Foreword: This is the start of the multi-chapter story I promised some months ago; I thank you in advance for your support. If you're impatient, the promised barrier exploration begins at the end of this prologue chapter.
Chapter 1: Affinity
Kyouko enjoyed hunting, or at least, that's what she told herself. Was not being unhappy the same as being happy? Did the pleasure derived from leaving the pain justify said pain? "Unlikely," she would have thought, but she didn't have the time nor focus to philosophize in the thick of combat, hence why she sought it out each night. Certainly, she did need the grief seeds, and she always made sure to issue such a statement to each newcomer before she ousted them from Kazamino.
But in reality, she would have been just as glad to fight them as she would any witch.
A grief seed would let her live another day, but another day was just that. The life of a Puella Magi was fleeting, so to Kyouko, temporary peace of mind and the visceral thrill of cleaving flesh were more potent than any magic. The exertion of battle usually left her comfortably drained and ready to indulge in her second vice on the way home. Well, on her way to wherever she was spending the night, if she was to be honest.
Normally, this particular twenty four hour ramen stand would be empty, minus herself, so she was surprised to find a cold-eyed girl in her usual spot that night. It was odd, but it certainly wasn't cause for alarm.
At least until Kyouko saw the girl's ring.
Then she looked up from it to find its owner staring right back.
"Kyouko Sakura."
The ring flashed violet, confirming what Kyouko was already certain of. She leapt back, adrenaline roaring into her veins, ready to transform. Her opponent, by contrast, nearly looked bored: she was still seated, legs crossed elegantly, resting her head in her palm as she gazed at Kyouko through half lidded eyes.
"Cease this, I've come to arrange an alliance," the girl intoned, voice perfectly level.
Kyouko allowed her guard to drop the slightest fraction upon hearing this.
"Yeah? And why would I want that?"
"I am prepared to offer you half of my grief seeds for the next month,"
Kyouko raised an eyebrow, "Not bad, but I'm doin' pretty well for myself, in case you hadn't noticed."
"And all of my territory in Mitakihara."
The offer gave Kyouko pause, "...Seriously?"
But only for a second, "Then afterwards you stab me in the back and retake it, right?"
The dark haired stranger sighed, exasperation momentarily stripping her stoicism, "Mami."
At the utterance of the name a third voice rang out behind them, "She wouldn't do that, Kyouko."
Kyouko knew the voice, its keeper was also that of her greatest regret.
No, my second greatest.
Second only to selling her soul, and by a narrow margin.
Had she not become a magical girl she would never have betrayed Mami. But then again, she never would have met her mentor without the contract. A certain quote about having loved and lost came to mind, but she wasn't entirely sure she agreed with it. Especially now that Mami was looking at her, not with a smile, not with the warmth Kyouko would never admit to missing, but with doubt and a cold melancholy.
This was strictly business, and it hurt more than open hostility ever could.
Mami broke their eye contact after a second more, and Kyouko opened her mouth to say something, anything to the golden magi, but managed only drop her gaze and mutter, "Fine. So what exactly are we joining forces for?"
The dark-haired girl cleared her throat, drawing Kyouko's attention back to her, "Tell me, are you familiar with the term, 'dreadnought witch'?"
The next few weeks were spent training, organizing and strategizing. Teamwork thus far had proven to be the trio's weakest skill. It was difficult for Kyouko to fight alongside someone she couldn't trust, and how could she trust someone she knew nothing about, apart from their name?
If Homura even is her name.
Kyouko was laying on the couch of the girl in question; the bizarre appearance of her home did little to assuage the redhead's suspicions.
Who spends magic decorating?
Homura's house was sparsely furnished and even more sparsely coloured. Circular couches radiated from the center of the room and motionless clockwork hung from the ceiling. The most unsettling feature, however, was the walls. They, along with the floor and ceiling, were a shade of flawless white. Due to the uniform lighting of the home, the borders between the walls were hidden, creating the illusion of a vast, blank expanse. In fact, Kyouko might have assumed the room to be just that, were there not hundreds of images of Walpurgisnacht plastering its edges.
It was a grim reminder of what was at stake; Homura had taken great pains to drill her partners over the magnitude of threat the dreadnought witch posed. Not that Kyouko needed much convincing, she would have been wary of anything dangerous enough to scare Homura.
As if summoned by the thought, the front door flew open to admit the markswoman; Mami brushed passed her a second later, making a concerted effort to avoid eye contact with her former partner.
It was also difficult for Mami to fight alongside someone she couldn't trust. Kyouko didn't blame her, if she was in the gunner's shoes, she wouldn't trust herself either.
Homura didn't close the door, "Kyouko, it's your turn to patrol."
Good, she was in need of a hunt.
"So why are we stopping Pinky from helping?"
Being a Puella Magi was a fate Kyouko wouldn't wish on her worst enemy, but still, if Walpurgis was as strong as Homura made it out to be, wouldn't they need all the assistance they could get?
"Her contract would end poorly for all parties involved."
The, "except Kyuubey," was implicit.
"You don't know that!"
Kyouko could have sworn that Homura looked furious for an instant, but she chalked it up to her imagination.
"Trust my judgement, Kyouko, getting Madoka involved can only complicate matters."
In the name of improving their team combat, the trio entered yet another barrier together.
The interior stretched on as far as the eye could see; they were standing on a broad street in a moonlit city. There were no true buildings, rather, structures borne of crude geometric shapes stretched to the heavens. The archaic-looking streetlights buzzed and flickered; they were all warped, their twisted frames directing a spectrum of lights anywhere but the asphalt. Kyouko stifled a cough, the acrid smell of industry hung heavily in the air.
Then the streetlights began to move.
Iron groaned as the nearest of them turned to blind the trio, while the protective casing of its bulb split into a gaping, shattered glass maw.
Kyouko drew her soul gem and transformed, the familiar weight of the spear settling into her hand. It was a unique sensation, she thought, to be shrouded in, and empowered by one's own soul. It was the realization of her mind in physical form: when her soul was clean the transformation felt powerful and restorative, when it was tainted her magic felt sickly and rebellious.
A series of flashes and clicks behind her signaled that her partners were ready.
The familiars began to tear themselves from the concrete and skitter towards them on limbs of cable and pipe.
Homura sighed, then murmured, "Let's end this quickly."
So the dance began; she vanished as Mami fired the first shot and Kyouko sprang into the fray, plunging her spear through the open mouth of her first opponent and out the back of its head. Homura flickered in and out of sight, decimating swathes of enemies, her expression never changing.
The lancer willfully lost herself in the moment, she parried a blow then responded in kind, relishing the grind of her spear on the iron flesh of the familiar. She vaulted one opponent and fell, point-first into the next; in a burst of magically enhanced strength she swung it, still impaled, into her next assailant.
After a time she wasn't sure how long she had been fighting, but she was certain that she would have already dropped from exhaustion were she still human. Another of the creatures fell to her assault, then another, and another, until she hadn't the vaguest sense of her own body count.
Just the way she liked it.
Soon twisted iron corpses lined the street, lights sparking and flickering as they expired and vanished from the barrier. This coincided with the slow, satisfying burn beginning to develop in her muscles.
A metallic grinding and a hiss were her only warnings before she was struck with a vicious blow from behind. Kyouko was distantly aware of her ribs cracking as she smashed into the pavement, not that they would be enough to slow her down. Ample combat experience told her that leaving an additional opening after being hit was the surest way to get killed; she allowed her magic to dull the pain as she sprang back to her feet, spinning to face the new combatant.
She found it was the last familiar.
Working through the aftershocks of pain, she finished it slowly, allowing to strike first and severing a limb in turn for each of its attacks, before shattering its head against the ground with the flat of her spear.
Kyouko stretched, feeling the wound; it wouldn't amount to anything more than a bruise with her accelerated healing, but it was merely a symptom of a greater problem. Homura and Mami weren't watching her back, and she wasn't watching theirs. They were still fighting as three individuals.
The first of the two in question appeared next to her, while the latter was climbing down from her vantage point on the nearest structure. Once they had regrouped, Mami spoke up, "I sensed it while I was up there. The witch is above us."
There was only one way up; she turned and led the way to the tallest building nearby: a tower which appeared like a cubist sculpture fashioned from candle wax. Mami leapt, slinging a ribbon around a protruding cube above her. She looked back down as she reeled herself in and shouted, "Hold on, I'll bring you up after me!"
If the barrier was a work of art, then so too was she; leaping from foothold to foothold, she possessed an absolute fluidity of motion.
And not a hair out of place, to boot.
Between her and Homura, Kyouko suddenly felt very, very maladroit. She wondered whether it was coincidence that their combat styles and weapons lined up with their personalities so well.
A few moments later two golden ribbons descended from above; as she reached out and touched the nearest one it came alive, snaking down her arm and wrapping it before traveling down her side and around her waist. Homura did likewise a second later.
As she rose, Kyouko closed her eyes; she could nearly convince herself that she was back in the old days with her golden mentor.
Nearly.
She wasn't afraid of heights, well, not enough that it had ever been a problem in barriers, yet here she hung, clutching the ribbon for dear life. What had happened to the absolute trust she used to have in Mami?
That was the wrong question, actually. She knew exactly what had happened, she just wasn't sure of how to make amends.
If such a thing was possible, which she wasn't sure of either.
The vermillion girl opened her eyes as the steady upwards pull slowed; immediately above her, the top of the building plateaued and stretched into a disc, over the edge of which Mami was looking, hands outstretched. She pulled Kyouko and Homura up simultaneously as they reached her; the former held her grip a fraction of a second too long and spoke with an uncharacteristic quiet, "Thanks."
The gunner simply nodded in response, then cleared her throat and said, "The witch is through the ceiling."
Ceiling?
Looking up, Kyouko realized she hadn't been looking at the night sky when they entered. The ceiling was carved of ebony rock, while its stars were holes through which white light poured, and the moon was a minivan sized chunk of limestone embedded a stone's throw away from her.
Mami extended a prehensile ribbon up through a hole directly above the trio and they soundlessly agreed on the same procedure as before. In a moment she was beyond the threshold and pulling the other two up behind her.
Kyouko arrived first this time and took to examining the chamber as Mami focussed on Homura; she was standing on the same black stone of the ceiling, no walls or roof could be seen. More importantly, the source of the light stood some fifty meters away. It was an effigy of a human, burning with an intense and unnaturally pale light.
A sigh echoed across the chamber, soft in texture, like a yawn, but with the volume of a scream; the thing, which Kyouko was now certain was the witch, started to shift. It moved like something awakening for the first time in a millennium, slow, shaking, each joint popping as limbs extended; it took a tentative step, then a stride, growing faster and more confident with each one. Once the distance was half closed it had reached a sprint and she could could make out more of its features, for one, its height. She didn't notice when it was far, but the creature was nearly twice as tall as a human. For another, it wasn't solid, its body was woven out of countless wooden strands, like wicker. The only smooth location was its face, which had no features, only cross-shaped scorch marks where the eyes and mouth should have been.
She brandished her spear, behind her she heard the telltale clicking of Mami's flintlocks.
Then Kyouko nearly jumped out of her skin as a bullet split the air beside her ear on its path towards the witch. While the gunner unload rifle after rifle, the red magi stood rigid, fruitlessly hoping her fear would subside. Then it became tinged with guilt as she realized: she didn't feel safe with Mami at her back. Each register from the blonde's arsenal was meant to kill the witch first, and to protect her friends second. Or perhaps it wasn't, perhaps she just had no friend to protect.
Kyouko preferred not to consider the possibility; she wished she wasn't frozen, that she was ahead engaging the witch so she wouldn't even have the chance to.
Mami's assault stopped as Homura walked to the front of their formation; she flipped her hair over her shoulder then vanished, an instant later she was a few meters away and the witch was engulfed in a barrage of explosions. A wave of heat and light washed over the trio as the witch cried out.
Kyouko rubbed at her eyes as the afterimage faded, like the fragile memories of a dream, to reveal the roof of an apartment back in the real world.
You'd expect a fire witch to handle bombs better.
As if hearing her thoughts, Homura said, "The shockwave is the deadliest part of an explosion."
You don't even need us, how are we supposed to work as a team?
Then she turned, gave a terse excuse to visit the Kaname home and disappeared; it seemed she hadn't read that second thought, funnily enough.
Homura had assured them that Walpurgisnacht would be arriving within the hour, of course, her assurance wasn't actually needed, as Kyouko had never experienced such a powerfully negative energy before. The dreadnought witch hadn't even manifested yet and she already felt like she was in the twisted core of a barrier.
The three of them were standing on an overpass looking east, towards the expected entry location of their opponent.
Its energy could be felt throughout Mitakihara, and not just by magical means; the residents had already been evacuated under the threat of a supposed hurricane. Kyouko could see why they would make such an assumption; she looked up to find clouds covering the sky so thickly and darkly that she could have sworn it was midnight. Heavy intermittent rains had also filled the streets with multiple centimeters of water, while tempestuous winds uprooted trees and tore the shingles from homes.
But at least there was no one stopping her from taking all the food she could carry.
She threw a newly empty pocky-box over her shoulder; she had always known herself to be a stress eater, and the irony of her current situation wasn't lost on her. Whether she robbed to her heart's content or not, it would all be lost in the battle.
First time I could be looting totally guilt free and I'm stuck here.
There was a shift in the air as lightning struck a nearby apartment, it almost felt like an ache in her soul gem. The lighting struck again, and as if guided by the hands of a god it passed the buildings by, instead striking the water pooling in the streets below and begetting a massive cloud of billowing steam. In that instant the rain also began to come down; then, as a southerly wind carried the steam away Kyouko saw a single familiar standing in the street.
It was the silhouette of a girl, cast in green and carrying a trumpet. It raised the instrument to its lips and blew, producing an ugly, trembling brass tone which sent ripples through the remaining water.
To her left Homura stiffened and inhaled sharply; she turned to them, "It's beginning."
The barest waver in her voice told Kyouko all she needed to know.
The ache in her soul gem dulled and expanded into a feeling of suffocation unlike any she had ever felt from a witch. She could see a rift opening in the distance, it looked the a normal barrier, with the exception of its massive size, and the fact that it was rapidly expelling familiars.
A grand and horrific procession began: distorted animals dragging nightmarish attractions, wave upon waves of armed silhouettes, each giggling and cheering in anticipation of the main act.
Kyouko was suddenly struck with both horror and impulse. She turned to Mami and grasped her hand, the girl jolted and looked back, terrified eyes meeting hers for the first time in weeks.
The parade went quiet and turned to look back into the barrier, inside of which a titanic shape could be seen approaching.
"Mami, in case we don't make it out of this..."
Funny, when had she seriously started considering the thought of dying here?
"I know how badly I fucked up back then. I probably don't deserve to be forgiven, or even to fight with you now."
Walpurgis was nearly through by that point, and she began to grip Mami's hand even more tightly, shaking.
What was it her father had always said? "Seek salvation through forgiveness"?
Looking out at the army of familiars, she was suddenly even less sure that they would pull through. She knew that people would throw away their pride in the face of death, but she had never known it to be as freeing as this: she was raw and vulnerable, but finally able purify herself. Mami was the only reason she had kept going after her wish went awry, but even before that, she had been Kyouko's mentor and partner; they had saved each other's lives more often than either could count. They had shared more than a lifetime's worth of experiences. A bond that held strong in the face of genuine magic and overcame what had many times seemed like certain death was nearly more valuable than she could fathom, and no stubborn ego, no impossible ideal was worth losing her most precious. She tried to quell the waver in her voice and hoped the rain would be able to hide her tears, just this once she wanted her dignity back.
"I just- I just want you to know that I never wanted to hurt you! When I betrayed you it was because I just couldn't make our ideals work anymore, I didn't want us to end up killing each other over it later!"
She grew quiet for a moment.
"So that night, when we argued, I decided to take the opportunity then and just get it over with. But goddammit, I never meant to have it end like this! I never wanted to-! I didn't mean for-!"
A single sob broke through as she tried in vain to articulate.
"It wasn't fucking worth it Mami, it wasn't worth it!"
Then she was in Mami's arms, the older girl crying just as hard as she was.
"Kyouko..." Mami's murmured between sobs.
It was hardly a minute, but during it even the dreadnought witch was forgotten.
Then they broke apart and the gunner gave her a long, serious look, "Kyouko, I don't know if I can forgive you, at least not yet. But I want you to know that I never hated you for what happened, not for a second."
"...Thanks Mami."
There was a tremendous wave of mocking laughter as Walpurgisnacht finally crossed into the real world, but with Mami at her back, Kyouko was unafraid.
"Hey, don't die on me out there."
Her companion turned, and for the first time since the day before Kyouko had left, smiled at her.
"I wouldn't dream of it, Kyouko."
The crimson magi cut down another familiar as Homura leveled a building on top of Walpurgis; she had instructed them not to engage it until it had passed through all the prepared explosives caches.
But Kyouko was growing worried, she wasn't sure how much more she and Mami could accomplish when Homura's assault had yet to visibly harm the dreadnought. Even it's familiars were more dangerous than any the lancer had fought before, each one was nimble and skilled, and while she hadn't yet been wounded, she was certain to if she lost focus for even a second.
Hence why she was terrified when the shockwave created by Homura detonating Mitakihara stadium swept her from her feet and threw her into the rubble.
"...Ko!"
"...Youko!"
There was a voice in the distance which she couldn't quite place; her blurred vision was slowly returning, but she was distracted by the most peculiar sensation coming from the back of her skull. It was hot and wet.
She wanted to rest for a short while.
Wait. Wasn't she supposed to be fighting something?
Her eyes flew back open to find a blue, sword wielding silhouette standing over her; she briefly reflected on the fact that it resembled Madoka's friend before it tried to run her through. She rolled to the left, feeling the tip of the blade skim her shoulder as she passed under. She was still in too close quarters to summon her spear.
"Kyouko!"
Then the familiar's head exploded like so many raindrops on the concrete; Mami was across the street holding a still-smoking musket. The two nodded at each other before the gunner was forced to dance away from a fresh wave of the creatures. Kyouko got back on her feet, feeling the bleeding staunch itself, the cracks in her skull however, would take at least a few hours to return to something resembling normal.
She couldn't afford another mistake like that.
She leapt after Mami, calling the familiar spear back into her hands. The two backed down the ruined street together, at the rear, the golden magi reigned waves of musket fire upon the advancing familiars while Kyouko acted as the advance guard, rending those that drew too near. It was entirely different than the last barrier they had fought in, now with Mami at her back she was unshakable, almost like old times. Also unlike the previous barrier, she had lost track of her body count, but not by way of losing herself, rather, the familiars of Walpurgis were so numerous that even the keenest eye wouldn't have been able to track them all. The three of them had been fighting for longer than against any other witch she could remember.
Homura's voice broke into her mind, calm as ever, "It's nearly time, get ready."
Mami cut down another wave of familiars, then the flow slowed for a moment; she and Kyouko backed into an intersection as a wave of explosions sounded nearby, shattering all the remaining windows in the street before them. It was a beautiful sort of destruction, the sparkling glass shards mingled with the rain as they fell.
Walpurgisnacht, still laughing, smashed through the buildings an instant later.
The red magi readied herself; for the first time since the beginning of the battle, their opponent was on the ground. Despite her mastery with the spear, her lack of reliable ranged abilities had become quite the handicap against the dreadnought; the extension of her spear could only do so much.
"Mami, cover me."
The blonde did just that as Kyouko sprinted down the street, vaulting destroyed cars and piles of debris. Familiars approaching from both sides were neatly dispatched by single shots; Mami had increased her economy of ammunition.
How much energy has she used up?
Walpurgis was one building down from Kyouko when she started the attack, imbuing her body with magic and she launching herself two stories into the air, before crashing down, spear first, into the head of the downed witch. The first thing that surprised her was how easily she pulverized it, the second was how the laugher didn't skip a beat.
The monstrosity began to rise again and she leapt away, lest she be taken with it. As it righted itself in the air, the wound she inflicted began to tear further, revealing its skin to be something closer to fabric, with a wire frame beneath.
"Kyouko," Mami's voice broke into her mind, "I think its real body is the gears!"
If that was the case then she could see why their attacks had been so ineffective thus far. A body made from thousands of pounds of solid steel: she could hardly imagine something more durable.
So the lancer wasn't surprised when a tiro finale from Mami failed to stop the laughter.
Or when a wave of explosives from Homura couldn't stop the laughter.
For each blow they inflicted, another wave of familiars descended on them, and each time they survived more narrowly.
A building collapsed on Walpurgis.
Laughter.
It was downed again, and Kyouko jammed her spear into the moving gears; the weapon was devoured without causing the slightest damage.
More laughter.
Homura unloaded the entire stolen munitions of the Yakuza, to no effect.
Except laughter.
But it wasn't until Kyouko tried to create a new spear that she realized how dire the situation was. Her soul gem was a muddy, flickering iron colour. From the look of it, Mami was equally drained. The two of them were standing back to back, barely scraping through each new assault by the familiars.
Behind them, Homura was also losing ground, unable to keep up with offense, defense and the protection of her partners at once.
All the time in the world, but not a second to spare.
She vanished again and again, each time bringing to bear a new, pointless arsenal. Waves of fire and molten lead rocked the surface of the stage-constructing witch, but its play would not be taken off schedule; it laughed even harder as its lone opponent began to run out of ammunition.
She was distracted, desperate and utterly drained when Walpurgis finally struck her down; a rain slicked hand lost its grip on her shield when she needed it most. The world refused to wait for her and a ray of flame sent her body careening through the debris.
"I'm sorry." Was all Kyouko and Mami heard from her.
The two broke formation as they dispatched another wave of familiars, then turned to regard the dreadnought witch. It was beginning to turn upright over Mitakihara.
"Kyouko," the gunner spoke up, "I'm glad to have been given one last opportunity to alongside you."
The two clasped hands for the second time that night.
"Hey Mami, promise me we'll meet again in a better place."
"I promise."
The two regarded the enemies massing before them, both knew they wouldn't be able to win. In a final, defiant gesture, Mami created one more rifle and pointed it at the approaching horde, then-
A shower of bright pink bolts decimated them all.
In front of the pair stepped Madoka, the very same girl Homura had told them to protect, clad in full puella magi garb.
"Mami, Kyouko, don't worry, I'll take it from here."
She turned to the side and nocked an arrow of pure light in her bow then closed her eyes in focus, the ends of her bow folding out as the arrow swelled with energy. More energy than Kyouko had ever felt, more energy than even Walpurgis, in fact.
So she really shouldn't have been surprised when Madoka's arrow tore it's body asunder and parted the clouds over the entire city.
Massive gears and fragments of machinery scattered across Mitakihara, almost replacing the rains as they dissipated, and with that, the battle was over. A black shape, the grief seed, dropped at the end of the block and the three of them slowly closed the distance to it, both crimson and gold leaning heavily on pink for support.
But Homura, climbing out from under the rubble, reached it first.
As the trio approached she kicked the softball-sized seed towards them.
"Madoka Kaname,"
"Homura, I know you said not to-"
"You've made a terrible mistake."
Then she twisted her buckler and faded away, leaving only a scrap of purple fabric and a brief, lingering ticking sound. It took Kyouko a few moments of staring in disbelief to realize that the violet magi was not going to reappear.
"Did she...? I mean, she said she'd give me the territory, but I didn't think it would be like this."
A throb from her soul gem brought her attention back to the present; she and Mami collapsed to their knees in front of the grief seed, hastily pressing their respective gems to it. It was an exquisite sensation, like having one's thirst quenched after a marathon. Plus, she would have been lying to herself if she said that sharing it with her mentor once again didn't make the victory a little sweeter. When they were done Walpurgis' grief seed was hardly tainted.
She noticed Kyuubey watching them from a short distance away.
"Collect later, this seed'll be good for a while."
It tilted its head in response before its voice rang through her mind in the same irritating, vaguely cheery tone it always had, "I am aware of that. I'm simply here to gather data on the strongest witch in history."
"Well you're a bit late, Walpurgis is dead."
"Correct-"
She picked up the seed in both hands, marveling that it was large enough to even warrant that, then passed it to Madoka. The pink girl breathed a sigh of relief as she accepted it. Kyouko was about to give the incubator a snide response when Madoka spoke up again, "It isn't working."
Then Kyuubey continued, "-But Walpurgisnacht was not the strongest witch in history. She is."
...What?
The lancer looked back at the archer; the grief seed was working, but her soul gem was overflowing with corruption more quickly than it could be drained. She was shaking and a cold sweat had broken over her brow.
"W-what's happening to me?!"
Mami too, was both enraptured and horrified, she could nearly see the colour drain from Madoka's face as the gem grew darker, and the blonde was sure that she herself was growing equally pale. Then she noticed something even more distressing: the grief seed was nearly full. The same grief seed which had easily purified both her and Kyouko was nearly full.
Seeing no other choice, she lunged forward, tearing the seed from Madoka's hands and throwing at Kyuubey. She realized that the other girl didn't know the consequences of filling a grief seed; from Madoka's perspective it must have looked like a betrayal of the highest order.
"Mami...!"
She broke into strangled cry of pain and collapsed, clutching at her chest.
For the first instance in what felt like a lifetime, Kyouko was utterly at a loss.
She's about to die in in front of me. She's going to die and I just have to stand here and watch.
"Kyuubey!" she snarled, "What the fuck is happening to her?"
The white creature was nowhere to be seen, but she could still hear it, "Madoka Kaname is merely fulfilling her duty to the universe by completing her metamorphosis into a witch."
Her mind ground to a halt for a moment, "Wait! What do you mean by-"
"Now, if you wish to prolong your lives for a few more days, I would suggest fleeing the area."
The mental contact cut off as Madoka screamed again; the vermillion girl spun to face her once more. She was lying on the concrete, shivering, sweating, her eyes terrified and unseeing. She was whispering something over and over, after a few seconds at the edges of Kyouko's hearing, she made out the words, "Help me."
There was a new energy building, even larger than that she had felt before the battle. No, larger didn't encompass it; Walpurgis was a single drop of pure rain compared to the blackened ocean she was sensing now. It grew and grew until-
Madoka fell silent. The storm clouds had been drawn back over Mitakihara , and when the first droplet fell, it landed on her soul gem, shattering the surface and leaving behind the black shell of a grief seed.
For a second, the world fell silent alongside her.
The quiet was broken by a deafening wail as the seed issued forth a wall of smoke. As it rose it resolved itself first into ribbons, then into a towering eldritch figure as they tied to one another.
Its skin was innumerable dazzling ebony shards, catching the light in a manner both angelic and terrifying as it rose to blot out the sun.
It cried ever louder for the suffering of the world it was born into; Kyouko felt fresh blood running down her neck as her eardrums ruptured.
Then the witch reigned in its tears and prepared to deliver a twisted salvation; as the area around it was drained of energy, the hard rains became a shroud of snow.
The red magi had dropped her spear, it was useless anyway.
As the grand witch birthed a new realm for the souls of Earth, Kyouko couldn't help but think it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
It was cold.
But she was pleasantly numb.
She just wished that bothersome sound would stop.
One of her eardrums finished sealing up and she recognized the sound as the wind.
Wind?
She shook off the dusting of snow building up on her skin and looked around. She wasn't supposed to be alive, or at least, she didn't think so. But here she was, sitting on the ground against a grey wrought-iron gate. It was chained closed from the ground all the way to-
The top vanished into the clouds. Well, It was too tall and sheer to consider climbing over, at least. Additionally, on either side it spread into a fence, equally tall and traveling as far as the eye could see.
The only way was forward; but such was life, she supposed.
Before her lay a path into a forest of dead trees.
She could feel that familiarly oppressive energy from a distant point up ahead; she was inside the barrier.
Kyouko decided that for now, she would keep living.
