2015-05-16 - Labyrinth Overrun

Title: Labyrinth Overrun
Summary: Mysterious disappearances near the Museum of Western Art lead to an investigation - and a Witch hunt. A Labyrinth, overrun with familiars and Witches - the plural of the latter indicating a worse situation than any had imagined...and not just the battlefield.
Who: Madoka Kaname, Sayaka Miki, Mami Tomoe, Kyouko Sakura, Eri Shimanouchi, Cheeseburger Propane-Chan, La Sirene du Nord, Mai Tokiha, Fuu Hououji
Where: Ueno Museum District
OOC - IC Date: 8 July 2014 - 05/16/2015

<Pose Tracker> Kyouko Sakura [None] has posed.

<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtyByefOvgQ

LAST WEEK -- SEARRS SYMPHONY HALL:

Kyouko Sakura crouches atop a precarious catwalk, high above the grand stage below. She moves cautiously, not for fear of falling but to stay as quiet as she can manage. Though it's after hours, one can never be too careful about these things. She's dressed in a black onesie, wild hair stuffed back into the bear-eared hood. Not quite Mission Impossible, but it does the trick.

Above her, some pipes run parallel to the narrow walkway, part of its support structure. Hopping up onto the railing in a sight that would give even an experienced stagehand a heart attack, she grabs a pipe above with one hand for support, and from the pocket of her pajamas fishes out something far darker than the felt of her clothes.

A stunningly black orb, decorated with ornate metalwork that resembles silver, top crowned with an icon and bottom tipped with a needle. Few people, even among the magical community, would recognize it. Stabbing the needle into the top of the pipe, it punctures the metal without effort or resistance, and stands upright like a potted plant. She used to bring tape to make sure they'd stick, but she's long since learned that a bump or a rustle isn't enough to dislodge them.

The Puella Magi scales back down to the catwalk and then the ground, and slips into the lobby. The beam of a flashlight casts from around a corner, but by the time the security guard wielding it makes the turn, Kyouko is well out the front door, safely undetected.

Breathing in deeply through her nose, she cracks her neck left, then right. Between this, that weird painting at the museum she'd visited just before coming, and her efforts over the past few weeks..she figures that this ought to be enough.

<Pose Tracker> Madoka Kaname [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qx2lMaMsl8

Ueno Museum District has fallen on hard times in the last month or so.

Art theft is through the roof, because security guards seem to be constantly leaving their posts (never to be seen again). The opera -- Lucrezia Borgia by Gaetano Donizetti -- that was supposed to have its grand gala at Searrs Symphony Hall, and then a several week run, has been postponed, pending investigation of several suicides among the cast and crew.

There is, overall, a miasma around the area, an underlying stench of helplessness, hopelessness, despair. It doesn't make for a very cheerful tourist destination, and small businesses are beginning to suffer from that, as well.

Tonight, the very air around the Museum of Western Art seems to hang heavy with cruel potential; an undulation of color too subtle for normal eyes to see. Those awakened to magic, however, can see it very clearly if they happen to be passing by. It is strange, malevolent. It is wrong.

Puella Magi can find the area even more easily, as Soul Gems are drawn to its location like lodestones, glowing as brightly and dangerously as red-hot coals.

Finding entrance to this labyrinth-in-progress is a matter of following a Puella Magi inside; the trick of opening such a portal is theirs, and theirs alone.

---

To walk through one such portal is to be transported into another world.

The stench of flowers is overwhelming, as palpable a presence -- and problem -- as any pit of spikes or moat of acid. There's sweetness, certainly, but so much of it that it has turned rancid, rank, rotting.

It's all the more astonishing in that it's coming from something of such beauty.

Because the flowers themselves are everywhere, in pots and raised beds and seemingly endless fields. They are pink and white and yellow and blue, and all lovelier than any spring day. Not a one is recognizable; there are no roses or tulips or orchids, but instead a riot of mixed blossoms all the more discomfiting for their unrecognizability. A light breeze tugs at curls of hair and hems of clothing, and also stirs petals and leaves to take flight, wafting through the air.

Here and there the terraces are broken up by staircases, or cut off abruptly, becoming dramatic balconies and overlooks. They are connected as unintuitively as any of Escher's most intricate daydreams, and always made of the same glistening white marble, veined with stone-swirls of teal.

Atop one such balcony stand two girls in the Ohtori Middle School uniform. The shorter and pinker of the two sneezes so violently that her tousled red ribbons shudder. The smell is tearing water out of her eyes and down her cheeks, but they were already red-rimmed. The sound she makes is equal parts indignant shock, existential horror and crushing sinus despair.

• achoo* "Rehhh?!? /Another/--" *achoo, sniff* "--labyrinth?!"

OOC: You are entering a labyrinth in progress! If you're not a Puella Magi, please wait for them to pose in first (and therefore, per the pose, provide you with a way in -- either by following behind them, or because you have intentionally arranged to arrive together).

<Pose Tracker> Kyouko Sakura [None] has posed.

<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b_N6xhmY-k

Kyouko Sakura stands outside of a special exhibit of the Museum of Western Art, "Bosch and His Followers." She'd been drawn to the paintings here..frankly she'd never seen anything quite like them. A nearby sign mentions that the pieces are on loan from a museum in Madrid.

The air is electric and toxic, thick and cloying with an unnatural stink. Despite her casual lean against the unpaneled open doorframe leading into the room, all manner of unnatural chaos and hell is swirling around her at that very moment.

She's there before anybody, waiting to see who, if any, shows up before going in herself. It might have seemed a little odd that she's already there to somebody with the wherewithal to notice..but there are far more attention-grabbing things going on at the moment.

She'll enter the labyrinth when it's time. Pulling a lollipop out of her pocket, she casts the wrapper to the ground and idly starts sucking.

COMBAT: Mami Tomoe has fully healed herself.

<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Miki [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

The taller and bluer of the limited edition set of imperiled middle schoolers has her arm around the shorter one's shoulders as she looks around miserably. "How are there two?" she moans, her eyes swollen as if from hay fever. "Shouldn't this one have come out in April or something?" She glances from non-Euclidean staircase to alien flower with concern. "Let's just try and get out, okay? We've had enough fun tonight."

Madoka's sneeze is Sayaka's freeze, and she locks up at the sound. A laugh bubbles from her, and she slaps a hand over her mouth, her watering eyes suddenly and incongruously happy. "W-what the heck? Is that supposed to be a sneeze?" She keeps hiccuping up giggles, shaking Madoka with a hand to emphasize her mirth. "That was like... mouse language! Like mice learning to talk! Do it again!"

Sayaka herself wiggles her nose like just such a creature, trying to dislodge her own sneeze. It's miserable when it gets stuck. She's still giggling a little as they resume walking, when their next steps take them to just the right angle to see down an infinite field of flowers, their rows somehow twisted and parallel at once, their colors vivid, the color of the air a haze that sickens every hue. Sayaka's laugh dies off to a frightened silence.

"Let's stay together, okay?" she says quietly, and takes Madoka's hand.

<Pose Tracker> Mami Tomoe [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.

The signs are all there.

Right off a simply beautiful area, unexplained troubles: suicides, missing persons, a downturn in businesss... this is enough to give Mami Tomoe a bad feeling, and to prompt her to investigate even beyond what she usually might. So tonight, for purposes of education entirely different from the average museum-goer, the golden Puella Magi has taken to Ueno's alleys with soul gem in hand.

The glow is /too/ easy to follow.

She has no soundtrack for the night except for the padding of her shoes against the ground. The bright glow might give away the blonde girl in the Ohtori high school uniform. It doesn't last long, however, as she stops upon feeling out just the right spot, frowning in concentration.

The right spot for her is not standing in front of an exhibit about Bosch or his followers. She stands in front of a fairly blank wall, just a hallway... until she opens it.

Behind her, for just a little while, a rip in sensible reality remains, an open portal to the bizarre world of this Witch's Labyrinth. There's time for others, even if they didn't see her before, to step inside and follow.

Her nose wrinkles and her eyes early water at the /smell/ to start, as she looks about to see the flowers.

She holds out her soul gem, and tosses it up into the air, inhaling as she transforms with a brilliant golden glow.

Her gold-lined boots disappear into the field as she walks, and the suddenly stops at the sound of an adorable sneeze.

She looks up, and for a moment one feeling is clear in her expression: alarm.

She pretends calm an instant later, however, looking up. Something is... very, very wrong.

Mami doesn't call out just yet--but if Madoka and Sayaka have a feeling that they're being watched, it's because they are.

<Pose Tracker> Kyouko Sakura [None] has posed.

Kyouko grinds her heel into the wrapper like she's putting out a cigarette, and quietly laughs to herself at the image of it. She seems very relaxed given the circumstances. The room flashes with a scarlet glow as her warpaint erupts upon her body, twirling her spear in hand like a bored student with a pencil.

She steps calmly through the rift between realities, into the nest of a creature that should not be, yet is. Kyouko does not even look around, nor crinkle her nose at the smell, and seems to consider the Labyrinth as casually as she would a convenience store. Shehe walks forward with a brisk sprint, crushing the flowers underneath without a thought towards their beauty..though her gaze does stray from the path quite often. It never lingers though, she isn't caught up in any of the spectacle of the place. It seems instead that she's looking for something, checking for something.

In the distance she spots two colors a head above the rest of the crazed cacophany. One blue, one pink..two little puffs of cotton candy that seem to have taken the wrong turn going home. Stepping upon a stone, she rings the butt of her spear against the hard material three times, its noise apparent in the unnatural place.

<Pose Tracker> Eri Shimanouchi [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWI1cctm27k

The girl seemed almost casual as she wended her way around the exhibits of the museum in her green blouse and dark suspender skirt. She kept her eyes upon her phone, which was camouflage for the blinking object beneath it. Calm on the outside, anxious on the inside.

Trying not to let those feelings spill out was nigh impossible given the tangible cloud of despair, so thick that she imagined that she was inhaling it into her lungs, like a miasma inside a smoke thick bar, but somehow she was managing not to show there was anything amiss.

Eyes flickering to the side as she walks, she catches sight of an Ernst painting from a surrealism exhibit, one of a capering gryphon like creature, imposing with its fabric limbs. A ghost of a smile touches her expression, as she looks back to her phone and finishes tapping out her message, and turns the phone on it's side to get a better look at the flashing pulse of the object beneath it. The phone disappears into the purse at her side, as she takes a better look at her surroundings, as she walks past a certain open doorframe, only stopping a few footsteps after she's past it, turning her head to give a glance over her shoulder at the figure standing as a sentry, "Heading in?"

Looking forward the intangible became tangible as the threshhold flickers into view, like a hidden message written in some variety of invisible ink, now marred by the void marking the entrance that another Puella Magi had apparently left. Swallowing as the palpable waves of sickening despondence hits her, she puts her hand back down to her side, the need for using the soul gem to open it unnecessary given another already turning the key. She only waits a few moments for an answer, before she looks straight forward again and strides within.

For just a few moments, she squints against the waves of nausea of passing from one part of reality to the next, before her feet crunch down upon an unrecognizable bloom. Looking down upon the field with a small frown, her mind tries to identify them, categorize them. A futile task which just causes her to shake her head, and push up on the bridge of her glasses. Spinning her soul gem within her hands, she turns a circle, transforming in a shimmer of glittering sparkles which smell of spring showers and fragrant petals abloom that contrasts with the pollin-thick despair.

Now girded for battle, she lifts her chin, her smile at the other Veteran Puella Magi in yellow and reds' presence becoming a frown as she hears the sneezing and the sniffling in the distance. And that's when her seeming calm breaks for just a moment, as she catches sight of the other pair, heads of pink and blue blooming above all. "What are they doing here?!" Before the ringing of a spear upon stone catches her attention, and she mumbles as a reminder to herself, "Priorities." Asking the why didn't matter so much as keeping them safe. Though she couldn't help but wonder how those two kept finding their way into these situations.

COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura transforms into Puella Magi Kyouko!

COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi transforms into Puella Magi Eri!
COMBAT: Mami Tomoe transforms into Puella Mami!

<Pose Tracker> Lera Camry [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.

Lera heard about the suicides and decided to investigate, herself, out of fear that something could be causing them. She didn't know of magic that could -- really, she didn't want to know of magic that could -- but it seemed that the museum district was going through a rough time in general. But when she slipped into the Museum of Western Art, she couldn't make sense of anything. She felt like an art thief, albeit one in a Barrier Jacket with a glowing, plasma-wreathed sword in hand.She couldn't sense a Witch's Labyrinth without entering it; she learned that from the time that she followed Eri into one.

In this case, she follows Mami Tomoe, though it's unknowing. She arrives shortly after the golden magical girl walked through the hole she made in reality; there isn't an initial sign of Mami, but Lera is left looking at a tear in reality.

<Be careful.> Her Intelligent Device hesitates. <I have a bad feeling about this.> "I will," she replies. Lera steps in, then. Her nose wrinkles at the eerie, many colored and utterly unrecognizable flowers; she looks around with widening eyes, staring everywhere but directly in front of her. Which is why she almost walks right into Mami, instead of also looking at the shocks of pink and blue hair. She yelps softly when she nearly steps right into Mami.

Then she hops backward quickly.

"Sorry!" she says, in a hushed voice; her flusteredness settles into something more serious-minded. "I didn't realize you were already here!"

<Pose Tracker> Fuu Hououji [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.

Given the amounts of trouble that have been plaguing the Museum District of late - haunted paintings, challenges to magical princesses, and those are just the first two things that come to Fuu's mind - the Magic Knight of Wind has started trying to do patrols of this part of the city when she can.

'When she can' being the key word, though. This is a long way away from Tama, after all; the best Fuu can do on a weekly basis is to keep her eyes, ears, and other senses open when she has homework at a museum or a library in the area, and keeping alert for other signs of trouble. The shadows laying across the concert hall have not been lost on her, though, so Fuu came up with an excuse to her parents for why she needed to be out in Ueno after dark. She doesn't like lying to her family, but she likes innocents dying far less.

The Magic Knight of Wind transforms quietly behind a shrubbery, then slips into Searrs Symphony Hall behind Lera (and thusly behind Mami), following them through the crack in space-time and reality ... and her bow and quiver materialize almost immediately. How well she'll be able to aim in the face of eldritch hay fever is a good question; she settles for breathing as shallowly as she can for now.

She's not trying to sneak up on people, really.

COMBAT: Fuu Hououji transforms into Magic Knight!

COMBAT: Mai Tokiha has fully healed herself.

COMBAT: Fuu Hououji has fully healed herself.

<Pose Tracker> Nori Ankou [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

This place... la Sirene du Nord had been here quite recently, near this hall. She had seen a man die, a man whom she had yelled at - who she, had she had her druthers, would have probably stomped in the wrist before subjecting him to an intense eruption of the unlight that comes from her Brazen Pharos.

But he died. Most emphatically. La Sirene du Nord helped. She is not sure how she felt about that - even now she digests it. As Zoisite himself had said: Fourteen against one. Is that good? Is that right? What does it say about her that she would do it over again gladly?

She doesn't have a good answer. So she went for a stroll, sliding between objects and rooftops. She went alone, without aid or assistance. And then she felt that strange chord in the air, dissonant to her -- and it stood out despite its nearness to the echoes in her soul, indeed /because/ of that nearness.

And that is why she slipped into an art museum. And when she spotted a familiar face, Shimanouchi, slipping /into/ a painting-- well.

Especially when the Propane girl goes in a moment later.

La Sirene slips into the world within the painting, into the labyrinth, with every sign of coming. She moved quietly, but she announces herself with a sudden, violent sneeze into her sleeve.

And a shocked look at the familiar heads ahead of her. Her sleeve still held up to cover her mouth and nose, la Sirene is bleating slightly as she says, "Ah. I see that I am not the only one who felt this."

COMBAT: Nori Ankou transforms into La Sirene du Nord!

COMBAT: Lera Camry transforms into Barrier Jacket!

<Pose Tracker> Mai Tokiha [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.

Mai Tokiha, part-time warrior - investigating a few help wanted ads in town for the upcoming summer break. The diner's hours aren't bad, but there's plenty of workers in the summer months and a bit of free time she can spend on earning....well, earning what she needs.

Fairly slim pickings in the museum district, but it never hurts to check for quick day jobs helping direct tour groups or cleaning up after a festival or something. The last stop is the Museum of Western Art - there was a want ad the other day, wasn't there? Something about positions opening up all of a sudden. And hey, something Western, she knows something or other about the food at this point, right? Worth a shot...

It's an ominous feeling, walking in, taking in the quiet foyer, starting to make her way to the offices...and to her surprise, she spies a friend walking down a hall. She nearly calls out to Eri, the museum's implied aura of silence being all that keeps her back...but the other girl rounds a corner before she can catch up immediately. Just around this corner - just missed her, around the next - getting lost in nearly maze-like halls, cursing her own impulsiveness...

And then she sees Eri walk into a painting.

Others follow her in short order as Mai stares - strangeness, all over again, and that horrible dread telling her that she shouldn't be here...warning her away, almost. And yet...and yet. A friend just walked into what's probably peril, others she's fought beside before joining in...she can't just turn around and ignore this, right?

The world inside defies comprehension, those ready for battle standing against an impossible landscape. Something within her, more wary than her thoughts, urges her - and on reflex, she summons her rings in a flash of flame. Not taking to the air, just staggering forward, rings quietly burning against the miasma. "What in the world..."

COMBAT: Mai Tokiha transforms into Mai-HiME!

<Pose Tracker> Madoka Kaname [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGQLXRTl3Z0

Madoka's cheeks flush scarlet with embarrassment, but -- 'do it again!' -- she is helpless within the throes of her humble human body's kitten-weak attempts to ward off the noxious aroma of the labyrinth. *achoo!* *achoo!* Nodding miserable agreement to Sayaka's plan, she produces a hankerchief from a pocket and ties it around her face like a flu face mask. It is heavy with dripping snot almost instantly.

Her hand curls into Sayaka's also like a kitten, but more pleasantly, one who found a cushion in the warm, warm sun. Where their wrists touch, her friend can feel her pulse, quick and light with fear.

From behind the girls' legs, Kyuubey suits cat metaphors as well as he stretches, forepaws in front of him, curling outwards from in between them, then leaping lightly onto Sayaka's shoulder, enfolding her neck in a tail like a fur stole.

Madoka clutches Sayaka's arm with her other hand too, when Mami and Kyouko make their separate appearances, jarring it like a lever. Her voice is snot-clogged but hopeful, as she squeaks, "Sayaka-chan, look!" She doesn't scream and shout, though, having accompanied both girls enough in recent months to know all too well what will happen if she draws attention to herself.

---

Those who have accumulated significant experience in a Witch's labyrinth have learned that they tend to fuse elements of themselves with wherever they are. This might be the first clue that something is slightly... off.

Because while these flowers could be attributed to Ueno Park itself, there's something about their sheer density -- that, and the weird, fused elegance of the marble banisters and steps -- that is a lot more evocative of Ohtori Academy, or at least the kind of horrific nightmares of the place that the student body have the night before finals week starts. It's an intricate, endless tangle of Southern Cross Island a la Dr. Seuss. Which, truth be told, is not that much of a stretch from the original (which already has more weirdly-placed grand staircases and balconies and terraces per capita than anywhere else in Japan, and maybe the world).

The marble at Ohtori doesn't pulse lightly through its veins, however, as though it were breathing, alive. Also, the real-life flowerbeds are meticulously swept of litter, so the bobble-headed dolls are kind of out of pl--

Yeah, about that.

The familiars were superbly camoflauged by their very nature, for, from the neck down, they are flowerpeople, all stems and leaf-hands and draggy brown roots for feet.

But where the blossoms should be are, instead, bobbly doll heads. Each one is exquisite, antique, unique. Their hair is painted in cherubic curly-queues. Their cheeks are rosy pink perfection (making Madoka's look all the more ghastly in comparison).

And in true really old doll fashion, one of their eyes is stuck halfway closed, the painted lid at an awful slash of an angle, the impossibly long eyelashes -- made of real hair? -- frozen with a razor's sharpness.

The other eye of each familiar is lidless and blue, and sparkling from within with strange energy, as though they might sprout St. Elmo's Fire at any time.

There are dozens of them, more than enough eyes to stare at each magical girl from every conceivable direction, pupils shrinking to the white hearts of stars as the girls transform, emanating their magnificent auras of love, justice, hope, and so forth. These one-eyed stares evoke an awful, discomfiting feeling. It is more than that. It is not dissimilar to the mystical paralysis of jungle snakes, described in story and song, as they stare down their prey.

Madoka and Sayaka, being a little less overtly magical, go ignored by them for now. But the floral miasma around them is thickening, the labyrinth closing in around its prey. The former, pink-headed girl, makes a low, miserable sound in her throat, her eyelashes fluttering.

All the while, the flowerbeds are as delightful and dreamlike as ever. There is no sun, pink light spilling diffusely out of a domed and fluffy heaven, but it is simply perfect weather for a garden party.

COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro transforms into Flowery Roundadoubt!

COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has fully healed herself. She is now ready to take on 10 opponents!
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used The Eye Has It on La Sirene du Nord.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used The Eye Has It on Fuu Hououji.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used The Eye Has It on Lera Camry.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used The Eye Has It on Eri Shimanouchi.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used The Eye Has It on Kyouko Sakura.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used The Eye Has It on Mami Tomoe.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used The Eye Has It on Mai Tokiha.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Poppies, poppies... on Sayaka Miki.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Poppies, poppies... on Madoka Kaname.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has adjusted her boss levels. She is now ready to take on 9 opponents!
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi fails to dodge Honoka Yukishiro's The Eye Has It, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Eri Shimanouchi is Taunted! Blind and Trap applied to Eri Shimanouchi!
COMBAT: Mami Tomoe fails to dodge Honoka Yukishiro's The Eye Has It, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Mami Tomoe is Taunted! Trap applied to Mami Tomoe!
COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura narrowly braces Honoka Yukishiro's The Eye Has It, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Kyouko Sakura's Block ability activates! Kyouko Sakura's Parry ability activates! Kyouko Sakura is Taunted! Blind applied to Kyouko Sakura!
COMBAT: Lera Camry fails to dodge Honoka Yukishiro's The Eye Has It, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Lera Camry is Taunted! Trap applied to Lera Camry!
COMBAT: Fuu Hououji narrowly dodges Honoka Yukishiro's The Eye Has It, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Fuu Hououji's Fade ability activates! Fuu Hououji's Flash ability activates! Trap applied to Fuu Hououji!
COMBAT: Mami Tomoe covers Madoka Kaname for Honoka Yukishiro's attack, Poppies, poppies..., taking it upon themselves instead!
COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura covers Sayaka Miki for Honoka Yukishiro's attack, Poppies, poppies..., taking it upon themselves instead!
COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura perfectly dodges Honoka Yukishiro's Poppies, poppies..., taking 0 Fatigue damage! Critical Dodge!
COMBAT: Mami Tomoe fails to brace Honoka Yukishiro's Poppies, poppies..., taking 19 Fatigue damage! Diversion and Stun applied to Mami Tomoe!
COMBAT: La Sirene du Nord fails to brace Honoka Yukishiro's The Eye Has It, taking 0 Fatigue damage! La Sirene du Nord is Taunted!
COMBAT: Mai Tokiha perfectly counters Honoka Yukishiro's The Eye Has It, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Critical Counter! Mai Tokiha's Reverse ability activates! Mai Tokiha's Tactician ability activates!
COMBAT: Mai Tokiha's counterattack, Unnerved Flame, fails to get through, doing 0 Fatigue damage to Honoka Yukishiro!

<Pose Tracker> Kyouko Sakura [None] has posed.

<SoundTracker> =https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90dxSgx7RbY

Kyouko nods to Eri as she approaches, a soft smile dancing past her lips. "All the way." She isn't entirely surprised to see her, but she isn't entirely unsurprised either. She does not see Nori in the crossing, but will soon enough. Her, and more and more people..she's surprised and a little impressed to see so many of their number that aren't Puella Magi. It's far more attention than a Labyrinth usually merits..but then, there have been far more consequences than a Labyrinth usually elicits.

Perhaps she's gone a little overboard. But then it's impossible to know where the line is without crossing over it.

Madoka seems to spot her..and somebody else as well. Following her gaze, Kyouko can see Mami in the distance with her own cohort of near-trippers. Raising her spear in an almost Roman salute, she's glad to see her. Must have made her own way in..not unlike her in the least.

As she stomps across the flowerbeds, she isn't..surprised, when the little freaks pop up. Three do so in an arc right in front of her, causing her to stop in mid-stride and break her composure for a moment. Her heart rate spikes, and she closes her eyes, silently cursing herself. She'd thought she'd gotten over this nonsense by now. Standing there, she catches her breath, but doesn't feel particularly threatened by the little ones. Not yet.

When she allows her sight to return to her, the cloying scene practically stings at her eyes and she keeps them to hooded slits. But it isn't hard to see that, separate from the rest of the group..the two poor girls in over their heads are..well, in over their heads. A wave of sorts blows towards them each, and nothing good could come of it.

Casting her hand in a flourishing arc, long razored splinters fling from her fingers, almost like throwing knives but longer, seeking to punish the offending little brats for taking her off guard..and then Kyouko leaps forward, and Mami does at the same time. For less than a heartbeat Kyouko glances at her friend and former mentor. When the spearfighter lands, her arms outstretched, it is Sayaka that she finds. She can't say what Mami does, nor what happens to Madoka, but Kyouko and Sayaka dart right out of the reach of the floral fiasco bearing down on them. Free from danger, Kyouko puts Sayaka down without more than a cursory glance.

Cupping her hands around her mouth, she shouts to the rest..something of a faux pas in an early Labyrinth, but she feels that this needs to be heard.

"Watch for mirrors! Watch for reflections! Even more than what's in front of you!"

COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura has used Pincushion on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro narrowly braces Kyouko Sakura's Pincushion, taking 1 Fatigue damage! Honoka Yukishiro is Quipped! Cripple and Exhausted applied to Honoka Yukishiro!

<Pose Tracker> Mami Tomoe [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.

Mami, already on the lookout for danger, has a very eventful half-second. Lera steps throuh the portal behind her, and Mami hears the soft footfall, feels the presence of another person through a hundred tiny cues--light, pressure, all the things one doesn't usually think about. And also...

Immediately steps forward and half-turns, golden eyes narrowed upon the girl behind her now in front of her. "...It's fine," Mami responds instead, her eyes softening. "But watch your step. This..." Fuu arives behind, and Nori too. Mami barely glances to both before returning her attention to where she saw Madoka and Sayaka, still scanning for danger. She sees Kyouko's salute, and is surprised, too surprised to process it at the moment. If she's here, then where...?

"Just watch your step. This is a Labyrinth--nothing here is safe." Her voice is low, instructional, as she sets another boot in front of the other to move forward--

Spending even this little time to talk has already cost her.

The flowers are /moving/, and Mami's breath catches in her throat, her foot still halfway through a single step. She's caught off guard and finds herself staring, transfixed if only for another heartbeat, into that blue eye. She almost can't move--

"No!" She calls, and, feeling as if she's wrenching muscles doing it, dashes forward and leaps toward her chares.

Ribbons cast out of her hands in the process, and she spins in mid-air, twirling and drawing the cloud about Madoka before landing just beside her, coughing and on one knee.

..It had to go /somewhere/.

She forces one arm up, suddenly holding a firearm, and the gun roars its retort towards lead of the crod of Familiars.

"Sakura-san, what--" Cough. Cough.

COMBAT: Mami Tomoe has used Tiro Flourish on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Mami Tomoe has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro perfectly dodges Mami Tomoe's Tiro Flourish, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Critical Dodge!

<Pose Tracker> La Sirene du Nord [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

The flowers are pretty in their way, even if this entire ambiance makes la Sirene du Nord feel like a dripping of black ink on a sunswept painting. Well, let me be that drop, she thinks, sneezing again.

The marble is eyecatching. For a moment she is reminded of the polythremic marble she had seen inside of the house of -- but then it pulsates in the wrong kind of way, and nothing else is similar. She resorts to a hankerchief as she turns her head, considering just how to graciously ask Madoka why she is in a painting, and -

A doll is there.

No. Many dolls - flowers? - no, dolls. With lidless blue eyes, gleaming. La Sirene's gaze locks with them and she is briefly and profoundly transfixed. She meets the gaze, in fact, of two dolls - no, flowers - she can't quite tell. La Sirene's eyes are slightly uncanny, but these... Their very regard is sending cold sweat down la Sirene's neck, making her feel her pulse, feel cold and washed-out.

Even la Sirene du Nord is afraid of these dolls! And this is certainly saying something. She stares at them - transfixed - until the spell is, if not broken, diluted by the cheery kibitzing of Kyouko Sakura. Mirrors, she thinks.

"Mirrors - the one mirror I trust is black!" she declares. And just like that, up comes the Brazen Pharos, and it casts a liquid black shadow out - the palpable streak of unlight /really/ looking like an ink smear on the painting, but hopefully at least dismaying those strange creatures.

COMBAT: La Sirene du Nord has used Pieces of the Perfect Black on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: La Sirene du Nord has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro narrowly counters La Sirene du Nord's Pieces of the Perfect Black, taking 6 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Honoka Yukishiro's Reverse ability activates! Blind applied to Honoka Yukishiro!
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro's counterattack, Razor Petals, partially gets through, doing 12 Fatigue damage to La Sirene du Nord! Critical Counterhit!

<Pose Tracker> Lera Camry [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.

"All right," Lera says to Mami. She nods, before she glances sideways at Nori then Fuu; then it's back to the Puella Magi. She frowns seriously, but takes a couple of steps forward after her. This wasn't quite how she planned to run into the Puella Magi after their talk a few weeks back. She takes the labyrinth in, staring around them, and then she sees Mami bolt off. She turns her head, eyes widening, and sees her flying at Sayaka and Madoka.

Girls without power, she realizes, with mounting terror.

Because of that distraction, Lera catches the familiars too late. It's only when she notices one of the bobble-heads, mixed in so well amidst the field of flowers, that she realizes the truth: these are monsters. She catches the half-closed eye first and a shiver runs up her spine. She lets out a small, frightened squeak as the unnerving appearance catches something in her hindbrain that fills her with fear. She steps back, staring at the other eerie blue eye of the bobble-head plant person that she first saw.

Then she realizes that all of the dolls are staring at her.

She snaps her head left, spotting a trio; then right, and sees a quartet of them, blue eyes watching. When she glances over her should, she realizes that they're -- still -- there.

The cold feeling changes from a peculiar sensation to something quite real; she feels suddenly paralyzed. Her minds rails against that.

"S-Stop it!" she yells at the dolls. "Get back!" With a thought and a quickly made spell, a small magical circle appears off the tip of her sword, shimmering into existence. A ball of plasma whips up after that, strands of energy spiralling together into a sphere. Then she looses it, firing the plasma ball off at an odd angle towards a cluster of dolls not too far from Madoka, Sayaka, and the two Puella Magi helping them.

COMBAT: Lera Camry has used Plasma Ball on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Lera Camry has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro narrowly dodges Lera Camry's Plasma Ball, taking 6 Fatigue damage!

<Pose Tracker> Eri Shimanouchi [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

"Reassuring." A smile creases her lips, as she gives her reply to Kyouko's words. She didn't mind admitting that she found her presence a relief, even while at the same time wondering if she was relying too much on her and the more powerful Puella Magi in these situations like this- but it's just a brief moment before she enters.

The material of this place is familiar, even if the context and meaning are different to her. It makes it no less horrific, seeing it twisted around like this. Nonsense flowers in a nightmare fairy tale land, like a twisted version of Alice and Wonderland. For just one moment, she hoped Mami hadn't brought the tea.

Others arrive behind them, one by one, and a soft sigh escapes her lips. She wasn't surprised, as she could hardly expect the rumors and the feeling permeating this place to not attract so many hearts to deal with it. Even so, she had hoped to keep this matter to just Puella Magi. La Sirene gets a nod, though she wonders idly if she'd followed her, or was summoned to her like when she'd come to her in what seems so long ago, in a shed that had been shelter from the storm.

The appearance of a certain HiME/Mysterious Waitress however, leaves her thunderstruck. "You shouldn't be here." She murmurs finally, before asking a little more nervously, "It wasn't your shift tonight?" Inwardly she cursed herself for her error. Feet shuffling nervously, they eventually crunch down on faux water color plant matter as she turns on a foot, trying her best not to look at her, her voice sounding somewhat dry. "We'll make sure you make it out of here."

She wasn't certain what was more horrific here, the fact that Madoka and Mai were /both/ here, or that she was so casually stomping on twisted flowers. She told herself one last time that they weren't real, but more than that, just 'wrong'. And not only that, but even if they were, there were people here that mattered more to her than some silly principles she made up for herself what seemed like a lifetime ago.

She feels it, before she sees them. Doll-heads rising up on the blossoms on stems, heads jiggling as they did so. Reacting by instinct alone, she presses down, ready to spring like some cat. Which is when she met the eyes and freezes. The sheer paralytic horror causes her to stand there, staring back for a while, bringing back the feeling of being in a labyrinth for the first time. When she felt all too much like prey, so small, so weak, so- helpless. The final feeling worst of all, what she'd felt before the first time she'd witnessed Kyubey's tail swish back and forth, crimson eyes boring into her. It left her feeling unable to help herself, much less Madoka and Sayaka. Fortunately, somewhere on the edge of her thoughts she noticed that Kyouko and Mami were always moving forward, admiring their composure under the weight of those eyes.

Swallowing, she tries to shut her eyes, but she feels their eyes on her even there, through her eyelids as she resists the urge to cry out. Still, it allowed her to feel able to attack at all. Flicking her wrist, she snaps the vine like tendrils in her hand, the sound of the tips popping reassuring, before her arms start to move in a blurring dance, swishing each length back and forth to blindly criss cross and lash towards the crowd of familiars. Each thorn tipped with liquid fire that they might feel course through their twisted xylem and phloem.

She moves forward, towards the position where Mami and Kyouko are moving to free the wayward pair. One crunching step after the next as she spins and twists with her lashing rebuke for making her feel this way. "W-Well-" She swallows again, trying to bury the sensation of twisted fear, before she trusted herself to speak, "-I'm trying not to look at all, so I'm not sure mirrors will be a problem!" A beat before she calls out from her blind assault, "How are they?" She could open her eyes to see for herself but she doesn't want to.

<Pose Tracker> Fuu Hououji [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.

Flowers should not stare like that. Actually, they shouldn't stare *PERIOD*, eyes do not belong there.

The Wind Knight winds up standing very, very still, her bespectacled gaze flicking around at all of the staring plant-creatures ... and then, slowly, almost as if she's trying not to spook a rabbit, she brings her arms up, gently pulling out an arrow, raising her bow for the start of her draw, and shifting her feet into an archer's stance.

The actual draw of the bow is just as gentle and cautious, but at Kyouko's warning, the Wind Knight expands her awareness, nodding to Mami as well, and picking out her target. Given that the experts in this kind of fight are already going on the attack, she can only presume that it's warranted for the rest of the group to do so. She listens to her instincts, shifting her aim from one doll to the next almost without seeming to think about it ....

The first sound she actually makes is the soft *twang* of released tension, launching her arrow towards a Familiar, possibly to pierce through one of those unearthly staring eyes.

COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi has used Venomous Lash on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Fuu Hououji has used Basic Archery on Honoka Yukishiro.
COMBAT: Fuu Hououji has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro narrowly braces Eri Shimanouchi's Venomous Lash, taking 1 Fatigue damage! Stun applied to Honoka Yukishiro!
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro narrowly counters Fuu Hououji's Basic Archery, taking 6 Fatigue damage! Honoka Yukishiro's Reverse ability activates!
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro's counterattack, Razor Petals, partially gets through, doing 4 Fatigue damage to Fuu Hououji!

<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Miki [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

<SoundTracker> Decretum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDrb3lX1--o

Sayaka is not gratified to find out she's been staring right at a horde of hideous little familiars without realizing it. She steps back, squeezing the kitten-hand Madoka entrusted to her tightly. "Oh, no," she says distantly, like she forgot something. She looks down at the gym bag in her other hand, taking a deep, painful sniff through her swollen sinuses. She drops it on the ground. She thinks at first that this has upset her more than she thought, because her eyes fill with tears suddenly, but the sting is too intense, and the air is getting hazy.

"Ugh!" she says, and starts backing away. She needs to put Madoka somewhere safe. But they are no longer alone. Sayaka hadn't felt golden eyes upon her with all the asymmetrical doll eyes doing the job, so she's startled when magical girls sweep in. She's distracted from Kyouko and Mami's landing by a sizzling ball of plasma striking nearby, and suddenly she's aloft, her hand torn from Madoka's so rapidly that it feels wrenched.

"Mado!" Sayaka starts to say, but she cuts off so abruptly that it sounds like a whole word, because Mami has her well in hand. Sayaka smiles, happy to see her, and then woofs as she and Kyouko land. The redhead doesn't acknowledge her, but she did save her. Sayaka stares at her back, at the wild length of her hair and the sturdy spear ready to lash out. She's been here so many times before, shielded by the strength of others. She feels a little nostalgic, really, because she knows today will be the last time.

"Mami-senpai!" she shouts over Kyouko's shoulder, eyes big with belief. "Look at me!"

Lifting the Soul Gem out in front of her, that Sayaka does by rote, not instinct. Closing her eyes, she starts to concentrate. But having played the first two notes, transformation comes to Sayaka like the words of a long-forgotten lullaby. She outstretches her arms, and her Soul Gem blooms, enveloping her in great trails of glistening light. It feels as if she has fallen back into it, that she is finally one with that bluegreen pool. Droplets land all around Sayaka, equally water and music; their ripples spread concentric melody. Notes suspended on each staff shimmer and chime. Listen. It is the song of her soul.

The light draws down into her body, condensing from white to a blue made of sparkles. She exhales, in this state, and her breath bubbles, each wobbling sphere popping into a dissolving memory of musical notes. From her limbs inward it begins, sheathing her legs and arms in valiant boot and glove, as the twin halves of a tunic fold around her torso, fastened into place by a bodice shaped like a knight-errant's chestplate. Her skirt ripples down like the petals of a snowy rose, the blue of loyalty sliding slickly down the pleats.

The halves of her face seem to shift, and the crack that formed between them is a blade, not steel but silver, mirrorlike. She grasps its hilt and swivels it smoothly, pointing the blade to the floor. The rapier hilt--basketed and crossguarded all at once--shields the lower half of her newly calm face. A sudden rush of current blasts from behind her, licking her cheeks with pale blue hair, leaching color from her already pale skin. As her surf-dewy lashes lift, the moment when her gaze will will be bared draws palpably imminent, but suddenly her body is engulfed by a billowing, winding sheet of white, concealing her eyes (and indeed her whole form) at the penultimate moment.

The churning, petal-like cloth lashes with austere violence to one side, Sayaka's naked bicep and long glove driving it off resolutely. The secrets her eyes were so close to betraying are gone now, shielded by cobalt irises hot with courage.

The final elements of Sayaka's raiment begin to gild her. A high collar, independent of her bodice, fastens to her neck, taming her cloak. At the hollow of her throat, two triangular golden panels fasten themselves down, even as the symbol for fortissimo is whimsically calligraphied to her hair, inked in the same metal. At last, an aguillette fastens itself to the corner of her bodice and streaks down, the military cord draping nobly across her breast.

Sayaka's cape erupts, fluttering like the tassel of a dart, as she confidently slings her newly formed rapier across the room, looking to skewer one of the dolls closest to her senpai and her best friend. From within its rippling grasp she turns her head slightly to regard Kyouko directly.

Fear is gone from Sayaka Miki. She has decreed her own hero, and found that it is she.

<Pose Tracker> Mai Tokiha [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.

Mai-HiME, for one, does not have significant experience in a Witch's labyrinth. She does, however, have experience being an Ohtori student during finals...so the world around her is reminiscent of a few half-remembered dreams from longer-than-usual nights. Except...somehow even less real than a dream, more maddening than she could have imagined.

What in the world is this place?

Flowers, endless flowers, with creepy doll-heads instead of blossoms. That sickly floral scent still fills the air, despite them being like no bloom Mai has seen in her life...and the light in their eyes is more worrying still. They're watching her...worse than those rare customers who need to be thrown out, worse than Mikoto staring down a pot cooking the night's supper...they watch, they hunger, and they won't stop-

Mai lashes out on instinct - with a brief panicked yell, she hurls flames from one bracelet. Not enough to burn away the stares entirely - but billowing orange flames to fill the air for a moment, and break that stare. The smell of smouldering embers - pure, warm, a hearthflame - wars briefly against those sickly flowers, and she can catch her breath long enough to see just who else is in this demented garden tea party with her.

One figure - more diminished, sneezing at the noxious aroma - stands out with pink hair as the last one she expected to see here. "Wait - Kaname?! What are you doing in..." She trails off - but anyone looking back who knows Mai Tokiha can probably recognize the look of shock on her face.

Her flames, still dancing, illuminate that look of shock as she turns to Eri. "I...no, I had the evening off! And then you went wandering in here, and I thought you might need..." She shakes her head, just as awkward as Eri for the moment, and half-turns away herself. "...you never did tell me what kind of things you had to deal with."

Mai's earlier desperate flames are fading into flickering wisps, and the stares of the flower-dolls are reasserting themselves. Kyouko and Mami's warnings have her looking over one shoulder, then the other - her jaw set in determination as the sheer scope of horror on display comes to light once more. "We'll talk about this later, but for now..." Cascading sheets of flame roar, dancing around her - burning brightly, and trying to cage in one patch of flowers. Or incinerate them. She may try to have kindness for Eri's plants, but certainly not for these.

COMBAT: Mai Tokiha has used Infernal Embrace on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Mai Tokiha has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Sayaka Miki has fully healed herself.
COMBAT: Sayaka Miki transforms into Puella Magi Sayaka!
COMBAT: Sayaka Miki has used Perfect Pitch on Honoka Yukishiro.
COMBAT: Sayaka Miki has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro narrowly braces Sayaka Miki's Perfect Pitch, taking 6 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Sayaka Miki is Psyched!
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro narrowly counters Mai Tokiha's Infernal Embrace, taking 11 Fatigue damage! Honoka Yukishiro's Reverse ability activates! Diversion and Trap applied to Honoka Yukishiro!
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro's counterattack, Razor Petals, partially gets through, doing 7 Fatigue damage to Mai Tokiha!

<Pose Tracker> Madoka Kaname [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxHkLdQy5f0

With Kyouko's shout, battle is truly joined -- and given the brightness, but not blazing Soul Gems, it is joined far from the Witch herself. Wherever she is, it isn't close by, and there are a great many stairs to climb and terraces to explore, in between them.

Nonetheless, familiars just come pouring out of the flowerbeds in massive and probably limitless numbers. It's a good thing not a one of them is more than three feet high. The mirrors scattered about the area, in lieu of cherubic statuary perhaps, are more like nine feet, and wrought of all manner of strange and twisted shapes.

Kyouko's spear-splinters soar towards the nearest trio, but rather than impale them, they are just sort of caught up amid the brambles and branches of their arms. Then they drop flat, disappearing amidst the oozing flowerbeds, narrowly avoiding destruction at the hands of Mami's golden bullets. One is too slow to recover from its leap in time to avoid Lera's plasma ball, while another is held in place by Eri's vine-whip for a long moment, before it jerks itself free.

The survivors, flanked by newcomers, advance, bobble-heads first, trying to headbutt the group of girls from all directions with sharp impacts. They must have a seed of some sort inside their hollow doll skulls, because it rattles around with each jerk of momentum, emitting a noise not unlike a horrific plastic Miyazaki-esque kodama.

Amid the chaos, Madoka coughs out her gratitude to Mami and Kyouko, and some concern for Mami's lungs, "A-are you okay?" Her hand is torn brutally free of Sayaka's as the two are separated in the act of their rescue, and she winces at that, but not even the predicament she's in can prevent her eyes from beading tears of joy and awe at her oldest friend's transformation. It is utterly gobsmacking. It steals her breath more than any amount of miasma could, while warming her heart more fiercely than any fire.

And it's not even the first time tonight that she's seen Sayaka in such raiment.

"You can do it, Sayaka-chan!!" Behind her, the rapier transfixes a familiar who was about to pounce.

From another angle, La Sirene's lantern-spilled darkness creeps towards a group of the plantdolls, and though it eats away at their roots, they recover quickly and drive it back with a barrage of razor-sharp petals, plucked from the flowers all around them. Another intercepts an incoming arrow from the Magic Knight of Wind, driving it back towards her with a dozen tiny petal friends, while others cannot prevent one of Mai's fire cages from withering their comrade, but can, and do, proceed to use that little flame to set their petals on fire before sending them at the HiME. It seems that this garden is still more dangerous than it first looked, beyond the noxious clouds and creepy familiars.

And worse, their friends are coming up behind this second grouping, their rooted feet twining and winding, hoping to trip and tear and trap.

COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Bobbleheaded Bounce on Mami Tomoe.

COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Bobbleheaded Bounce on Kyouko Sakura.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Bobbleheaded Bounce on Lera Camry.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Bobbleheaded Bounce on Eri Shimanouchi.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Bobbleheaded Bounce on Sayaka Miki.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Bobbleheaded Bounce on Madoka Kaname.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Flowergrasp on La Sirene du Nord.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Flowergrasp on Fuu Hououji.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Flowergrasp on Mai Tokiha.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi narrowly counters Honoka Yukishiro's Bobbleheaded Bounce, taking 5 Fatigue damage! Eri Shimanouchi's Reverse ability activates!
COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi's counterattack, Thunderous Crack, partially gets through, doing 7 Fatigue damage to Honoka Yukishiro!
COMBAT: Mai Tokiha fails to brace Honoka Yukishiro's Flowergrasp, taking 28 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit!
COMBAT: Fuu Hououji fails to dodge Honoka Yukishiro's Flowergrasp, taking 23 Fatigue damage!
COMBAT: Mami Tomoe perfectly counters Honoka Yukishiro's Bobbleheaded Bounce, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Critical Counter!
COMBAT: Mami Tomoe's counterattack, Tiro Retort, fails to get through, doing 0 Fatigue damage to Honoka Yukishiro!
COMBAT: Lera Camry perfectly counters Honoka Yukishiro's Bobbleheaded Bounce, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Critical Counter! Lera Camry's Reverse ability activates! Lera Camry's Tactician ability activates!
COMBAT: Lera Camry's counterattack, Aura Surge, fails to get through, doing 0 Fatigue damage to Honoka Yukishiro!
COMBAT: La Sirene du Nord narrowly counters Honoka Yukishiro's Flowergrasp, taking 7 Fatigue damage! Tangle and Trap applied to La Sirene du Nord!
COMBAT: La Sirene du Nord's counterattack, Les Mysteres, partially gets through, doing 35 Fatigue damage to Honoka Yukishiro! Critical Counterhit!
COMBAT: Sayaka Miki narrowly braces Honoka Yukishiro's Bobbleheaded Bounce, taking 3 Fatigue damage! Sayaka Miki's Block ability activates! Sayaka Miki's Parry ability activates!
COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura fails to brace Honoka Yukishiro's Bobbleheaded Bounce, taking 7 Fatigue damage!
COMBAT: Sayaka Miki covers Madoka Kaname for Honoka Yukishiro's attack, Bobbleheaded Bounce, taking it upon themselves instead!
COMBAT: Sayaka Miki narrowly counters Honoka Yukishiro's Bobbleheaded Bounce, taking 2 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit!
COMBAT: Sayaka Miki's counterattack, Disjunct Chord, partially gets through, doing 13 Fatigue damage to Honoka Yukishiro!

<Pose Tracker> Mami Tomoe [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.

<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqQ3hP_q7Ns

Mami can feel already that it's all wrong--she's started this battle on the wrong foot, and it's only harder to get her bearings with so many people around her, people she's not used to having in a Labyrinth. Her breath is still shallow, though her face is the same mask of confidence as always, the signs of her growing worry apparent to few to begin with, and fewer here in the chaos of battle.

"Don't worry," Mami non-answers Madoka with a small smile, even as she's sure worry is exactly what it's time to do--and yet...

And yet for a moment, just a moment, she stops worrying about anything at all. Sayaka shouts to her, and Mami immediately turns her head to see whatever Sayaka is so cheerful about, ready to shout her warnings--but they don't come.

The glitter of blue seems to draw her away into an ocean far from this place. The light, the music, the change in Sayaka--Mami stares raptly at her younger friend's magic, brilliant sparkles reflected in her eyes as if she were the new Puella Magi watching a transformation for the first time. "Sayaka-chan!" she calls back, dazed into elegance once again.

The impact of weapon on Familiar calls her back to reality, as reluctant as she is to go--the rapier stabbed down near her points the way to another Familiar coming, and once more Mami conjures a weapon to blast it back away at point-blank range.

It may be dark here, but there's a hope in her heart that burns strong now.

She rises, and there's a gleam of light as she pushes her hand forward and conjures up another rifle in preparation. "Sayaka-chan!" she calls, more strongly. "I'll cover you! We need to press forward!" Here she interposes herself between Madoka and the coming flowers, and puts on a braver face in hopes that the rest of her will catch back up again.

"I was wondering what the two of you were doing alone in a Labyrinth," the veteran speaks to Madoka behind, glancing back only a half-moment with a small smile to cut what could otherwise be harsh.

COMBAT: Mami Tomoe has used Senpai is Looking! on Sayaka Miki.

COMBAT: Mami Tomoe has finished attacking.

<Pose Tracker> Fuu Hououji [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.

The razor-edged petals slice at the Wind Knight's clothes, a couple of them finding bare skin and drawing blood from rather shallow but profuse lacerations; it's enough to make her wince, but she's been hurt far worse in battle.

But she's still a bit wobbly from the transfixing gaze of the bobble-head blossoms, and she doesn't even spot the roots and tendrils ensnaring her ankles until she's already trying to leap - and she winds up crashing to the ground instead, her bow and quiver vanishing back into her glove-jewel; in their place, her sword appears, gleaming in what light finds the magical girls in the Witch's Labyrinth. She grasps it, trying to get back to her feet, and starts attempting to cut herself free from the ensnaring roots - and if that means cutting up the plant-monsters that did so in the first place, she's certainly not going to *object* to having to do so. Hopefully she'll be able to free herself without falling behind her allies.

COMBAT: Fuu Hououji has used Sword Strike on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Fuu Hououji has finished attacking.

<Pose Tracker> Lera Camry [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.

Lera draws in a sharp breath, trying to regain some measure of calm. She only succeeds in a shaky sense, pushing down that growing panic and channeling it into something useful. She swings back her sword, before she catches the tail end of Sayaka's transformation -- and the way her sword cuts down a doll. She flashes her a grin, saluting her with the sword she has gripped in hand.

"All right!" she calls out. The significance is lost on her, but the pink-haired girl seems happy, and an ally is an ally at this juncture.

Which is when she sees more of the bobble-headed dolls leaping in for her, in countless numbers. She pivots on her right foot, boot grinding into the dirt -- watch your step, she reminders herself -- and light flares up the length of her blade. It flashes with a brilliant white burst of light, hurtling the dolls backward with a slash.

Her eyes narrow ans she gets a good look on them. She rotates the sword quickly in her hand, taking a deep breath.

Then she jumps slightly and rockets forward, firing forward fast enough to become a blur of green, backed by a red-orange light. Her Device is stretched out to the side in a two-handed grip, cutting into the lot of the dolls and possibly some vines, too, as she shoots across the battlefield in a straight line.

She comes to a jerking stop, now slightly closer to Mai and Eri. She nods, quickly, at them. Her question is to the entire group, still with the edge of repressed panic in her voice: "Is there any end to these things?"

COMBAT: Lera Camry has used Line Burst on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Lera Camry has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Sayaka Miki accepts Mami Tomoe's Senpai is Looking!, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Sayaka Miki is Cheered!

<Pose Tracker> Kyouko Sakura [None] has posed.

<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo3StFtLIlM

Kyouko hears Mami's coughing inquisitiveness. Her hair tears through the air like a bandit horde as she turns to look at her, but she doesn't have any answers to her unspoken questions. Not now at least.

The others chatter among themselves. It's all fine. Kyouko doesn't have the time to prepare them from this, and if all their talk attracts the Witch from her lair then all the better. Her ear's perk at Eri's mention that she isn't looking for anything, let alone mirrors, and her face screws up in irritation. It would seem that she hadn't gotten her point across. So she shouts again, a seriousness and the slightly unhinged quality she's known for bleeding into her voice.

"Check your mirrors in here or you won't see what's coming! Not a metaphor! Mirrors! Reflections! These things are mindless and pointless, we need to move forward!"

Kyouko finally turns to Sayaka, now that the moment's come to give her proper consideration. Her hand dips into her pocket, grasping something to offer her..something she'd brought for herself but would be far better used in a civilian's hands. The cheap plastic hand mirror is out in the open when Sayaka cries out those fateful words. And she looked at her, right at the epicenter.

Her eyes widened at the soul gem, her mouth opening, closing, tearing apart and snapping shut before resolving into a thinly-pressed line. Her eyes welled up with an unbroken glaze of moisture, and her throat and her chest seemed to tighten as though swept up in an invisible grip. And amidst it all she was filled with pride and confusion.

Standing still, she says nothing as she witnesses the ritual play out right before her. A minor horde of dead-eyed familiars crash into her leg. She sags at the knee and suffers for their approach, but doesn't break her gaze. Sayaka's was one of a number of transformations that the red reaper had watched play out in so many, so many times. But there was an oddly noble quality to it that stood out to her, nothing easily dismissed.

The hand mirror lightly but noticably shudders in her hand. Kyouko sees her face in a flash against the saber's side. Sayaka Miki, the brave and foolish girl, stood tall as she looked right at her, their eyes snapping together as decisively as magnets. She murmurs quietly, not so much that she can't be heard but not so loud that she meant it for an audience, "You're in it now."

Crossing the gap between them, she leans in aggressively, pressing her forehead to Sayaka's own, her eyes wide and electric as they stare into her peer's blue orbs. "Check the reflections in your swords here. Welcome to the jungle." A pocky stick appears between her fingers, and she lightly tucks it between Sayaka's teeth. Stepping off, her voice jumps several decibels in strength. "Madoka! Use this! Catch!" Winding her arm back like a pitcher, she slings the hand mirror to the innocent girl with all the strength and confidence it needed to reach her.

<Pose Tracker> Kyouko Sakura [None] has posed.

<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo3StFtLIlM

Kyouko hears Mami's coughing inquisitiveness. Her hair tears through the air like a bandit horde as she turns to look at her, but she doesn't have any answers to her unspoken questions. Not now at least.

The others chatter among themselves. It's all fine. Kyouko doesn't have the time to prepare them for this, and if all their talk attracts the Witch from her lair then all the better. Her ears perk at Eri's mention that she isn't looking for anything, let alone mirrors, and her face screws up in irritation. It would seem that she hadn't gotten her point across. So she shouts again, a seriousness and the slightly unhinged quality she's known for bleeding into her voice.

"Check your mirrors in here or you won't see what's coming! Not a metaphor! Mirrors! Reflections! These things are mindless and pointless, we need to move forward!"

Kyouko finally turns to Sayaka, now that the moment's come to give her proper consideration. Her hand dips into her pocket, grasping something to offer her..something she'd brought for herself but would be far better used in a civilian's hands. The cheap plastic hand mirror is out in the open when Sayaka cries out those fateful words. And she looked at her, right at the epicenter.

Her eyes widened at the soul gem, her mouth opening, closing, tearing apart and snapping shut before resolving into a thinly-pressed line. Her eyes welled up with an unbroken glaze of moisture, and her throat and her chest seemed to tighten as though swept up in an invisible grip. And amidst it all she was filled with pride and confusion.

Standing still, she says nothing as she witnesses the ritual play out right before her. A minor horde of dead-eyed familiars crash into her leg. She sags at the knee and suffers for their approach, but doesn't break her gaze. Sayaka's was one of a number of transformations that the red reaper had watched play out over so many, so many times. But there was an oddly noble quality to it that stood out to her, nothing easily dismissed.

The hand mirror lightly but noticably shudders in her hand. Kyouko sees her face in a flash against the saber's side. Sayaka Miki, the brave and foolish girl, stood tall as she looked right at her, their eyes snapping together as decisively as magnets. She murmurs quietly, not so much that she can't be heard but not so loud that she meant it for an audience, "You're in it now."

Crossing the gap between them, she leans in aggressively, pressing her forehead to Sayaka's own, her eyes wide and electric as they stare into her peer's blue orbs. "Check the reflections in your sword here. Welcome to the jungle." A pocky stick appears between her fingers, and she lightly tucks it between Sayaka's teeth. Stepping off, her voice jumps several decibels in strength. "Madoka! Use this! Catch!" Winding her arm back like a pitcher, she slings the hand mirror to the innocent girl with all the strength and confidence it needed to reach her.

COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro fails to dodge Fuu Hououji's Sword Strike, taking 9 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit!

COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro fails to brace Lera Camry's Line Burst, taking 23 Fatigue damage! Lera Camry is Psyched!

<Pose Tracker> Mai Tokiha [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.

Countless stairs and terraces stand before those assembled - but as the outsider in more respects than one, Mai's attention is foremost on friends and coworkers, and then on the fields of familiars. Small, perhaps - but backed by those ominous mirrors, and growing faster than they can be cut down.

Fire. Fire should be the answer - flames hot enough to burn away hesitation, to make clear just what she thinks of this twisted garden. Bright, blazing, and making it eminently obvious just who has taken offence to this place's warped aesthetics.

There's a will here beyond the monsters, one she didn't know coming in - and the storm of petals set ablaze assaults her from all sides. She does what she can against those in front of her, but those from behind...with a choked-off scream, Mai stumbles to one side. It takes a moment for her to pick herself up, and she answers the arriving Propane-chan with horror of her own. "I...your guess is as good as mine. Are these kinds of things always..."

Horror not just for herself, as dawning realization looks upon Eri. Her gaze flickers to the other apparent veterans, those calling advice to newcomers. "...you've had to deal with these. All this time, and you never..." Mai winces as she stands, hearing Kyouko's commands, and realizing just how unprepared she was for this kind of maddening place.

"All this time...you should have said something. Should have asked for help...and yes, I know, you can laugh later. Just..." Fire dances around her, more subdued, more wary - a harsh lesson learned already, even as horror at what her friend has had to deal with is setting in. "...try not to worry about me, and I'll do what I can to watch your back. Okay, Eri-chan?"

The smell of her flames, homely, is at least not that of the flowers. That much, at least...

COMBAT: Mai Tokiha has used Affectionate Inferno on Eri Shimanouchi.

COMBAT: Mai Tokiha has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi accepts Mai Tokiha's Affectionate Inferno, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Cleanse! All of Eri Shimanouchi's debuffs are cleared!
COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura has used Breaking Bread on Sayaka Miki.
COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura has finished attacking.

<Pose Tracker> La Sirene du Nord [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

The sudden and sincere appearance of Sayaka Miki - her true self? Or her new self? Or is it merely her 'blue' self, with all questions of truth or novelty suspended? - heartens la Sirene du Nord. The petal storm does less so. One slashes a thin line on her wrist that makes her draw back the Pharos.

And then they're all coming. The Pharos is brandished again as she declares with great force, "Les Mysteres!" A downward emphatic stroke - "Come!!" The outward spilling of silver-threaded blackness smashes down, but she's already been slowed enough to stagger forwards.

La Sirene heads for Mai, Lera, the others - it would seem quite foolish to be caught alone. "Reflections?" she says when Kyouko continues to call instructions. She turns her head then and looks right into her own lantern of doom --

Which in this case does give her at least some guidance, at least some reflection within the labyrinth. (Parenthetically, she kicks a familiar in its creepy head.)

COMBAT: La Sirene du Nord has used Riders On The Storm on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: La Sirene du Nord has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro narrowly counters La Sirene du Nord's Riders On The Storm, taking 2 Fatigue damage! Honoka Yukishiro's Reverse ability activates!
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro's counterattack, Bobbleheaded Bounce, fails to get through, doing 0 Fatigue damage to La Sirene du Nord!

<Pose Tracker> Eri Shimanouchi [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

An expression can wince even with eyes shut. It happens as Mai speaks, even in thrum and pulse of battle. A promise of a conversation that she'd decided long ago that she'd never wanted to have. Something within her wilts, while something else hardens. "Maybe I had a good reason for that." Voice chilly, she digs her heels in.

'Mami-senpai! Look at me!' Even if it wasn't directed at her, she couldn't help but turn her head in that direction, opening an eye. Just a crack, before her eyes open completely, and she stands transfixed as she watches her classmate change from what she'd thought to be an innocent middle schooler into- a hero without fear. For a moment, she's dazzled by the change, as if uncomprehending. And then her free hand clenches into a fist so hard that she feels her nails past the fabric of her gloves.

Remembering a slick alleyway, stained crimson, she'd perhaps wanted to think that Sayaka would have been dissuaded from this path by what she saw. That she'd want to remain as she had been forever, and not experience any more horrors of this life. And yet, had she discussed the matter with her ever since? Asked what she'd learned from the experience? Thinking on some level that it was vaguely her fault, even if it wasn't, she takes a deep ragged breath, and tears her gaze away from the Puella Magi who shone so brightly.

Now wasn't the time to discuss the truth of her feelings with the others here, but she could at least vent the vague frustration she felt on- something. Through blurred eyes, she sees them advancing upon her, skulls rattling as they lurched. She takes a moment to gather strength within her arms, before she snaps down her scourge like whip as hard as she can. The crack of it is thunderous, echoing, though the echo sounds wrong within the Labyrinth. From the tips, the concussive wave powerful enough to scatter a few of the familiars mid-movement, bowling them away just as they connect. Wincing at the traded hit, a small growl escapes her lips at the numbing pain in her legs that will likely be thoroughly bruised on the morrow.

Some part of her wanted to congratulate her, to say she was proud of her but- that would be a lie. "I hope it was worth it." She finally says, speech clipped short by emotions simmering beneath the surface. Not wanting to think upon if this life would cause sweet Sayaka Miki to one day end up in the same state she'd once been in.

Not even having time to feel chagrin at Kyouko's message, she thinks on the contents of her purse, and with a thought she has a compact in her hand, a flower engraved on the back of it. Opening it up with one hand, she tries to use it to get a better view of her surroundings with her free hand. "Right. I'll do that."

Mai continues saying things, a lot of things. At first she doesn't hear them, so focused on splitting her attention between the new hero born and her compact, but by the end of it. She glances at Mai, her eyes careworn, and her smile small. Really it was nothing she hadn't expected to hear, but her affection for the one speaking it causes it to creep into her voice, "We'll talk about it later. Right now, you promise me the same. Focus on what's ahead of you and not on me and we'll make it out of here together."

Seeing the familiars continue their relentless, endless advance, she decides she isn't finished letting the horrific floral dolls know her displeasure. Emerald sparkles shimmer over the field, marring the flowers of the landscape with verdure light. "Not really." She answers Lera, just before sharpened sticks and trunks the size of small saplings criss cross the battlefield like living punji sticks and pikes in an attempt to impale a few of the creations of the witch. Though Mami's advice is directed at Sayaka, she cocks her head towards her as if to indicate she should listen to them, "We've got to get to the center quickly, or we'll be overwhelmed! Try to keep up with them!" She thrusts her arm towards the veterans at the front. And then she presses forward, legs pumping, on occasion hopping over them one by one to crunch on more faux flowers.

COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi has used Weald Advent on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro narrowly dodges Eri Shimanouchi's Weald Advent, taking 23 Fatigue damage!

COMBAT: Sayaka Miki accepts Kyouko Sakura's Breaking Bread, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Empower applied to Sayaka Miki! Cleanse! All of Sayaka Miki's debuffs are cleared!

<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Miki [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

Sayaka doesn't notice the mirror break, will never know Kyouko tried to give it to her. But she does watch the girl's face, more calmly than she ever could have until today, because for the first time, they are on even ground--so she thinks.

Kyouko doesn't take long to push Sayaka back onto the balls of her feet, quite literally. Sayaka has to lean back, her body taking on a Pisa-like angle to the floor as Kyouko gets close, their foreheads touching anyway. She grimaces, and yes, it's nerves, but it's not the sort of flailing Kyouko would have gotten with a move like that yesterday. Her eyes haven't changed color, but perhaps the outfit has loaned them some of its color, because they have a vivid, almost neon quality in the dark Labyrinth.

"Reflections?" she asks cautiously. "Why-urph." She's forced to hold the pocky with her teeth, looking down at it cross-eyed for a moment, then reasserts her normal posture when Kyouko backs off.

"Nice to be here," she says, and she has no idea if she means it or not. But she moves the pocky around with her lips like she's seen Chow Yun Fat do with a toothpick, and looks proudly up at Mami and Madoka.

Sayaka had enjoyed Mami's forgiveness, recently, and had not fully gotten over that heady brew. Her /approval/ is even more potent, and Sayaka feels light on her feet, her lips smiling of their own accord. Mami-senpai? Cover /her/?

"Right!" she says gaily, and bolts across the floor, snatching up her rapier from the pinned corpse of a familiar. She catches the eye of an unfamiliar pink-haired girl, and automatically salutes her back with her sword. Only once she's done that does she realize... that girl doesn't know! She assumes Sayaka has been a magical girl all along! Sayaka feels even more confident, and less like three little Sayaka-chans stacked in a trenchcoat trying to get into a movie.

Eri gives her the most subdued greeting. In Sayaka's mood, she's inclined to respond gently, protectively, because her own emotions are for once glowing perfect and invincible. "It's the best thing I'll ever do," she tells Eri reassuringly. And then the familiars come.

With a militant 'hah!', Sayaka claims one side of Madoka. "You think I'll just watch monsters attack my best friend?!" she mocks, as if she's entirely forgotten that she's been forced to do that over and over again, and spears a doll through its head so abruptly that one of its eyes is forced to pop out from the inside. She slings that one down into its fellows as its nerveless roots try and grab her hand, and lifts her forearm to catch another one as it attacks, slinging it away too. She tsks at the pain, glancing at the thin red line on her skin, but she's not paying attention when it starts to close mysteriously.

"Puella Magi are supposed to be in Labyrinths alone, right, senpai?" she asks Mami, as she dances into the attackers, her gleaming blade sweeping back and forth among them. She throws a huge white grin over her shoulder at Mami. "But if you think we should go into them together from now on, I can't say no to anything senpai says!"

COMBAT: Sayaka Miki has used Caprice on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Sayaka Miki has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro fails to dodge Sayaka Miki's Caprice, taking 22 Fatigue damage!

<Pose Tracker> Madoka Kaname [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbLQhzsJG0A

Lera decapitates several creepy dolls on her way over to Mai and Eri, and their heads bobble around on the ground, clicking all the way, before abruptly poofing out of existence along with the roots clinging to Fuu, which are easily banished with the prompt and deadly wielding of her sword. (Nori's kick meets another head, but this one was wielded more deliberately in an impact-counterimpact, the creature remaining intact.)

Eri forges a path forward with animate wood as her trailheads, and the impaled corpses of familiars as her markers. The group begins to advance through the labyrinth in earnest, Sayaka leading the way, somehow everywhere and nowhere with her silvery blades. Where she passes, familiars are destroyed.

Madoka has to snap herself out of gazing in wonder at Sayaka's carnival of carnage, then shakes her head at Mami's question, her little nose making a circle in the air, in that forlorn manner she has that sends her ribbons bouncing. Up close, she looks like way more of a mess than even a minute or two in this labyrinth should account for; there's residue on her neck that might have once been a mark of a wholly different color, her twintails are stringy and tousled, and she seems incredibly drained even by the standards of someone being defended on all sides by monsters out of nightmare. "Mmmnnn," she negates with exhausted dullness, "Sayaka-chan, she, she had just saved me and Hitomi-chan from a /different/ Witch... and we were starting to walk home... when this one came up right on top of us."

She chews the inside of her cheek. "B-but, she's doing her best, and so are all of you." It's really easy to tell what she's thinking if you've ever been around her for more than five minutes, and indeed Kyuubey elects, in this moment, to leap from Sayaka's admittedly extra-busy whitecloaked shoulder onto Madoka's relatively still one. "So... thank you!" She bows, there and then, right in the middle of the labyrinth, nearly sending the girls' mascot flying.

As she's righting herself, Kyouko's words penetrate, and especially her direction. She raises her palm totally instinctively, obediently following instructions, and it thuds straight in. "Y-yes! Thank you, Kyouko-chan!"

Glancing in it, she sees only her own frightened reflection, and that of the glow of the many gems luminescing around her.

Gold on Mami's beret; red at Kyouko's throat; green fastening the back of Eri's mask; and now, blue at Sayaka's midriff.

Accompanied by a mottled, distant, mechanical roar, the light pouring from the four Puella Magi's Soul Gems abruptly doubles in intensity.

But, as their owners can sense instinctively, it isn't because the mistress of this garden is suddenly twice as close. And everyone, Witch-expert or no, can tell that what was already horrifying whimsy has just gone even further sideways, reality shattering even further, spiderwebs cracking up the dimensional glass.

Because, with a second blast of its horn, led by the brilliant purple flash of its glaring, malevolent headlights, a semi-truck with an opaque, chrome windshield is plowing towards the group. It doesn't churn up flowers so much as overwrite them; pavement, sparkling with faintly red chips of mica, pours out behind it. It is the vanguard of a freeway that splits the garden straight in half, then continues on into the sky, which is now undulating with strange, dark, illegible runes. Mystical stormclouds on the moebiesque horizon, the pink light invaded by violent violet.

As though they were only held in place by balloon strings, the various terraces and balconies and stairways vaguely drift forward, flowing along the freeway on either side like floral shoulders. Some of the plantdoll familiars drift onto the road. The first few are rendered unto paste by the literally hungry wheels of the cars and trucks that follow the semi in the lead -- their ichor absorbed into the rubber, fuel to accelerate those lucky fauxtomobiles. The next are more careful, hopping up into passing pickup truck beds, onto the rooftops of taxis and even, in one memorable case, onto the back of a passing motorcycle. It has no driver.

The wind tears at everyone's hair and clothes with its sudden gusty passage, dragged inadvertantly and uncontrollably behind each of what seems to be a tide of cars as unlimited as the plantdolls themselves. Everyone has to move, /right away/, or risk sharing that sloppy fate. Madoka definitely can't do so quickly enough on her own. These awful things are starving for blood, and the blood of the innocent most of all. Certainly they're happy to chew up Eri's trees as they pass... which means... they're not heading /towards/ the center of the labyrinth, but away from it. Even so, the freeway is definitely not the safest place to be.

Incongruously, Kyuubey remarks, his dry tones materializing directly into the minds of all around him, << Did you know, this territory needs a new hunter? How fortunate for some of you. >> It's easy to project feelings where there are none to get in the way, and he sounds genuinely happy for whoever he's talking about, rather than sarcastic. His intentions are totally pure. Pretty and pure, even.

COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Yield on Mami Tomoe.

COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Yield on Fuu Hououji.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Yield on Lera Camry.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Yield on Kyouko Sakura.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Yield on Mai Tokiha.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Yield on La Sirene du Nord.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Yield on Eri Shimanouchi.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Yield on Sayaka Miki.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Dead End on Madoka Kaname.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Fuu Hououji narrowly braces Honoka Yukishiro's Yield, taking 2 Fatigue damage! Bind Break! All of Honoka Yukishiro's debuffs are cleared!
COMBAT: Mami Tomoe narrowly dodges Honoka Yukishiro's Yield, taking 6 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Mami Tomoe's Fade ability activates! Mami Tomoe's Flash ability activates! Bind Break! All of Honoka Yukishiro's debuffs are cleared!
COMBAT: Mami Tomoe covers Madoka Kaname for Honoka Yukishiro's attack, Dead End, taking it upon themselves instead!
COMBAT: Mami Tomoe fails to dodge Honoka Yukishiro's Dead End, taking 19 Fatigue damage!
COMBAT: Mai Tokiha perfectly dodges Honoka Yukishiro's Yield, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Critical Dodge!
COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi fails to dodge Honoka Yukishiro's Yield, taking 8 Fatigue damage! Bind Break! All of Honoka Yukishiro's debuffs are cleared!
COMBAT: Lera Camry narrowly dodges Honoka Yukishiro's Yield, taking 4 Fatigue damage! Lera Camry's Fade ability activates! Lera Camry's Flash ability activates! Bind Break! All of Honoka Yukishiro's debuffs are cleared!
COMBAT: La Sirene du Nord fails to dodge Honoka Yukishiro's Yield, taking 7 Fatigue damage! Bind Break! All of Honoka Yukishiro's debuffs are cleared!
COMBAT: Sayaka Miki perfectly dodges Honoka Yukishiro's Yield, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Critical Dodge!
COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura narrowly braces Honoka Yukishiro's Yield, taking 3 Fatigue damage! Kyouko Sakura's Block ability activates! Kyouko Sakura's Parry ability activates! Bind Break! All of Honoka Yukishiro's debuffs are cleared!

<Pose Tracker> Lera Camry [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.

"All right, then, we just need to--" Lera was about to say 'keep moving,' but then she sees the semi-truck barreling down for her. Her gold-brown eyes go wide as she stares at it, at first, while it comes barreling down on her. She didn't epect to be standing in oncoming traffic.

<What in the--Lera! Move!>

She doesn't need to be told twice. The semi-truck comes screaming at her, wind whistling around it, and she leaps, jumping over it in time for her foot to brush the cab's roof. She rises over it, executing a midair backflip, and comes down at the trailer as it rushes by. The wind rips at her hair and jacket, sending them flying. She does another sharp midair turn.

Her foot kicks at the side of the trailer. All of the different momentums catch up with her -- the motion of her kick, the speed of the truck, and the sudden cannon shot of her flight spell -- to send her flying away from it with a burst of green light shooting off her foot. She grits her teeth, barreling through the air away from it.

"Everyone okay?" she yells, as she lands in a three point stance. "You, too, Mister Cat... Rabbit... thing?"

COMBAT: Lera Camry has used Spin Kick on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Lera Camry has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro narrowly counters Lera Camry's Spin Kick, taking 3 Fatigue damage! Lera Camry is Psyched! Honoka Yukishiro's Reverse ability activates!
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro's counterattack, Dead End, fails to get through, doing 0 Fatigue damage to Lera Camry!

<Pose Tracker> Mami Tomoe [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.

Mami hasn't gotten her answers yet from Kyouko, and she doesn't have the time to ask again now. It's not as if Kyouko is likely to go anywhere at the moment anyway--not anywhere she isn't already going. ...Neither, thogh, did she have a chance to help with Mai's questions, or say mch more to Eri. Her attention span is rapidly drying up as her sitation worsens.

The others, for the most part, are left to take care of themselves, as Mami focses pon two here.

So Sayaka is moving, and Mami does just as she said she would, picking off anything that threatens to reach Sayaka's blind spots, analyzing her younger friend's fighting style, her magic. It feels electric... and not entirely in a good way.

Eri's words /do/ reach her. "Shimanouchi-san," Mami snaps, tense, but leaves /what/ her caution might be unspoken.

...Which is for the best: the warning wold only worsen. Mami careflly listens to Madoka as she speaks, but this close can see that exhaustion, the marks of battle, and the explanation is worse. "Wait--/another/ Witch, right here?" She is able to conceal most of her alarm, but most still leaves enough that this is /plainly/ unusual, as her pink-haired friend may well already know. "Madoka-chan..."

Kyubey's there, almost falling at Madoka's bow, and Mami too can read what's in the air.

The horn almost stops her heart outright--Mami turns and nearly freezes as a scene from her nightmares erupts even as her soul gem flares to brilliance, but has the werewithal to do one thing: "Look out!" she calls, and shoves both Madoka and Kyubey with her out of the path of the truck before she disappears from view as it crashes right through her position.

It's sudden; one moment she's there, and the next, the gold light is nowhere to be seen.

...But the moment after, she's visible, swinging upward on a yellow ribbon, the other hand reaching out to send one coiling after Madoka and Kyubey. "I won't let you be left behind!" she winces back, thudding heavily onto the truck's back.

As... the voice. A new hunter... and a new Labyrinth.

/How/?

"We have to keep moving!" she repeats, and desperately tries to conceal the terror rising up the back of her spine. She /runs/, leaping towards the next car, and the next, Madoka under one arm and her other arm free to wave an entire line of guns into existence to clear a path.

Gunfire roars ahead of them, straight into the tide of cars.

COMBAT: Mami Tomoe has used Tiro Circle on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Mami Tomoe has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro fails to dodge Mami Tomoe's Tiro Circle, taking 34 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Mami Tomoe is Psyched!

<Pose Tracker> Mai Tokiha [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.

Later. That promised time, when truths are laid out, honest feelings stated, walls torn down and a new era of openness to begin. A word Mai's used herself more than once - she'll have a heart-to-heart with Takumi later, deal with Mikoto's habits later, take time to relax later...

This 'later' might come sooner than those, but it's still not entirely heartening...though the matching concern in Eri's voice helps. "Right. For now, it's dealing with this crazy place...and making sure we all get out safely." Safety seems to be in short supply - especially with the nearly endless supply of familiars. It seems impossible to stand against them, and yet... Rifle shots and swords and vines all tear into the floral army.

She follows as best she can, trying to watch for the next attack. It's chaotic - she can spot the Wind Knight cutting through vines at one point, la Sirene joining in the charge forward at another, pink-haired Madoka following without any apparent power save that implied by the white fox-thing accompanying her...

And then reality breaks.

The terraces drift away, like some ephemeral dream fading into some new illusion. The roar of engines heralds the arrival of tires and furious vehicles, and Mai jumps in shock...and then just carries that through to its conclusion, taking to the air above the tide of cars. They, at least, seem bound by gravity for the moment...

A voice speaks in her head, and Mai whirls around for a moment in surprise. The words themselves are even more surprising than the mysterious speech's existence - "Wait...hunter? You mean, these kinds of things show up regularly?! And no one's..."

Determination ignites once more, and Mai glares furiously toward the source of the cars. Between the flowers and the traffic, it's been like a dreadful dream...and it's time to try to wake up. "Right. The problem's that way, right?" Banked embers ignite, Mai's rings beginning to spin into a blaze. A pillar of flame, like some great bludgeon...and she rushes forward, dragging flames along the stream of cars. She's not just fighting for herself - and she's going to try to clear a path for those following her flight.

COMBAT: Mai Tokiha has used Vehement Ignition on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Mai Tokiha has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro fails to brace Mai Tokiha's Vehement Ignition, taking 39 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit!

<Pose Tracker> Kyouko Sakura [None] has posed.

<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aWCKVEGvWI&index=32&list=PL5C894E719DEECEB2

So much is happening very quickly. Kyouko winces internally. She isn't accustomed to dealing with these situations with others. More than anything else, so many people being here just seemed to overcomplicate everything. If she was alone, then she would be without backup, yes..but she'd be freer than ever to leap ahead into the core and skewer the beast and be done with it.

Although she's still reeling from Sayaka's revelation, she can't help but wonder why they haven't met with Asuka Suzuki just yet. If not for Blueberry's contract, that would have been the surprise that most consumed her on this night. It's Suzuki's turf, she would have been at least /second/ on the scene. Nowhere to be seen.

Sayaka leaps over to defend Madoka's side like she's never used her newfound legs before. For all that the more experienced Puella Magi knows, she hasn't. Kyouko kicks some familiars side as though she's stomping through mud, already irate that the battle hasn't been meant in earnest. This witch was a shy thing from the start, perhaps such great numbers discouraged it from taking the assault.

And then the gem upon her breast blazes faster than a boiling pot bellows steam, and her eyes flie wide. A belching bellow blasts over the horizon..when the big rig tears through them and lays pavement like a hell-raising street-snail, she leaps straight up..and over it.

This is something different. Something foreign. Something beyond the labyrinth. Kyouko has seen when one witch's lair collides with another, a thankfully rare mishap..but she's taken meticulous care in monitoring the seeds in this region. As more cars come careening down, howling with screeching tires and unholy hunger, she soon realizes that for all of her due dilligence, she has no idea what she's stepping into here. She hops, and hops again, standing on the highway since she leapt from the first, even as the other islands scatter into a tight orbit.

The shit's hitting the fan very abruptly. Her gaze tears towards Kyuubey, and then back on the road. Sprinting forward, she pounds the pavement, staring down an SUV screaming straight at her, launching herself up at the last second..falling onto its roof with a shuddering crash, she hoists her spear and hurtles it as far as it can go, attempting to forge a bridge across the sea of traffic, anything to make her way back to the center she's being whisked from by the moment.

She starts to leapfrog from car to car before her harpoon even falls. There's no margin for error here. She shouts to the others, her labored breath punctuating the spaces between the syllables. "We're in it bad! Try not to die!"

COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura has used Masterstroke on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura has finished attacking.

Huh? (Type "help" for help.)

<Pose Tracker> Fuu Hououji [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.

This was a garden, WHY ARE THERE CARS

The Wind Knight brings her right arm and her sword up, legs flexing for a leap just before one of the seemingly-driverless vehicles slams into her; most of the impact is absorbed, and she takes advantage of the remainder to help her get off the garden-turned-street. The sudden presence and telepathic commentary from Kyubey is mostly shut out of her consciousness; she doesn't need the additional distraction, whoever or whatever that is.

"Is everyone holding up all right?" she calls out to her allies, following the lead of Mami and Kyouko as she starts hopscotching between cars. It's a very risky endeavor, with little attention to spare; she has to let her sword disappear again, for the sake of keeping her balance. She can afford enough focus to cast a spell, she thinks ...

A radiator grill full of teeth suddenly rears up in front of her, and the Wind Knight just barely *doesn't* scream in surprise or fear. That doesn't mean she doesn't raise her voice, though: "STORM-DANCE OF KAMAITACHI!!" she shouts, unleashing a tornado ahead of her, rending winds to hopefully carve a path through the onrushing traffic-beasts, or hurl a bunch of them off the road, or something that'll help the group's advance.

COMBAT: Fuu Hououji has used Storm-Dance of Kamaitachi on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Fuu Hououji has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro narrowly braces Kyouko Sakura's Masterstroke, taking 18 Fatigue damage!
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro fails to counter Fuu Hououji's Storm-Dance of Kamaitachi, taking 30 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit!
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro's counterattack, Razor Petals, fails to get through, doing 0 Fatigue damage to Fuu Hououji!

<Pose Tracker> Eri Shimanouchi [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

"Don't be so sure about that." Eri says reflexively to Sayaka, eyes flickering towards Mami at her warning, her anger bubbles up but the words- they don't quite come. How could she communicate her desperation? Her feelings of hopelessness for these past few months. She couldn't. Not here, she couldn't rain on Sayaka's parade any longer. The anger is squeezed out by the sudden weight of sullen depression. She holds up a hand towards Mami as if indicating she'll respect her warning for now. Later though?

The little compact that she's watching in her hand alerts her to the green glow before any tingle of instinct might have. Yet it's those instincts which alert her to what's going on as one reality blurs into another. Or does it? Whatever the case- "Up! Up if you can!" Just as the glare of headlights hit her eyes, illuminating them, she's leaping high, a foot touching down upon a truck bed for only a moment, her feet nearly jerked out from under her as she tries to leap up and forward again.

The wake of it's passing altering her trajectory like she was a dandelion seed floating in the wind. At its mercy, her next landing is hard, as her feet find little purchase amidst the bobbly headed familiars taking refuge on the back of a station wagon. Rolling over the side, she grips ahold of the roof rack with a single hand to prevent herself from falling, sacrificing the compact which hits the momentary pavement and shatters, before being scattered by the wheels of a passing truck.

The desperate hold jerks her arm hard, as she fumbles around to try to plant her feet in the side of the vehicle. Seeing them advance to try to knock her off, she grips her scourge handle firmly, before flicking it in a sweeping sideways motion, each length trying to wrap around the familiars and then with a sharp tug, cast them off the roof to the merciless pavement below. Kicking off of it, she does not quite so graceful back flip towards a passing semi trailer, kicking off of it with all the force her legs could muster, before flipping forward, skipping forward off vehicle rooftops as if she were playing some high stakes version of hopscotch.

Which is when those tones, so sweet and helpful enter into her mind. It almost causes her to botch her next landing as she processes it. And suddenly she feels ravenous hunger. Not for food, but all the desperation she'd felt for so long came roiling back all at once, making her feel like a starving animal all the same. One that had just been offered prime hunting ground. "Really. How interesting!" She says perhaps too enthusiastically, deciding not to answer Mai right now and yet- her eyes suddenly search for Sayaka on the highway to hell.

The new hero, it was unlikely she had territory, wasn't it? The epiphany hits her at once, causing a sickly wave of nausea. Seeds of paranoia take root in her mind, as she then looks towards Mami, and Kyouko, wondering if lines would be drawn over this. She could say she deserved it, she could say that it was her turn, that she'd paid her dues, that she'd waited long enough. But would that even matter, if the others decided Sayaka's life had more worth than hers?

Suddenly the atmosphere of the Labyrinth felt all the more suffocating during her advance. She decides ultimately not to voice her intent right now, instead thinking to watch and wait and see what each of them would do. Once she laid those cards on the table, she didn't think she could take them back. Instead, she yells at Kyouko over the rush of wind, "What makes you think I'd do something as foolish as that?" It would be foolish indeed, as suddenly she felt like she had a /lot/ more to live for.

COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi has used Flowing Scourge Feint on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro perfectly counters Eri Shimanouchi's Flowing Scourge Feint, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Critical Counter! Honoka Yukishiro's Reverse ability activates!
COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi is unable to keep fighting!
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro's counterattack, Dead End, fails to get through, doing 0 Fatigue damage to Eri Shimanouchi! Eri Shimanouchi is unable to keep fighting!

<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Miki [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

Sayaka is having a much easier time in combat now. It's that Lera salute, partly; she let go of feeling like a trainee, and her performance thus far just continues to hearten her. She bounces her way through combat, jete, jete! Strikes bound off the strings!

When the horns blare, Sayaka loses some dignity, lifting a knee and tucking an elbow to try and protect her body from some unknown attack. She lets them down quickly, hands out to her sides to keep her balance as the world itself shakes under the might of those grindingly huge tires.

The only person in the room Sayaka can truly leave Madoka to without worrying scoops the pink-haired girl under an arm (sorry Eri, not sorry Kyouko). This leaves Sayaka with nothing to rescue but her own precious gym bag, and the guilt that comes with even considering the safety of its precious contents when Madoka's is on the line. Slinging the bag over her back, Sayaka dances around on the ground. "Um! Kyuubey! How do I go up?" Mami and Kyouko are always so aerial, though none of them can fly. Sayaka's eyes get bigger as the trucks blaze closer, and suddenly one of them fills her entire vision with its giant grill, barrelling down to smash her like Cujo. Is that the wrong movie she's thinking of?

"AAAAAAAaaaAAA!" Sayaka screams, jumping straight up. The edge of the truck rips past her... right next to her shoulder, and she lands there, stabbing her sword down hard until it lodges tight. She pants, wincing, waiting for the bruise, the pain. Slowly she creaks an eye open. Nothing? She bites her lip.

Hah! Nothing!

"Senpai! Let's turn all this into a Grief Seed!"

COMBAT: Sayaka Miki has used Disjunct Chord on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Sayaka Miki has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro narrowly counters Sayaka Miki's Disjunct Chord, taking 12 Fatigue damage! Honoka Yukishiro's Reverse ability activates!
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro's counterattack, Dead End, partially gets through, doing 6 Fatigue damage to Sayaka Miki!

Fuu Hououji's last pose:

This was a garden, WHY ARE THERE CARS

The Wind Knight brings her right arm and her sword up, legs flexing for a leap just before one of the seemingly-driverless vehicles slams into her; most of the impact is absorbed, and she takes advantage of the remainder to help her get off the garden-turned-street. The sudden presence and telepathic commentary from Kyubey is mostly shut out of her consciousness; she doesn't need the additional distraction, whoever or whatever that is.

"Is everyone holding up all right?" she calls out to her allies, following the lead of Mami and Kyouko as she starts hopscotching between cars. It's a very risky endeavor, with little attention to spare; she has to let her sword disappear again, for the sake of keeping her balance. She can afford enough focus to cast a spell, she thinks ...

A radiator grill full of teeth suddenly rears up in front of her, and the Wind Knight just barely *doesn't* scream in surprise or fear. That doesn't mean she doesn't raise her voice, though: "STORM-DANCE OF KAMAITACHI!!" she shouts, unleashing a tornado ahead of her, rending winds to hopefully carve a path through the onrushing traffic-beasts, or hurl a bunch of them off the road, or something that'll help the group's advance.

COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has adjusted her boss levels. She is now ready to take on 8 opponents!

<Pose Tracker> Madoka Kaname [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCEDfZgDPS8

Madoka stumbles and scrapes her knees on the pavement, glancing desperately over her shoulder and turning bone white when she sees Mami disappear behind the truck. She opens her mouth, Kyuubey glancing at her expectantly--

--somewhere not here, a purple Puella Magi's blood freezes--

--but then she's being scooped onto the truck with Mami, the breath forcefully expelled from her lungs all in a rush. Somewhere along the way she's started to cry for reasons other than sinus relief, and she hiccups with miserable relief even as she's carted along up the down escalator of traffic like a sack of potatoes under her dear friend's arm. A dear friend who has just exploded a line of cars with incendiary bullets; debris and smoke billow in all directions.

"Don't worry," she offers wetly, the only thing she can offer to help is hope, "Sayaka-chan killed the first one all by herself! This one is separate. Just... so many of them!"

Somehow even more of her blood rushes out of her head at Kyuubey's indirect explanation as to the /why/ of that mystery -- the Puella Magi who was tending this territory is dead. The image of Eri bleeding out in a Shinjuku alleyway swims in front of her eyes, and she has to blink it away, helped by the words of the magical girl in question. "Not no one!" she yells across traffic to Mai, a feat aided by the fact that there are abruptly fewer cars between them, seeing as they've just been incinerated. Flaming car-casses tumble down the road, creating further traffic accidents in their wake. "/This/ is what they /do/! They protect us all!"

Even in this moment of distress and indignity, her absolute conviction in, and love of, the Puella Magi surrounding her is as evident as the snuffly nose upon her face.

Lera's question enters her ears as well, even as the Midchildan ricochets off the sunglasses-like chrome windshield of the lead semi. "This is Kyuubey!" she yells, forgetting about his useful telepathy router function in the heat of the moment. << Nice to meet you! >> he adds of his own volition.

Kyouko's harpoon chain goes flying past Madoka's head to be anchored in a distant car. It will go more and more slack as the Puella Magi approaches it, if it doesn't first get tangled (along with traffic) in the cars being pushed about by the Magic Knight's whirlwind, but as she passes by, Madoka remembers to look into her mirror.

She shrieks her alarm as she sees something truly horrible, but once she blinks, it's gone. "S-sorry," she murmurs, "I thought I saw something..."

There's a lot to see. Even as Eri discovers that the plantdoll familiars atop many of the vehicles are not going to be trivially dislodged, and Sayaka slams into a truck a little harder than she might have expected, as though the truck itself rose up to meet her and heighten the impact, things are beginning to change.

Surely the cars and trucks and motorcycles are the familiars of the second Witch -- they really are of an astonishing density around here. They certainly obey unfamiliar traffic rules; the sky flashes with red, yellow, and green, but also orange and cyan and sickly rainbows of indescribable hues with no place on Earth's normal spectrum. This causes them to stop and start abruptly, often right in the path of the flyers, such as Lera and Mai, who may meet a fly's doom on the windshields of another semi and a tank (a tank?!?) respectively if they aren't careful.

The lights themselves are downright mesmerizing, putting those on the ground, such as Fuu, or those deep in thought, such as Madoka and Eri, at significant risk of momentary, deadly distraction. Kyouko and Mami, meanwhile, discover that their hopscotch efforts may be actively stymied by seat belts that pour out of the windows of the vehicles they momentarily land on -- and tripvines set up by the familiars.

Sayaka, the last to leap, is pulled further away from the group by the simple expedient of her truck accelerating to dizzying speeds. It wouldn't be good if she was forced to be truly alone in traffic, much less disoriented...

COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Do Not Enter on Lera Camry.

COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Do Not Enter on Mai Tokiha.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Buckle Up! on Kyouko Sakura.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Stopandgolights on Eri Shimanouchi.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Buckle Up! on Mami Tomoe.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used velocity on Sayaka Miki.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Stopandgolights on Madoka Kaname.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Stopandgolights on Fuu Hououji.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Madoka Kaname fails to dodge Honoka Yukishiro's Stopandgolights, taking 11 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Blind, Cripple, and Stun applied to Madoka Kaname!
COMBAT: Fuu Hououji narrowly counters Honoka Yukishiro's Stopandgolights, taking 2 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Cripple and Stun applied to Fuu Hououji!
COMBAT: Fuu Hououji's counterattack, Trick Arrow Shot, partially gets through, doing 15 Fatigue damage to Honoka Yukishiro! Critical Counterhit!
COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi fails to brace Honoka Yukishiro's Stopandgolights, taking 7 Fatigue damage! Blind, Cripple, and Stun applied to Eri Shimanouchi!
COMBAT: Lera Camry narrowly counters Honoka Yukishiro's Do Not Enter, taking 8 Fatigue damage! Lera Camry's Reverse ability activates! Lera Camry's Tactician ability activates!
COMBAT: Lera Camry's counterattack, Aura Surge, partially gets through, doing 9 Fatigue damage to Honoka Yukishiro!
COMBAT: Mai Tokiha narrowly braces Honoka Yukishiro's Do Not Enter, taking 6 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Mai Tokiha's Block ability activates!
COMBAT: Sayaka Miki narrowly dodges Honoka Yukishiro's velocity, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Sayaka Miki is Quipped! Stun applied to Sayaka Miki!
COMBAT: Mami Tomoe perfectly dodges Honoka Yukishiro's Buckle Up!, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Critical Dodge! Mami Tomoe's Fade ability activates! Mami Tomoe's Flash ability activates!
COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura narrowly dodges Honoka Yukishiro's Buckle Up!, taking 6 Fatigue damage! Trap applied to Kyouko Sakura!

<Pose Tracker> Lera Camry [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.

'We're in it bad.'

It confirms a suspicion that Lera had: this is worse than other Labyrinths. She only saw the one before; it was not as chaotic as this. Her eyes widen sharply, panic mounting in her. She doesn't know what happens if she dies here, but she knows what doesn't happen. She never makes her mother proud of her. She never sets things right with Jaren, Ren, and Endo. She never helps Fate and she lets down Nanoha.

She swallows. She can't let that happen.

"Kyuubey?" she asks, with a hitch in her voice; she's not quite beaten that panic. "Got it! I'm -- er -- Magical Cheeseburger Propane-chan!"

The last part comes out as more of a shriek, because she finds herself flying directly at the barrel of a tank. She shoots past it, then does a sharp twist in midair, and swings her sword at it. There is a tremendous flash of light from her blade a magical circle appears under her feet; it rotates with her as she backflips.

<Aura Surge!>

The blade hits the tank's cannon barrel, knocking her to the side with the tremendous white flash, and she does another backflip, her blade swinging down. A second magical circle appears underneath her feet.

<Inferno Slasher!>

Her blade alights with a roaring flame -- and she swings the sword for the tank, hard. The energy lengthens the blade -- and then it releases, firing off the sword as an edge-shaped explosion. Lera's now far too distracted to offer intelligible commentary, as in a flood of desperation to live and more primal panic, she tries to cut a tank in half.

"KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"

COMBAT: Lera Camry has used Inferno Slasher on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Lera Camry has finished attacking.

<Pose Tracker> Fuu Hououji [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.

The Magic Knight of Wind is getting a strange case of shell shock at this rate; the sudden lights are a very dazzling surprise, and despite the initial shock, she's able to will her bow and arrows back into solid existence. An arrow flies for one cluster of those lights; she thinks she hears the arrow hit, and it's possible some lights went out from it ...

She can't SEE to be sure, though, and not for lack of her glasses - they're balanced on her nose as usual, she can feel the subtle weight, and reaching up to adjust them confirms their presence. She sees her fingers when she does it, too, so ...

"Winds of Healing!"

She's too disoriented to extend the healing spell to anyone else at the moment; she has to clear her vision and her head and get back on the move. As soon as she can see where she's about to put her feet, she'll be back in motion; otherwise she has to trust her ears - which aren't enough in this mobile deathmaze of deadly traffic.

COMBAT: Fuu Hououji has used Winds of Healing on Fuu Hououji.

COMBAT: Fuu Hououji has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Fuu Hououji accepts Fuu Hououji's Winds of Healing, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Cleanse! All of Fuu Hououji's debuffs are cleared!
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro fails to brace Lera Camry's Inferno Slasher, taking 41 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit!

<Pose Tracker> Mai Tokiha [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.

There's a dynamic going on here, and once more Mai gets that premonition that she shouldn't have intruded. The ominous feeling was there from the start, flowers and cars both clearer messages...and there's a second conversation, beyond shouted tactical advice, belying some deeper meanings here. Nothing she can put to words, and something she could just try to stay oblivious to.

She'd be happier that way, probably. But at least one friend is wrapped up in things, and she'd wonder what was really going on forever if she left it at this.

She looks back at Madoka's furious, admonishing yell - a glance that offers her a view of the spectacle that is this conjoined Labyrinth. Lines of traffic weaving through countless gardens, an endless nightmare...

Mai calls back, her voice tinged with affection of her own. "I'm beginning to realize that - though I wouldn't begrudge them all the help they'd ask!" That line might not have been aimed at Madoka alone...

And then there's a transport truck right in front of Mai, cutting off further conversation.

Crimson light flares briefly in a sphere around the HiME, and there's a resounding crash as she seems to be consumed by the truck's cab. A vehicle obeying some strange traffic laws, flight claimed, begins to plummet...and then, flames erupt from within, throwing the semi-trailer truck spinning off course.

Mai Tokiha, recently, found herself in possession of a car. She hasn't finished any kind of driving course, is still trying to study rules of the road, and has only vague ideas of how to drive a car. What she is fairly certain of is that this isn't it.

And yet, she's doing it anyway. Mai-HiME, gripping the wheel of a transport truck, unleashes flames intermittently to try to steer the mammoth machine against the flow of traffic. Taking every traffic law she can think of, and flagrantly violating them - as soon as it looks like things are going to wreck, she's going to try to take to the air again, and take her chances.

Should really finish getting that permit.

COMBAT: Mai Tokiha has used Learner's Permit on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Mai Tokiha has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro fails to brace Mai Tokiha's Learner's Permit, taking 20 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Mai Tokiha is Psyched!

<Pose Tracker> Mami Tomoe [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.

Mami gives Eri one more sharp look, but relents as the younger girl seems to go along with what she's said before. There's no gentleness in that lok, no apologetic 'we'll do this later'.

There are things more important than gentleness to Mami Tomoe.

...And even if she can't stop to ask Kyouko her questions, she's close to the same wavelength in a few other ways--this many people /does/ hurt her focus, and earlier she wished she was alone in this fight... But the distance is that Mami doesn't wish it anymore.

She doesn't have time to stop long enough to figure out what she /does/ wish. It's all she can do to pretend she can handle this as it is.

She can't help but have a pang of some dark feeling at Kyouko's casual ease, or at Eri' excited statement to Kyubey. But she can't say such things--her golden eyes blink once as she keeps jumping, and Madoka under her arm remind her of what she has to be now.

Despite that, it's Madoka who's giving /her/ hope. "Did she collect its grief seed?" Mami finds that she has to ask, suddenly concerned again for the new Puella Magi, but can only respond in silence to the impassioned defense of Puella Magi.

Madoka can feel her tense in alarm at the shriek, and indeed may well see that this close Mami is not qite as sual--but her trademark grace returns as daner threatens. She touches down, and the seat belts pouring out towards her hit empty air as she launches back up on one foot. She reaches out another ribbon towards the next car to help /pll/ herself away from the rest, but that's not nearly enough to finish things on its own. Not while there's a tank to be rushed, and even /more/ Familiars here. So many motors.

"Madoka-chan," she breathes, "What did you think you saw?"

There are /too/ many. Mami continues her magic, waving her hands as moer and ore of her guns spin upward out of nothing and fire at familiars, cars, everything /away/ from the path to keep it down. ...Well, down, and to herd it towards the fireball erupting thanks of Mai-HiME.

COMBAT: Mami Tomoe has used Suppressing Fire! on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Mami Tomoe has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro narrowly braces Mami Tomoe's Suppressing Fire!, taking 5 Fatigue damage! Diversion applied to Honoka Yukishiro!

<Pose Tracker> Kyouko Sakura [None] has posed.

<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VWOSciGbF4&list=PLH3TFIVCOgxKUIW5uP_mf92GVC8ugvg2K&index=7

Kyouko bares her teeth at Eri in a wolf grin, fleeting as she goes. The length of her lance and the long chain trailing behind it have formed a bridge that shrinks by the moment. Sprinting at a breakneck pace along it, she seeks to take as much advantage as she can of it.

Madoka says something that she can only half-way make out, but it sounds like some dribble about the Witch-hunters protecting everybody else. Shaking her head, she doesn't feel much more than pity for the soppy attitude. She's a sweet girl but she has no clue how things are. Hopefully she'll never need to learn.

She didn't see the pink-haired girl check her mirror as she lopes forward parallel to her, but she can hear her shriek and her shaken attempts to wave her reaction off all too easily. Her head whips back, her face a mask chiseled to demands of the moment, something fierce and violent. "What?!" She shouts, not with anger but with the only volume she's capable of.

Coming at last to the charter bus at other end of the length, her heels slam down upon the its roof, making it a step before black tentacles burst out of the windows for her ankle like the teeming swarm of maggots upon a corpse. Snarling like a dog her gait is interrupted, her footfall stumbling and staggering but still holding en route, wildly brandishing her weapon to fend the pests away from her.

Just before her feet slam to the rear end of the roof, she twists mid-stride towards Madoka again. "You saw it! Find it again!" Launching off of the bus like a skydiver, she thrusts her spear down towards the ground, and it grows several feet with every second, soon propelling her up from her fall and dragging her up into the sky as her spear shifts forward like a falling tree. She shouts..no, screams to the others.

"It's here! It's here, now! Look for its reflection!"

She's..pole-vaulting along the road. A truck slashes across lanes to smash into her spear. It slices itself halfway about two thirds through its length, but there's enough momentum to knock the tip out of place. She begins to fall back to the asphalt. Her hand flies out, another length rocketing for the ground. This time the savage tip pierces straight through a car, launching her further forward along that precarious pole.

She has to make it to the end. She has to kill the second witch, that's the only way to collapse the second labyrinth. If Madoka spied what Kyouko believes she saw, then the first is in everybody else's hands.

COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura has used Masterstroke on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro narrowly braces Kyouko Sakura's Masterstroke, taking 6 Fatigue damage!

<Pose Tracker> Eri Shimanouchi [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

Madoka's words instantly cause her to size up Sayaka with a flickering glance as she's sped away, and at the same time, feel incredibly guilty about it. That feeling only increases as it's her that answers Mai's question with such passion, telling her all of the positive- while her own thoughts were squarely upon the negative. Bitterly she remembers when she felt the same. Yet it never was exactly the same, was it? She feels like there'd been something defective about her, about her feelings from the start.

Vaulting over familiars she'd initially failed to dislodge, she questions whether she'd even be able to back up any claim. She'd been a scavenger so long, what sort of aspersions might anyone cast upon her competency? Well- except for one bright eyed pink haired girl, and what was she thinking about that girl's best friend, sweet, proud Sayaka-chan? It was perhaps only for Madoka, that she turns her thoughts away from that for a moment- only to meet the mesmerizing lights. The dazzling brilliance trips her focus on what she's doing, before they trip her up for real.

Her foot never touches down solidly, instead slipping up from underneath her, for just one moment, perhaps, she thinks that maybe her boast to Kyouko was all bluster with no substance, and this was it. Falling off the hood, she hits the road with a yelp and rolls a few paces, thinking bitterly that 'Pretty lights' were going to be how she meets her end. It wasn't even an interesting death. Yet wasn't that fitting for someone like her?

Fortunately, she didn't think /that/ little of herself, grit, determination and the measure of confidence she'd gained from hanging onto life this long causing her to immediately mentally answer, 'No.' Her battered body reflexively scampering upright and a pace forward, just quickly enough to only feel the tip of a car's side mirror graze the fabric of her clothing. She hadn't come this far to die like this.

Her legs felt rubbery, but still, her first leap took her high enough to avoid the next speeding vehicle. Determined movements and leaps on quickly numbing legs keep her moving inexorably forward. There was a witch left to kill. There was territory left to claim. If all went well, she could have her cake and eat it too, couldn't she? And then maybe, just maybe, she'd be able to live up to what Madoka thought of her for a short while.

At first, witnessing Mai's actions, she's concerned. Yes, concerned was definitely the word for it. She'd intended her first drive to be in a nice parking lot at Ohtori where nothing would go wrong and she definitely wouldn't randomly appear inside buildings as a flaming wreck. She leaps a tad closer, diagonally across traffic, moving onward, spitefully swinging little stinging flicks of her whip to try to dislodge familiars as she went. "Mai-chan!" She yells out, like she's going to impart some sage advice. Then she says impishly, a tease that's mostly a smoke screen to obfuscate how she feels, "I think Mikoto-chan still wins this competition! Cruise ship versus Truck? No contest!"

Hearing Kyouko's call, she thinks about it for a moment, bitterly remembering how she'd lost her mir- her eyes suddenly search the side of the cab she's on. Suddenly she snaps her whip, which encircles around the mirror's fixture and tugs it off, before with another flick it recoils back to her hand, where she catches it. And then she's moving forward, trying to get a leg up of the group. Instinct from battle experience, and hunger of a different sort than one might feel in the pit of their stomach, as she turns the mirror this way and that searchingly.

COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi has used Stinging Rebukes on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro fails to brace Eri Shimanouchi's Stinging Rebukes, taking 8 Fatigue damage!

<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Miki [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbQ5KOLJcnk

Sayaka stands up shakily, stance crouching low. Holding her blade up, she looks at the reflection, just as Kyouko had told her, and sees that the trucks behind her bear her friends. They are growing further away as the one beneath her accelerates. "Um... hang on, senpai!" she shouts back. No way is she gonna look bad in front of Mami today. Crabwalking to the cab of the truck, Sayaka stabs her sword down and peels it open like a tuna can. She can't drive, but all she has to do is turn it around.

Inside the cab is... nothing much. It's an empty little chamber. Sayaka no sooner looks up from this in frustrated confusion than Mai Tokiha zooms past in her own truck, driving it in a dogged rush of flame.

"No way! How come hers has a wheel?!" Sayaka stomps around, gloved hands curled near her face at the injustice.

She glances at her sword again. Madoka is getting further and further away from her. And poor worried Eri needs to know that this is the right call. And Mami needs to see how cool her kohai is. And Kyouko needs to see that she was wrong. Sayaka turns around carefully and slides down the windshield with a squeak of shatterproof glass against shatterproof... butt.

"Go back!" Sayaka orders the truck, and she tosses her rapier down the grill, where it sticks into the ground and is instantly run over by the front right tire. It doesn't pop, so Sayaka slides a new sword tentatively from inside her cape somewhere, not really sure how it works. Tossing the second one down, she hears some dull thud noise from the tire that doesn't sound healthy, but there's no pop. Wincing, she pulls out a third sword and tosses it down hard. This one lodges in the tire and is immediately sucked under, and suddenly that wheelwell is constantly pounding, the rapier stuck in there somewhere and getting spun around and around. The truck lurches hard to that side, tossing Sayaka off the windshield, and she hits her head on the rearview mirror before grabbing onto it desperately, her gym bag flapping around on her back. As the truck begins to chart a course back the way it came, back towards her friends, its momentum changes, and Sayaka's body swings closer to the truck body, whereas before it had been dangling off to the side. Sayaka pinches her eyes against the wind. There's something in front of the truck. Something golden and graceful.

"Senpai!" Sayaka croaks, but she can't get the air to yell it like this. She starts to pull herself up, trying to climb back onto the windshield, when suddenly the truck runs over a motorcycle that was lying, prone and on fire, from Mai's assault. The sudden lurch nearly hurls Sayaka in front of the truck too, but she clings to the mirror, and so it simply flips her hard into the windshield, spiderwebbing it into a turquoise mess of crunchy glass and driving her free arm through it entirely. When she finally lets go of the mirror, her cap is all over her front side, smothering her, and her arm is caught behind her in the windshield, looking as if she were simply slinging it back there rakishly.

Covered in her own cap, which is plastered to her by the whipping wind, Sayaka takes a deep breath. "Mami-senpai!" she bellows.

When Mami and Madoka turn around, they see Sayaka splayed across the hood of an unrushing juggernaut of a truck... and even as they look, her cape peels open over her torso, revealing a cringing, terrified, and fully-clothed Sayaka.

COMBAT: Sayaka Miki has used /Ohtori/ Learner's Permit on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Sayaka Miki has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro narrowly braces Sayaka Miki's /Ohtori/ Learner's Permit, taking 9 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Sayaka Miki is Psyched!

<Pose Tracker> Madoka Kaname [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfuZqGvruug

The two halves of a Tank-familiar tumble past either side of the Midchildan, still glowing red along their edges. They crash into a car apiece, then explode.

<< Well struck, Lera Camry! >> Kyuubey compliments, right in her head, and hers alone. There is nothing intimidating about the way he calls her by name, it is purely the truth passing from the lips of babes (or at least of cute baby animal-esque piles of white fluff).

Meanwhile, Mai plays road warrior with a familiar who is unable to jerk her off its wheel. It's a good thing the initial explosion shattered the (opaque) windshield; shards of that reflective chrome drift around her, and for the briefest of moments the mirrors seem like they're dripping blood. That's only an illusion, however, and a moment later she is fire-whipping the monster truck straight up the road, sending her foes crashing out of her way. Eventually it does explode, but not for a good five or six impacts, then seven through eleven as Mami, in the eleventh hour, shoots even more cars into the way, culminating in a four-motorcycle fireball.

At the edge of this maelstrom, Eri leaps forward, brutally flicking familiars into traffic -- they die squealing from their bobble-headed mouths. For a moment she might be able to see something in her purloined mirror, something oozing and awful, but in the next instant the vision is gone as quickly as ever.

"Y-yes, of course," Madoka is quick to assure Mami of Sayaka's competence, but the next question takes her aback. She swallows; she knows this is important. But it's scary to even think about what she saw so briefly that her mind has already rejected it. "I-it was... red." Madoka's trying her best. "H-hai, Kyouko-chan!"

She gazes like crazy, wielding the compact with all the skill her mother might have imparted during Makeup Mornings, but cannot seem to catch another glimpse.

It takes Herculean effort to swim upstream, but eventually the traffic thins, and then dies completely. Windblown razor petals float by in all directions, making soft zipping noises as they violate the otherwise perfect silence juxtaposed against what was the roar of unholy traffic on a burning hellscape.

This isn't a bad moment to catch one's breath.

Madoka's catches in her throat as she finally once again sees something awful reflected in her mirror, distorted by the dancing lights still refracting through her eyes and mind. "Mami-chan, /look out/!"

And then it comes, a force that slams into Madoka like an /invisible/ truck, ripping her out from under Mami's elbow to tumble across the ground. She lands in a heap of plaid skirts, red ribbons, and dizzying pain. Her tiny moan implies she has at least survived the experience.

But will Mami survive what she only realizes, after it's found purchase on a surface of some kind and is quivering with the impact, was an invisible (but now visible) hatchet, still dripping blood that was never hers, down its edge to the jagged tip?

The quiet moment ends as quickly as it began: with a howl, tires screech down a new stretch of highway.

Motorcycles rise directly underneath each girl, creating individual strips of highway which locally defy gravity as they twist and turn above and around this central, otherwise floral -- identical daisies, all of them unsettlingly the same -- arena. The bikes try to slam into each other and create fireball-roasted girls, but there are lots of other vehicles to leap onto, tickets to ride.

It is a Gordian knot of high-speed traffic, with its maker at its heart.

Out of the flowerbed explodes what is unmistakably, gut-twistingly a Witch, from her sheer wrongness which is difficult to look at directly for very long: twenty, maybe thirty feet tall, chains everywhere. Golden chains, shimmering and sparkling, she literally drips with wealth. They fall from the neck of a central, massive, black microphone in an outline faintly evocative of a ballgown. This shape is distorted in two ways:

First, at the end of each chain is a razor-sharp-looking key. Each key is different and distinct from the others. There must be dozens.

Second, each chain is locked, somewhere along its length, to the /thirty/-foot long, triple-headed glaive. The locks are similarly antique and unqiue, like the keys, though they don't match up along the chains. This bunching creates the facsimile of arms, but the Witch can no more escape the burden of combat than anyone else in the room.

She screams. Or, well, there is a scream. It sounds pre-recorded, tinny, canned; Witches don't have voices. It seems that she caught Madoka's earlier scream, the first time the girl saw something in her mirror, and now it's on long, distorted, agonizing playback.

In the same instant, several of her chains snake out to try to grasp pairs of girls and slam them off their bikes and into each other, hopelessly entangled: Mai into Eri, Fuu into Lera. Sayaka, last to arrive (her truck satisfyingly well-aimed, it actually makes it onto the /new/ swirling highways intact), gets not the chain-wrapping but instead the chains' tips in a swirl of brutal slashes.

But Kyouko was the first to the middle, first via pole-vaulting, familiar-slicing and sheer determination, and so it is she that is faced head on, that massive, twisted glaive descending with its very own agonized howl. It has three blades, and all of them want to gut the crimson Puella Magi like a fish.

COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has fully healed herself. She is now ready to take on 4 opponents!

COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro transforms into Nadja, The Unseen!
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa transforms into Odette, The Unchained!
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has fully healed herself. She is now ready to take on 15 opponents!
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has fully healed herself. She is now ready to take on 4 opponents!
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Thickened Air on Madoka Kaname.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has used Buried Hatchet on Mami Tomoe.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Madoka Kaname accepts Honoka Yukishiro's Thickened Air, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Madoka Kaname is Quipped! Exhausted and Stagger applied to Madoka Kaname!
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has used Strung Together on Mai Tokiha.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has used Sonic Shout on Eri Shimanouchi.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has used Strung Together on Fuu Hououji.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has used Sonic Shout on Lera Camry.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has used Triple Down on Kyouko Sakura.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has used Diamond-Toothed Keys on Sayaka Miki.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has cancelled their attack on Kyouko Sakura. If there are more attacks that need to be +cancelled, please hold all +attacks until the process is complete.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has used Titanic Glaive on Kyouko Sakura.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Mai Tokiha fails to brace Juri Arisugawa's Strung Together, taking 24 Fatigue damage!
COMBAT: Fuu Hououji perfectly dodges Juri Arisugawa's Strung Together, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Critical Dodge! Fuu Hououji's Fade ability activates! Fuu Hououji's Flash ability activates!
COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura narrowly braces Juri Arisugawa's Titanic Glaive, taking 11 Fatigue damage! Kyouko Sakura is Quipped! Kyouko Sakura's Block ability activates! Kyouko Sakura's Parry ability activates!
COMBAT: Lera Camry narrowly dodges Juri Arisugawa's Sonic Shout, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Lera Camry is Quipped! Lera Camry's Fade ability activates! Lera Camry's Flash ability activates! Diversion applied to Lera Camry!
COMBAT: Mami Tomoe fails to dodge Honoka Yukishiro's Buried Hatchet, taking 29 Fatigue damage! Mami Tomoe is Quipped!
COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi perfectly braces Juri Arisugawa's Sonic Shout, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Critical Brace! Eri Shimanouchi's Block ability activates! Eri Shimanouchi's Parry ability activates!
COMBAT: Sayaka Miki narrowly braces Juri Arisugawa's Diamond-Toothed Keys, taking 25 Fatigue damage! Sayaka Miki's Block ability activates! Sayaka Miki's Parry ability activates!

<Pose Tracker> Lera Camry [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.

When the tank is split in half by Lera's sword, she grins for a moment, terribly relieved to have managed that. She even nods to Kyuubey, taking the compliment in stride, but then she pauses with the realization. Somehow, that cute little animal saw through her Barrier Jacket and the alteration that it makes to her identity. She turns her head, staring at him for a moment. Then she calls out a hesitant: "Th-thanks!"

She keeps flying after that, bobbing her and there. She sees the mirrors from the car that Mai destroyed, the shards dripping blood. What Kyouko called out at the battle's beginning stands out in her mind.

She grits her teeth and nods.

She flies up, too, breaking past the traffic with the other girls. There's that moment of quiet -- interrupted by Madoka's cry -- and Lera is looking at her, still, until she suddenly feels the highway that rises up under her feet. Her boots hit the pavement as she slides down on her bike and grabs it with one hand, trying desperately to steer it on these new, insane, swirling highways. Sparks fly, as she banks down low. She grits her teeth, fingers clutching the accelerator.

The motorcycle speeds up, but that voice hits her ears. Madoka Kaname's voice, shifting and changed by Odette, replayed in an altered and tinny version. Lera's eyes widen as it pierces through her to her very heart. It sounds pained; it sounds wrong. And that huge, enormous glaive is in the air--

--and Fuu's bike is pulled towards her by one of those chains. "N-No!"

Lera tries to duck low, but she misjudges; she has to jump off the motorcycle, and it goes spinning out under her, hurtling down the spiralling highway. It vanishes into a snarl of traffic below her, and the Midchildan threatens to drop down into that tangle of vehicles too. Lera's feet kick off the ground, magically rubbered souls kicking into asphault, as she ducks underneath Fuu and her bike.

Then her eyes turn up at the chain that yanked on her bike, connected to the glaive, and then up higher to Kyouko. Her heart skips a beat, then sinks more. It's terrible and huge. Somehow, she finds the will to scream out: "Hang on! I'll try to slow it down!"

She jumps off the spiral of highway, swinging her sword up -- and chops it at the chain attached to the glaive as she reaches the apex of her flight spell-boosted leap.

COMBAT: Lera Camry has used Bolt Diver on Juri Arisugawa.

COMBAT: Lera Camry has finished attacking.

<Pose Tracker> Fuu Hououji [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.

It's little more than instinct that guides the Magic Knight of Wind in her evasion; she guns the throttle, yanks the handlebars up, and somehow manages to leap off of another vehicle's hood to get out of the way of that chain.

This is all the more miraculous, she'll reflect later, due to how ungodly CHAOTIC the Witch's battlefield is - and she still thinks, in error, that it's just ONE Witch that is posing as the final boss at the end of the Labyrinth. "Lera-san," she calls out (forgetting to use Lera's code name), "are you all right?!" She manages to land near Lera, glancing between her and the Witch with the glaive ...

The Witch is far out of sword range, she can't spare both hands to shoot an arrow without getting run over by something (or worse), she only has her magic to depend on right now. So be it. "Winds of Admonishment!" she calls out, trying to conjure the binding tornado about the improbable form of Odette, and in spite of the fact that even trying to look at it makes her brain scream and try to flee right out of her skull ... that can't be good for her spellcasting, either.

COMBAT: Fuu Hououji has used Winds of Admonishment on Juri Arisugawa.

COMBAT: Fuu Hououji has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa fails to brace Lera Camry's Bolt Diver, taking 19 Fatigue damage!
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa narrowly braces Fuu Hououji's Winds of Admonishment, taking 3 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Fuu Hououji is Psyched! Juri Arisugawa's Block ability activates! Juri Arisugawa's Parry ability activates!

<Pose Tracker> Mami Tomoe [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.

Kyouko's shouts confirm the feeling in Mami's gut, the very same reason she asked Madoka what she saw--it's the only thing she can think to explain what's going on, what it could have been, and she knows with the certainty of fear that her instinct is right.

Her eye scan the perimeter, passing over the other magical girls present--she doesn't see the only one she's really looking for in that moment, far behind them on another truck. "Sayaka!?" She can't hear much from her, not at first as she keeps moving forward, unable to stop lest Madoka pay the price.

So it's relief that fills her at the sound of the blue-haired girl's voice, even as she turns back and has to stare an instant at the sight. It's completely ridiculous--a bolt of lightning goes through her heart, and it's an urge to laugh.

For half a breath, she does.

The next half is quiet.

The next breath, Mami's world is replaced by pain.

Madoka's scream is her only warning, Mami herself not watching the mirror with all else she's tracking. The force tears her friend from her, and she feels it like she's lost an arm. Or maybe she feels like she's lost an arm; the shock comes too fast, because with it is the invisible force ripping through her, agonizing to the point of blinding her. Mami doesn't notice that she screams, a blood-curdling sound completely unlike the elegant sharpshooter. She doesn't notice that she tumbles over, dazed.

It's only the rush of the wind as the motorcycle beneath her carries away that brings Mami to her senses, and the white of her attire is stained crimson with her own blood. The wound can't even be seen under the layers of fabric and the scarlet flowing out, but it starts in a great line diagonal down her back, right arm hanging limp and useless at the shoulder. "I--" She squeezes her eyes shut against the pain, forcing out another breath over the roar of the engine. Her eyes open to see her destination--

She shoves off the bike with her good arm, sailing onto another motorcycle where she lands roughly, still hanging on as she's taken upside-down through a loop that makes no sense in any natural reality, up and through like some kind of roller coaster.

Mami is not really a fan of roller coasters.

"Madoka-chan!" she calls, looking around in desperation to find her friend, to see the others in the midst of it too, and to see... Dripping blood.

Something beats, at the back of her mind.

Odette looms, immense, as Mami orbits her, as the others strike towards the titanic Witch. But it's not the only one. Nadja is there.

Mami closes her eyes, and her hand folds inward, fingertips stretching towards the ribbon at her wrist. Tightening her knees about the motorcycle to hang on, as if riding an iron horse for some elegant trail, Mami grips the yellow fabric and pulls as hard as she can.

With effort, she rights herself, sitting up for now in the second bike's seat. Soon, it'll crash again towards another.

Soon, she'll be off of it.

"TIRO...!"

Most Puella Magi don't do something as frivolous as naming their attacks. ...But Mami knows better. It's not a waste. The words themselves are magic, a chant to keep her safe, to make her the sort of magical girl she dreams that she can be.

Keeping her fear for herself, she puts her hope on display for everyone else: the ribbon spirals outward, lilting to become a gigantic silver cannon, mounted on the motorcycle itself. Its length is all done in golden filigree, the barrel large enough for Mami to stand in comfortably. It aims towards the Witch who nearly took her head off.

Mami levels her stare at the same, and hopes that Sayaka can see her ow, even if she can't bring herself to ask it like the blue-haired girl did of her.

"FINALE!"

Her world erupts into golden light as the recoil sends her flying backward towards another spiral of road.

COMBAT: FINISHER! Mami Tomoe has used Tiro Finale on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Mami Tomoe has finished attacking.

<Pose Tracker> Mai Tokiha [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.

At the last moment before exiting the calamitous truck, Mai slams one impulsive hand into the horn. Then it's into the sky, abandoning the shattered truck cab. Into the air above the battle-torn roadway, taking an indulgent moment to just behold the traffic calamity she's helped cause.

Kind of magnificent, in a horribly destructive way. Mami's firepower helps make things worse for the vile vehicles, and Mai's grin grows just that much brighter for it. The snark from Eri, on the other hand... "Eri-chan! It's not supposed to be a competition, honest!"

Please don't let it become a competition. Mikoto might try to win.

And yet, she can't stop grinning...right up until the world shifts once again. A motorcycle flies up out of nowhere, and Mai's instinct is to just hold on for the ride. Gravity might as well be meaningless, the roads becoming a knotted spiral of asphalt...or rather, a flower winding in towards some mysterious core to the madness. It's not exactly a safe ride - Mai's bike determined to wreck her as surely as she wrecked the truck.

It's a battle. And one that tests her agility as much as her willpower - as long as she can, she tries to wrestle control of the bike away from disaster, and further down the spiralling road. Eventually, and more than once, she has to leap clear and grab onto another vehicle - wherever these bikes are headed, it's towards the end of this twisted nightmare. Hopefully.

She's managing well enough along the swirling floral highways...right up until the instant that the monstrous foe appears, at which point Mai can only stare openly. "Is that...a karaoke microphone?! Everyone else sees that, right?!" This isn't her personal nightmare, is it? Because that's just the kind of thing that she's about ready to accept from this kind of place-

She really should have been watching the chains. One slams into her, sending her flying away from the bike and road entirely - only to crash heavily, and more fixedly, onto the back of another occupied vehicle. Groaning, she tries to sit up - that much is manageable, but her legs are tied. Who else is driving this thing, anyway?... "Eri-chan! How are you..."

Her friend's state doesn't look great, but Mai's not exactly doing her best either...but they're at least in this together, right? "...never mind. I'm sorry I never asked...but at least today, I can do my best to help." Perhaps not the words Eri was hoping to hear, but... Mai is pulled up abruptly, and admonished gently. The HiME smiles faintly...

...and then scowls, turning her attention to the towering microphone-monster. "...All right. Like you said - after we're out of here." She closes her eyes in a brief prayer, murmuring a name to herself. There's a flicker of light, a fleeting presence, the hint of an omen-forged sword - and the rings around Mai's wrists blaze white-hot, spinning with newborn howling fury. Heat, oppressive, regretful and furious all at once, blazing with Mai's conviction. With a friend at her back, with names and faces she's fond of imperiled by the same foe...today, she has fire.

The bike spirals round and round, fire and air swirling together into a blazing nexus. Toward the heart of the flower this bike races along, the one point all the disorientation can't divert Mai's focus from, a small sun dawning on that locale...and in an instant, as the HiME glares defiantly at the Witch, that burning fury roars toward the towering enemy.

COMBAT: FINISHER! Mai Tokiha has used Ardent Light on Juri Arisugawa.

COMBAT: Mai Tokiha has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa narrowly braces Mai Tokiha's Finisher, Ardent Light, taking 37 Fatigue damage! Juri Arisugawa's Block ability activates! Juri Arisugawa's Parry ability activates!

<Pose Tracker> Eri Shimanouchi [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

Out of the periphery of the mirror she sees something- but only for a moment, it was the thing of nightmares. Fortunately she'd dealt with enough eldritch horrors of despair in her mind, that she immediately recovers from the glimpse. "I think I saw it too." Twisting the mirror, she tries to catch it in her vision again, glancing upright as Madoka mentions that it was red.

It's something of a surprise when a motorcycle rises up beneath her. And unlike Mai, she hadn't even started studying how to drive it. Even getting a motorized scooter seemed so distant that she'd never thought to try to learn. Thus she doesn't grab ahold of the handle bars, and try to steer it, but instead stands up straight upon the seat, holding the mirror in one hand, her scourge clenched tightly in the other. She felt this moment was a test, not to gain the approval of the other Puella Magi, but to prove to herself that she could handle tackling this territory on her own. And for whatever reason- between the chain witch, and the invisible one. She found the identical daises, all blurring together as she was driven around the arena offended her far more.

Keeping her eyes on the mirror, she keeps completely focused on the task of finding the witch lurking beyond the realm of the naked eye. Just as her bike is about to crash into another to create a flaming wreck, she takes a leap of faith, crossing the distance before gravity changes her orientation, and she touches down on one foot on the seat of another on another track. It's then that she hears it, static at first, causing her to look up moments before the scream begins. Crouching down on the seat, she puts her hands against her ears, the mirror and handle of her weapon gripped tightly over them both. And somehow, she manages to endure. It's not a simple matter, as she grapples with trying to keep her equilibrium over the waves of vertigo the scream cause within her ear canals, but at the end of it, she can still shakily rises back to her feet, feeling her teeth shaking and ratling within her mouth.

It's that moment when she feels the impact into the back of her vehicle, almost causing her to lose balance from her standing position. Surprised her bike was still going, she looks behind to see- "Mai!?" Leaning over she wraps an arm around her solidly and pulls her up so she has a better position on the seat. Mai is saying something about apologies, and she sticks out her palm, still looking at the mirror. "Don't you dare apologize!" After all, it was her choice not to tell her. In her eyes, Mai didn't do anything wrong, exhaling, she retracts the palm. "I know you have a lot of questions, but it's better if I just answer them by /showing/ you what we do. I just need to-"

Looking at the mirror, she stops speaking for a moment, she frowns as she notices the spider web of cracks the sonic scream created over it's surface, amplifying the difficulty of finding the witch. Casting it aside, it skids on the roadway, raising sparks before she simply rips off another mirror with all brute force and no finesse from her current perch. "-focus!"

Turning suddenly, she catches sight of that oozing mass of crimson for just a moment. Turning the mirror desperately, she tries to follow the movements, causing an impromptu little dance on her seat meant to keep the witch into view, but not to dislodge Mai. Turning in sync with every movement of that horrific mass, she catches just a glimpse of paper dolls amongst the mass. "Got you!" She whispers, triumphantly, but not too loudly, before turning suddenly, one hundred and eighty degrees, her scourge lashing out.

Each tendril branches, again and again and again, creating a labyrinthine mass of tangled foliage and twisted roots. It winds about itself, becoming thicker and more dense by the moment, until it's the size of a large tree trunk, extending, reaching in sync with Eri coaxing it to keep in time with the witch's movements, and ultimately trying to crush the oozing vein-streaked witch that she sees with extreme prejudice, like the footstep of some titanic wrathful nature spirit. She had no expectation that either Senpai would be watching her. This time, she was doing this entirely for herself.

COMBAT: FINISHER! Eri Shimanouchi has used Footsteps of the Kodama on Honoka Yukishiro.

COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro narrowly braces Mami Tomoe's Finisher, Tiro Finale, taking 60 Fatigue damage!
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro fails to brace Eri Shimanouchi's Finisher, Footsteps of the Kodama, taking 73 Fatigue damage!

<Pose Tracker> Mami Tomoe [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.

Kyouko's shouts confirm the feeling in Mami's gut, the very same reason she asked Madoka what she saw--it's the only thing she can think to explain what's going on, what it could have been, and she knows with the certainty of fear that her instinct is right.

Her eye scan the perimeter, passing over the other magical girls present--she doesn't see the only one she's really looking for in that moment, far behind them on another truck. "Sayaka!?" She can't hear much from her, not at first as she keeps moving forward, unable to stop lest Madoka pay the price.

So it's relief that fills her at the sound of the blue-haired girl's voice, even as she turns back and has to stare an instant at the sight. It's completely ridiculous--a bolt of lightning goes through her heart, and it's an urge to laugh.

For half a breath, she does.

The next half is quiet.

The next breath, Mami's world is replaced by pain.

Madoka's scream is her only warning, Mami herself not watching the mirror with all else she's tracking. The force tears her friend from her, and she feels it like she's lost an arm. Or maybe she feels like she's lost an arm; the shock comes too fast, because with it is the invisible force ripping through her, agonizing to the point of blinding her. Mami doesn't notice that she screams, a blood-curdling sound completely unlike the elegant sharpshooter. She doesn't notice that she tumbles over, dazed.

It's only the rush of the wind as the motorcycle beneath her carries away that brings Mami to her senses, and the white of her attire is stained crimson with her own blood. The wound can't even be seen under the layers of fabric and the scarlet flowing out, but it starts in a great line diagonal down her back, right arm hanging limp and useless at the shoulder. "I--" She squeezes her eyes shut against the pain, forcing out another breath over the roar of the engine. Her eyes open to see her destination--

She shoves off the bike with her good arm, sailing onto another motorcycle where she lands roughly, still hanging on as she's taken upside-down through a loop that makes no sense in any natural reality, up and through like some kind of roller coaster.

Mami is not really a fan of roller coasters.

"Madoka-chan!" she calls, looking around in desperation to find her friend, to see the others in the midst of it too, and to see... Dripping blood.

Something beats, at the back of her mind.

Odette looms, immense, as Mami orbits her, as the others strike towards the titanic Witch. But it's not the only one. Nadja is there.

Mami closes her eyes, and her hand folds inward, fingertips stretching towards the ribbon at her wrist. Tightening her knees about the motorcycle to hang on, as if riding an iron horse for some elegant trail, Mami grips the yellow fabric and pulls as hard as she can.

With effort, she rights herself, sitting up for now in the second bike's seat. Soon, it'll crash again towards another.

Soon, she'll be off of it, and before then she needs it. She reaches out for the mirrors on the bike, shoving them roughly before simply wrapping one in ribbons and tearing it loose to use to scour her field of vision, to stare for the 'red' thing Madoka told her about. She looks desperately, staring in motion...

What she needs, she finds.

"TIRO...!"

Most Puella Magi don't do something as frivolous as naming their attacks. ...But Mami knows better. It's not a waste. The words themselves are magic, a chant to keep her safe, to make her the sort of magical girl she dreams that she can be.

Keeping her fear for herself, she puts her hope on display for everyone else: the ribbon spirals outward, lilting to become a gigantic silver cannon, mounted on the motorcycle itself. Its length is all done in golden filigree, the barrel large enough for Mami to stand in comfortably. It aims towards the Witch who nearly took her head off.

Mami levels her stare not at the invisible witch, but at the mirror, for her gun is aimed /behind/ her, not before. She hopes that Sayaka can see her now, even if she can't bring herself to ask it like the blue-haired girl did of her.

"FINALE!"

Her world erupts into golden light as the recoil sends her flying backward towards another spiral of road.

<Pose Tracker> Kyouko Sakura [None] has posed.

<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuAzPR0ACVw

Kyouko didn't know what to expect with she finally clawed her way to the wellspring. Swooping down from her pole vault to land butt-first onto a motorcycle that hadn't been there before, that launched up and away and started squeezing out highway lik a crazed concrete snail was pretty far from what she didn't expect, though. She glances down at the handlebars, then ignores it. Although she isn't yet sure that it's steering itself, she has more pressing concerns.

With both hands, she thrusts her spear up above her head in a blocking position, desperately and barely absorbing a full on strike of the witch. She grimaces as the thing shrieks with another's voice, and as one of the glaivetips reaches past her parry to slash a bloody furrow up her cheek.

By now the rest had well since arrived, and chaos ensues shortly after. As Kyouko's motorcycle shrieks in winding arcs around the flowered platform like a bee buzzing around the hive, Kyouko takes a moment to take stock of the situation. Her eyes lock onto the second witch, the new witch, new to her at least. Normally she'd study it, take her time with it. Her motorcycle banks hard and careens towards another whining bug of the swarm. Kyouko calmly leaps up and off of her mount, landing on a tiny winding strip of highway, and sprints towards the motorcycle laying the track before vaulting up onto it, practically sliding into the seat.

This is all well and good, and far past a point of no return. In fact, Kyouko had scarcely ever found a labyrinth more easily escaped. There's a literal convoy flooding away from this place just a short distance off from it. But this new witch, even having drawn her blood, is not where her thoughts lie. She thinks of the unseen beast in the air, hatchets jutting out like a spiral staircase swimming like a snake. Both Witches must be dealt with, at the same time no less.

Kyouko tenses on the bike..wraps her hands around the bottom of the handlebars, and yanks off of them while throwing her legs back and up towards the air. Her body pivots back, free from the motorcycle save her hands and carrying the bike off of the road with her..arcing unsupported and landing, very shakily, on her feet, she holds the demon bike aloft, wheels off of the ground and body perpendicular to the narrow highway, even as it revs its engines at her like a snarling animal.

Producing a razor-tipped lance, she shoves it up into the bike, just above the rear wheel and stabbing it straight through the thing's body. The immense tip bursts out just below its headlight, preserving the functionality of the wheels but locking out its ability to turn. In short, she's made a torpedo of it.

Turning on her heels, she grunts, hauling it further up with both hands, and hurls it straight at the microphone-headed Witch. Where it passed, pavement came with it, guaranteeing its route though it is unable to turn from its mistress. Kyouko hops over her own roadway, gracefully dropping down to the neatly arranged flowers of the battleground beneath.

COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura has used Masterstroke on Juri Arisugawa.

COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa fails to brace Kyouko Sakura's Masterstroke, taking 40 Fatigue damage!

<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Miki [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

Sayaka hadn't even seen how dangerous the terrain was getting, but as she passes over the shifting ground, she has just a brief moment of fear and relief to appreciate it.

Pushing herself up from her decidedly unattractive splay, Sayaka sets her feet on the hood and herh against the wind. She draws herself a new sword from her cape, its edge sizzling with blue energy as it peels forth. Before her is a mountain of deadly riches, animated by some formless malice. She gets to watch its shrieking chains haul her allies into each other, and assail Kyouko with a horrifically large glaive. She inhales deeply. Instinctively, she gets into a batting position, as the colorful destruction draws closer to her flesh.

When the razors arrive, it is fast and brutal. Keys rip across every limb, and for every chain she bats away there are three more to find her skin. One of them plugs right into her thigh. "There's no LOCK there!" she shrieks, chopping it off. Enough. Turning, Sayaka dives off the cab and back onto the trailer, tumbling head over feet. She's up immediately, woozily, looking side to side for Madoka, whose screams the Witch has stolen. Her head is swimming. She passed out once doing laps on a hot day, and she's pretty sure it's about to happen again.

Drunkenly Sayaka plunges towards the side of the truck that has Mami, who she can see, looking for Madoka, who she can't. But with every step, she lurches less, and the blurred image of her senpai gets clearer. By the time she reaches Mami, she's alert, even feels energetic. There's a lot of pain, sure, lots of hot cuts on her skin, but she has no idea where the real injury went.

"Senpai!" she shouts. She can see the grievous wound that punctured Mami's corset, though she cannot see what caused it. Her eyes swing up to Kyouko, then down to her own sword, which she tilts hurriedly until Mami is reflected in the flat of the blade. An axe?

Sayaka understands suddenly, and begins to tilt the mirrored edge wildly. Eri and Mami both begin to target something Sayaka can't see, and so she uses them to guide her, finally laying eyes on what Madoka saw. It scares her as much as it did Madoka, probably.

Trembling, Sayaka walks sideways along the edge of the racing truck. Its tire really did seem aimed well; enough revolutions will crash this astreroid into the Witch-sun, but she has some time. Withdrawing another sword so she can continue to use the first to see her foe, Sayaka worries her lip. How is she supposed to fight like this?

Sayaka suddenly looks up at the grand, chained Witch. Jogging back to the front of the truck, she leaps down onto the hood, slashing wildly to try and 'kill' as many chains as possible. Her real goal comes soon after, as she pins one of the wriggling chains (which is wrapping slowly around the Witch, but will probably never run out of links anyway) with one sword, then hacks off a length of it. The others are fighting, but Sayaka keeps working, hopping onto the trailer again and simply sitting cross-legged. Sword after sword after sword slides from her cloak as she keeps a careful watch on Mami, sliding each blade through a link in the chain, then fastening the ends into a circle by sliding a blade through both. Standing up, she walks to the edge of the trailer and crouches, a twenty-foot long "bracelet" of swords and Witch chain over her shoulder. She waits for her chance, holding up one final sword to try and watch the invisible threat.

COMBAT: Sayaka Miki has used Caprice on Juri Arisugawa.

COMBAT: Sayaka Miki has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa narrowly braces Sayaka Miki's Caprice, taking 5 Fatigue damage! Juri Arisugawa's Block ability activates! Juri Arisugawa's Parry ability activates!

<Pose Tracker> Madoka Kaname [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HIoCUgyCaE

Events transpire as chaotically as the battlefield itself; the pink light of the garden has been all but consumed by darkness, now, lit by occasional strobes dictating the Moebius Highway's traffic.

Inside the span of an orange strobe, Lera is seen connecting her blade to one of the chains on Odette's immense blade, shattering the lock, its silhouette exploding in all directions. The blade crashes down, the freed chain enfolding itself around the microphone's head.

A green strobe captures the moment in which the Magic Knight of Wind sends a massive tornado towards the central Witch. It fails to bind her, but causes all of her chains to ring like bells, gold tinkling against itself and diamonds chiming here and there.

Mai provides her own illumination when she explodes a titanic column of fire against the Witch's massive form. Chains rise up to meet it, to protect the microphone, animate as snakes; afterwards, golden rain falls down, threatening to hiss and burn against unprotected skin.

So too does Mami's Tiro Finale drown out any local luminescence in its brief moment of existence. It thunders into something that wasn't visible, but that casts a marvelous shadow for the duration of the blast -- that of a series of two-dimensional, identical girls, all holding hands. The shadow is faintly red against the daisies below, implying that some of the light has pierced through the invisible Witch, Nadja entirely.

But she's still standing, even as Eri's mammoth overgrowth provides a verdant filter across the entire area for a few seconds. Its leaves are smeared with blood, gradually turning the tree -- and the light -- red as well.

It's beneath this bloody light that Kyouko hurls her massive spear-bike-torpedo, which passes straight through the chains -- leaving them parted, highway in their path -- to solidly impact the central column of the microphone, just below the microphone head proper.

The mic squeals with agonizing feedback, reality-warping, enough to make all the daisies below shed their petals and waft through the area on distinct waves of pressurized air.

In response, the remaining few chains that are yet attached to the glaive contract, swinging it upwards in an attempt to counterimpale -- not Kyouko, now below -- but Mai, flying across and above, who blasted Odette so furiously.

And Nadja -- Nadja has been Tiro Finale'd and Footstep'd and /is still not dead/. As though drawn by a magnet to her lost axe, she drifts visually through Sayaka's mirrored maze, towards Mami. Her colors last long enough, between all of the mirrors, to really be appreciated. She is an oozing, throbbing mass of blood and veins; the blood the expected color, the veins the same teal as those on the marble banisters of this strange realm. She moves like an earthworm might, her layers of self extending and retracting with appalling momentum.

Each paper doll-like hand, joined to the next in the chain, also has a hatchet sprouting out at the joint, one that drips with the Witch's own blood. All of them are abruptly hurled at Mami in a storm of suddenly visible blades --

-- except for the ones out the other half of the earthworm, which arc towards Eri with lazily deadly perfection.

Amid all of this: Madoka Kaname is apparently unconscious on the back of a truck. She hasn't slipped off of it -- yet.

COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has used Midas' Rain on Lera Camry.

COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has used Midas' Rain on Fuu Hououji.
COMBAT: FINISHER! Juri Arisugawa has used Glaivepocalypse on Mai Tokiha.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has used Midas' Rain on Madoka Kaname.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has used Midas' Rain on Kyouko Sakura.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has used Midas' Rain on Sayaka Miki.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa has finished attacking.
COMBAT: FINISHER! Honoka Yukishiro has used Mirror's Edge on Eri Shimanouchi.
COMBAT: FINISHER! Honoka Yukishiro has used Mirror's Edge on Mami Tomoe.
COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Sayaka Miki fails to counter Juri Arisugawa's Midas' Rain, taking 32 Fatigue damage!
COMBAT: Sayaka Miki's counterattack, Disjunct Chord, fails to get through, doing 0 Fatigue damage to Juri Arisugawa!
COMBAT: Fuu Hououji narrowly braces Juri Arisugawa's Midas' Rain, taking 16 Fatigue damage!
COMBAT: Mai Tokiha narrowly braces Juri Arisugawa's Finisher, Glaivepocalypse, taking 83 Fatigue damage! Mai Tokiha is unable to keep fighting! Mai Tokiha's Block ability activates!
COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura perfectly dodges Juri Arisugawa's Midas' Rain, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Critical Dodge!
COMBAT: Eri Shimanouchi narrowly braces Honoka Yukishiro's Finisher, Mirror's Edge, taking 45 Fatigue damage! Eri Shimanouchi's Block ability activates! Eri Shimanouchi's Parry ability activates!
COMBAT: Lera Camry fails to dodge Juri Arisugawa's Midas' Rain, taking 33 Fatigue damage!
COMBAT: Sayaka Miki covers Mami Tomoe for Honoka Yukishiro's attack, Mirror's Edge, taking it upon themselves instead!

<Pose Tracker> Lera Camry [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.

Lera's sword cuts into the lock, and then she falls back down. She hits one of the spiralling highways below, just as a motorcycle comes whipping by, and she lets out a deep breath before she looks back up at the strange and terrible Witch. A microphone for a head; a body that's impossible. What does it all mean?

She grits her teeth, then she shakes her head. She feels drained; worn out and exhausted, her mana reserves running low, and the marathon of exerting herself taking a strong toll on her. But, she has to keep going, or she dies here -- with her friends and fellow magical girls. That isn't acceptable. Blasts of air come shooting by, slashing at her with the petals from below. It blows her back; one petal hits her cheeks and leaves a bloody thin gash on it.

"C'mon, Sky," she mutters. "Just a little more. If we can get these things down..."

Her eyes glance about, trying to find everyone. She can't in the confusion. She can try after the battle. She leaps again, sword swung back over her shoulder, and a blaze of plasma ignites along the sword's length.

<Blaze Cleaver!>

She swings it hard at the Witch's side -- and then it ignites out in a blast, flame and force blowing away from her sword, and hard enough to send Lera rocketing away, back towards the ground below.

COMBAT: Lera Camry has used Blaze Cleaver on Juri Arisugawa.

COMBAT: Lera Camry has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa narrowly braces Lera Camry's Blaze Cleaver, taking 18 Fatigue damage! Juri Arisugawa's Block ability activates! Juri Arisugawa's Parry ability activates!

<Pose Tracker> Mai Tokiha [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.

Ensnared within labyrinthine paths, Moebius loops of Highway consuming all traffic, Mai is dragged around and around by the bicycle. Raw fire surges forth, illuminating the witch and casting ominous shadows...but in the end, her fire is an imitation of Kagutsuchi's wrath. It burns at the witch's golden chains, melts and twists and rends countless threads of metal...but it doesn't quite break through.

Mai, for her part, continues to work at that which keeps her bound to the motorcycle. Almost done, almost free, as towering rifles rage and plants pour forth their fury... "Honestly, I'm beginning to get a good idea. And honestly, I think it's time I-"

The Witch, having survived that echoed fury, appears to have no desire for a recurrence. If that's the right phrase for what drives such an eldritch thing... a glaive, titanic in stature and wielded with the strength to injure even a dragon, comes hurtling upward to pierce the HiME of fire. At the last moment, Mai at least manages to see it coming - manages to bring her Elements up as a guard against the massive blade.

To a degree, it works. Her bracelets, manifestations of protective drive, are strong enough to keep her from being impaled. But the sheer force can't be denied - with a rending squeal, the remaining chains binding her to the bike are torn asunder. Mai herself is slammed free of the motorbike, smashed through the air until she meets a terrace coming the other way...

Utterly insensate, she begins to fall.

<Pose Tracker> Fuu Hououji [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.

The Wind Knight just can't track everything that's happening; the 'battlefield' is motorized chaos, the Witch is impossible to look at for any length of time but is whipping around wildly, and the Magic Knight of Wind can only hunker down against her motorcycle against the flurry of noise and deadly daisy petals. "No choice left - !"

It's then that she sees Mai-san plummeting, and her heart freezes in her chest for a split second. She can't tell if Mai is dead or just out cold; she hopes and prays that it's the latter, but it underscores her own observation, and lends force to her next words.

"EMERALD ... CYCLONE!!!"

The Magic Knight's scream rises above the roar of engines, and the tempest howls even louder than her voice, a rending gale - the fury of the storm, distilled through her desperation, and flung full-tilt against Odette with all the force of will that Fuu can muster. She may be only barely conscious when the last gust of the spell races away from her and towards the Witch ... and if this doesn't end Odette, she won't have any idea what else she can do.

COMBAT: FINISHER! Fuu Hououji has used Emerald Cyclone: Full on Juri Arisugawa.

COMBAT: Fuu Hououji has finished attacking.
COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa fails to brace Fuu Hououji's Finisher, Emerald Cyclone: Full, taking 83 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit!

<Pose Tracker> Kyouko Sakura [None] has posed.

<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7tkWy7rEvQ

Kyouko doesn't smile or cheer as her converted enemy howls down a furious road as well as she could have expected. She doesn't even offer an impassive nod. Things are well beyond any of that now. In silhouetted relief, Mami's heavenly blast etches the spectral witch's shadows into the sky. /There it is.../ Not quite shivering, there's something about that one that makes her shiver even now. Kyouko should have cut its throat, so to speak, the moment it matured, the moment she understood its trick.

Like so much of the rest of this, left to fester, it risked getting out of hand.

She can't help but proudly grin at Sayaka, for as long as Kyouko Sakura is capable of noticing anybody else in the heat of battle. The chains and her choppers..very nice. Inventive, adaptive. And best of all, a promising sign that, for once, the little brat's appreciating the wisdom of her advice..even if it took a sudden tomahawk to get there. She doesn't savor the moment, though. There isn't time.

Molten metal pours down from the sky in Mai's blaze of glory, a rain of fire. Kyouko darts back, twisting on her heels from one step to the nest, head poised upwards as she dodges, narrowly but cleanly, every last drop, before the chained maiden focused all of its fury down on the head of the HiMe who sparked that fire. The glaive smashed down far more savagely than when Kyouko first touched down on the scene. Unfortunate for Mai, but terribly convenient for her.

Her nostrils flare and a pulsating aura of warped light, not unlike the minor mirage of heat-waves, emanates from her. Dozens and dozens of vicious spear-heads blink into being in a surrounding sphere, each one thin and wide like a kite, leading a little spear-haft. Like an orgy of eels, they squirm and climb up into the sky, orbiting all around the arena, twisting into fixed positions and tilting at fine angles.

Kyouko Sakura was forming an impromptu satellite belt of mirrored blades, a 360‚àû net to catch a particularly nasty fish. All she needs to do is to catch sight of it..within moments, she does. A flash of color and movement, the sickly perverse glance of a chain of paper dolls mutated like poor souls from a body horror film, and enough spears to indicate its immediate trajectory. Immediately, all of the closest blades to the lightless monster silently slice through the air, rocketing forward to find its flesh. The rest of the spears, approximately half of the total, follow suit in pursuit of the road warrior, still flailing her terrible scepter at a kind-hearted girl that deserved none of this pain.

COMBAT: FINISHER! Kyouko Sakura has used A Rain of Razors on Juri Arisugawa.

COMBAT: FINISHER! Kyouko Sakura has used A Rain of Razors on Honoka Yukishiro.
COMBAT: Kyouko Sakura has finished attacking.

<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Miki [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

Sayaka whoops as Mami and Eri's combined powers put a lot of destructive force into, at any rate, the area in which the Darkly Witch is presently. She takes a moment to shake her head with affectionate disbelief as she watches a motorcycle, unmanned, Evel Knievel its way into the Highway Witch's great body. "Anko," she snorts. This whole mirror thing was her idea too, pretty sharp.

Wait, but how did she know?

Sayaka swivels her hand-held sword, the massive bracelet of strung swords still over her shoulder, her gym bag on her back. "Come on, be dead, be dead-dead-super-dead," Sayaka mutters to herself, in a way only Madoka's ever heard her done. When she fastens the mirrored image on the Darkly Witch, however, the gory paper is still ambulatory. And Mami is exhausted, already grievously wounded. Sayaka doesn't hesitate.

She leaps off the speeding truck as high as she can go, her momentum well-timed, carrying her over the Darkly Witch, or where she knows it to be. At the exact point when Sayaka's upward momentum is stilled by gravity, but hasn't yet turned into falling, she suddenly twirls in midair, the ugly, shambling sword-bracelet on her shoulder immediately beautiful as centrifugal force spreads it into a wide, perfect circle, one that is absolutely bristling with glittering silver blades.

Sayaka lands, crumpling her knees to absorb the impact, right in front of a Witch she cannot see. But in the very next moment, a chain-strung ring of magical blades surrounds them, every point downward somehow, sinking into the ground to await a hundred or more Kings of Britain. A wall of swords surrounds both Sayaka and the Witch, trapping them in with each other, the hatchets aimed at Mami still unthrown. And in every possible direction, from every gruesome angle one might care to examine, the Witch is visible in the ring of tall mirrored swords.

Sayaka looks at where the Witch is, one last sword still in her hand, her peripheral vision informing her of what's in that empty space. "I'm your enemy now," she says. "My name is Sayaka Miki, my Puella Magi senpai is Mami Tomoe... and I can see you." She springs forward just as the hatches whistle to meet her.

From outside the ring of blades, a few wet, meaty thuds can be heard. No. Not a few. Too many.

It's worse for Sayaka. As she lies on the ground, eyes drifting shut and then snapping away, slower and slower, she can see herself reflected in a funhouse of her own swords. In the reflections reflecting reflections, there is no end to the number of axes buried in the pretty white cape lying on this hideous higheway.

COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro fails to brace Kyouko Sakura's Finisher, A Rain of Razors, taking 110 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Honoka Yukishiro is unable to keep fighting!

COMBAT: Juri Arisugawa fails to brace Kyouko Sakura's Finisher, A Rain of Razors, taking 61 Fatigue damage! Juri Arisugawa is unable to keep fighting!

<Pose Tracker> Mami Tomoe [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.

The brilliant colors of all the lights combine with the bizarre spirals the roads take and the wounds she's taken--Nausea threatens to overwhelm Mami if the Witches don't first. But she is able to shove it aside, to channel her hope into one final attack, one chance to blast apart the horrifying, terrible monster before her.

The thing that is all the worse because she can't even see it. Her mind still recoils at using the mirrors.

The awful sounds are no better. She's dealt with Labyrinths for years, but they never stop being what they are. It just means that she knows the stakes of this battle.

Sayaka's voice reaches her, but it doesn't allow her to stop. The haze only falls away for good in the moment of her attack, once the light passes. Still sailing through the air, she stares into the mirror, her back still to the Witch as she sees...

It still stands. Her attack didn't finish it, and her stomach sinks as she watches more sink into the horrible Thing without stopping it. The axe still invisibly embedded in her back, she stares with mouth half-open as the Witch advances on her. She is aware, in that moment, of the awful space between everything, of the wet of the blood and the too-tight sleeve after she pulled its ribbons on her good arm. She's still recovering; she put everything she had left into that blast, but it wasn't enough.

Mami doesn't bother to blink away her tears. The blonde girl closes her eyes, and holds in her breath.

But the blades never come.

She opens her eyes in confusion, and turns.

Sayaka's swords greet her, and awful, awful sounds.

"Sayaka," she breathes, finally releasing what she thought ws her last taste of even this awful-smelling air. Things start to make sense again. What felt like time stopping moves back on, and she's conscious again of the roar of the engine beneath her.

But what was before a spark of hope is now a paralyzing storm of something else.

"Don't go," she pleads softly with the air, staring at the ring of swords as if her life depended on it.

And maybe, as Mami leaves the battle to Kyouko above even all the others... It depends more than she knows.

<Pose Tracker> Eri Shimanouchi [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

Crimson ooze creeps up her scourge, drenching it in moments. It's a peculiar feeling, watching it become blood stained. It felt like a weed resisting the gardener more than it ought to. Except- weeds didn't fight with this sort of determination to survive. If the witch wasn't a monster in every way, she might have had a queer feeling of respect for it. As it stands, she's merely horrified, respect could never enter into this equation.

Out of the periphery of her vision, she notices Madoka precariously perched atop a truck, her neck having to crane to follow her movements with the gravity distortions of the arena. That horror for the state of the witch she'd failed to finish off translating into her opinion of her situation, "MADOKA!" She cries out in desperation, turning around to try to move her way and correct her situation.

Before she could leap a swish blur of a glaive comes close enough to parther hair, the wind rush of the slice knocking Mai aloft, and nearly impaling her. Torn between the girl who was her first and most precious friend, and another who was as dear to her as a sister. What choice could she make? She didn't have time to even cry out for Mai. Would she sacrifice certain survival for either of them? For both? A reflection in her mirror all that keeps her alive. A storm of hatchets, thin and suddenly visible from the earthworm like mass comes her way.

Letting go of one scourge, she manifests another, which lurches from behind her glove like some Magician's parlor trick into her hand. Keeping her position for a moment, her arms blurring as she moves the scourge to knock off course as many of the deadly throwing axes as she could. A whip made of vines is a poor match for what it faced. While some are knocked off course, others slash through the defensive pattern she weaves, covering her in numerous cuts, the mere force of some of the hatchets striking her spinning her around and nearly knocking her off. Covered in numerous cuts, the burning highway is stained with a goodly amount of her life's blood.

Vision blurring from sudden agony, she looks up just in time, considering Mai's path, considering Madoka's last known position. She casts aside her newly formed scourge, which was already useless from being rent to pieces, before leaping straight with as much oomph as her injured legs could muster. Mid-course, she reaches out, all but tackling the unconscious HiME in mid-air in a life-saving measure that was anything but gentle, she allows her trajectory upwards to fight against the HiME's sudden weight, until- gravity shifts, and now instead of up, she was heading downwards. Towards another highway, another path. Booted feet landing roughly upon a motorcycle, she only realizes it by the fact that she somewhat felt contact with solid ground. Not contemplating the fact that her legs felt far too numb and tingling, she uses a raised knee and her not unconsiderable strength as a Puella Magi to adjust Mai under one arm.

Before she could even allow herself to think, she leaps again, sailing a few vehicles over to the truck bed with a 'whump' that buckles her at the knees. Grasping Madoka roughly and pulling her roughly by her arm, before she could slip off onto her road, she kneels and adjusts her under her other arm. Leaping on pure instinct alone, a wave of pressurized air sends wave upon wave of razor sharp petals her way. They score over her back, just as she leaps, turning what would have been an experience that might have killed all three of them into one that is merely /extremely/ painful for her. The force alone of the pressurized air sends her back into gravity shifting orbit again, twisting and turning the Puella Magi and both of her unconscious passengers around in ways that force her to hold on with all of her might.

Landing upon a single knee on the front of a motorcycle sidecar she deposits both girls down on the seat and closes her eyes, taking one gulping breath after the other, each mouthful of toxic air causing her side to burn, and while her eyes watered, she didn't think that was the miasma of the Labyrinth. But more because she almost just lost two people who mean so much to her, because she'd been so focused on what she had to gain here. "Who puts sidecars on motorcycles still?" She quips to noone but herself and the two insensate girls. The bit of levity at least prevents her from bawling her eyes out right there, reining in her emotions before finally leaning forward and whispering, "Got you both." It was as much apology to them for her negligence, as it was reassurance to herself.

<Pose Tracker> Madoka Kaname [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

Those able to battle the Witches are fast becoming fewer and fewer.

Lera blasts through Odette's side, creating a gout of flame and molten gold to rival that created by Mai. Before it can fall to the ground and endanger others, though, this time it's caught by Fuu's cyclone, caught and twirled, becoming a new set of chains, chains that embrace the Witch without her awareness, even, at first, for even as the wind splays her 'skirts' wide, she senses only herself nearby.

---

It is a miracle that Nadja stops hurling axes into Sayaka after she dies -- it is easy, and among these mirrors all /too/ easy, to imagine her continuing to use that huddled, whitecloaked form for target practice, meaty thwack after thwack after thwack.

But then, although Witches are all but unknowable, one thing about their behavior is clearly understood: they're in it for their own survival. Otherwise, why would they all eat with such consistency? Their place in the food chain is sancrosanct.

Thus, when the novice Puella Magi ceases to be a threat, the mirrored swordcage begins to shake with melodic twangs. Music cannot help but pour down the blades with each impact of the Witch, who is thrusting against it like an enraged slinky.

It sounds like a dirge, and yet not so very different from the earlier melodies that enraptured the girl's transformative soul. This version is more of a descant.

Finally, Nadja bursts through, shattering mirrorflecks all around her like snowflakes, which mingle with the wildly dancing daisy petals still suspended in the stormtossed air.

It's just in time for the rains to come -- Kyouko's lethal torrent, which stick inside her invisible mass one at a time as though charting an enemy's Battleship, until she squirms her last.

She is wholly visible for all to see for a single, unforgettable moment.

Then her labyrinth begins to lift, the flowers fading along with the last of the pink lustre in the air. For a split second, it's just darkness and motorcycles and highways and gold, glittering gold.

The rest of the spears find their mark with astounding precision.

Afterwards, all that glitters is /not/ gold. They are more than an absence than a presence, in their way, those spindled ebon needles that roll across the tiled floor of the museum before somehow righting themselves to stand on end.

One -- Odette's, given the direction that it flew -- has the sigil of a feather at its tip. The other, Nadja's, has a rose virtually indistinguishable from Ohtori's crest, other than the way that it is made of the dark matter of Grief Seed.

Nadja's comes to rest directly below a triptych, painted by Hieronymus Bosch. From left to right it depicts first the Garden of Eden, then the world at large, and finally a hellscape with all the torments of damnation. The many people and animals and geographies are all painted whimsically, yet with profoundly insightful detail.

A small plaque names it The Garden of Earthly Delights.

---

How much of Eri or Sayaka's suffering Madoka witnessed is difficult to say. It would be kindest for the answer to have been 'none'. But her breathing is too ragged for her to be completely unconscious, and her eyes flutter open to meet the former's, as she nestles up close.

"Eri-chan," she chokes, tears streaming down her face, empathy and horror and relief all at once.

Her gaze shifts inevitably to one side, seeing the whitecloaked heap of pure agony.

"Ss-suh-Sayaka-chan," she gapes, she gasps, barely able to get the air to say the name until she's tried several times.

A tiny paw taps her cheek, reminding her who's been tagging along this entire time.

"K-- K--"

<Pose Tracker> Lera Camry [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.

As the Witch's Labyrinth -- labyrinths, perhaps -- fades, Lera comes to a knee, fingers clutching Soaring Sky's hilt so tight that her knuckles turn white. She lets out a long, low groan of pain, but that's the sum of it. She knows she wasn't nearly as hurt as others; she didn't get chopped into like them, by some string of fate. She hears Madoka's crying and bites her lip, before she stands back up.

Her Barrier Jacket vanishes with a thought -- she doesn't have much mana left -- but the Device remains in its combat form. She slumps back against the wall, looking about the room with a drained look. Two Witches is two too many, she thinks, hollowly.

Then she glances at Mami Tomoe from the side. She stays silent.

She has a better understanding, she thinks, of what she said; about how this life is hard, about how people have to be careful about friendships. It isn't just the difference in ideals. It's what happens if they lose one of their own. She looks down back at the ground. No words come.

<Pose Tracker> Mami Tomoe [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.

Nothing registers for Mami, in the next few moments. She sees everything around her but doesn't comprehend--it's all a bunch of strange images that might not have anything to do with her. Nothing except for the horrible twang of the swords themselves shaking, a sound that is every bit as cutting as the weapon that sank into her on the highway. Bloody, she watches the Witch reappear, and does not move. She watches Kyouko's devastating strikes, and does not move. She doesn't even see Eri's rescue at all.

The Labyrinth fades, and she does not move.

Her golden eyes are fied upon the shock of white, the crumpled form.

She hears Madoka's voice, and the haze of her world shimmers while Madoka fills her frame of vision, Madoka and Eri who saved her.

Mami rises, but the fading of the Labyrinth has not changed her bloodied form. Her beautiful outfit is ruined, and even her lovely hat pin, gleaming gold with a hint of color usually, is dingy, surely from all the dirt and debris.

"Sayaka," she chokes out, and nothing of her mask can hide the tears running from her eyes.

She rushes forward, and the impact and pain of her knees hitting the ground she ignores. She is kneeling now over Sayaka's body, reaching for an arm, a hand, something to hold. "Please," she whispers, as if no one else even exists. "Don't die," in what would be a wail if she could muster anything above a whisper. "I--I can't--"

Her words choke off into what becomes a painful, wracking sob, tears dropping from her face onto the beautiful cape she'd seen for the first time only tonight. Bleeding on the floor, her right arm hanging at her side, Mami can only hang onto her friend with one tight hand and cry out her heart.

<Pose Tracker> Eri Shimanouchi [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

The pressure of reality shifting back into view is always an unsettling experience. Closing her eyes to fight back the waves of nausea, she finds herself on the ground, when she opens her eyes again. She finds her eyes upon three different gardens. One of paradise, one of worldly pleasures, and one of- she doesn't even shudder, despite the horrific depiction.

For some reason it seems very fitting. Eri doesn't look at herself, not only does she not want to see what others see, given the amount of wounds she's suffered, but she doesn't want to calculate the sheer amount of magic she'd have to use healing it. When she started, that was hardly a concern, now it was an all too necessary consideration.

Which is when she hears- that tear-choked breathing, and turns. Hearing that voice, she curses mentally, where noone but the Puella Magi and the fluffy faced mascot might hear her before she reaches out with her arms to just embrace her and wish that she could wish away all the bad things in her life, but when her arms extend, all too slippery with fresh blood, she just catches a glimpse of it and lowers them. "It's going to be o-" She follows Madoka's gaze.

She cuts off when she sees the white cloaked form. She'd been so caught up in rescuing the two of them that she just hadn't even seen. Suddenly her breathing was becoming more ragged too, more rapid. As angry as she was on some level for Sayaka making her contract, it was purely because she /never/ /ever/ wanted to see her like this. This close to death, like she had been. "S-She'll be okay. After all she's Mami-senpai's student isn't she?" It's empty reassurance, while she'd seen Mami pull through worse she knew with a single thought that Sayaka wasn't Mami. Noone was really, was, except Mami. The two of them had established that long ago.

And even if she was physically okay, sometimes experiences like this, they just stuck with a person. And thus, she feels a very real surge of fear. As much as she had to consider Sayaka a potential rival here, she certainly didn't want that. Not to the girl who had stayed with her and comforted her, not to the girl who had taken her pulse and kept her hand there, making certain it wasn't slowing. Not to the bright eyed, exuberant classmate who was always so full of life until now. She looks from Mami to Kyouko, before manifesting her purse and toppling it it to the side, searching for something black and silver, and wickedly pointed amongst the objects within. Much like the thing that had started this mess.

Grasping it, she straightens only to hear Mami's sobs joining Madoka's. Shocked beyond all belief to witness her crying, she finds herself having to wipe away at her own tear-stained eyes before they caught the edge of the mask. And yet despite the tearful scene a few bitter thoughts still crept in.

<Pose Tracker> Kyouko Sakura [None] has posed.

<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujM6guF36-U

Kyouko stands tall, as the world returns to sanity, bit by bit. She's surprised by well she stands, really.

The moment that the spears fell..once the arrow was truly loosed from her bow, she had the chance to see the rest of the field. And the sight of Sayaka Miki's body riddled with hatchets was a horror to her. She sprints to the girl's side..in the confined space of the exhibit hall, she practically trips over her body in doing so.

Crouching next to Blueberry, she breathes thickly, running a gentle touch along one of the more grievous wounds. Her hand gathers up a bunch of Sayaka's clothes, squeezing it viciously in her fist for just a moment before she remembers herself, her clenched hand flying away like she doesn't trust herself to handle it. She likely doesn't.

Falling back onto her ass, she roams her hands through her hair, yanking straight through knots and tangles, ripping strands out by the seam where they offered resistance. She blinks faster than a hummingbird flies, acrid seawater poisoning her vision. Less because the spell is broken and more because she's desperate to escape it, even at the risk of finding more misery, she looks around.

She sees Eri, bloody but unbroken, and Madoka along with her, still breathing. That she'd saved her seemed very obvious to the spearfighter. With a quivering touch, she reaches out and grasps Eri's hand, smiling across the greasy gauze of her probationary grief and croaking out a "well done."

Mami's at her side, her devastation apparent. Kyouko screws her eyes shut, her tears stinging red irritation into the lids. She rocks further back and hugs her knees, and can't help but spy the painting in the center of the room..or rather the three paintings, arranged in sequence.

Such a strange scene, so unlike any painting she's ever seen..but so evocative of the labyrinths she hunts as an occupation, a lifestyle, and a calling. Chaos and insanity in every inch, too much to take inventory of with meticulous inspection. Kyouko Sakura rarely plants seeds with anything but practicality in mind. But here she could not help herself.

She breathes deeply again, and bites down into her lower lip and draws a sliver of blood that she swallows, and looks down upon Sayaka Miki. She believes that she'll live. She truly does. But that she got caught up in this is a horror to her. Kyouko had wrought hell but never anticipated that Sayaka would be thrown into its core, even after she learned of her intention.

And even now, in her grief..the reptillian aspect of Kyouko Sakura's brain ticked on. She didn't regret it, it preserved her where so many had fallen. And in that corner of her she wonders about Asuka Suzuki and the second labyrinth. Kyuubey suggested she was dead. That's well and good. Nothing hard to understand about that..but if she'd died it wasn't in that Garden of Hellish Delights. She didn't die at the hand of the invisible beast..and there was absolutely no accounting for that road of fury. It seemed to come out of nowhere.

Kyouko, if anybody, should know.

But that's all on the periphery. Time has stopped until Sayaka Miki breathes or twitches, and beyond that it isn't a sure thing either.

<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Miki [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

Sayaka's eyes are closed, her face serene, as if she were asleep. The cuts in her cape explain the shape of those that must be on her body below. Her arm should be heavy in Mami's hand, right? That's what they say. But it feels too light, as if it might disappear. Face-down like she is, no one can see the Soul Gem darkening on her belly, draining.

Sayaka is dreaming. All her friends are here, crying. Poor Eri-chan, nothing's ever been easy for her, she deserves a break. Poor Madoka, she always cried too easily, and so it was always too easy for Sayaka to love her. Poor Mami... what could make her cry?

Someone's grabbing her cape. She almost figures out who, but the tight grip causes her gym bag to shift on her back. Sayaka's eyes open a crack. The contents of the bag felt loose, jangly.

Sayaka sits up abruptly, woozy and weaky, the bag falling, its strap severed. She pulls it onto her lap and pats it with her hands, finding it torn open, and her exploring hands pull out a sword hilt with only a rough hasp of metal left where the blade should be.

"It's broken," she whispers weakly. Finally she lifts her eyes to her nearby audience. "Oh," she asks, "did we win?" She looks from Mami, to Eri, to Kyouko, and suspicion grows in her dazed mind. "Senpai..." she says, and she does the bravest thing she's done all night, and touches Mami's cheek with her gloved hand. Rather than ask the hard question of Mami, however, she gives it to Kyouko, looking over at her. "Where's Madoka?"

<Pose Tracker> Madoka Kaname [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

Madoka's whole world is red, red, red. Even though most of the carnage of the labyrinth has faded, wounds remain. Wounds in her friends. Wounds in herself. Wounds in the world.

Two of them, framed by fuzzy white fur, are staring right at her, and she feels herself sinking into them, even as Eri retreats from her to find a grief seed. Now she's alone, never mind the stares of others, and through her tears she sees a fuzzy vision of Eri's back, Mami's arm, Kyouko's expression, Sayaka's...

...Sayaka...

"--Kyuubey," she finally spits out, trembling from twintail to toe, rocking back and forth, arms around her knees, desperately focusing herself on his twin orbs. They're the only thing that hasn't changed. They're patient, embodying a universal constant in their blank expressionlessness. Often it comforts her, that lack of judgement. But right now he isn't a companion.

Right now he's a miracle.

"C-cuh-can, can you, can I..."

Bloody miasma fills her vision, the physical pain from her own scrapes and scratches and bruises -- which are many, and somehow so much less on the absolute scale, and so much more on the relative, than the injuries of her friends -- rising up to mingle with the emotional agony. The shock. The loss.

Seeds of grief, indeed.

<< You can save her! >> prompts Kyuubey encouragingly. Everyone hears him; it suits him to make this a public event, that it is all the harder for his would-be contractee to back down.

But backing down is the last thing on her mind. She's feeling black and seeing red, and there is no thoughtful care in her to spare. Kyouko will be disappointed. Mami will understand. Sometimes there really is no choice.

"Puh-please... I want, I want to sa--"

Blue.

It's just a sliver, the corner of her own eye catching the crack of that of her oldest friend's. Of course, more motion follows.

She exhales all at once, a monosyllabic, bawling expression of exhaustion and surprise and relief muted slightly by the internal layer of snot that stretches across her windpipe, then pops audibly.

"-aaaaaaa, hic!, saaa, Sayakaaaaaaa..."

She crawls over on her hands and knees, unable or unwilling to try her feet. Her demure white stockings are charred and torn, but one of them is intact enough to gradually form consecutive crimson imprints over the knee, like a pressed flower spread across multiple wax pages, only resolved in full when they're crushed tightly together.

As luck would have it, she comes in on the side of Mami that has a good arm, and flings her own arms around both her and Sayaka -- with her fingertips brushing Kyouko, too, tangling in her skirt. She wishes her arms were wide enough to hug the entire world right now, and she briefly gazes wide-eyed and joyfully overwrought over Mami's shoulder at the more distant Eri, a blatant invitation.

Kyuubey isn't spared a second look. He won't forget how close he was, though. He's learned something very valuable today: a wish that Madoka Kaname would swear upon her soul.

No, today was not a waste at all. Not like what's happening now. With his usual, insufferable patience, he sits on the outside, looking in at all this inefficient expression of emotional energy and wondering what she would do if she knew she could power the whole city with it for a year. The planet for a decade. The universe, forever. Isn't that a better use for her tears than Sayaka's sensibly white shoulder?

"Aaaaaa-uhhh," she's still heaving, but her voice is growing tinier and tinier, like a mouse. And yet somehow, at the same time, the passion in it, the ferocity in which her love is expressed, only grows more and more intense. "Aaaaaa. Aaaiii'm here. sayakaaaa. i'm here."

<Pose Tracker> Mami Tomoe [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.

Yes, Mami and Eri had established long ago the difference that's there. ...But while being Mami's student might come well-recommended, Mami herself doesn't feel reassured knowing it. She says 'can't', but it's not that it can't be happening. It's just that she can't bear to even think to herself what must already be true.

The only painting that captures her interest is the same that draw's Madoka's eye.

red.

She sees Kyouko but can't bring herself to look away, and she hears Kyubey's voice in her mind. Here, she should stop. With what's happened to Sayaka, with what will have to happen to all of them, she should do anything, everything to ensure that Madoka is safe.

...But she passed that door a long time ago, closed it and turned out the lights. Mami won't be stopping any Contracts today.

But suddenly...

"Sa--" Blinking, the blonde has that moment of half-certainty, the lock-up of her heart muscles as a raw wound is pressed back open. She feels like she's bleeding even more, but doesn't let go. Not until Sayaka reaches out to her... And touches her face, the soft glove speaking something real to her.

Sometimes, a wound has to be pressed in order to be healed.

rRelief flooding her, she nearly falls right over forward on the spot before Madoka arrives, and then she's supported and doesn't so much as consider pulling away from what's becoming a great hug. While she catches her breath, Madoka can still speak, and Mami is certain for a moment that even if she couldn't that her friend's feelings would find a way to spill out.

"Sayaka-chan, I was so worried. I--To know that you'd already been fighting, and then--I--"

...The thought creeps back into her mind, as the crisis--for her--abates. Her wounds are nothing compared to what she could have lost, and the precipice she was ready to fall forever down is gone without her ever noticing.

.../Three/. Three, all here. And no sign of...

Her tears are still flowing, even if they've slowed, and that can hide the thought in the back of her mind. She can breathe first, can think what next now that it's all right.

"You can't be so reckless," she finally breathes out, but she's smiling anyway, trying to hang on to one gloved hand without tipping over in the tangle.

<Pose Tracker> Eri Shimanouchi [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

Wiping away her eyes, it was easy enough to see and feel how stained her hands were. While she wasn't afraid of the sight of it, there was a certain memory, so close that she could still remember the fine details, yet so far that it felt like half a lifetime ago. Sayaka's plight evoked all of those feelings again. Covered in blood then, hands stained in it now as if the world were mocking her with her own future plans.

And yet that bright-eyed gaze, so inviting, one that had- well, she always made her feel like she was never judged at least. One that had always liked and defended her no matter who she was, and what feelings she expressed, no matter how terrible and true and raw they were. She certainly didn't feel like she deserved that invitation.

Looking away, she fusses with making certain Mai is in a more comfortable position for a moment, checking her for any mortal wounds which she's already quite certain don't exist. It's a cover for taking time to think the invitation over, like it had come in the mail in pretty pink letterhead, rather than something more immediate and meaningful. And looking at Mai, perhaps she remembers a certain piece of advice she once gave to her in a hospital room. 'Love isn't about what you deserve. It's about what you feel.' Face screwing up in chagrin, she smiles at the HiME and murmurs so softly, "Well I'm not that much of a hypocrite yet."

Crawling over on her knees, her fingertips gently wrap around the periphery of the circle of Puella Magi, stretching from Madoka around the side. Despite how disparate they were in beliefs, in feelings, and in their methods, it certainly felt like they came together as a sisterhood in all the ways that mattered at times like this at least, even if they could also be anything /but/ when a whole district of the city wasn't on metaphorical fire.

And while she was still mad at Sayaka, relief overwhelmed all of that right now. "Welcome back, Sayaka-chan. Welcome to-" She swallows, the words tough because her welcome to this life was still a grudging one, the words cracking a little when they come out, "-a-all this." For better or worse.

She gives a glance towards Mami lecturing Sayaka on being so reckless, and part of her wonders if Mami follows her own advice or not on that. Then again it was hard to believe the avatar of elegance that she considered Mami Tomoe doing anything so reckless that she couldn't compensate for it. However, given that Mami was the one criticizing, Eri swallows back any of her own for now, remembering the earlier warning in the chilliness of a single word, her name. She'd save it for another time.

Instead she turns her head towards Kyouko, managing a faint smile, having not noticed her sudden distance as she stared at the painting "Good work on settling the matter, Kyouko-chan. Things were starting to get really nasty in there." 'Starting to' was an understatement, and yet she'd survived again, wasn't that a testament to the fact that she too was getting better? Maybe she could afford to have a little more confidence in herself.

<Pose Tracker> Kyouko Sakura [None] has posed.

Kyuubey speaks to all of them. Kyouko's eyes narrow at the creature's sudden missive. She doesn't dislike or particularly distrust the creature by any means..it's just that she tends to understand things based on where they sat upon the totem pole of predators and prey..and Sakura's never been able to even begin to figure out where Kyuubey is on the food chain, or even just what it wants. Kyouko opens her lips, about to interject..

And then she woke up.

Kyouko's body had sat rigidly still, but when Sayaka sits up her reverie shatters. She jerks so suddenly at her core that it resembled taking a gutpunch. Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, her breaths come quickly, and very deeply, sighing out of her nose quickly and consistently, venting out the strain. Burying her face into her forearms for a moment, her confidence in Sayaka's recovery revealed to her the artifice in its illusion.

She hadn't been confident at all. She'd been something that she hadn't been in a very long time, and the recognition is like icewater on her brow. What Kyouko had felt was a hope so powerful that it utterly eclipsed realism.

Goosebumps break out on her forearms. Most of the fear and worry she'd been penting up washed into her, transformed by this moment of unconscious apostasy. It troubled her terribly that she'd fallen feet-first into the same trap that she swore to forever free herself from, the same that kills her kind just as surely as the Witches do. She has to be careful that she doesn't forget that, even for just a moment like now.

Running her hands through her hair, she grasps the mane tightly in both fists, easing them to brush up through the strands and throw her mane back, lifting her head back to the earth along with it, jettisoning most of her face's visible worry down in the dark pit her arms had formed around her. And Sayaka asks a question, sounding disoriented and muddled.

"Yeah, we won."

She blinks, her mouth opening not to answer Sayaka's question about Madoka, but in surprise that she chose to ask /her./ She jerks her head towards Pinky. "Yeah, she's..." Her words are quickly cut off by the innocent girl's plaintive wail, and she grins a little grin that grows a little more wolfish, an approving shade entering her gaze as she considers the hero-survivor. "Still tougher than you look. Still punching above your weight."

Roped into the group hug, Kyouko stiffens at first, surprised by it and unaccustomed to it, but she forces her shoulders to relax and slips her arms around the others in kind.

She looks to Mami. Her relief that Sayaka lives only narrowly outpaces her relief that Mami's spared that terrible grief as a result. She gazes into her friend's eyes with quiet understanding and understated happiness for her, knowing that between the two of them, they're the only ones who really understood what it felt like when things went the other way.

She looks to Madoka, bleary-eyed and wet-faced and never one to hold back her feelings. If the sweet child keeps getting wrapped up in this business then she'll learn how the jungle works one of these days..but she's glad that it isn't like this.

She looks to Eri, and grins right back at her, pleased and impressed with how far she's come, the latest in a long series of confirmations that she had been right when she thought she saw something in the once-timid girl. "Thanks Eri-chan, hell of a showing you gave. I hope you're over that self-doubt crap after that because if you need to fight /three/ witches to get there, you're on your own."

She happens to see the painting once more, all those frolicking people in all their embraces..and all followed by a hellscale of madness, and remembered that she'd engineered the circumstances that they narrowly escaped.

And she looks at Sayaka. Her control slips a little, her eyes misty and her face a little paler than usual. The falsity of her grin's swagger shines through, and her gaze is tired and sunken, kept awake in the raw freezrburn flush of recently drained adrenaline. But as she looks at the survivor longer, her smile becomes more confident, and some of the light dials back into her pupils.

"I'm glad you..I'm glad that..that you're ok. Gonna be ok..." She blinks rapidly, closes her eyes for a moment and regains her composure. Her face is wolfish when she opens them again. "Did you really kill a witch in a whole other labyrinth before this?"

<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Miki [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

"Sorry to worry you," Sayaka tells Mami sheepishly. "I'm not very good at this yet, I guess."

Her eyes follow Kyouko's to the pinkest pink in the room. Sayaka hadn't suffered a head injury all night, but she'd been lying in herself, and one of her cheeks has a red stain. Sayaka, however, is the sort of girl who can put a good face even on that, and as exhausted and weak as she is, her whole appearance transforms as she sees Madoka, eyes sparkling, teeth bright, every muscle shaping itself to joy. "Madoka!" she calls back, and tries to crawl also. There's no strength in her (and not enough blood), and her arm just wobbles and gives out, but she waits like an eager puppy, and when Madoka embraces her and Mami, Sayaka drops the sword hilt and puts her arms around both of them, even if she can't squeeze very hard.

Sayaka had needed a lot of willpower to touch Mami, but it comes easily for her best friend. "Madoka, Madoka, Madoka!" she says, rubbing her (cleaner) cheek into the shorter girl's, her Madoka-arm close around her back. "I'm here too, Madoka. We're both here. Ooo I wanna hug you," she says, in the happy way that people do when they are very much already doing so. The hand still on Mami's cheek rubs it with a gloved thumb as she uses it to confirm Mami's spot in the hug.

"Eri-chan," Sayaka smiles from the middle of all that. "Thanks. Sorry I didn't give you a heads-up or anything, hehe... don't worry, though, I didn't rush into it." There's an understatement.

Sayaka startles as Kyouko joins the hug, in no way mentally prepared to be hugged by that girl, and Madoka feels the heat in her face from it. "Thanks," she tells the girl who tried and failed to show her the life of a Puella Magi. "And, ah, yeah... it was a TV Witch that got Madoka. My fault. The Grief Seed is in my bag..."

Honest as Sayaka is (except about one thing, the thing in her gym bag), whenever she and Madoka get in trouble together, Sayaka claims the blame. Madoka too. That way they're in trouble together, Sayaka figures. And anyway, friends have responsibilities to each other.

"Eri-chan, c'mon," Sayaka urges weakly. "I can't hug so many people, I'm too tired..." Those hugging Sayaka are getting their clothes a little red, though. However, the actual wounds are considerably smaller than the hatchet blades had been, and aren't particularly gorey.

<Pose Tracker> Madoka Kaname [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

One of Madoka's twintails tickles Mami's other cheek as she shakes her head in silent protest of Sayaka being chided, but once the bluenette is clearly willing to accept the criticism as the expression of love that it is, she relents, relaxing back into the moment. Words pass between the Puella Magi, and she's just so happy that they're all alive that she doesn't spare the time to feel left out.

But as the prologue of the story comes up, she frowns and finds her voice again, which had, until now, simply been blissful hums of affirmation as she nuzzles Sayaka right back, ignoring -- or, better, accepting -- all the blood as a reasonable price of admission. Alive, she's alive, alive...! "Nnnn, it wasn't your fault, Sayaka-chan. I had to follow Hitomi-chan, when I saw her like that. She wasn't herself, and she had that mark..."

She's much more shamefaced than angry. "It was dumb. What could I have done? I should have called somebody, but I wasn't really /thinking/ at all, about anything but Hitomi-chan."

In that brief instant where they were between labyrinths, they saw the victims of the other, now-defeated Witch being rescued by EMTs, or she'd be in a frightful state about that issue as well.

"But Sayaka-chan was wonderful... so brave and strong, with her cloak, and her swords." Count on Madoka to put fashion before function. "The Witch didn't stand a chance." There's no artifice in the way her eyes shine, twin lamps. They're as bright as they ever were when anyone else rescued her from some other monster -- maybe even moreso.

The thought comes to its inevitable conclusion, though, and her brow wrinkles in consternation. "But then the other ones dropped right on top of us on our way home! I've never seen so many Witches together like that... three, all near each other!" Everyone in contact with her can feel her shudder. She's been trembling this whole time, really, but her tiny frame shakes extra hard as she comes to realize the sheer scope of the evening. "Is that even possible?" An extremely silly question from an extremely silly girl.

Kyuubey wanders over, and positions himself exactly in between the two as yet unclaimed Grief Seeds. He doesn't answer Madoka's question, considering it rhetorical, but seems ready to field others, meeting gazes expectantly. That's often the case at times like this. (How many other temporary, catastrophe-drawn clusters of Puella Magi has he advised, since humanity's dawn?)

<Pose Tracker> Mami Tomoe [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.

"I wouldn't say /that/," Mami insists back at Sayaka's response--her criticism was a matter of love, and for that matter, was a way of her usual self coming back. She doesn't really have to think in those terms to want to reassert her calm, her control over things. So she takes her time to do that during the happy reunion, soaking up the ambient friendship like a flower reaching for...

Maybe it's better not to consider flower comparisons for a while.

Like she's warming herself at a fire, she stays close. Close, and uncommenting on her own hypocrisy when it comes to being reckless. She only slowly slides her attention to Eri, letting her golden eyes roll that way as if casual, incidental. "It is certainly a big occasion, isn't it? I'd have preferred less excitement, but you made quite the showing for yourself, Sayaka-chan."

There are things she won't let get in the way, right now. ...And there's a side of Mami acting now that's easy to miss, and that few ever see.

'We won', though. Tougher than she looks. Mami gazes right back at Kyouko in the same understanding, her expression still haunted by what almost was.

...But it's not happiness, exactly, that looks back.

"It's all right, Madoka-chan. I'm not angry that you were out--I'm glad the two of you are safe. ...I just wanted to get a better picture of what was going on." She would have done the same for a friend, wouldn't she? "..."

"I do think we should do more hunting together, Sayaka-chan, as you learn your magic," she adds at the matter of how good Sayaka was... and because of the extra Witches. "Something like this happening is /always/ possible."

It might've been rhetorical enough, but Mami glances to Kyubey as she answers. Glance once, and then back to the others, looking between everyone. All friends, or... at least something like them. But are they?

There's so much already starting to roil back behind the wall that's coming back up between Mami and the world.

"So it can happen... But it's a worrying sign. This territory wasn't unclaimed. We shouldn't have been the only--or the first--Puella Magi here. ...And there shouldn't have been so many, so close."

She is tired, yes, needs more magic sooner rather than later--But she has the luxury of poise, of not grabbing immediately at the grief seeds.

<Pose Tracker> Eri Shimanouchi [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

"Three?" Blanching for a moment at the thought, she nevertheless feigns a grin which is all bluster. Finding that gardening terms such as N-P-K were inadequate, she finds her salvation in a sports term from her time in the swimming club, "Well if you insist, bring 'em on. I wouldn't mind a hat trick under my belt." She lets that cover for any self-doubt she'd feel about pulling off such a feat for now.

The grin fades though the moment Sayaka speaks to her, her face running through the gamut of emotions, from anger to sadness to just sheer relief that she was alright. "Baka!" Eri whispers affectionately at Sayaka, in the Green Puella's Magi perception not 'getting it' when she says she didn't rush into it, eyes misting anew.

But she doesn't follow up to tell her why she thinks that term fits right now. That'd break the peace, ruin the moment, so instead after a pregnant pause, she offers a teasing jab, "Well that's too bad! You're going to learn really quickly that being exhausted is no excuse at all." Though it's also a tease which applies to every part of Sayaka's life now, if she intended to keep up with all the demands of being a Puella Magi, a social life, and/or school. Arms tightening around the group, and thus Sayaka, leaving little crimson blotches of her own.

It's only after Madoka starts self-depreciating while at the same time painting such a fervid picture of Sayaka the hero that she draws back, just a little. Just enough, to look her way. Both listening and not really listening. Remembering her own first witch going a lot differently. It was both terrifying and exhilirating. Relieved that the witch didn't claim her prim and proper green-haired classmate, she offers, "Maybe it was a little, but what might have happened to her if it hadn't? It sounds to me like you're selling yourself a little short." She doesn't ruffle pink twin-tailed hair, but it's tempting, while at the same time, she looks over at Sayaka and mouths a silent, 'Thank you.'

And with both the most impeccable, and the worst timing in the history of humanity, white fluff wanders into view, positioning himself between the pair of grief seeds which were pulled out of the brink of disaster. And Eri finds the spell broken in an instant, as all she can do is stare, like a starving jungle cat in the food chain that Kyouko keeps professing. While she had a grief seed right now, she was literally living from one to the next and eventually the model would become unsustainable, it already was, save for occasional charity disguised as IOUs for favors.

She takes the time to close her eyes and just breathe as Mami offers to Sayaka that the two ought to hunt together more often. It causes a bitter spike of emotion that quickly fades, though her eyes flicker over to Mami as she responds unbidden to her statement to Madoka. "Shouldn't have doesn't matter, because it did. What does matter is that it's unclaimed now." She doesn't speak her intent, but she doesn't really have to. Mami, Kyouko, Madoka, they all know how she'd been living for some time. The comment thrown out their to weigh their reaction. Because she could forego a single meal- given what she stood to gain.

<Pose Tracker> Kyouko Sakura [None] has posed.

Kyouko certainly doesn't mind some blood on her frock. Far from the first or the last time that that will happen. What commands her attention instead is the look in Mami's eyes when she gazed back. There was a quality to them that Kyouko was unsure of, like a handshake gone awry. Her hand wasn't knocked away..but she can't tell if the shake was denied or taken with some clumsiness, or awkwardness.

She wonders, for a moment, if their armistice is approaching another end. What had been happening in Ueno was an experiment..and one with a number of unforseen hitches. But then that's what experiments are for..seeing what will happen. Mami had long taken a don't ask, don't tell position towards Kyouko's administration of her own turf. This was something well beyond that, and the spearfighter knew it.

The brief summary of Sayaka's early night returns her to the moment, and nods and murmurs her response. "If you have a seed then you should use it now." She taps her own upon her breastplate, little flecks of shadow roiling about its otherwise spectacular ruby color like a lava lamp with oil instead of wax. "Don't want to cut it too close and after you're night I'm betting you're past avoiding that."

She flashes a wink to Eri at her swagger, not believing for a moment that she means it in earnest, but enjoying what an improvement a little bluster is in her. "You'd be beating me to one if you did, that's for sure. Hell you'd be Queen of Tokyo with one of those under yer belt!"

Madoka pipes up, and Kyouko grins to hear a slightly less..massaged version of events. Of course the passionate one of the pig-tails wouldn't describe Sayaka in anything but the most flattering light, but that seems more like an internal embellishment than any willful manipulation. "It seems it is possible. All the more reason to be careful."

Kyuubey strides up, and something in those dead doll eyes suggests that he's ready and waiting for the issues at hand to be settled. She pulls away from the hug, cracking her neck between both hands. "I landed the killing blow on each of them, so I have the best claim." She turns, and looks at the others one after another, in a line. Her demeanor is serious. "..but don't sweat it, I don't want 'em. I figure one should go to Eri-chan, and one should go to either Sayaka-chan or Mami-chan."

That's all well and good. There's a far more pressing matter to discuss though. Eri's hunger had driven her to a deep corner of a dark alley, and she's starting to think like the starving animal that she is. This might be the perfect chance to keep things from having to move any further..and to reinforce her place in Kyouko's pocket, if a need ever arises.

"On the issue of territory I say Eri takes Ueno. I've got enough turf at the moment and she's been out in the cold too long. Sayaka's gonna need some too but Eri's been needing much longer, and I'm sure Blueberry'll make do until something comes her way."

Kyouko gives Sayaka a look and a little smirk, but not without warmth. "Unless you keep up with these crazy marathons of course."

<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Miki [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

"Maa maa," Sayaka says, blushing at Madoka's description, especially with so many people she cares about (or at least cares about the /opinion/ of) around her. "It's not nearly as cool as Mami-senpai's." She looks down at herself, and her cheeks warm at the resemblance her outfit bears to a certain boy's uniform. "Wow, it's really bloody, huh," she says dizzily.

"Of course!" Sayaka enthuses to Mami. "I would love to help Mami-senpai any way I can." She doesn't notice Eri's reaction at all. Indeed, she knows nothing that would lead her to suspect one. But she does turn to Eri and give her a weak victory sign and smile at being called baka.

"Okay, okay," she tells Eri. "No being tired for me." But Madoka can feel how much of Sayaka's weight is resting on her. A little more rests on her as Sayaka reacts to Eri's secret thank you. She's been stressed out over Madoka's safety all night.

Sayaka finally pulls back from the group hug to rest listlessly on her own haunches. "I'll use it soon," she tells Kyouko, because she doesn't know how to do it and she doesn't want to fumble around in front of Kyouko, who would probably laugh at her as Sayaka fruitlessly poked her own belly button. She looks between Kyouko and Eri.

"Well, /I/ don't want Ueno," she tells Kyouko. "I'm a Puella Magi conbi with Mami-senpai, so I'll fight Witches with her!" Suddenly she grimaces in panic, and looks over to Mami. "Oh, I'm sorry! I mean, if that's okay." She's red with shame at having gotten ahead of herself. "I would be really honored..."

But the more pressing issue still remains, so she turns back to Kyouko. The hatchet wounds still burn on her body, and Sayaka's face is taciturn. "What I want to know is, how did you know about the mirrors, Anko? Something really weird is going on here. It's my first night, but even I know this is way too many Witches."

<Pose Tracker> Madoka Kaname [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

Madoka senses Sayaka's vertigo immediately, and stiffens her shoulder, trying her best to be a staunch supporter in the physical as well as emotional sense. She's not very good at it, smaller and weaker, but at least she doesn't lack for enthusiasm -- and when Sayaka pulls away, she keeps her quiet worry to herself. She knows it would only embarrass her in front of the others.

She's not above embarrassing people in the name of doing what she thinks is right, but she doesn't like to do it /right in front of them/ if she can help it.

Mami and Eri's reassurrances are as effective as usual -- which is to say, not at all -- but she isn't too caught up in her own incompetence, high as she is on Sayaka's grand victory. She offers them both small smiles, and then kind of glides through Kyouko's discussion of logistics mostly oblivious to what's at stake.

Not completely, though; she gives Eri a long look, her eyes briefly vanishing behind a bright grin that squinches up her whole face. It says, 'see? things can work out after all!'

She has no idea.

Sayaka's teamup with Mami, on the other hand, is a source of great relief (and tiny anxiety, but in the context of the evident dangers Sayaka is already in, the former infinitely outweighs the latter), and she looks between them eagerly, hoping that it will turn out to be true. She walks on her knees back over to Sayaka, not wanting to let her out of her snuggly clutches for more than a minute, and doesn't seem to grasp the implications at stake.

Although Kyouko /did/ give her a mirror, one she's holding even now.

The look she gives the crimson Puella Magi isn't the least bit suspicious, only confused, like a bewildered puppy.

<Pose Tracker> Mami Tomoe [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.

"You're too modest," Mami admonishes. ...She doesn't actually say Sayaka is cooler than her, of course, but her tone is encouraging nonetheless. At least, encouraging on /that/ from--there's something else here, something else she doesn't really like. Mami finds herself watching Eri thoughtfully at her bravado in turn, and thoughtfulness slowly shifts to apparent neutrality as Eri teases Sayaka.

It's not that it's /untrue/. That isn't the problem at all.

No, there's something in Mami's expression now, a guardedness that she typically reserves for...

Well, that she typically reserves for other Puella Magi, others beyond the little crowd she's come to know over time.

"Yes," Mami agrees with her old partner, "Three Witches at once would be a very impressive feat indeed."

Mami doesn't move from her position so close to blue and pink; she peers out, wounded, at Eri's eyes.

"Shouldn't is how you notice what's gone awry, Shimanouchi-san. You can't maintain a territory for long without understanding the way it feels when something's gone /wrong/." ...She can tell, all right, what Eri is suggesting, though her tension is briefly interrupted by the sheer excitement in Sayaka's voice.

She smiles, just for that moment. "Of course. Between the two of us, once you've gotten used to things we'll be able to cover much better than I can alone."

But she still hasn't actually /answered/ the suggestions. "...I barely dented it," Mami replies flatly. "Either of them. I'm not claiming these seeds."

She stops, and closes her eyes, just for a moment. This isn't something she /wants/, that much is sure.

Opening her eyes, Mami settles her gaze on Kyouko, still tensed. "How /did/ you know about the trick of the Labyrinth in a territory that wasn't yours so quickly? ...I entered before you did. But you came prepared. And the girl I expected to have to question didn't come at all."

<Pose Tracker> Eri Shimanouchi [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

The Green Puella Magi sees the overwhelming positivity in Madoka's eyes, she's smiling at her when Mami starts to speak. Eri doesn't look at Mami as the advice is offered, but all she hears is veiled criticism, even if it isn't.

Slowly she turns her head to meet her eyes, there's acrid hurt there, which moves out of her eyes seemingly to the tip of her tongue she tries to swallow all of it like some pill before she speaks, "Thanks for the advice, I'll take it to heart. Though-" But apparently she only half-swallows it, her tone light, even if the words weren't, "-maybe I'd know these things already if I'd ever-" She circles a finger, pointed down in mid-air, "-made the rounds about anyone's stomping ground before."

Kyouko's support for is like a weight being lifted off her shoulders, especially when Sayaka declares that she doesn't want Ueno. It temporarily washes away any feelings of bitterness that Mami might have accidentally brought to the surface. She feels giddy with relief at once, like her fortunes have instantly turned. While she'd thought that's who Kyouko would cast her bid behind, as the many grief seed loans had evidenced, there was always a tiny measure of gnawing uncertainty. "T-Thank you, I-"

Her eyes mist up, overwhelmed by joy, like some long dark night was over, even if she knew this really was only the beginning. And yet, wiping her gloves against her eyes, she straightens, deciding that being overly emotional in response was probably the last thing Kyouko wanted to see, she nevertheless smiles in gratitude as her hand shifts away from her eyes.

"-Well I guess I'd better get started. Otherwise I'll never have that crown." This time it was all bluster. Her ambitions weren't that high yet. On the hierarchy of needs that was /far/ from the biggest concern in her mind. In reality it was more just a gardener finally having a metaphorical garden to harvest food of her own. And yet, for a moment, saying it to Kyouko who had always been so kind with her tough love, she felt every bit the Queen already. A Queen with a tiny nation all her own.

And then- Sayaka, her question to Kyouko causes a few pieces fall into place in her head. She doesn't know the truth to a certainty, but it would definitely make sense At the realization, she decides to play it cool, figuring that an innocent question could just as easily become an accusation if it wasn't answered quickly. As Mami quickly proves with her intensity, "Well you know how she fights, with all that whirling metal everywhere, how many reflections do you think she can see at any given moment?"

Shrugging her shoulders as non-chalantly as she could through the numbing pain, "And come on, is it really that unusual? I've fought a few witches with similar tricks to each other. Maybe I should come prepared like that myself so I don't get caught flat-footed by the same one."

It's possible that Sayaka might believe it, being new to this life. But would Mami, who was as every bit the veteran Kyouko was? She tries her best not to look at Madoka and those eyes, so guileless. Despite trying to act casual, her breath catches, completely tense on the inside, in her gut, and in her muscles. The theory wasn't quite a lie, but it wasn't quite the truth of everything she might think either, was it?

<Pose Tracker> Kyouko Sakura [None] has posed.

Eri can't help but bring a smile to the red-headed warrior's face. For all her efforts, the junior magical girl isn't the best at concealing her sentiments, at least not from somebody like her. But in this moment..with such a profound ease of such an all-consuming weight, it's visible for miles. She nods to her words, quite appreciative of this new phase of a girl who'd always been quick to speak to diminish herself. "Don't thank me, I'm not giving anything. You've earned your turf. Not many people could have hung in as long with as little as you have."

It always surprised Kyouko, how little love Mami seemed to spare for Eri. Although she far from knew the full story between the two, it seems out of character. When a vicious wolverine like herself can muster up more sympathy for a charity case than one of the most selfless veterans she's ever known, it stands out. Is she not kissing up enough? Not constantly blowing smoke like Sayaka with her insufferable hero-worship? It's hard to say, but it elicits an oddly protective feeling in her.

Whatever's happening, a rift between her and the golden haired gunner seemed to be forming with astonishing speed. It took her aback, but Kyouko Sakura is nothing if not adaptive. The practical matters are settled surprisingly quickly..and she is not at all surprised by the last item on the agenda.

Many Puella Magi lead reactive lives, roaming their territory in search of quarry, hunting the grounds and depending on the largesse of fate. Kyouko is a more determined person than that. As the likes of Mami Tomoe sail through the night, slipping into labyrinths without any consideration beyond combat within, the spearfighter's had to take a more proactive approach..for all her viciousness, Mami's more of a huntress. Kyouko's more of a farmer..

Like any professional planter, Kyouko must plant her seeds and check on them regularly, monitoring the condition of her harvest and ensuring its proper growth and health. When people make up the fertilizer..dealing with them on her way in and out of her sites becomes an inescapable necessity. Kyouko's well suited for the task.

She used to be stronger than she is, actually. Less experienced, but more capable. Before her family was slaughtered she had a mastery of illusory spells, deceiving and manipulating those around her with a supernatural edge. The trauma of that experience shut that away from her..but it seemed some vestiges of the talent remained, if only through some sort of arcane kinesthetic memory. She is an excellent and well practiced liar.

Sayaka breaks the ice, and Mami adds the weight of her wisdom and experience to the question mark. Madoka, for her part, looks very uncertain, and that's perhaps the worst possible sign she could give. And Eri..bless her for trying, she tries to throw off the suspicion. She didn't know a thing about what had been going on here, but she's probably in the best position to make an educated guess. Even so, she is /not/ a good liar, and her clumsy attempt at assistance did more to damn Kyouko than anything.

Kyouko opens her mouth, and then closes it. A look of some embarrassment flitters across her face, like she's been caught urinating on the side of the road, and some color touches her cheeks. Her eyes shift down and to the side. "I, uh.." She fidgets with her dress a little, looks up at a diagonal above the others' heads, and sighs audibly before resuming eye contact with the group.

"Sorry. It's dumb but I'm a little embarrassed about it. I went into that labyrinth the night before." She scratches the back of her neck, lips tight like a kid in the principal's office. "I mean..you know me, Mami. Asuka Suzuki's tough but I'm not gonna let something like that stop me from sniffing out a chance if I see one. I was wanderin' through the museums like I do sometimes.."

This is not an uncharacteristic thing for her, as somebody particularly close to Kyouko would know. Without school to attend, there's a limited circuit of things to do if she feels like taking to the town, and museums are one of them. "These paintings were.." She gestures to the very pieces on the walls around them, works of Bosch and those inspired by him. "..I dunno, I kinda dug 'em. I saw them on a brochure at a sister museum a couple weeks ago and I wanted to check 'em out. Figured out pretty quick there was a labyrinth here, so I hopped in, figured I could make a quick seed off of it."

She glances down to her feet, and sighs again before looking back up. "So I went in an' I was doin' my thing like I always do, hoping I beat Suzuki to the punch. When I found the Witch I didn't know it, I couldn't see it and I didn't know it was there. It saw me though, and it started beating the crap out of me. I saw it in my spear while I was flailin' around, but I was a little banged up and it was fine, so I figured I should do the smart thing and leave, hope like hell that Suzuki didn't find it that night, rest up, and come nail it the next day after I rested up."

Her eye contact is steady now, and her expression is sincere and serious. "It got worse overnight, started throwing out bad energy all over the place. I don't know why, I guess it was just how it was. I brought that hand mirror I gave you.." she nods to Madoka. "..because I figured it would reflect better than my weapon, not much better I could do without burning a lot of magic. When I got there I wasn't the only one, so I tried to help everybody with what I knew."

She smiles to Eri, waving off her words. "That's..that's nice of you, and I really appreciate you tryin' to stick up for me, but it's kinda crap. Sorry. Witches are all different, and I'd never fought one I couldn't see. It kicked my ass already, that's the only reason I knew what we were up against. I know you're excited about finally having turf, you don't need to try to hide it to seem cool."

She looks back to Sayaka and Mami and frowns, a slightly troubled look on her face. "But there's definitely something up around here. I've seen it when Witches get crazy with their numbers, happens with other animals too and it's always for some weird reason. I have no idea where the Puella Magi in charge of this place is..was. If it weren't for what Kyuubey said, I'd expect her to show up any moment now." This is completely and utterly true. Kyouko in all honesty has no idea what had happened to Asuka Suzuki, and is as surprised as anybody that she hadn't met them in the Labyrinth. "..if something was up with her then it might help explain why things have gotten so crazy here. But if something was I got no idea. I don't know her well, just ran into her once or twice."

<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Miki [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

"Really? Senpai? I can be your partner?" Sayaka bounces a little, though how cautious and tired the motion is speaks volumes about her physical condition. "I mean, your junior partner, of course... sidekick! Oh, I'd be so happy!"

Sayaka slides her forearm on the inside of Madoka's and takes her hand, eagerly cuddling back against her. She has the energy for that, anyway. Her expression doesn't match Madoka's, though, as they look at Kyouko together. Eri diverts her attention--Eri, whom Sayaka knows so little about that she didn't spare the gardener from witnessing her request to Mami--and Sayaka frowns.

"I think you should let her answer, Eri-chan," she says, pained. She seems to think Kyouko's suckered Eri, not that Eri is lying to her. "She didn't /think/ we might need the mirrors, she knew."

Kyouko's explanation is a lot longer and more complex. Dismissing Eri's defense as crap helps convince Sayaka early. "I see now. It's good that you survived, this was a pretty bad Labyrinth." She tries to stand up, and immediately has to cover her side with her hand, grimacing. "Nngh. But I'm not happy to hear what you are saying," she says, looking up at Kyouko with her unusual directness, one that seems to match the clarity of her blue eyes. "If this is Asuka Suzuki's territory, doesn't that mean you were trying to steal from her? I don't think it makes any sense to not fight a Witch if you find it, so I don't mind that you did that last night."

She puts a hand on Madoka's shoulder. "But I mind you leaving the Witch here for a whole day, and hiding it from Asuka Suzuki and everyone else. So you could kill it yourself, right?" Though she has no more strength in her than a kitten, Sayaka leans forward, impassioned. "Someone might have been killed by the Witch today and we wouldn't even know! Is that worth a Grief Seed, one that wasn't supposed to be yours to start with? Don't try and tell me you were just trying to protect Asuka Suzuki, because I know you could have had Kyuubey warn her."

Sayaka shows her teeth, and this time it's not in a smile. "The only reason Madoka fell into this Labyrinth is because you left it there without telling anyone." She squeezes Madoka's shoulder and hand at the same time as she finally confesses the real reason she's angry.

"Kyuubey!" Sayaka exclaims. "Is Suzuki-san really dead? Is that what you were telling us before?"

<Pose Tracker> Madoka Kaname [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

There were a lot of crucial differences between Sayaka and Madoka even before one of them made a Contract, easily glossed over as superficial by those who see a group of girls walking home from school and categorize them by hair color or 'Saionji vs Touga' rating. One of them has to do with their relationship with truth.

Of course Sayaka's the one to ask the difficult question; where she is insightful, Madoka is gullible. That's what makes her the best teasing target -- believing the best of people as she's wont to do, she's an easy sucker for most any line.

But conversely, Sayaka might be the one to uncover the hard truths, but which of them has the frame of mind to accept them? To survive them?

Not that Madoka has realized the truth by any stretch. She hasn't taken everyone's "multiple witches? yup, seems to be" at all well, growing quieter and smaller and paler next to Sayaka. She doesn't try to interfere in the darker turn of the conversation, either, but from the way she shifts her dainty frame on her heels, it's clearly making her uncomfortable. That's reasonable; Madoka hates conflict.

Madoka is the worst at this.

Anyone watching her react gets to see her get completely taken in by Eri's explanation -- why wouldn't she believe Eri? Eri is a classmate, a friend, someone she worries about a lot. She stares at Eri with those big wide eyes and 'thinking critically' does not even enter her reality.

And then Kyouko contradicts Eri -- which means Eri 'misunderstood' Kyouko, in MadokaWorld, which isn't totally unreasonable -- and offers an explanation of her own. It is accepted with equal credulity. Kyouko might not be a classmate, but she certainly occupies the other two categories squarely.

Here is another difference between Madoka and Sayaka: when Sayaka gets angry and judgmental, Madoka just gets sad.

She tugs gently at Sayaka's sleeve, and leans in close. Her murmur is public, audible -- she would never talk about Kyouko 'secretly' right in front of her. But there's the distinct sense of someone trying to be politely discreet, like Papa reminding Mama that no matter how drunk you are, there are still things you mustn't do at the restaurant.

"Sayaka-chan," she says in a soft hush, "Kyouko-chan said she had to /run away/. /Kyouko-chan/." The repetition clearly casts the assertion that the crimson Puella Magi is one of the toughest people they know, who doesn't run from fights very much. "She wasn't just saving a hunt for later, procrastinating... she could have /died/."

Like you almost just did, her gently reproachful eyes add. Like Eri almost did, back in that alley.

"And even though it wasn't her territory, her responsibility... she came back and made sure that we /didn't/."

Whether or not this line of thought could be persuasive, Kyuubey helpfully interjects, << Yes. There were more Witches in Ueno than Asuka Suzuki could fight. It seems to be a particularly dense territory right now, which explains why you have all had such a busy night." >>

That reminds Madoka of an old terror, and she adds, in a thinner, higher voice, "Mami, everyone... doesn't it hurt?" Again she looks straight at Mami's arm, Eri's back, and Sayaka's collective self. "You're all so hurt... what if another Witch shows up /right now/ and you have to fight /four/ tonight? It's... it's not safe for you to just sit here like this..."

Sayaka can feel the shaking in her voice, in her hand, which squeezes back, and her shoulder, nestling.

<Pose Tracker> Mami Tomoe [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.

Maybe it was a veiled criticism, and maybe it wasn't, but it's out there now. When Eri does look back, Mami sees it--and whatever she might have said, whatever reaction she may have had to the hurt is soon followed by the way it's brought right out, as far as she's concerned, into the open.

Mami doesn't so much as blink, though her good hand curls up more tightly.

"Don't get me wrong, Shimanouchi-san. I'm very impressed by your ability to survive so many missteps."

Her tone is also light, but her eyes are not--they keep the same edge, harder even as she volleys right back.

She then nods, starting to smile but not actually turning away from Eri. "That's right," she answers Sayaka. "But don't count yourself out--You've shown a lot of talent tonight already."

And yet...

She doesn't feel a growing rift between herself and Kyouko; she feels the old chasm, and the bridge across it swaying dangerously in the wind. So finally she does continue looking from girl to girl here. She's already mentioned her reservations about the territory, and if Eri took them badly, then it wouldn't be the first time she couldn't get through to the other girl. ...She hasn't forgotten any of /that/ story.

But a wedge goes deeper still about Eri's explanation. "Yes," the golden veteran answers simply. "It /is/ that unusual."

She doesn't buy it. But Kyouko's story--well, that's different. For a long time now, Mami has simply failed to ask questions of Kyouko--they never did reconcile their original split, the real /reasons/ for it, but for a while she was willing to pretend otherwise. ...How long has she been fooling herself about what this girl has chosen for herself? How long, now, has she let people fall into danger because she just couldn't press the issue?

...Mami should know better than most Kyouko's talent for deception, but even so, she /wants/ to believe her as the other girl gives a sheepish explanation. It completely appeals to Mami's habit of being the older one, the caretaker; surely she just needs to frown and chide her old student about remembering things she already knows...

But it's awfully specific--another part of her keeps doubting, and the evidence it brings is the years she fought alone because trust isn't something she can afford with Puella magi.

She can see even now a vibrant, red-haired girl she knew a few years ago, talking about their magic and what they could do as a team.

...Slowly, the older girl closes her eyes. Slowly, she shakes her head, side to side very slightly.

"That's right, Madoka-chan. Even Sakura-san ran... But she did keep it from Suzuki-san. And she could have asked us for help, but she didn't--she knew she /could/ beat it... Just not right then." Her eyes open; she hasn't directly addressed Sayaka's question--...but she doesn't have to, really. "It's perfectly normal. A Puella Magi hunts where she can, gets all the grief seeds she can find to stay strong and protect her own territory. We certainly don't work together--we compete. We don't really have to warn one another of danger, because less competition just means less to worry about."

The explanation is calm, light, casual... And, for anyone who knows Mami, as damning as something /can/ be.

Kyubey's answer confirms it for her. There are reasons a territory can become dense. Which could it be? But--

But... As Sayaka glares, Mami does hear Madoka's question. She doesn't soften, can't, but...

"You're right, Madoka-chan. It's best that we're all in top shape in case something else happens tonight."

There's a flash of gold, and in hand Mami has her Soul Gem and a small, black-and-silver grief seed. She presses the one to the other, purifying... and her magic starts its work, a healing glow letting her pick up the gem with her other hand after all, lifting the now-empty Seed.

<Pose Tracker> Eri Shimanouchi [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

It sounds like a light compliment doesn't it? Her eyes stay on Mami for a moment trying to figure out how she meant that, until she sees that look she's giving her right back. Her lips curl into something that seems a little smug as she dismisses that line in her own way, "I'm like ivy in that respect. Hard to get rid of."

Kyouko's thorough explanation of the circumstances takes her so off guard that she doubts her own private theory immediately. Within moments she's dismissed it as a distant possibility, which left her feeling chagrined and quite the idiot for trying to cover for what didn't happen. A hand moves towards the nape of her neck, but then remembering the blood, it falls back down before it makes contact. Noone had ever accused her of trying to look 'cool' but there was a time when it would have been the most valid criticism, "Guess I let it go to my head!" She finally says, sounding a little like a kid who got her hand caught in the cookie jar. "Haven't gotten used to the idea yet."

She's still looking at Kyouko when Sayaka begins to vent her anger at Kyouko, but by the end of it, she's shaking her head, "And I suppose you don't remember how messed up someone can be after a fight goes bad." It doesn't even sound angry there at her idealism, though that's still there below the surface, just a little sad. To her it's like Sayaka is glossing over a few memories just because it's Kyouko, and not even just with her, but Mami as well when she was immolated trying to save her. She leaves it at that, still feeling a touch ridiculous from her clumsy defense which instantly had more holes poked in it than a sieve.

Mami does a better job defending Kyouko's actions anyhow to Sayaka, and she shrugs, eventually nodding in agreement, though not out of any feelings of solidarity between the two, just confirming that she thinks she's just speaking common sense even if she remembers a time when she might have reacted like exactly like Sayaka did. She turns her thoughts away from that at Sayaka's call to Kyubey, Kyubey inadvertently, or perhaps by design shattering any delusions of her feeling like a queen of a tiny nation, or even a gardener who finally had a good plot to work with. What would happen if this turned out to be more than she could handle too?

Looking a little distant, she eventually shoves those thoughts aside, deciding that she could, and she had to. Madoka's words do the rest of the work there, and she looks immediately touched by her concern. "Right. Wouldn't want to be caught off guard." Though she's less worried about a witch, and perhaps moreso about any opportunists that might have come late to the party.

The grief seed that was originally brought out for Sayaka's sake is held next to her hand, where her own gem appears in a verdure flash. A tiny clink as she touches one against the other marks it beginning its task of purifying the green dulled by rippling black into something a a touch more radiant.

<Pose Tracker> Kyouko Sakura [None] has posed.

Kyouko matches Sayaka's gaze with an even look, listening to her criticisms and allowing her to finish without showing visible reaction. Inwardly her irritation is flaring up. The latest in a long and nearly unbroken chain of Sayaka Miki finding every excuse to make her the devil to the Christlike Mami. She doesn't need to put up with this crap, and she wonders, again, why she bothers. When she speaks at the end of it, her voice has a cold quality, but isn't harsh.

"Well I'm sorry you're not happy, Sayaka. We don't always get to live the lives we'd like, and things usually don't go according to plan. It's only Asuka Suzuki's territory as much as she can defend her claim. That's true for my territory, any Puella Magi's territory. Japan's territory, hell, all territory in existence, and not just human beings'!"

She narrows her eyes. "You always act all high and mighty to me because you don't think that I don't have a choice. That I'm just an evil bitch and that's the reason for everything. You don't know me at all, and you definitely don't know the life you've chosen. You haven't been hungry a day in your life, I've been for years and years. When you start to understand what it means to starve, to live on the edge, I bet you're gonna be a lot more understanding to yourself than you are to me. You think we're protectors of people, guardians of truth and justice?"

"I'm sorry but that ain't so. If that's what you wanna be then you should'a joined any of the other troupes of magical girls scurrying around town, because Puella Magi are scavengers or hunters. We can't afford to be anything else. It's my fault Madoka got caught up? You're a Puella Magi, you should'a smelled that labyrinth's stink as well as any of us. You could've just taken her home, and don't tell me you didn't have a choice because I don't see that other friend I hear you saved. You're gonna have to accept the consequences for what you do and what you don't do."

"Grow up."

Her blood's up, and it shows in her cheeks, reddened in a way that quite clearly isn't a blush. As quickly as Sayaka stoked her ire, Madoka soothed it though, and the hardness to her melts away quite quickly as the gentle girl speaks up for her. It compels the spear-fighter to speak up, even though it won't gain her anything to do so. "...don't..don't worry, Madoka. I wasn't about to die. But I didn't wanna risk being..about to about to die. It only takes one bad slip up, one time you're a little slow, a little late. So the smart thing is to fight on your own terms when you can.."

Mami speaks. It seems that her slowly but surely expanding social circle has shrunk how badly she needed Kyouko's friendship. It isn't a question of being alone anymore, and now she has a new kohai, who may turn out less disappointing than her old one. It pains her..but there's no putting that ketchup back in the packet. Only Kyouko could truly heal the rift, and that could only happen if she finds a way back to her old practices, her oldattitudes, her old beliefs about the world. And she just can't see a path to that place. So it is, so it will be. Detente is the best the two could ever reasonably hope for. So she matches her former senpai's gaze, understanding all too well the nuance between her words.

And so she nods in agreement, to everything she says. "Yes." A beat. "Exactly right. As true as people or piranhas, bugs and bears, hippos and hamsters. We do what we need to to best protect our chances of surviving to the next day."

Poor Eri. The girl has no idea how right she'd been, assuming Kyouko's reading her properly. It's a shame to knock her confidence but her reaction helped cement Kyouko's deceit. She may or may not tell the gardener just who scattered these seeds later on, who knows. She speaks to valkyrie's defense though, and it's appreciated. She jerks her head to Kyuubey without looking at it. "Eri-chan, if you want I'll help you pacify the territory while you're getting your feet wet, beat it down to normal levels. I'd be keeping the seeds I earned but I won't take so many that you'll be worse than you will be when things calm down around here."

From the folds of her dress, she produces a grief seed of her own, moderately used. Flicking it up to her chest with her thumb and snatching it out of the air with her other hand, she holds the seed to her breast, little black eels swimming away from her crimson pool. "I wanna fall asleep to the starts tonight, Mami-chan. I think I'll be sleeping out tonight." She smiles tightly to her old friend, a little tighter to her new true blue boo, much warmer to Madoka and to Eri. "See you all when I see you. Congrats on your first turf, Eri. Congrats on your first kill, Sayaka, and for surviving your first day. Definitely isn't guaranteed. I hope the next isn't any less lucky."

She walks away without looking back, not bothering to shed her armor, and very quickly disappears into the shadows of the night.

<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Miki [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.

"Uwai!" Sayaka bounces on her heels, though she's still kneeling. "Did you hear that, Madoka-chan? I'm teamed up with Mami-senpai! It will be perfect! I'll distract everybody and then... Tiro Finale!"

Sayaka lets Madoka temper her anger a little, but it's only been pushed a bit below the surface. Madoka herself is a living reminder of what Sayaka would have lost if the Labyrinth went wrong, so just talking to Sayaka underminds Madoka's case somewhat. Still, she sets her mouth sullenly at Kyouko. Eri steps in again, and again Sayaka feels sympathetic rather than confrontational, though she doesn't agree. "Are you really telling me she was so hurt she couldn't talk to Kyuubey all day? Then she suddenly recovered enough to fight like she did today?" Actually sort of a compliment. "I don't think she'd agree with that."

Kyouko doesn't, but that's really the only thing she says that's disagreeing with Eri. The rest is for her. Despite herself, Sayaka feels punctured, not because she thinks Kyouko's right, but because she once began to want to be more like Kyouko than like Mami. She was so cool, so free. And she still is. Sayaka feels like Kyouko understands her, because of how she's the only person Sayaka knows who lives outside the bubble. But Sayaka hasn't forgotten the convictions she's had since she was old enough to form thoughts about morality.

"If you want me to blame myself for Madoka being in danger," she says tightly, "then you're late. But you're wrong. A home doesn't belong to a person because they defend it. They defend it because it belongs to them. Eri-chan... you didn't get Ueno because you beat us all up, right? You got it because you need a place to live and your friends want you to be happy."

Sayaka grits her teeth as she pushes down on Madoka's shoulder, trying to get up, feeling like she has a bad chip on one of her molars. Even rolling over would have been impossible fairly recently; there's something unusual about this recovery, but Sayaka has no way of knowing that. With a grunt, she sways weakly onto her feet. "That's what we should always be like. Friends, helping each other. Asuka Suzuki... I don't know anything about her other than that she must've had something she wanted so much that she would fight Witches for the rest of her life for it. Isn't that enough, though, to make you feel like you know her a little? Doesn't it make you sad that someone who /wanted/ so badly is dead now?"

Sayaka is pale and haggard from the effort of standing. "Maybe I haven't seen the bad things like you. But I've seen an angel come down and save me when something big and grindy and toothy was going to rip me apart. It felt a little like this did." She lays a hand on her navel, as tenderly as if she were with child, her gloved fingers over the Soul Gem. "Like dying and being reborn better. I want to do that for other girls, and for old people and little kids too, and salarymen and construction workers and anybody that ever needs help! I want them to feel the way I felt. Like the conductor was just beginning." Her thumb strokes the full lunar curve of her Soul Gem, and she smiles secretly.

"That's why I'm going to be different than you," she tells Kyouko. "That's why I'm going to be like Mami-senpai, and protect everyone and be a guardian of truth and justice. Someone who would risk innocent people like you did today..." She shakes her head. "I don't think that's what Kyuubey brought us together to do."

Sayaka feels a chill as Kyouko leaves. It's hard even for Sayaka to believe that Kyouko doesn't know what she's talking about. But it's a lot harder to believe that it's okay to do the wrong thing. Sayaka works her tongue around that broken molar, and shivers in discomfort as she realizes it's worse than she thought. There's a big chunk... she spits it on the ground, away from Madoka, where the thin, stubby cylinder rolls a little, damp.

Oh. It's the end of the pocky stick.