quipped! Mai Tokiha is Taunted! COMBAT: Mai Tokiha's counterattack, Sanctum Blaze, fails to get through, doing 0 Fatigue damage to Pink Moon Stick!
<Pose Tracker> Mami Tomoe [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.
"No especial weak points," Mami answers once they've initiated their attack, her voice calm despite the rushing miasma and wind. "Aim center mass--you're most likely to hit and destroy one that way."
Seven, seven, seven... La Sirene continues to be a warm presence for Mami; the cold ocean sea is not so cold when it is your friend. The Sea of Sorrows is a place that still holds a piece of Mami's heart to this day.
But to Mai, "Even the ones feeding on others!"
Wraiths are a marathon, though. The miasma bursts into action. Many, many Wraiths are suddenly there, but that is not Mami's first priority. Mami's first priority is the civilians here. The instant that Rina and Hanae's wraiths drop off of them, Mami's magic bursts up in sparkling light, ribbons whirling forth to form tough shells that will protect them from stray attacks. Naru and Umino get the same treatment. However...
Doing this costs Mami a moment's reaction, and she can't get out of the way of the Wraiths rushing her. From ahead and behind they crash into her, and Mami grits her teeth to prevent voicing the pain of the sudden attack. Their claws sink against her magical raiments, and Mami lifts her hands, conjuring twin guns from her sleeves, which pivot against her fingertips down to the Wraiths--and fire, bursting right through them as Mami whirls despite her new injuries to throw out a ring of muskets. All in a circle, she detonates them with the rip of a cord, and they all fire their percussive payloads towards more Wraiths still.
"There's more to come!"
COMBAT: Mami Tomoe has used Tiro Circle on Pink Moon Stick. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick braces 13 Fatigue damage from Mami Tomoe's Tiro Circle, taking 11 Fatigue damage! Pink Moon Stick's Block and Parry abilities activate!
<Pose Tracker> Mai Tokiha [Ohtori Academy (12)] has posed.
Mai can't go. Can't search for those missing from this place - can't leave Mikoto and Eri and other friends behind - can't just advance through a horde of monstrosities. Many reasons, one truth - here is the place to stand.
Shrugging a bit more lingering ghost-light from her jacket, Mai takes one more sharp breath at Eri's advance - Mikoto's trust in her plan - and tries not to dwell. She shifts from one foot to the other, looking warily from one side to the next-
-and then Eri strikes-
-and then the swarm of Wraiths manifests and attacks all at once, the embodiment of the dread that just pervades the entire area. Mai's rings flare to desperate light as the horde just begins existing, and despite herself she can't help but shout in alarm.
"-and is it always like this?!"
Maybe it is. That's the atmosphere. That things being any different would be alarming, terrifying. That it's safer to just keep doing the same thing over and over forever. That inevitable change is to be feared.
The stagnation seems to weigh Mai's arms down as she draws fire up against an onrushing Wraith - slow, too slow, and it tackles her head-on. Her hands push against its horns, trying to push back, all too slow...
"...All right. Here I am."
And yet Mai burns. Her rings spin to life, burning reserves of strength she's mostly drained. Hotter and brighter, shining in the monster's face - and then burning, burning as she lunges forward with a cry.
Because it's true. She does fear what might come next, how things might change. But she's outside on a darkened night, accompanied by those she's grown to care for, risking her life to bear a flame against hideous monstrosities that would devour her brother.
She can do this forever. Or until she burns out.
COMBAT: Mai Tokiha has used Devoted Scintillation on Pink Moon Stick.
<Pose Tracker> La Sirene de Diamant [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.
Things are going to change.
(La Sirene flexes bare hands. They have rarely been bare. The scar on the back of her left hand is probably a lot of why, but she has also had rare call to take off any of her garb. I mean, usually, you wouldn't in these situations. But this is an unusual situation, isn't it?)
They say time is a river but perhaps time is more like an ocean; a place where we are drawn by the inevitability of the contours of existence itself, one way or another. A basin where things accumulate, and in this world there is water; and perhaps instead there ought to be tears.
(Eri is preparing her whip.)
Tears enough to fill a sea. Tears for what could have been; tears for what is; tears for what might be; tears what has come to pass. There are a myriad myriads of reasons to weep in the face of the events of the day. When things stay the same, we weep; when they change, we weep; sometimes, we weep for joy itself.
(La Sirene hears them, sees them, as one of the wraiths fall. They're coming.)
But if time is not a river, but a sea-
(Two of them coming towards her.)
- then though the storm may come and go -
(One high, one low. La Sirene feels the silent will, feels that sensation not unlike a sea breeze that always comes with the touch of will and hope and passion.)
- there will be -
WAVES of light come out of la Sirene's hands; not quite light, but perhaps its opposite. Here there is the opportunity for contrast, perhaps. What la Sirene touches, what comes from her lantern, is perhaps the negative of light - what surrounds them is the removal of the possibility of light. The fog and the black-light contend as one of the things lands on la Sirene's bare arm, leading her to turn round and hurl it to the ground with a hiss. The waves, though, bounce, intersecting and flying out towards where she'd thrown her glove. The black gems sparkle fiercely and the light comes back towards her, la Sirene already turning to 'catch' it on her bruised arm and hurl it across the intersection, sweeping like a sea breeze along the Wraiths, battering them like a highly localized wave of a hurricane.
"If they're here," she remarks to Mami through the effort, "then they aren't THERE!"
COMBAT: La Sirene de Diamant has used Shine On Through The Night on Pink Moon Stick. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick fails to brace Mai Tokiha's Devoted Scintillation, taking 13 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Blind applied to Pink Moon Stick!
<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.
Prepare. You've gotten much better. For many of them. But you still seem to be holding back. Don't hold back. Those who attack you are your enemies. Don't let yourself get bogged down. And enemies have to be defeated. Everything Mami-san has said is correct. You mustn't hesitate when the time comes.
What did Mikoto say to Kyouka, back then? What was she trying to do? Wouldn't it be better to stay with what's comfortable, in the end?
Isn't the alternative much worse -- much more horrifying?
Tap, tap, tap.
There's a weight, Mikoto realises, all a sudden, all at once, on her head, in her short and scruffy hair. Unfolding, unfurling, one leg, two, four. Tap, tap, burred to her skin like a weed or serration or a promise.
She screams -- no howl of vengeance, this, as she shakes her head viciously to toss it away before it can sink anything in. (Oh, the poison injected long, long ago.) Her fear runs through her warhorse breathing, whole chest rising and falling, everything rushing past her parted lips.
Her snarl is angry, as she brings her sword up, over her head, and down -- what did she say?
'If conditions are good I'll try for a headshot. I've never seen any puella come back from one of those. If not... center mass.'
'Aim center mass--you're most likely to hit and destroy one that way.'
Ah, yes.
Why else would Mikoto lift her massive blade in roof stance, to come right down the middle?
Mikoto glowers, as her blade comes down. She doesn't like spiders, but there's no time to be afraid. It's not alone. (She never was.) She spins, in a wide arc, to cleave the next one trying to rush at her head-on -- meeting it with a whirlwind of her blade, all girl at its centre.
And nothing's changed.
COMBAT: Mikoto Minagi has used Obsidian Blade: Devastation on Pink Moon Stick.
<Pose Tracker> Eri Shimanouchi [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.
The moment the Wraith bisects from the second swing, Eri steps away from Hanae to let Mami's ribbons do their work, with a flick of her wrist coiling back up her whip. Shapes appear out of the miasma, and she stays still. A flicker of movement in her periphery.
A tick like appendage scythes towards her feet and several leaves fly off her henshin, as she takes a short hop upwards, her whip sweeping up - and overhead.
Another descending wraith is snagged as a thorny tendril grasps it. With a pull, and a mid-air rotation, she tugs it out of its leap at her, then angles it down to smash it brutally into the other Wraith.
There's a cold precision in how she lands atop their stunned forms, driving her heel right into the body of one like someone trying to smash a roach with a shoe. Flicking her wrist, her whip releases, then she swings it behind her without looking.
"Yes." She asides to Mai mid-attack.
A wraith heading towards Mikoto is one she tries to snag a limb from out of mid-air, arresting its momentum. "And no. This is the worst I've encountered yet."
That one shortly thereafter is one she tries to sends flying at several of the Wraiths Mami is setting up her shots against trying to bowl over any that manage to break through the salvo.
Wraiths are a marathon, and she looks like she's trying her best not to expend too much energy early on, setting herself apace.
"If time weren't of the essence, I'd have wanted Senpai and Homura-san here too for this."
However, there's not...
... time.
COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi has used Gardener's Grasp on Pink Moon Stick.
<Pose Tracker> Kyouka Okazaki [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.
Eri... Eri...
Kyouka blinks. She had looked at the other magical girl just long enough to register 'magical girl' and 'not a threat' when she had arrived and then turned her attention back to the creepiness. But then they kept calling her Eri. She looks, really looks, and blinks. "Shimanouchi-chan?"
Right as she attacked with that whip.
Right, battle now, (re)meet friends later.
But they all come swarming in at once, and there's just so many of them, that she's trying to prioritize the targets when one comes at her from the side. She dodges left--right into the pincers of a second one approaching from the other side. The pincers clamp down and she grunts through clenched teeth as they clamp down tight.. "Augh. Stupid... thing...! Grah!"
"Fine! Two can play..." She twists, wraps her arms around the wretched thing's neck, and heaves. Over her head, right behind her and... onto the first one that had menaced her, smashing them together.
That oughta be center mass enough.
COMBAT: Kyouka Okazaki has used Bug Suplex on Pink Moon Stick. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick fails to dodge La Sirene de Diamant's Shine On Through The Night, taking 26 Fatigue damage! La Sirene de Diamant is Psyched! Diversion applied to Pink Moon Stick! COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick braces 13 Fatigue damage from Mikoto Minagi's Obsidian Blade: Devastation, taking 11 Fatigue damage! Mikoto Minagi is Psyched! Pink Moon Stick's Block and Parry abilities activate! COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick dodges 10 Fatigue damage from Eri Shimanouchi's Gardener's Grasp, taking 7 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Eri Shimanouchi is Psyched! Pink Moon Stick's Fade ability activates! Stagger applied to Pink Moon Stick! COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick fails to brace Kyouka Okazaki's Bug Suplex, taking 9 Fatigue damage! Kyouka Okazaki is Psyched!
<Pose Tracker> Serpentina Ruse [Juuban Public School (9)] has posed.
Like the song says, the wait is the hardest part. Serpentina holds her flowing pose, ready to leap into action once the word is given. Every one of her nerves is tuned in to catching the starting signal. Her tension, the pressure, the darkness... it took everything she could not to break stance and attack.
The crack of the whip breaking the tension nearly catches Serpentina off-guard. Nearly. The darkness springs to life and rushes the girls in the form of those hideous tick-like creatures from all sides, but Serpentina could only focus on the ones charging her from the side. "Center mass, got it," she replied. She rushes the ones rushing her in return. They're faster than she expected, though, and as she prepared to attack with her parasol, they were nearly upon her.
Instead of a massive attack, she went on the defensive. As the Wraiths descended on her, she opened her parasol, deflecting them. When they bounced off, she took a wide stance, and rapidly opened the parasol even further, inverting it - releasing a gust of wind. Not her most devestating attack, but even if it was too weak to defeat the Wraiths, at the very least it would grant some room to unleash a better attack.
At the very least, it would delay the inevitable - no, they were here to win, not give in to the miasma or the Wraiths.
COMBAT: Serpentina Ruse has used Wind Wall on Pink Moon Stick. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick fails to dodge Serpentina Ruse's Wind Wall, taking 7 Fatigue damage!
<Pose Tracker> Pink Moon Stick [Admin] has posed. <SoundTracker> Death Game ~ Progressive Mix -- Yuki Kajiura -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMxfLvsD_zY
There are many things that wraiths are not in general, and more things that these wraiths aren't in particular. Notably: they aren't spiders. It's an easy analogy to make, all those legs, all that skittering, especially with them swarming like this, but it would be so much easier in a way if they were truly arachnids. At least then they would be ... familiar. Though at the same time, the wrongness of these creatures isn't entirely unfamiliar. Witches, of course, turned out to sometimes strike a chord of recognition for a horrifically specific reason. Wraiths do too, but it's for the opposite reason. They aren't anybody; they are everybody...
...and everybody, apparently, is a mammal gone horribly wrong. Up close and personal their fur smells faintly of a cow pasture, only with an extra sickly sweetness to heighten the corruptive umami of dung. The way their legs terminate in boney spikes resembles horns one minute and fangs the next. And their faces... identical, but they do very much have a face, just like cows have a face, only twisted, foul.
Their flesh is FLESH, black flesh, with lumps and folds and hair; they have nothing so distant and impersonal as an exoskeleton. Alas, when La Sirene shakes one off of her arm, a little bit of heat is left behind, extra-stark in the chilly miasma. Which, it must be remarked upon, is not fog. Everyone knows that, but the maiden of diamonds really has it hammered home when she sees the way the Unlight she unleashes interacts with the mist in its way; hers is a power of the sea, and storms, and fog is not outside of that portfolio; but this stuff is in a dreadful way unfog in the same way her light is unlight. It fills the air without moistening it. It chills without any promise of heat drawn from some other part of the world. It will not become rain or river, will never return to the sea, and it somehow mutes her attack, gets in her way, when it should reflect, refract.
Fortunately she also finds that the creatures are not quick. Another way that they are unlike bugs. Though with six downward-facing legs the sight of their self-propulsion is necessarily animated with many, many frames, whatever their killer instinct may be, it is not that of something able to get itself out of harm's way with any signficant speed, and she is able to vibe them out of existence forthwith.
Kyouka, too, experiences that touch of warmth, when she suplexes one into the other. Then it is gone, as quickly as they are -- they shudder satisfyingly into one another, smashed... and fade, rather than linger in any specific torment.
Mai does not, insofar as any proximate heat signatures are totally blasted out of the sensation range by her immense gout of fire. Her means of incineration light up the miasma from the inside out; and, distantly, too vague to make out individually, she momentarily reveals A LOT more motion, the shadows cast by an ever mounting number of icky, wriggling legs.
Mikoto, too, goes untouched; the first one, bisected, disappears promptly, and the second one -- having already mashed two together, Eri went for a third, to snatch it up with a whip, but it juked itself out of her path at the last second, with some hideous contortion of its mass. Miroku does not allow it further passage into the future, however. It becomes history immediately afterwards.
Serpentina Ruse hears the scrape of bone on vinyl against her parasol; a loud record scratch of a noise, promising imminent trouble -- but she's able to blow them well clear in the end. They soar through the air, backwards and almost out of sight; since the edge of sight still is very close, as the miasma is very thick.
Mami finishes off the last of them with swift, efficient bullets, which roar golden and glorious into the night from every direction. Disorienting, to say the least. It's a good thing Naru, Gurio, Rina and Hanae were wrapped up -- if anyone here is really emulating the spider, it may well be her. It suits her well in a certain manner. No one can deny that Puella Magi are hunters born, and what more deadly hunter can there be?
And then there is quiet.
A long, tense moment of silence.
More creeping sounds presage the next wave, just long enough after the first to really set the teeth on edge about when they were going to appear. Bone on asphalt. Bone on shattered rooftop tile. Bone on traffic light metal.
When they come, they come in even greater numbers than before. There might be twice as many. The first wave was dispatched with haste, efficiency; heroically and with style. The second wave asks the question:
What happens when you aren't able to keep up?
It's up to the magical girls whether or not they find out now or later. Or never. Never would be great.
COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Four By More on Serpentina Ruse. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Four By More on Kyouka Okazaki. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Four By More on Eri Shimanouchi. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Four By More on Mikoto Minagi. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Four By More on La Sirene de Diamant. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Four By More on Mai Tokiha. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Four By More on Mami Tomoe. COMBAT: Mai Tokiha braces 15 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Four By More, taking 12 Fatigue damage! Mai Tokiha's Block and Parry abilities activate! Trap applied to Mai Tokiha! COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi cleanly braces 17 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Four By More, taking 3 Fatigue damage! Eri Shimanouchi's Block and Parry abilities activate! Trap applied to Eri Shimanouchi! COMBAT: Mikoto Minagi dodges 15 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Four By More, taking 10 Fatigue damage! Mikoto Minagi's Fade and Flash abilities activate! Trap applied to Mikoto Minagi! COMBAT: Mami Tomoe braces 7 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Four By More, taking 10 Fatigue damage! Mami Tomoe's Parry ability activates! Trap applied to Mami Tomoe! COMBAT: La Sirene de Diamant decisively counters 21 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Four By More, taking 7 Fatigue damage! La Sirene de Diamant's Reverse and Tactician abilities activate! COMBAT: La Sirene de Diamant's counterattack, Les Mysteres, partially gets through, doing 37 Fatigue damage to Pink Moon Stick! Critical Counterhit! COMBAT: Kyouka Okazaki dodges 10 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Four By More, taking 15 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Kyouka Okazaki's Fade and Flash abilities activate! Trap applied to Kyouka Okazaki! COMBAT: Serpentina Ruse perfectly dodges 29 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Four By More, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Critical Dodge! Serpentina Ruse's Fade and Flash abilities activate!
<Pose Tracker> Mami Tomoe [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.
Mami weaves and weaves, the many 'legs' of her rifles gleaming in the night. Is it always like this? Mami answers, "Eri-chan's right. Yes and no."
Much like Eri, Mami is conserving her energy, planning for a long battle ahead. But La Sirene's remark prompts Mami to answer, "Just so!" as she whirls about to check for more--and face the next wave.
But that first hit was something--she's still trying to catch her breath from it, not that she lets on more than she has to. But the hideous motion, the rush of the next... After that tense moment of silecne--
"They're here!"
Mami starts firing again immediately. One takes a bullet in its awful 'face' immediately; more bullets ring out still, as they get closer... but there are too many to pinpoint shoot each one before they're close enough, and as one latches onto Mami's shoulder, the rest start coming. "Eri!" Mami turns that shoulder towards the other Puella Magi immediately, even as she aims to shoot one that seems to be getting too familiar with Eri in turn.
But it's not guns that form her main attack this time--this time, Mami throws out her other hand, and from it the ribbon at her wrist extends, enlarges, billows into a great wall of golden threads that seek to sweep them together for the others to destroy all at once.
"Remember! Stay ready!"
COMBAT: Mami Tomoe has used Velare on Pink Moon Stick.
<Pose Tracker> Mai Tokiha [Ohtori Academy (12)] has posed.
It's worse than usual - the worst Eri has ever encountered. Maybe that should be heartening. A relief, in a way, that the Wraiths Mai's friend and old nemesis face are ordinarily not this much of a nightmare.
But the night is dark and the weight of despair is oppressive, even discounting the horrible not-spiders.
They burn. Maybe that should be a relief, too. But that fire illuminates hints of what lurks beyond, the depths of the horde of grief.
That...that almost feels right.
Thunderous cracks die down, and there's barely a moment to breathe before the next wave. Mai's limbs seem to feel heavier with every passing moment - but they haven't found Takumi yet. Her duty isn't finished. She takes a breath, and utters aloud.
"That's always how it is, Eri. We don't get to choose when-"
The horde is coming. The horde is here.
Mai's rings shine as brightly as her soul will allow, which seems all too dim right now. - and she bats aside one after another, but there's too many, there's legs crawling up her back like sins. But it's not just her they're going for - it's everyone.
In the gloom, she sees one land on Mami's shoulder, and old fear strikes Mai's heart as she shouts. "Tomoe! Hold still a moment - we still need you!"
Arms raised high, Mai brings a lash of flame down - carefully at Mami's shoulder, then sweeping from there to carve into more of the horde. Again, and again, perhaps even after a path is cleared.
But one of them is still on her back. And so Mai calls once to Mikoto, and turns a trusting back to her companion.
COMBAT: Mai Tokiha has used Impassioned Ignition on Pink Moon Stick. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick cleanly braces 11 Fatigue damage from Mami Tomoe's Velare, taking 2 Fatigue damage! Mami Tomoe is Psyched! Pink Moon Stick's Block and Parry abilities activate! COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick fails to dodge Mai Tokiha's Impassioned Ignition, taking 29 Fatigue damage! Mai Tokiha is Psyched!
<Pose Tracker> Eri Shimanouchi [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.
Kyouka's call of Shimanouchi-chan gets a glance of a single green eye. There's no answer otherwise, however it's answer enough. "More will be coming." The girl tells her, before asiding to Mami again, "This is going to get messy."
The second wave comes, and she springs into action. Her pace changing from calm, sedate, to almost explosively violent in a moment. Her whip dancing towards the front of the line when - one of them leaps at her, and her form is enveloped in inky blackness. A twisted bovine face, distorted and awful - bites down towards her neck, only to find the handle of the whip intercepting in its jaws.
It's a violent struggle, as the Puella Magi grapples with it, unable to bring her weapon to bear to knock it off of her. Her knees buckling as it tries to drive her down.
'Eri!'
And Eri looks sideways at Mami, that momentary sweep assessing just how bad it is for everyone and deciding 'Very'. She tries to twist her body just enough for the Wraith to be consigned wholly to the musket ball's path.
At the same exact moment that Mami pulls the trigger Eri lets go of the handle with one hand, as the weight of the Wraith presses further down, her fingertips skimming the ground, there's a shimmer of green in the muck beside Mikoto.
And the one attached to her neck suddenly has to contend with so many serrated stakes - a briar patch akin to something of fairy tale nightmares forming beneath it, inside it, trying to skewer it at odd angles, covered in thorns which get caught in its blackened form and hook into it, rending and ripping it away.
Suddenly biting Mikoto's neck is probably the least of its concerns. "Mikoto. Are you alright?" Her conjured creation vanishing in sparkling motes shortly after.
"It isn't, how it always is." Eri says to Mai with a quick disagreement, "Remember the hospital?"
It's a startling invocation perhaps, that awful night. Pointing to how bad this could theoretically get if it was allowed to keep going any longer. "If things get that bad, we wait. We don't want things to get to that point here - so we don't."
COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi has used Horticultural Horizon on Pink Moon Stick. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick fails to dodge Eri Shimanouchi's Horticultural Horizon, taking 43 Fatigue damage!
<Pose Tracker> La Sirene de Diamant [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed. <SoundTracker> Les Mysteres https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTouBqPkhtc
It's not fog. Something outside of that. Something different - the miasma is alien, in its way. There are degrees of alienation.
La Sirene feels that hot bite on her arm. Bite? What is it? There is no time to meditate on this. They are upon them. Then they are not.
La Sirene breathes outwards, sweeping a hand up through her hair as something skitters and rustles nearer. The Things, the wraiths, not spiders or bugs despite the obvious points of comparison. They live in the same way that they do. Somehow. Something Other. Something beyond even the differentation of life one might see on another world. From Outside? Or from Within? A thing of -
There they are.
La Sirene pivots herself to face towards the main body of the approaching Wraiths. She has time enough to do it slow, to do it right. Her right hand swings upwards as something scuttles behind her, moving with eloquent abomination and preparing itself with a wriggle of an unwholesome central body. It prepares to leap --
"Les Mysteres, come," la Sirene pleads, as her right hand swings down --
It looks almost like playing a guitar. The strike brings a silvery wail that sends resonating lights throughout every jewel still on her garb, in the two gloves she's thrown out as stations of observation and sacristy. More to the point, there is usually a sort of back-blast behind la Sirene when this all-purpose invocation is brought out, silvery etchings of occult symbols behind her like a sweeping light through cut-outs in a wall.
They are not just lights, as the Wraith, midleap, discovers; thrown back, its pounce foiled, the real action is the bursting eruption of raw blackness interlaced with silvery light as an almost-electric wail resonates outwards, striving mighty against the gloom of the miasma, sweeping ahead swift but not too swift, ripping against the things as she calls out, "Eeeigh!"
Well, that's an understandable reaction. Stepping forwards one pace, la Sirene has the chance to look behind herself and see the Wraith that had her in its sights. A twist of the hand, a snap of the fingers, and a streak of light rolls round the ground, aiming to 'burst' beneath the thing, to billow it upwards on that not-quite-surflike force.
"I think they have venom," la Sirene states, head snapping back to look towards the others. "Beware!"
COMBAT: La Sirene de Diamant has used Carbonado Kaleidoscope on Pink Moon Stick.
<Pose Tracker> Kyouka Okazaki [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.
Kyouka smashes the two wraiths together and they disappate, leaving her free. Good. The warmth of that bite is worrisome, though. Different from the miasma and the fireflies, like they needed something new to worry about.
She gets up, a little shaken, but quickly settles into a ready stance. There's a burst of activity, a defeating of foes, and then... silence. Kyouka frowns.
It can't have been that easy. And it seems she was right. Goodie. "Where these all attached to people? There can't have been that many left."
Or maybe there could've, and she really shouldn't be contemplating that right now.
More emerge, from everywhere. This time, she was more prepared. A juke to the left, hop over a second, under a third, and where-- "Nnng!"
Crap. In that brief moment of hesitation, behind her, and latched onto her arm. "Get-- OFF!" And now the three that she dodged are turning, taking advantage of her momentary distraction. She can't really suplex it with her arm being caught like this, but... Her legs are free.
She lashes out with lighting fast speed, one, then another, and the last, without even setting her leg down.
Good thing she keeps drilling the basics.
COMBAT: Kyouka Okazaki has used Fast n' Flying Kicks on Pink Moon Stick. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick braces 21 Fatigue damage from La Sirene de Diamant's Carbonado Kaleidoscope, taking 17 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Pink Moon Stick's Block and Parry abilities activate! Stagger applied to Pink Moon Stick! COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick partially dodges 2 Fatigue damage from Kyouka Okazaki's Fast n' Flying Kicks, taking 9 Fatigue damage! Kyouka Okazaki is Psyched! Pink Moon Stick's Fade ability activates!
<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.
Eri and Mikoto work together to destroy them, after all. They always have. "Eri!" Mikoto cries, though it is so hard to draw the words together. "Something's... wrong... I can't..!"
It doesn't make much sense, on its face; clearly she can, the way she decimated those things like ticks and not like spiders, despite all the fear in her heart. She is someone who can. And yet, she is someone who cannot communicate it -- cannot choke out the words. She needs Eri to know, to know her, to hear.
She's all mixed up. She can't figure it out.
The strings hit a higher note as those creeping sounds creep-crinder skitter tap!, and Mikoto says no words to the horde as it masses. She is murder in motion as she moves between the Wraiths, and it makes it all the more striking when those things like horns which aren't horns strike her arms, her shins, tear through the warm clothing she wore out here tonight. The threads hang loose and ravaged.
She cries out, and slams her foot into the ground, CRUSHES the flesh of one of its faces beneath her heel as it tries to climb her leg. All the mechanical action flows from her hip, down her knee, to straighten, to press. Even if it doesn't have a throat, it's not difficult to imagine.
Her sword moves, in the same motion, to plunge into another. Another. Another. Here a straight-down stab, there a slice from top to bottom, there more a CRUSHING motion as that massive slab of obsidian slams that uncomfortably-organic smelling thing away. Her nose wrinkles.
She expected to smell something else.
Tirelessly she kills them; tirelessly she moves, without much thought for the damage they lay onto her. She shoves away those ones she notices. She pants, hissing, all clasped tight. She kills them.
She hears
"Mai!" Mikoto cries, in turn, as she hears her calling for her, and moving quickly Mikoto brings her greatsword up, over her head. Her back to her -- an easy place to aim, to --
-- bring the blade down on the tick grasping her back, a feather's length from Mai's own clothing, to stab it into the ground. "LEAVE H--hhh," Mikoto tries to yell, and gets one and a bit words in before her mora descend to something tortured. She lists forward; realises, with dim recognition, how close Miroku is to Mai's flesh.
Mikoto jumps away, and where she lands, she's a kitten in a briar patch. No -- the Wraith is, the Wraith at her neck, the place she remembers, the wound wrapped around her. Mikoto sees Eri's magic and her miracle is the way she stills, heart a-hammer, to let her excise the haunting from her flesh.
She looks to it, with dull horror, as it falls, as it dies, all consumed by greenery.
"... no," she says, to Eri, and this is horrified, too. "I'm not. But, I can still fight."
As if to demonstrate, she plunges her sword into another.
COMBAT: Mikoto Minagi has used Obsidian Blade: Decimation on Pink Moon Stick.
<Pose Tracker> Serpentina Ruse [Juuban Public School (9)] has posed.
The battle never ends, does it?
Such happy thoughts fleetingly flit through Serpentina's mind, but she shakes them out immediately, focusing on the here and now. Despite more appearing and attacking, she was able to see them coming and twirl out of the way of one. Then another. Then -
Where Serpentina was just barely able to dodge one, it seems another Magical Girl did not fare as well. That could have been her if she wasn't careful, and maybe it would be - no, only if she lets her guard down. But while she is free, she might as well help.
Serpentina zigged and zagged, striking in motions that were both flowing and stilted, somehow. This melee flurry was half-hearted, however, as her real goal turned out to be a downward swipe at the Wraith attached to Kyouka, those other attacks being both a deterrant and a distraction from her actual attack.
"You okay there? Nice to meet you, but I should probably save introductions to later, huh?"
COMBAT: Serpentina Ruse has used Umbrella-Fu on Pink Moon Stick. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick braces 30 Fatigue damage from Mikoto Minagi's Obsidian Blade: Decimation, taking 13 Fatigue damage! Pink Moon Stick's Block and Parry abilities activate! COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick partially dodges 5 Fatigue damage from Serpentina Ruse's Umbrella-Fu, taking 19 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Pink Moon Stick's Fade ability activates!
<Pose Tracker> Pink Moon Stick [Admin] has posed. <SoundTracker> Gradus Prohibitus - PMMM OST - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dwzTO4EPG0
In the heat of the battle it is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment that the miasma becomes perceptively thinner, but it is very easy to pinpoint the exact moment that everyone notices, so maybe that's the same thing:
It's when the edge of everything suddenly contains another two people. It isn't because they've suddenly somehow arrived, like the wraiths have, drawn by the noise and intent of combat. They were there all along, sprawled out on a bench along the street. The bench just wasn't visible until now.
Which is not to say that it is suddenly EASY to see. Merely easier. A little bit easier. Just easier enough.
Serpentina Ruse and Kyouka recognize their missing mothers. Though only barely. Grief has rendered their faces rictuses of their former selves. Clearly they are undone; stark cheekbones, clenched jaws, and those empty, empty eyes.
Momo Inoue is stuck to herself. Maybe, technically, she is stuck to her blazer. There is a straitjacket feel to it, and also to the way she rocks back and forth. Trapped. She is trapped by whatever it is that put her hands on her own shoulders; a need for comfort she tried to self-satisfy, only to be doomed to an endless failure, an endless absence, an endless reminder of how very much she needs help and cannot deliver it.
Next to her, Yuki Okazaki is stuck to her phone. She sits primly on the edge of the bench, in stark contrast to Momo's steady rocking; almost a statue. The only part of her body that moves is her swiping fingertip. It scrolls, and scrolls, and scrolls. But it never lifts, it cannot lift, and therefore surely if the phone still had power -- it does not -- she would be viewing, and re-viewing, and re-viewing, the same screen. It's impossible to know what it was, but easy to imagine: either an attempt to call for help, or perhaps, more likely, beneath the weight of the miasma, egged on by the ghost lights that crawled across her skin, she pulled up a photograph. Even now that the screen is black, she stares at it all the same, consumed by the mute horror of whatever it represented to her.
They seem unaware of the battle raging near them; and, more immediately, unaware of the wraiths passing over them. They are very much in harm's way, despite being of no greater interest to the converging army than warhorses are interested in the ground; they churn up mud all the same. There is time to rescue them from the oncoming horde, but not much time. And time is no longer something anyone can spend without cost. When the cost of NOT spending it is even greater, of course, it must be done, but... every single second not spent exhuming wraiths from existence is a second in which two more may appear.
There aren't wraiths attached to either woman anymore, though, and probably haven't been for some time. No, the wraiths seem much more interested in attaching to the magical girls. And in those moments before they free one another, they discover the WEIGHT of them. It is wholly at odds with how the wraiths interacted with gravity; it has nothing to do with their incoming trajectories. It is as though, once they got their hooks into you, they immediately increased in mass by a factor of ten. That isn't how matter is supposed to work, of course, and if a nerd were here -- dub in the voices of Ami Mizuno, Honoka Yukishiro, or Fuu Hououji, perhaps... or Homura Akemi, for that matter (if you'll pardon the pun), who knows more about practical battlefield physics than virtually anyone on this or any world -- they might posit that that energy has to come from somewhere, and given the timing, is certainly IMPLIED to be a transfer from host to parasite.
But that, too, elides the truth in the way that excessive simplicity is prone to do. Whatever nibbles the wraiths got -- notably, delivered from the sharp mouths on their faces, bending in for those bites, rather than any of their limbs' eight horny fangs -- there was no especially profound, taut feeling of being drained. And magical girls, of all people, are familiar with that feeling. No; if they were heavy once they were holding on, they must have been heavy BECAUSE THEY WERE HOLDING ON. Heavy like the first aid kit. Heavy like the door.
The wraiths are inseparable from the emotion they inspire. They don't want to let go. And they don't die as easily, once latched on. It takes that little extra time and effort for Mai to burn off Mami's. A second bullet of Mami's to murder Eri's. More of Eri's thorns than she'd like to skewer Mikoto's. Even mighty Miroku may have scared Mikoto as much with his proximity to Mai as with the way that his handle twisted in her grip, just a little bit, by an unexpected resistance, which might have then in turn created an unexpected exit angle... close. Much too close. And Serpentina Ruse learns the hard way that her first strike winds up being a kind of feint also, when it requires a second to finish the job.
This preoccupation with freedom was utterly necessary but also meant that in many cases the bigger picture was not addressed. Mami's ribbons scooped a big bunch up for easy slaying, but no one was able to capitalize on that tactic; distracted, they all fought their own battles. Mai incinerated three when she could have gotten thirty; Nori's wailing silvery unlight snapped the wraiths in her field of view to death but there were so many more she might have achieved. Kyouka's kicks and Serpentina's strikes made short work of those nearest them, but...
...but...
...Mami's web overflows. And still more are arriving -- they've taken too long, there is no meaningful gap between waves this time. They crawl over their trapped fellows and down the ribbons, towards her. They crawl over a wrecked car, every nearby awning, and the traffic light. They will crawl over that bench and both ladies seated on it if no one stops them.
The miasma may be slightly thinner but the feeling of hopelessness, of fear for the future, is more heightened than ever. And, perhaps, for good reason.
COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Tide Comes In on Serpentina Ruse. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Too Many Futures on Mikoto Minagi. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Tide Comes In on Kyouka Okazaki. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Tide Comes In on La Sirene de Diamant. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Tide Comes In on Eri Shimanouchi. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Too Many Futures on Mai Tokiha. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Tide Comes In on Mami Tomoe. COMBAT: Mami Tomoe counters 10 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Tide Comes In, taking 31 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Mami Tomoe's Reverse and Tactician abilities activate! COMBAT: Mami Tomoe's counterattack, Tiro RETORT, partially gets through, doing 11 Fatigue damage to Pink Moon Stick! Stagger applied to Pink Moon Stick! COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi dodges 10 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Tide Comes In, taking 15 Fatigue damage! Eri Shimanouchi's Fade and Flash abilities activate! COMBAT: Mai Tokiha braces 28 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Too Many Futures, taking 12 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Mai Tokiha is Quipped! Mai Tokiha's Block and Parry abilities activate! COMBAT: La Sirene de Diamant cleanly braces 23 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Tide Comes In, taking 4 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! La Sirene de Diamant's Block and Parry abilities activate! Stun applied to La Sirene de Diamant!
<Pose Tracker> Mami Tomoe [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.
"Thank you," Mami says to Mai. "I am to stay useful today." Her words are calm, collected--the same show as always, despite the greater gloom, the deeper miasma, the horror at hand. Mami makes of herself an anchor, that the others can hold on.
...But she has to hold on, too, and Eri is part of that right now. So are all of them. She answers Kyouka, "Probably not." But she can only say 'probably'.
La Sirene mentions venom. "Not ideal," Mami answers. But as Eri explains why they didn't wait, Mami inclines her head, shooting another until they're gone for now.
"I remember the hospital too," Mami says, "Let's hope we were in time to avoid that here."
Mikoto's not all right. ...That's fair, Mami thinks.
But they come, and faster. Without a moment to recover, Mami whirls to face the next--and sees that they are bursting past her ribbons. "No--"
Mami understands fear for the future. She knows it well. And she has to admit that she feels it in that moment, when another wave crawls towards her. She doesn't have time to--
"I can't get to them!" Mami calls in alarm at the ladies on the bench, a horror in her voice because once again, she's going to see someone she can't save, she--
Mami squeezes that thought until it bursts, and throws out a small cannon at the ones coming towards her. A beam of golden light explodes forth from it, incinerating a few more Wraiths--but they come over and around it, and Mami tumbles backward. "Ah--"
She can't maintain the illusion that she is completely in control here anymore. And that's a dangeorus place for her to be in, and she knows it. "Someone--Help them! I'll try to clear a path!"
Mami bends at the knee and leaps upward out of the mass, guns swirling into her hands as she whirls upward. She becomes a spinning top, bullet after bullet crashing downward towards the many Wraiths as she fires one, two, three, four, more--
Each blast spins her back the other way and sees her knocked back with recoil, and each blast prompts another two.
This is bad.
COMBAT: Mami Tomoe has used Tiro Flourish on Pink Moon Stick. COMBAT: Mikoto Minagi perfectly counters 26 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Too Many Futures, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Critical Counter! Mikoto Minagi's Reverse and Tactician abilities activate! COMBAT: Mikoto Minagi's counterattack, Obsidian Blade: Dynamo, fails to get through, doing 0 Fatigue damage to Pink Moon Stick! COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick braces 16 Fatigue damage from Mami Tomoe's Tiro Flourish, taking 13 Fatigue damage! Mami Tomoe is Psyched! Pink Moon Stick's Block and Parry abilities activate!
<Pose Tracker> Eri Shimanouchi [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.
Eri can tell that Mikoto is having a difficult time, even without the physical challenge of the Wraith marathon. She's not alright. She can still fight. "If it gets worse, fall back. I'll cover you. These are the worst kinds of Wraiths for you to fight."
Pause. A single glance towards her.
"There's no shame in retreating."
There's a reason why Eri doesn't let Mikoto hunt with her anymore. And maybe in this statement, Mikoto understands why. Wraiths which Eri can fight well, are just incompatible with the ones that Mikoto can manage. There's no explanation of nuances there, just that this is true.
Everything starts to blend together, there is no such thing as 'waves' anymore. They're just everywhere, an inexorable tide. Eri leaps one way, she takes a cut against her thigh. Then twisting another way after she lands in the muck, and her outfit sports another clawmark across the shoulder. They're all shallow, in an attempt at a death of a thousand cuts. However, their bodies were made to take this kind of punishment.
"Mai. You retreat too if it comes to it. Mami and I will get Takumi out of here."
However, the situation gets more desperate, and she sees where the pair on the bench have slipped Mami's protective magic. She knows she's lost control.
"Kyouka, you grab them. We'll keep the way to them clear."
It's a lot to ask of someone new. However, Mai and Mikoto are in a bad state, and the rest of them are needed to keep control of the advancing horde.
Touching the handle of her whip as she leaps again, there's a glimmer of magic imbued in it, as its tendrils wrap together into one much larger strand. And as all of its thorns jut out larger, thicker and longer, like large stilettos. There's a sudden ferocity put in each swing, as each one causes the air around it to ripple but whatever it touches, it punctures, slices, bludgeons and rends at high speed. In effect to those who can't see the effect up close on impact-
-its fast enough that it's like she's trying to scythe through the wraiths like wheat.
COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi has used Aerating Edge on Pink Moon Stick. COMBAT: Kyouka Okazaki counters 10 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Tide Comes In, taking 10 Fatigue damage! Stun applied to Kyouka Okazaki! COMBAT: Kyouka Okazaki's counterattack, Pissed Off Bug Smashing, partially gets through, doing 13 Fatigue damage to Pink Moon Stick!
<Pose Tracker> Mai Tokiha [Ohtori Academy (12)] has posed.
There's a sword at her back.
There's a sword at Mai's back, cutting with deadly force, and one twitch the wrong way could be her end.
And under the weight of everything that is this place, it's hard to care
The miasma is thinning, supposedly, but that just means that the ocean can be heard that much more clearly, and the things Mai can't escape are all blending together. More of the people who had gone missing, they're trapped but they're alive, and-
And it's so hard to care about anything, under the weight of what is yet to come.
The hospital. That old fear. "This seems-" Not there. Not as far off as anyone would hope. Mai bites off her words, turns to Mikoto with a smile of thanks - but the wave is renewed, overwhelming itself, overwhelming the group's meager tactics.
It's getting worse. Mami is getting flustered, Mami Tomoe is not in control of the situation, and that...that's worrying in its own right. "I - I'm not sure we have time, Tomoe-"
They're swarming Mai, Wraith after Wraith, and the light off her Element seems dimmer and dimmer. But still she's here. Still she has to fight. Even as Eri suggests retreat for those who can't handle it-
"I can't. It's - I can't leave. I can't abandon Takumi."
Her brother is in danger. That's what she's done, what she's always done, taken care of her brother a decade before she even woke her powers. And for two years since then, again and again, she's been in the same situation over and over. Fire spirals out, lash after lash, making a cage of fire around her from dwindling fuel to scorch and slash and burn, again and again and-
"...I can't stop."
COMBAT: Mai Tokiha has used The Candle Burns To Nothing on Pink Moon Stick. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick fails to brace Eri Shimanouchi's Aerating Edge, taking 48 Fatigue damage! COMBAT: Serpentina Ruse fails to dodge Pink Moon Stick's Tide Comes In, taking 31 Fatigue damage! Stun applied to Serpentina Ruse! COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick perfectly dodges 16 Fatigue damage from Mai Tokiha's The Candle Burns To Nothing, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Critical Dodge! Pink Moon Stick's Fade ability activates!
<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed. <SoundTracker> Florence and the Machine - Heavy In Your Arms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo1n6OTKb0k
The worst kind of Wraiths for her..?
Mikoto can scarcely fathom, for a moment, how Eri can say that and sound so put-together about it. Then her conscious mind catches up, around all the calculation load her instincts are placing on her brain, and she realises they're not the worst for Eri.
They're not the same.
Mikoto's hands curl, heavy, around Miroku's hilt; her grip has always been iron, always been impossible to shake. Is it any more, now? Any worse? Or was it always, always, always, a weight only she can bear, only she is privileged to wield? It's a horrible thing, so close to a girl she loves. It is hers.
Takumi, Eri says, and Mikoto looks up, sharply. "Takumi! And Aoi, and Chie! And I promised I'd help Hanae... I promised..!!" Those people, those people, she's here to help people, she's here to help. The light sparks like la Sirene's lamp in the darkness, and Mikoto insists, all pointed edges: "I'm not going!"
Loyalty, too, is a comfortable thing.
There are people, there -- and between them, so many monsters. Mikoto can't keep her thoughts in order well but she hardly NEEDS to, needs only the motion forward to plunge her blade into the face of the next wraith, pulling up, YANKING, up and down through the centre mass of another, just like Homura-- just like Mami said.
Don't hold back, she said. Don't hold back. It's so easy; it's such a familiar weight.
COMBAT: Mikoto Minagi has used Obsidian Blade: Disequilibrium on Pink Moon Stick. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick braces 26 Fatigue damage from Mikoto Minagi's Obsidian Blade: Disequilibrium, taking 21 Fatigue damage! Pink Moon Stick's Block and Parry abilities activate!
<Pose Tracker> Kyouka Okazaki [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.
Kyouka gives a determined nod to Eri as she warns of more to come, which they do.
A huddle of them jump on her, and three are dispatched, but the fourth--Ahh, a timely save, from the girl she had to reassure. She flashes Serpentina a quick grin and a nod. "Later!" she agrees. "But thanks!" she acknowledges before she turns her attention back to the confrontation.
It's a mess, there's no coordination, and more are coming, but yet...
The miasma thins, and her heart seizes in her chest. "((Mom!))" she shouts. (In English, not Japanese, as always happens when she gets rattled, forgets to switch out of what she considers her 'native' tongue, most of the time.) She takes a half step forward--but there's so many other priorties, a fresh wave, and...
She can tell. They're in harm's way. The horde isn't after them, but they'll be trampled underfoot just the same.
A growl raises up in the back of her throat. "Strike Wolf!"
The reply is immediate. Her device knows her throughts. <Wind Strider.>
A light violet circle appears at her feet, inscribed with runes. Energy swirls up around her, flowing over her body, concentrating in her boots and gauntlets. And just as the swarm is about to jump on her once again, she surges into action. There's no elegance or grace as she bats off the oncoming horde, just raw strength applied in the crudest, bluntest, most physical way possible. She shrugs off the bites and scratches as they come until the area right around her is clear.
Then the others do their parts, attempt to clear a path, and Kyouka nods. "Got it!" is all she says before she's kicking off in a fury of motion. She jumps straight up--but then suddenly she's surging forward, skimming over the ground, trying to stay out of reach of the wraiths. She touches down in front of the bench, punts another of those abominations away, and then grabs both women. There's no time for grace or elegance here as she hauls them up, one over each shoulder. It's a bit awkward but--
She's determined.
"Keep me balanced!"
<Affirmative.>
Her return trip isn't as fast, but she's taking it in gentle bounds, trying to stay in the air as much as possible as she makes her way back to the relative safety (she hopes) of the group.
COMBAT: Kyouka Okazaki has used Rescues to the Mothers! on Kyouka Okazaki. COMBAT: Kyouka Okazaki accepts Kyouka Okazaki's Rescues to the Mothers!, taking 0 Fatigue damage!
<Pose Tracker> Serpentina Ruse [Juuban Public School (9)] has posed.
Despite her efforts, Serpentina could not defeat the Wraith attached to her companion in one hit. Maybe not even in two hits if she tried, so she was ready to triple her efforts in a focused flurry.
She never got the chance.
The fog lifted just enough for her to see two figures. One she was not super familiar with, but the other...
"Mom!"
Serpentina couldn't help herself. She blurted it out before she realized she said anything. "Uh... I mean... miss! Are you okay?" The brief hope that came from seeing her mother 'okay' vanished when she realized she wasn't. She was another zombie-like victim caught in a misery loop.
% "N-no..." Serpentina's heart broke, and everything but her mother faded. She rushed towards her with reckless abandon, taking hit after hit, cut after cut from the Wraiths she was only vaguely aware of and barely tried to dodge. When too many were in front of her, she tried to clear them out with a parasol-assisted spinning kick. Her only goal was to reach mom - er, Momo Inoue - and place a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I'm here... it will be okay... I think..."
COMBAT: Serpentina Ruse has used Spinny Kick on Pink Moon Stick.
<Pose Tracker> La Sirene de Diamant [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.
La Sirene's hand twists round and her fingers curl. Then uncurl. Les Mysteres attend her as they so often have. One day, she wonders, will they not? She will not be a Siren forever, will she? One day she will become queen, or she will yield her contention and become something else.
But what?
Will she still be the 'Red Future' then? Who is the Red Future?
Will there be a replacement? Would Tsuru know another?
Would the friends she has met and cultivated remember her? Perhaps they would, but -- but, they wouldn't forever. They'd move on. They couldn't make their lives a shrine to her. But she's still here! Why wouldn't they --
'someone, help them!'
La Sirene's head saccades for a moment even as Mami's guns fire with eloquent persuasion, the queen making her decisive argument as she feels a fatigued shiver run up her spine. Her lips purse for a moment, as she hears the panic in the voice of Tokiha out there. La Sirene breathes out.
The same trick that had served her well enough against her would-be assassin is brought to play again, but as they say, 'once more - with feelings.' The wave along the ground is aimed forwards, more of a surging crest or a ripple which seems to be pushed forwards-- the angle does not, tragically, take much advantage of her clever little setup, but there are people in peril. She can hear Ruse's sorrow.
Will it be okay? she thinks. She can't answer. She doesn't feel that she can speak such things with decision.
But perhaps, la Sirene thinks, action alone will be enough--
COMBAT: La Sirene de Diamant has used Polyploia on Pink Moon Stick. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick dodges 3 Fatigue damage from Serpentina Ruse's Spinny Kick, taking 4 Fatigue damage! Serpentina Ruse is Psyched! Pink Moon Stick's Fade ability activates! COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick cleanly braces 51 Fatigue damage from La Sirene de Diamant's Polyploia, taking 9 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Pink Moon Stick's Block and Parry abilities activate! Tangle and Trap applied to Pink Moon Stick!
<Pose Tracker> Pink Moon Stick [Admin] has posed. <SoundTracker> Counting Down - Yuki Kajiura - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHtdHknhjJI
Mami and Eri are... intensifying. It's been a long time, probably, since anyone's seen them put out this kind of mana outlay. Mami in the air, sending bullets in every direction almost faster than thought, yet at the same time, with a cunning mind and an iron determination to create a very specific opening. Eri on the ground, her whip and the force behind it both magnifying in order to reap a bloody miasmic harvest, with the same goal. A path cannot help but open for Kyouka, with these two veteran Puella Magi on the job. No quantity of wraiths will stop them from doing their duty -- to the world, to each other, and to these people who need saving.
The world around Mai seems to be closing instead. Closing in, both with the quantity of wraiths and the quality of her answer to them. The fire is a shield and a sword all at once. And within it, the HiME is heating up, overheating, threatening to turn to molten slag. Mikoto meanwhile contends with a simple truth: it never took a wraith to get her stuck to that sword. It is as much a prison as any cage of fire. But it's HER prison, one she's known for so long that the concept of a world without it is almost more frightening. No wonder she is so susceptible to this terrible emotional inertia. Might there be a dose of self-delusion, of deliberate distraction, when her fears for the future focus on Mai's exams?
Fumiko's Mom and Kyouka's Mom (who, let's face it, are much more those things than their actual names, at least to the people involved) are as unresponsive as the rest of the victims, but while that may be difficult to handle emotionally, it at least makes them pretty easy to manhandle (girlhandle) physically. It seems that whatever made Momo sticky only applies to herself, which may come as something of a relief, since that power is mighty, indeed. Kyouka is able to lift both, but then -- trained legs or no -- it's mostly up to Serpentina to protect her on the retreat, a task made much easier by La Sirene. Her surging wave creates a boundary, widens the lane... buys time, that most precious of commodities now.
Kyouka finds that superstrength is irrelevant, and gets the feeling that it isn't even the miasma that lends the two women this incredible weight. It's plain old importance. Kyouka holds the whole world in her hands. Her whole world, anyway. And someone else's. The miasma DOES make it a little extra difficult to put them down when the time comes, however; a crucial hesitation; and it is then that Serpentina will be truly vital, to protect all three of them. It is fortunate that Mami and Eri cleared that path, or Serpentina's wounds would be much more severe.
Once they're back with the group, of course, nothing ends. Or begins. What a terrible middle to inhabit.
Time is beginning to lose all meaning. Has it been minutes or hours? There are always more. More minutes, with more wraiths to fill them. This is NOTHING like fighting a Witch, or even an Akuma, a Cardiax, or the typical Orphan. This isn't a battle. It is a war. And like all wars, logistics start to matter. Did the Puella Magi begin to unleash in earnest too soon? Or, had they not, would it have been too late?
The heavy weight of a wraith becomes familiar; it is more typical to be fighting beneath one or two than not. Then it becomes OVERfamiliar -- what a terrible thing to become accustomed to. THAT is dangerous. It's more necessary than ever to look out for one another.
Something else changes, too.
Plop.
Plop.
Ploploploploploplo...
A wraith fell from the sky. Then another. Then a cloudburst of them. There is no longer a line to defend; these wraiths are not coming from distant reaches of the village; they are materializing into existence on the spot, on THIS spot, right on top of the threat. It is not a coincidence. There's no time for theologizing; it is enough to understand that some instinct of self-defense is causing the miasma to congeal into these horrible curds of monster, with the singular goal of stamping out the girls disturbing it.
The miasma continues to thin. With each wraith, in fact, it thinned a little more; but there were SO much and SO many that it was unnoticeable at the individual. Now however it is beginning to not only open up the edge of the world by more crucial meters, but within them, feel a bit lighter as well. A possible end to the tunnel, though no light has penetrated yet.
But something else has. Penetrated, that is. Or, more aptly, been revealed.
A block away -- and, crucially, two blocks APART -- are three more people. Aoi and Chie to the north. Takumi to the south. The storm is such that the rain of wraiths threatens them also. Indeed, it probably reduces the urgency on some level; surely they've already been trod upon, after all this time. What's one more?
But the heart knows nothing of such logic. One more is one more too many, when Aoi and Chie are stuck TO EACH OTHER, clinging in a wad of yellow uniforms. And yet like Momo they obviously gave no comfort to one another with that nearness. Connected at shoulder and hip, they are stuck upright, and occasionally vaguely strain to separate from one another. If this were a sweeter story, they might also be holding hands or have their arms slung gently around each other's waists, but it isn't and they aren't; it is clear that they were, are, both desperate to separate and absolutely, urgently, vitally unable to do so, not because of some invisible suction force but because of their short-circuited hearts, which is worse, much worse.
As for Takumi... well. It would be nice if he'd gotten stuck to his pillbox, though less nice if his hand was then in the way. But it's not so. The bottle fell out of nerveless fingers. His gaunt little chest shudders with cold as much as with misery.
He will not be picked up by any means. He cannot be, not even by a sister's love. Much as Rina cannot be moved from that streetlight, and for the same reason.
He is stuck to the ground.
The world itself is hungry to reclaim him. Or, perhaps, it is him who is so unable to let go of it that he cannot move. What do you call the ground that inters a body like that?
A grave.
COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Wraith Storm on La Sirene de Diamant. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Wraith Storm on Serpentina Ruse. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Wraith Storm on Kyouka Okazaki. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Wraith Storm on Eri Shimanouchi. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used Wraith Storm on Mami Tomoe. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used The Future Is Now on Mikoto Minagi. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has used The Future Is Now on Mai Tokiha. COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi braces 33 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Wraith Storm, taking 14 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Eri Shimanouchi's Block and Parry abilities activate! Blind applied to Eri Shimanouchi! COMBAT: Mami Tomoe dodges 22 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Wraith Storm, taking 15 Fatigue damage! Mami Tomoe's Fade and Flash abilities activate! Cripple applied to Mami Tomoe! COMBAT: La Sirene de Diamant partially dodges 10 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's Wraith Storm, taking 40 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Blind applied to La Sirene de Diamant! COMBAT: Serpentina Ruse fails to counter Pink Moon Stick's Wraith Storm, taking 44 Fatigue damage! Blind and Cripple applied to Serpentina Ruse! COMBAT: Serpentina Ruse's counterattack, Umbrella-Fu, fails to get through, doing 0 Fatigue damage to Pink Moon Stick! COMBAT: Kyouka Okazaki fails to dodge Pink Moon Stick's Wraith Storm, taking 41 Fatigue damage! Blind and Cripple applied to Kyouka Okazaki! COMBAT: Mikoto Minagi partially dodges 5 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's The Future Is Now, taking 20 Fatigue damage! Mikoto Minagi is Quipped! Mikoto Minagi's Fade and Flash abilities activate! COMBAT: Mikoto Minagi covers Mai Tokiha for Pink Moon Stick's attack, The Future Is Now, taking it upon herself instead! COMBAT: Mikoto Minagi perfectly counters 28 Fatigue damage from Pink Moon Stick's The Future Is Now, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Critical Counter! Mikoto Minagi's Reverse and Tactician abilities activate! COMBAT: Mikoto Minagi's counterattack, Obsidian Blade: Dynamo, bursts all the way through, doing 44 Fatigue damage to Pink Moon Stick!
<Pose Tracker> Mami Tomoe [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.
It's been a long time since Mami's seen Mami put out this kind of mana. The situation is, in a word: desperate. It's all falling apart as Mami watches, but she will not let it fall further as long as she has breath in her lungs.
Not for the first time, she wonders if that will still be so, after tonight. ...But instead of the terror of solitude, she feels something else pumping in her chest. There are so many she's lost already, but...
"Kozue," Mami mumurs to herself, and remembers a blue girl who lives still.
Her eyes snap open sharply. "Hah--!"
Bullet after bullet, Mami keeps destroying Wraiths. She keeps at this war, and she will win it. "Then keep that promise!" Mami calls to Mikoto. "But remember you can only protect anyone if you're alive to do it!"
But Mai... can't stop. That concerns Mami, but there is little she can do for it now. She has to leave her to Eri; Mami can't reach her. But Kyouka and Ruse--there, they go. Kyouka has them, and Mami breathes a sigh of brief relief as she comes back down from the air finally. La Sirene cannot answer, but Mami saw the effort she made. Action is enough to tell her she's still active. And she is another reason that Mami must live. She has so many ties, now--not her own fragile, golden tie to life, but the red threads of her relationships.
"The concentration is approaching maximum!" Mami calls. Falling, falling, falling around them, Mami whirls in place, a dancer weaving across wraiths that fall and fall. But she burns with mana as she does it, golden light moving off of her brilliantly as she spends her life to save it. She sees--the others there. The ones there. She can go to them--Or...
"Tokiha!" Mami calls, "I see him!"
No. There are others who can go to them. She has a different role to play. Hers in this moment is not the hand of salvation.
If she is lucky, it is a hand of something altogether different.
That burning golden aura about her means she has to end this fight now, or be overwhelmed herself regardless. And so, once more, Mami Tomoe raises herself up. "ERI!" Mami calls, her throat raw. "Now's the time!" Mami drops, hitting the ground, and then a ring of rifles goes up with her. Bullets pierce Wraith after Wraith after Wraith, giving Mami plenty of room for what she needs to do next.
She bends at the knee and leaps up into the air, practically taking flight. Up, up, up she goes, through the thinning miasma, until she reaches the crest of her leap. Then...
As if to silent music, Mami performs the motions of a familiar dance. Her hand moves up to her collar swiftly, pulling the ribbon from there down. She extends it, tugging with her other hand, until it starts to billow forth, expanding and expanding. Then she drapes it over the air, as if a blanket--and it shimmers. Whipping away in the high winds of this perch high above, Mami's ribbons reveal a gigantic gun. Beautiful silver, wreathed in gold filigree all over, forms the great barrel of quite probably the largest firearm anyone here has ever seen. It gleams, despite the darkness, shining bright with Mami's power. Delicately, she assumes command, hooking her hands against it and aiming it down, down towards the Wraiths. Power begins to gather all of a sudden, golden light streaming inward down the barrel, becoming a miniature sun in its brilliance.
"Tiiiiiiiirooooooooooooo...!" Mami's voice echoes over the battlefield, a song on her lips. What could be a final song.
"FINALE!"
All the gathered power slams down towards the earth, where it will completely spare the civilians caught up in its targeting, not by virtue of pure magic but by sheer precision of aim. Where it will reduce Wraiths by scores to so much dust, where it will light up the entire night in its fury.
COMBAT: FINISHER! Mami Tomoe has used Tiro FINALE on Pink Moon Stick.
<Pose Tracker> Eri Shimanouchi [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.
"Leaving him to someone else is not abandoning him." Eri notes to Mai, sharply, at her refusal. "If you fall victim to this you won't be able to help anyone. It'll be us protecting you. Put on your own oxygen mask first, Mai." She gives Mikoto a look, but for now, Mami's answers is her own. She can only protect if they've alive to do it. In this moment, she can't notice the mindset. They're not the same.
... Certainly that must be true? That knowledge is something she just understands intrinsically. Maybe if Wraiths had existed before, her prey of choice would align with her. They didn't though, and things are different now.
Kyouka goes for them, and like Mami she tries to cover them, keeping the Wraiths away from that bench, trying to cut down any that come near it.
Eri can feel the fast drain of her magic. There will be cubes aplenty for both of them - assuming they survive this. Wraiths are a marathon, and this is a longer one than most. If they run out...
... well, the Law of Cycles awaits, doesn't it? That's more a comforting thought, than one that brings her despair now. Even if she doesn't want to leave her behind. If anyone notices, there are moments when her reserves come out, these blackened little cubes, her fingers carding through her hair as the cube is placed near it, wisps of that sickly black drawn out of it.
It starts to get bad. The Wraiths come like Raindrops, and Eri finds herself wildly parrying each blow that comes her way. More wounds appear. There are just so many, each one congealing out, as she swings wildly to try to ward them away. 'Tokiha I see him.' The moment Mami points him out. She sees him too, and a glance marks Aoi and Chie. However, she understands that right now, there's no force on Earth that will keep Mai and Mikoto from charging in at them. Her role is different- which is something Mami and her are in full agreement on.
'ERI! Now's the time!' And despite the desperation of the situation, there's a certain adrenaline rush that sweeps through her, and the faintest curve of a smile that hits the edge of her glips, "Then let's wipe them all out."
Eri takes the wooden handle of her whip, and stabs it into the ground. There's a gleam of green magic around her, like an aurora. Then sigils form all over the mud, the concrete, each one pattering, rippling like raindrops on the surface of a pond underneath the awful skittering advance of so many wraiths, as it spreads out from her not even just a short distance...
... but her magic encompassing the entirety of multiple city blocks. In this moment, she looks utterly immobile, and vulnerable. Mami's explosion lights the air in an afterglow of the bright flash briefly as blinding as looking into the sun. Still she focuses.
Then das the afterglow of the explosion fades dozens of serrated, thorned tendrils erupt out of the ground at each point where that magic formed. Each aimed to smash into a Wraith. One after another.
Some are slashed to ribbons if struck, others are caught briefly by one, two, three, four on their limbs then drawn and quartered. Others are pummeled on the spot. Still others impaled. Her eyes flicker from one to another, as she focuses because she's directly controlling each of them.
And in the center of it she kneels, gripping that handle, that storm of awful violence to the miasmic creatures, as she mops up that which Mami's initial explosion could not reach with an exacting, brutal precision.
COMBAT: FINISHER! Eri Shimanouchi has used Child of Thorns on Pink Moon Stick.
<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.
Mikoto would call Eri dark and brilliant in her violence -- has always admired it; but now, right now, right here in this unending war, she is distracted.
Her world is all narrowed to a point, Miroku's point, the edge of the world and all creation. There, a Wraith. Kill it, claymore sinking in from leg to leg, bisected. Another. She presses her weight forward on the blade she cannot let go, couldn't leave behind even in her freedom, the blade which has always followed her, another shadow in her step. Miroku can stab as well as slice, piercing a strange face and strange teeth, piercing flesh, piercing through. She spins, and catches three more in the way her sword drags upon the ground, sparking and grinding, too physical, too violent.
Mikoto can certainly fool herself into thinking she's afraid of Mai's exams. She's really very good at that.
It's so nice to believe in fairy tales.
They're fighting a war, and Mikoto is all violence, a catastrophy unto herself -- she hears Mami's warning, but distantly, distantly, all stood on far shore. Enough to shake the weight from her shoulders, sometimes. It always comes back. It's crawling up her back. It's crawling down her head, falling from above. She twists and turns, and it is not unlike a dance, if dancing were the horror at the end of a story book.
Because it's what she believes, there's one thing Mikoto sees, in the pounding blood where her eyes should be, all slit to narrow points. Those things, those Wraiths, they're falling on --
"MAI!"
Mikoto charges, and leaps -- in front of, not away from, and her blade comes up in the motion, slams DOWN. She turns, and brings her blade up, elbow jutting sharply aside with the control she needs to halt that killing slab at the right moment, to carve the ticks from Mai's arms without disarming her entirely.
Her foot comes up -- she kicks one off of her chest, sidelong, where it has clutched too tightly for Mikoto to aim. Miroku plunges into it, when it hits the ground. Mikoto plunges forward, too, the force she needed to generate to remove it setting her off-kilter.
"We can't stop," she agrees, she affirms, she allows. "We can't ever stop. Mai! Don't hesitate! If you stop, they'll kill you--!!"
She is screaming, loud enough to be heard across the warzone, across every dying Wraith. A warzone which clears, in that moment, to reveal him --
All of them.
"GO!" Mikoto yells, and she charges in the opposite direction, because this isn't the first time Chie and Aoi have seen her bearing down, this isn't the first time she's had to. They're kind people; they've taught her very, very much.
She can't just leave them here. They've stopped. They'll die.
But she can't ask Mai to help them, either, when Takumi's in trouble.
Miroku sends up sparks as it tears through tortured ground, destroying what is already very, very much destroyed, as if it could simply be rent asunder a second time. It would be easy, here, to claim her as King Solomon, cleaving the girls in half to separate them; to see who, here, would protest, cares more for their welfare than being with them.
She doesn't. They're not her enemies.
But she can't possibly get there in time, with all these Wraiths weighing her down.
She can't...
She can't.
Mikoto spins, in a wide arc -- once, twice, three times, raging revolutionary, before she plunges her sword deep into a dark, dark portal. White light arcs from it, sharply, like lightning -- her shadow twins, as the power billows from it, as she cries, as she invokes: "MIROKU!"
There's a wraith, falling from the sky, towards Chie's head. At an angle, a horrific obsidian spike tears from the earth, to skewer it in mid-air.
There's another, all settled on Aoi's side. Another spike, lancing out beside her, holds it up like a mouse on a butcher-bird's tree.
The girls will find themselves all caught in a cage of obsidian spires -- and THEY, at least, are not impaled, so total is Mikoto's singular devotion to keeping the girls in this warzone safe. None of the dozen-dozen black glass lances come for any of those girls -- though, certainly, one might want to watch their step.
Two blocks apart, Miroku, unseen beneath the earth, is not generous enough to see to Takumi's... safety.
Perhaps that's for the best.
COMBAT: FINISHER! Mikoto Minagi has used MIROKU!! on Pink Moon Stick.
<Pose Tracker> Mai Tokiha [Ohtori Academy (12)] has posed.
The cage of flame burns around Mai, burns up what little will she had left. That's all she can do now, bereft of a path forward, a purpose. Burn.
The candle burns at both ends. She was told, once, that she shouldn't, but that's so hard to remember here and now. She's reminded by someone important that she has to take care of herself before she becomes a burden, and it's hard to let the words sink in. Mai is just here to do the same thing as always, the same thing she can keep doing instead of changing even one thing about her life. Just burn, and burn, until-
The cage is fading. The Wraiths are surrounding, raining down, consuming everything, and it's so hard to care. This is just how things are now - they're as heavy as her guilt, all over her back, and there's no need to even move any more-
And then suddenly, the weight is gone.
Somehow she's...still breathing. Not yet consumed, not yet gone, and- and it's Mikoto, there, protecting her with grace and fury. Familiar and welcome and unexpected, all at once. "Mikoto...you're..." Here. For her. Mai cuts off her surprise as her companion yells that they can't quit, and a new guilt burns hotly. Even with all she came here for-
"...what am I even doing. You're right. Eri, you were right, it's just..." So hard to change. So hard to take that step forward, with the fear and the guilt weighing down her heart - but she lifts her head all the same. "...I'm sorry, everyone."
And one more voice calls out. One she once thought she hated. One that ultimately seems to understand. "Tomoe?...Got it! And...thanks."
She parts with Mikoto, because they both have something to protect - but the steps are familiar. She steps. She runs. She flies towards Takumi, to where her brother is...trapped. Trapped by the earth that seeks to reclaim him, and it's a small mercy that it wasn't water.
A sister's love tries and fails to move him. A sister's duty has her make her stand there, by her brother's side, rings spinning and burning with whatever she has left. She might have scarce little courage or conviction left, but she can draw on the fear, draw on the despair, because even this action never changes.
Flames spiral together from her Element, converging to ponderously form a miniature star before her, burning brighter and brighter with all her dread of change. It's a dismal light, but beautiful all the same - something to shine in the gloom, something she can unleash with a scream, to tear through Wraiths and scorch away the miasma and maybe just break her out of this nightmare.
Whatever the future might be. To protect what's important to her, she can always burn.
COMBAT: FINISHER! Mai Tokiha has used Ardent Splendour on Pink Moon Stick.
<Pose Tracker> La Sirene de Diamant [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.
Time itself is turning round. Stretching. Congealing in the hellish similarity of their enemies.
Similarity! It's funny, isn't it? Even if they have traits in common - the loathesome invertebratism of the Cardiax, the feminine forms and grotesquely whimsical touches of the Daimons - their enemies are like themselves, in a way. Unique.
But these are not the same sort of enemy, la Sirene thinks, but she can't put a lot of thought into it. They can see further, but it is raining. It is raining something horrible. The miasma? Is it curdling? Do they have to grind it down, piece by bloody (not bloody) piece?
La Sirene can glimpse Takumi but to her she is another person. Dear and precious, but there are always people to whom we are *particularly* precious - people who are precious to *us*, above and beyond their intrinsic value. Jewels of jewels, they anoint our hearts. That is not Takumi to la Sirene.
But she has her share of jewels.
'The concentration is approaching maximum.'
La Sirene wipes her pale forehead, taking five steps back towards a particular place -- her hands spread outwards, not quite at a T-pose, but getting near to it. The astute might recognize she is pointing her hands towards where she threw her gloves, considering that she maneuvered herself.
La Sirene's eyes close and her head rolls backwards.
Pencil-thin rays of light fire outwards from the backs of her hands towards those gloves, now quite clearly visible, having gone undisturbed by the rush of the Wraiths. There is glittering and gleaming. "Awaken," la Sirene breathes. The lantern at her waist flickers for a moment-- and then intensifies as she stands up on the balls of her feet... then perhaps a centimeter higher... two... because the decorations extend to the soles of her knee-high boots.
Thorn and blast and obsidian are joined by a sudden profusion of beams - the manifold facets of a half-dozen jewels each shining upwards into the air, interlocking with each other. Against Mikoto's blades they *refract*, because some things are similar even if they're not the same; against thorns they simply spread apart. The profused array is silent for a moment, merely beautiful, and then the pencil-wide projections from la Sirene's arms suddenly SURGE--
And it simply goes everywhere, light that feels like a wave in the sea at night, pressure that doesn't warm. At least, that is what those who might stumble through it would feel, for a moment. The Wraiths, of course, will feel that touch for significantly longer.
COMBAT: FINISHER! La Sirene de Diamant has used Saturday's Delight on Pink Moon Stick.
<Pose Tracker> Serpentina Ruse [Juuban Public School (9)] has posed.
There was nothing else that mattered to Serpentina. Nothing else that mattered to Fumiko. Nothing else that mattered to the little girl but her mother's safety.
The swarm was closing in, and the parents were unresponsive. Serpentina was strong, but not strong enough to carry her mom and the other woman. However, it seemed her ally was. "I... am trusting you to take good care of he- of them. Promise me you will get her to safety..."
What could Serpentina do then? She REFUSED to be useless in rescuing her own mother. Miasma or no miasma, she REFUSED to stand idly by.
"But I'll help make a path," Serpentina added finally. "When there's an opening, you know what to do. Ready? Let's - "
It seems that she wasn't the only one to have that idea. It really made clearing a path easier, and they were able to 'rescue' the moms. They still weren't responsive, no matter how many times Serpentina shook Momo Inoue. "Some rescue," she said despondently. "Well... this is it, huh?" She blinked, then tensed. "No, we just gotta fend off these Wraiths, and things will be normal, right? Then... you!" She tapped Kyouka's arm. "Help me guard the ladies! Nothing will get past our impenetrable wall of love!" She meant that as a Magical Girl kind of saying, but Momo was her mom... and she did not know it, but with Kyouka, it also had a more significant meaning.
Serpentina leapt into the air. Her parasol pointed to the ground, opening as she spun it around.
"WHIRLING..."
When she let go, it landed on the ground point down, still spinning.... and spinning faster... and faster...
"PARASOL..."
Soon the parasol was a little whirlwind, twirling at rapid speeds towards any and all Wraiths nearing the quartet. It was like an angry spinning top... no, a furious spinning blade.
"TOP!"
COMBAT: FINISHER! Serpentina Ruse has used Whirling Parasol Top on Pink Moon Stick.
<Pose Tracker> Kyouka Okazaki [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.
Kyouka has lived a life of constant change--moving from country to country, constantly meeting new people, taking on new challenges wherever she went. There's always a new bazaar to visit, a new cultural site to appreciate, new rock faces to climb, and places to camp.
And she loves it. Change is, in many ways, exciting for her, because it means there's something new. Sure, there are times, like when moving to Japan, where she wanted a chance to settle in for a while, to go to a normal school, to make friends. But even that was its own kind of new challenge. She's not afraid of change.
But yet... there has been one constant through all of that. And as much as they sometimes are at loggerheads.... she loves her Mom. And it's so hard to let go of her to continue the fight. For so many reasons.
But there are others to save, and she has to be responsible to them, too. She gives her mother one more tight hug before she reluctantly pries herself away.
"((Don't worry. We'll get you out of here.))"
The miasma is thinning, but... now it's pouring. They're falling from the sky, and she tries to duck, to dodge, to weave, to make use of the amped up speed still flowing through her... but there's too many. First one lands on her face, and that makes it harder to see the others, and she's pummled mercilessly every which way. "Yuck! Dammit!" It's endless, so endless as she rips them off of her again and again, tries to smash and kick away the endless tide.
And then she can see them. Two stuck together, one stuck... to the ground?
It's getting down to the wire now. Everyone seems to be pulling out all of the stops, and so she will, too.
Another circle appears at her feet. She holds her right hand out low, like an open palm strike, and braces it with her left. She knows how to do this now, can do it safely. She's desparate, but... she's in control, this time.
She opens the floodgates, and pours mana into her attack. A bright whining ball of light starts to build, but from it, power washes outwards, blows back the horde, deflects the damnable wraith-rain and provides, for just a moment, a brief respite.
"From warded den, through hallowed glade..."
Power builds up brighter still, the energy output intensifying as it rebuffs the advance of the wraiths around her. Brighter and brighter. It is not the warm, suffusive glow of Mami's soulgem, or the light of a Siren's lantern, or the raging of Mai's fire. But it is both serene yet intense as it builds both larger but more importantly, more intense. A brilliant white light, tinted just a shade of blue. Surely it could have repelled the dismal dim of the miasma earlier?
Her first closes around that power and all of a sudden it flows into her. There is a brief vacuum that momentarily sucks the wraiths in, but just as quickly, as the power flows through her, the outflow continues, rebuffing them just as quickly. Her body alights with an aura of mana, wisps of power lifting off of her. Her gauntlets and boots are pure white luminance now, and still the light is building.
She's been muttering something the entire time, and only now do the last words raise to an audible pitch as she shouts, "And guide your guardian's hand!" She shifts her position to one of action, knees bent, one hand forward, the other back and held high.
And in unison with her device: "Shining Moonlight Strike!" <Shining Moonlight Strike.>
And she is a blur of motion. She tapped into speed before, but now she is a white streak. Last time there was only one important target. This time, there are oh so many. But she regulates. Each punch is a small explosion, a blast to clear the air and send wraiths flying away from overhead. Each kick another explosion, clearing ground. Each precisely placed to avoid their family or her allies. As soon as there is an encroachment she is suddenly there to blast them away, and she widens the perimeter, holds it as she streaks back and forth unleashing attack after attack.
COMBAT: FINISHER! Kyouka Okazaki has used Shining Moonlight Strike on Pink Moon Stick. COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick fails to brace Mami Tomoe's Finisher, Tiro FINALE, taking 172 Fatigue damage! Pink Moon Stick is unable to keep fighting! COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick fails to brace Eri Shimanouchi's Finisher, Child of Thorns, taking 118 Fatigue damage! Pink Moon Stick is unable to keep fighting! COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick braces 60 Fatigue damage from Mikoto Minagi's Finisher, MIROKU!!, taking 49 Fatigue damage! Pink Moon Stick is unable to keep fighting! Pink Moon Stick's Block and Parry abilities activate! COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick fails to brace Mai Tokiha's Finisher, Ardent Splendour, taking 116 Fatigue damage! Pink Moon Stick is unable to keep fighting! COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick fails to brace La Sirene de Diamant's Finisher, Saturday's Delight, taking 102 Fatigue damage! Pink Moon Stick is unable to keep fighting! COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick fails to brace Serpentina Ruse's Finisher, Whirling Parasol Top, taking 46 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Pink Moon Stick is unable to keep fighting! COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick fails to brace Kyouka Okazaki's Finisher, Shining Moonlight Strike, taking 101 Fatigue damage! Pink Moon Stick is unable to keep fighting!
<Pose Tracker> Pink Moon Stick [Admin] has posed.
Spreading out is the very last thing the group should do right now. They must be a wall upon which the waves of wraiths break, until at last the tide recedes. But necessity demands the opposite, and so it is that at one end of the village's little downtown, Mai makes her stand alone. A LITERAL flame in the darkness, or a single candle at a memorial? Time will tell. It is difficult for her there. But it is so much easier than if Takumi were NOT at her feet. If she could not have reached him at all.
That's what happened to Mikoto. Mai's shadow so often walks darker paths. Unable to reach her friends Aoi and Chie at all, she is forced to entrust them, at a distance, to her own shadow. The dark core of her darkness. Miroku delivers, of course. He always does. That's what makes him so seductive an ally. Aoi and Chie disappear within his obsidian grasp. All that is required of Mikoto, afterwards, is to survive.
But with her sword half-buried in a portal, that is easier said than done.
There are still so, so many wraiths. The ground is littered with them. The air is increasingly more full of hairy black bodies than actual miasma. And they converge indiscriminately; Mai and Mikoto are not bait and do not receive more than their share, but at the same time, they're so inconveniently located, and it's forcing a group of girls who could barely survive half these numbers grouped together, to survive double in much smaller groups.
But what is not factored into that analysis is who the girls in question are.
<SoundTracker> Credens Justitiam - PMMM OST - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_J3UhPK-Zo
Serpentina Ruse creates an unlikely and puissant bunker in the middle of everything; a final retreat for her and Kyouka's vulnerable mothers, and for anyone else who needs a quick respite. Her winds do not just blow but sear, slicing; their walls cut any wraiths lucky enough to get past the others, mostly ones that materialized nearby, into ribbons.
Kyouka, one layer outwards, picks off wraiths like a sniper rifle armed with tank bullets. A single punch shatters ten at a time. The pockets that she creates are always momentary, ever re-conquered by their enemy. But those moments are crucial. It is inside those moments of safety, blasted open by her white-blue mana, and her inexorable heart, that the others can act.
And act they do.
La Sirene does not allow a hair on Mikoto's head to be harmed, while the girl stands as bulwark for two others. Her beams are ethereal but far from ephemeral; where they pass, wraiths die and die and die. A wave of them erupt into being much too close to the HiME for comfort, yet her wave, too, is already there, surging, merging, engulfing. Drowning. Storms have already destroyed this place, but this storm destroys nothing but a terrible trapped future for its survivors.
Eri rends open that future with both hands. She beats it into existence. She rips it into place. Her violence shines so much less like emeralds, which do not live, and so much more like new shoots, fresh leaves, which live relentlessly. Some day she will disappear like the wraiths do, but today is not that day. And it's a good thing that they are vanishing... there would be piles of them in the streets. The gutters would run with their blood, if they bled anything but miasma. The world would be worse for it. But instead it is BETTER. One at a time, a hundred in aggregate, she is removing them from the equation. She is defeating grief, right where she stands.
And none of them stand alone, not with Mami at their backs. Mami, whose singular, signature attack is onomatopoeia as enforced by the Golden Queen's will. She says it and it is done: finale means finale. Everything the light touches will fall to it, and it touches everything; for wraiths that means falling into nothingness, and for everyone else that might mean falling in love. That's what tends to happen when one is in close proximity to her spectacular display. It's only natural. It's a ludicrous attack, ludicrous in power, ludicrous in control, ludicrous in how she still has enough magic left over to conjure herself a steaming cup of tea, and sip it on the steamingly empty battlefield with the cool confidence of a veteran who knows the job is done.
And it is. Done.
If there's miasma left -- and there is, to be sure, that too is also only natural -- it is too thin to perceive, and much too thin to harm anyone. In fact, it is just barely possible to perceive something ELSE:
False dawn.
It really has been hours.
But it isn't the promise of a sunrise that tells everyone that it's over.
It's a schoolgirl sliding off the side of a traffic light. One mother's hand opening, and the other mother's arms. A door finally falling shut, and a first aid kit that can finally fall open. Someone dropping their umbrella. Two more dropping each other, though in the best possible way.
It's a little brother who can finally be held in his sister's arms.
All of them are vague and weary; much too much so to hold much conversation. It would probably be kindest to let them succumb to exhaustion, and ensure that they wake up in their own beds.
<Pose Tracker> Mami Tomoe [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.
Mami Tomoe sips her tea. It is a black tea, hot, done up exactly to her taste, because it is her tastes manifest. It is elegant, it is assured... And it is very Mami.
She knows they have control of this situation again. That these people will live, and she has not added this time to the litany of faces she will never forget. Today--Tonight--they triumphed.
"Mm..." Mami inclines her head. "Next step, of course..."
Pause. She looks over girls reuniting with their loved ones, and smiles faintly. "...Next step can wait a few minutes, I think," she finishes quietly.
But the first aid is no longer in Hanae's hands. She murmurs, as she stars to slide down to her side. "I'm here. Everything is..."
She doesn't finish 'fine', as she dozes off this time, exhaustion finally claiming her. Finally, it is fine.
...And, somewhere, Yumi Ohzora despite her state is certain that when Mikoto Minagi comes back, she will have kept her promise.
<Pose Tracker> Takumi Tokiha [Ohtori Academy (12)] has posed.
It's not morning. But maybe it's close enough.
It's cold, still. January, after all, means winter. The ruins of a town by the sea brings a chill breeze of its own. The earth isn't trying to claim Takumi, but it's cold, even through the heavy pants he'd picked out for...
He's sitting up, when he comes to. Or rather, he's being supported, a hand rubbing his back and giving him some warmth back in spite of the fading chill on the breeze. The skies are lightening...what time is it, anyway?
"...Sis. Where...we were heading to Sanbu, weren't we? How..."
The voice, the familiar voice, answers. "It's fine, Takumi. It's all fine. Dont...don't worry about it."
He's not supposed to worry. He turns his head, sees Mai there - Mai looking exhausted, with that strange golden jewellery that he knows she never bought. She wasn't smiling, but as Takumi watches, she tries all the same.
Ah, he thinks, but doesn't say. Something happened again. He can't remember a thing, but if she's here like this...something must have happened again. He could ask what happened, press Mai about why she looks so worn.
But here and now, as ever, he doesn't say anything.
Nothing ever changes, after all.
<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.
All that is required of Mikoto is so often such a simple thing, and it is, again, so easy to say she thinks of Mami, when she thinks of surviving. It is kinder, to say she thinks of Mami's words.
Such a simple thing -- if only it were easy.
Blade plunged to dark portal, Mikoto cannot release it, cannot retreat. She denied Eri her logic, but perhaps it is better said that she had no hope of accepting it -- weighed down as she is here, she can no more deny the lessons carved on her soul as she could stop breathing. She can't leave, and she can't let go. She can't let go.
It's so heavy. Heavy as a blade as a promise as a future.
THE future.
The only future she...
It's so scary. She grasps her blade and she is afraid, afraid, seeing the Wraiths close in. But Mikoto is not the only one given to obsidian -- there is another; another type, another origin, another shining darkly as the unlight refracts. Her breath catches in her throat -- she gasps, "La Sirene!" High and pleading, she cries, cries out to her: "I'm stuck...!"
It is such a little hope, such a little change, to cry out for help -- and be answered. Those beams dance around her, protect her, and she doesn't die, even though she's stopped.
She hears Tiro Finale retort, and she is glad, so glad, not to face its barrel down. It felt so much like she should or she might or she would, fighting here, tonight. It felt too familiar.
The miasma fades, fades enough, and Mikoto rushes the rest of the way to Chie and Aoi. She plants her blade in the earth, releases it -- releases it! -- and goes to catch Aoi, as she lists to one side. "Ah," that honey-blonde girl mumbles, halfway to coherent, as she feels someone at her side.
"It's okay," Mikoto assures her. "Sit down -- here -- it's okay. Don't worry. We're here."
"Mm," Aoi murmurs, as she half-sits, half-collapses to the ground. Chie follows suit, and Mikoto makes sure she doesn't hurt herself, on the way down.
When it comes time for her to tuck Hanae in a seat for her safe return, she shrugs her cardigan off, and tucks it around her shoulders, so she won't catch a cold. The false dawn is often the coldest time of day, after all.
There are torn holes in the wool.
But perhaps that's normal, too.
<Pose Tracker> La Sirene de Diamant [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed. <SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0t_wb0lUW0 - Astronomy (Secret Treaties) - Blue Oyster Cult
Quiet falls. La Sirene breathes out. Tired, yes, because how long has it been? And yet, through it all, there is a certain feeling of accomplishment.
Something goes 'tak' and there is breathing that seems labored. Her head turns, and she walks a few steps, towards the doorway of a shop. Two young people are there; a redhaired girl in a swoon, a young man feeling blindly to the ground in front of him.
"S, stay back," he wheezes in desperate fatigue, seeing only some sort of glowing shape moving in his direction.
La Sirene ignores this, but only for the sake of something small: she reaches down, picking up a fair of thick-rimmed glasses. The lenses twinkle strangely as she holds them out in a bare hand; and they must be strong indeed, because she has to move them to tap against the boy's forearm before he takes them.
He fumbles them on, hiding caring but desperate eyes.
In a moment Gurio Umino is able to take in the sight of la Sirene, and he sags back, relieved beyond measure. Not entirely so - but enough to mumble, "'r you with... Sailor..."
"No," la Sirene tells him: "But she is my friend."
"Rest," la Sirene says, "and please, don't worry; all of this will pass... ...?"
Her head tilts left, then right, but it seems the boy to whom she spoke has fainted; or else fallen fast asleep, at last, his watch relieved.
Satisfied, la Sirene turns.
"It's good, isn't it?" la Sirene says, from Mami's eight'o'clock. "As once it was. Even if things do not repeat, sometimes there is an echo."
<Pose Tracker> Raising Heart [Admin] has posed.
Even Rina is not sure how she felt about being in this ribbon egg. It was dark, but it sparkled enough with magic for her to see. For most of the time she was too submissive to her fate to care much. But even as she began to recover, it was too strange to really process. If you find a pencil in a bag of cookies, that's weird. If you are condemned to hug a traffic light and then get encased in a big yellow ribbon egg, at some point you just deal with it.
When at last the ribbons fall down, Shiho separates herself from the car she was hiding behind and runs over. She's none too fast on those short legs, but she's determined, and a few ribbons spray into sparkles when she steps on them, having already been in the process of disappearing. She won't really remember that sort of thing later, probably. She will remember that Rina freaked out on the volunteer trip, that it scared her a lot, and now, thanks to the magical girls, she will remember that they got through it.
Shiho seems about to tackle-hug Rina, which is above their usual level of physical comfort. But the short girl thinks better of it at the last second, skidding to a stop and checking Rina's face with a mixture of worry and suspicion. Last time she tried to pry her off that was an ugly moment. Rina was angry in the way that only shame causes.
And Rina is still hugging the traffic light.
"Can you not let go? Can you can you can you?"
"Ah..." Rina's skin is sallow with exhaustion, her body quivering. "No, I can." That simple statement, so impossible all this time, startles both of them when they hear it, and Shiho sniffles gratefully.
"Well well well?" Shiho prompts in her usual triplicate style. The hesitation has put some hesitation in her, too.
"No, it's just..." Rina grimaces. "I've been standing in one place this whole time. I'm gonna fall over when I let go."
"We'll see about that!" Shiho proclaims, hastening forward. "Okay, grab on and walk with me!" She pats her own shoulder, then brushes it off when she notices some dust come off it from all the action. She did not go in an egg.
"You're too low..."
"Just do it, you giraffe."
"I'm not even very tall, you're just..."
"And HERE WE GO," Shiho bullies Rina off the traffic light. Rina's weight nearly knocks her over, and with a drunken reel they catch their balance together, looking like a motorcycle and a sidecar. This is how they walk past the magical girls, Shiho thanking them (for what, it's not clear she fully understands), Rina giving a tired bow with her head, then both continuing their amiable shamble. It is good, yes. It is as it once was. Shiho bubbles over with relief, and, as typical for her, begins speaking rapidfire because of it, about buses and food and homework, all the pragmatic things that need taking care of now. She sees a friend who had a near miss and needs help. She sees a traumatic situation that is over.
As they go, Rina tunes out the chatter for a moment, confusion as to the night's events seeping in. Turning, she looks over her shoulder at the traffic light. It had made so much sense that she had to stay there. That was the rest of her life as she saw it, and as miserable as it was, at least she knew what to expect.
Shaking her head, Rina tries to dispel her thoughts. If there's sense to be made of them, it won't happen today.
<Pose Tracker> Kyouka Okazaki [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.
So much of these last few--has it really only been weeks?--has been so strained and alien for Kyouka. The battle with the ogre daunting, but fairly straightforward. Shaodw Stern was overwhelming force, and yet... a small victory, in attaining new levels of power.
This, however, was unrelenting numbers. An endless tide of battle and strife. And to top it all off, her mother--and another's mother, and friends, and a little brother, were all in harm's way. If she ever gave a thought to taking off Strike Wolf and quitting the fight, this would cure her of it.
She's determined to never let anything befall her mother. She's lucky to have rescued her this time, can't guarantee she'll be there the next, and yet... as her friends have recently told her, there are many of them, and together, they can do so much together. Like they are now. She has to have faith that if it's not her, it'll be someone. And she'll be that someone for someone else whenever they need it.
Still, even properly controlling her newfound power, this fight is draining. Mentally, physically, magically, but slowly the hold back the tide, thin out the miasma, and finally, blessedly, she can stop moving. She pants softly as she comes to a standstill, looking around to make sure nothing is left before she lets the built-up power of her attack go, and the aura encasing her body fading with it.
She looks to her gauntlet. "Good job, Strike Wolf."
<Thank you. You too, Kyouka.>
Kyouka nods in agreement, and then...
It is not mana that powers her legs now as she runs over to her mother. "Mom! Er..."
Recognition Inhibition. Right. But still, she has to do something. She looks around. It's lucky the wraiths disappated, because it makes it easier to see... There! Back at the bench, leaning up against it. She snatches up the backpack she insisted her mom take and brings it back, pulls out windbreaker built into the backpacks bottom and crumples it up.
"C'mon, just... get some rest. You've been through a lot." A moment ago she was punching and kicking explosions, and now... even in her barrier jacket still she's suddenly turned so tender and soft. She gently removes the cell phone from her mother's hand and slips it into her pocket. The windbreaker is an impromptu pillow as Kyouka lays her mother back. to rest.
"... Kyouka..." comes the softly spoken word.
Kyouka tenses. Does she recognize her? Or was that just the thought trapped in her mind when the miasma claimed her?
The first, she'll certainly find out later, the latter... she's not sure how to feel about it.
Instead, she just shushes her softly. "Don't worry. You're safe. Everything's fine now.
Yuki blinks uncomprehendingly but nods, closes her eyes, and drifts off into an exhausted sleep.
Kyouka stands and looks over to Mami. "... We should check on the villagers too, huh?"
<Pose Tracker> Pink Moon Stick [Admin] has posed. <SoundTracker> Amicae Carae Meae - PMMM OST - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LfxVGZYcIs
Some magical battles take place inside barriers, a half a dimension to the left; or in Zero Time, which is more like two dimensions backwards; high in a Dueling Arena beneath a spinning inverted castle, safely removed from ordinary life; or even in the entirely ordinary world, but with all traces of the fight wiped from existence afterwards by the power of love (through the medium of beam, often as not).
This one took place in the real world too, but a real world that had already been destroyed. So it isn't so much that the collateral damage needs to be accounted for, as that it's simply irrelevant. If Tiro Finale blew up a car, that car was already totaled. None of these storefronts are going to survive anyway. Most of them already hadn't. Every building in Sanbu Village is condemned to demolition, really. The condemnation they were lacking is abandonment, which is the greater of the two.
That doesn't change overnight.
It might have, if it had been a Witch at the root of all this madness; though if had been a Witch, the entire population would have probably committed suicide weeks ago. Either way, no such being existed here, or could ever have existed. Their era is dead and gone, like Sanbu Village.
The living remain.
And their hearts are not so easily moved. It takes a couple of days for the first person to do it. Then the rest, as though by opening that floodgate of possibility, everyone else could pass through.
The first person was Furukawa-san, and he could not name a single, dramatic breaking point where he decided to give up on saving the town, decided to take the next evac truck to safety. It was many small breaks. His heart, of course, was already broken. It had broken from the start.
But it happened in time. In time for him to live instead of die of exposure. In time for Hina to have to job hunt out in Tama. In time for the kids to be enrolled in school next term.
"Tell them I'll go," he'd rasped at Ito-san, through lungs at least half full of pneumonia. "Tell them."
Tell them that he had finally been ABLE to let go.
He was allowed to choose.
Sometimes, magic doesn't fix everything. It cannot resurrect the muddy corpse of a village.
But to say it didn't fix ANYthing would be just as wrong.
More than one life was saved that night.
More than one world was saved.
