Chapter 12: Infinitesimal
Homura's footsteps left deep indents in the thickening layers of snow, but her trail was quickly enveloped by the storm, as if the world were attempting to erase her from existence.
The winds were now ridiculously strong, and Homura opted to stall returning to her magical form and instead remained human, drawing her sparse coat around her person with a deep shiver. Cold streaks of flying ice slipped past her cheek, rubbing the soft flesh there raw with their speed. She couldn't see more than fifty yards in front of her, and the tails of her coat flapped wildly behind her like it had become the demons she was currently failing to locate.
Taking another few steps in a totally random direction, Homura noticed that she was the only one out on the street. Well, that much made sense. No one was stupid enough to struggle through a blizzard that they had been warned about properly in advance.
Well, except her, it seemed.
Homura huffed, the sound getting quickly swept away by the storm as she tucked her chin into her collar and forged onwards. Regardless of the conditions, she refused to return to the promising warmth of the hospital behind her. That would be one too many strokes on her pride. She was going to find a demon before the sun rose if it killed her.
Kyouko's such an idiot, She thought as she slowly made her way across the street before leaping atop the adjacent building. She almost immediately had to raise a hand to shield her face. The winds were even stronger up here. Can't she see that I'm just worried? It's not as if I enjoy doing this all the time...
But that was the impression she had given off, if the redhead's words were to be given any credit. And now they were on bad terms again, mere hours after making up. Breathing in shallowly, Homura narrowed her eyes and scanned the city sprawling out before her. She didn't know where to start. Having another person with usually made the work go so much faster.
They had already searched high and low wherever they could think to look, and she was running out of ideas. Every nook, every cranny of the city above the surface, every shadow and every cemetery they could find on a map. Homura shook her head and leapt back down to the street below her, deciding that she needed a higher vantage point. Just where had the demons gone?
Even as she tried her best to focus on the task at hand, half of Homura's mind remained on the girl who was probably sitting stubbornly under the cold lights of Mitakihara General. She knew that their argument had been over something petty, but the emotions behind it had been something else entirely. She had assumed that talking with Kyouko about the lake incident would ease their troubles, but the conversation had only served to place more stress on her mind. It didn't make any sense. She had dealt with the problem; why wasn't it abating?
It occurred to her that perhaps she was dealing with the problem incorrectly, but she pushed the thought away.
And why was Kyouko as frustrated as she was? She didn't understand that part either.
Homura growled to herself and shoved her hands into her pockets to keep her coattails from ballooning out behind her. She wasn't comprehending much of anything lately. It really irked her. Homura had used to be much better at handling adversity, but those had been strictly contained to combat situations, and as a result she was poorly versed in the mine field that was a friendship, and a friendship with Kyouko no less. Those were never easy. In fact, they were exceedingly difficult. So difficult that it made her want to open up a manhole and crawl into the sew-
The deep moan of the winds howling around her ears was the only audio for a while as Homura stopped in her tracks, her eyes going wide as something dire finally entered the depths of her mind. Looking down along the narrow alley she was trotting through, her violet eyes made out the thin outline of a chrome plated manhole, just barely sticking out over the thick coating of white.
Feeling her heart quicken, she pulled her hands out of her pockets and ran over to the metal circle, skidding to a stop just inches before it as she got down on one knee for closer examination.
The sewers. Of course! That had to be the answer. It was the one place they hadn't looked yet, because it had failed to occur to either of them. It was also the perfect setting for demon gatherings; dark, dank, and in this special case, mostly devoid of people. Ideal for stealth. God, why hadn't this made itself apparent to her earlier?
Crouching under the crushing pressure of the winds, Homura dug her fingers under the hefty rim of the manhole when another thought occurred to her.
The demons had been missing for weeks by now. If logic followed and the entire lot of them were waiting for her at the bottom of this hole, it probably wasn't the greatest of ideas to dive in without backup. But it wouldn't do to sit back and wait. She had to act now, before the situation changed again. She needed help.
The frozen edge of the disc was starting to burn her fingers, so she let it drop. Standing back up, Homura closed her eyes and expanded her consciousness. Her first instinct was to call for Kyouko, but she soon shied away from that idea. After mulling for a moment, she called on her only other option.
[Kyubey!] She mentally shouted, hoping the alien was within range. [I need you here, now. I think I may have found the demons.]
Thankfully, there was a reply. [I hear you, Homura. I'm on my way. Where did you find them?]
She paused. [I haven't exactly found them yet. But I have a hunch. The sewers.]
[Ah. I suspected as much.]
[What? Why didn't you say anything then?]
[I was busy. And you were less than cooperative at the time.]
Homura took a moment to think back to when she might have been angry with the furry alien, but realized that there were too many instances to count. Meaning that there was a good chance that Kyubey had tried to tell her, but she had blown him off. Maybe even more than once.
She stood and waited in the middle of the street, drawing her coat as close as magically possible as she wavered like a stick in the grip of the wind. Thankfully, Kyubey emerged from a nearby alley soon enough and joined her by the manhole.
[Down here?] He asked, circling the metal circle carefully.
"Should be," Homura murmured, lifting the cover and rolling it over to expose the entrance to the sewers. A thin waft of the rotten rose up to meet her nostrils. She blanched at the scent.
[You're going down there alone?] Kyubey asked her when she slipped her legs into the hole and made as if to drop down. [We should call Kyouko for backup while we still can. We don't know what's down there.]
"No, don't," Homura interrupted angrily. "I can handle this on my own."
With that said, she slackened her grip and shot down the length of the ladder, straight into the fathomless depths below.
Kyubey lashed his tail and followed suit.
[If you insist.]
Kyouko felt the annoyed glare of the receptionist burning into her back, but she ignored it.
She was currently pacing back and forth across the floor of the lobby, hands clasped irritably behind her as her feet covered ground. She had been waiting like this for several minutes now, and a glance at the clock told her that it had been half on hour since Homura had gone running out into the storm.
During that time, the tempest had significantly worsened. The frigid turbulence was howling outside the thin windows of the hospital, making the shutters rattle ominously as the glass they rested on vibrated under the pressure. The man in the television mounted on the wall was telling everyone to not leave their homes because of the dangerous conditions.
Yeah, Homura was out in the middle of that. The girl really was a stubborn idiot.
Exhaling loudly through her nostrils, Kyouko spun on her heel and strode past the front desk, heading down the length of the first hallway.
"Oh, come off it, I'm just going to the bathroom," She snapped when the receptionist eyed her suspiciously.
She wasn't exactly lying. She did go and use the bathroom, because being pissed off always put undue stress on her bladder (no pun intended), but sue her for adding a small detour to her trip back. Taking a different route on her return to her lobby, Kyouko navigated the halls until she was standing at the end of Mami's row, walking slowly forwards until she could quietly post up against the cold door with her ear pressed forward, listening intently.
She couldn't make anything out at first. Straining, Kyouko tried to pick up the last snatches of a conversation.
"...never met before..?"
"...If we...wouldn't...remember...ever mind."
Then next thing she made out was the sound of footsteps clicking towards her, and her swore under her breath when she realized that she had fucked up. She hadn't expected the visitor to leave at that precise moment.
The door was pushed open from the other side, and Kyouko was send falling backwards by the impact, landing on her rear end as the opener of said door took a step forward only to have her foot collide against a certain redhead.
Looking up, Kyouko's eyes widened when she realized who the mysterious visitor was. Or...maybe she didn't? Either way, the tall, blonde girl standing before her looked awfully familiar.
"You-" She began to say, but the stranger quickly shushed her.
"Who is that?" She heard Mami call out from inside the room, sounding confused. "Another visitor?"
"No, no," The stranger said back over her shoulder, turning to block Kyouko from further few. "I just dropped something. Goodbye, Mami Tomoe."
"But you weren't carrying anyth-"
The door slammed shut.
Kyouko took the opportunity to scramble to her feet and dust herself off, grumbling to herself at having been saved by the person she had just been spying on. Taking a few steps back, she looked up again to find her person of interest smiling bemusedly at her. Probably.
"So," The girl said, in a voice that could have been anyone's. "You're the infamous Kyouko Sakura. I've heard many things about you."
"Uh," Was the only thing that came out of the redhead's mouth at the moment, still feeling a little flustered.
The stranger most likely smiled then. "I guess this isn't the best place for an introduction. Let's go somewhere else, and then we can talk."
Kyouko gingerly handled the steaming cup of coffee that had been handed to her only moments prior. Raising her head, she observed the mysterious visitor ordering her own cup at the small cafe that operated at all hours, making small talk with the lone cashier. She wondered how she had gotten herself into this situation.
The two of them were sitting in another section of the hospital that she hadn't been to before, occupied by nothing but the cafe bar and a smattering of tables and chairs. The chairs were plastic, and it hurt her already bruised ass to sit in them, but she wasn't about to complain when she had so much to be sorry for. And so many questions to ask. She would have to be careful about those.
As the stranger finished her order and made her way back to their table, the redhead stooped and took a sip of the coffee. Artificial brew. It was obvious in the taste and composition. She smacked her lips.
It still tasted better than her own, though.
"Sorry I took so long," The taller girl apologized as she set her own drink down on the table and took her seat. "Got caught up in conversation."
Kyouko could only nod imperceptibly, unsure of how she was meant to conduct herself.
The stranger smiled at her again. The redhead felt oddly small around her, and it wasn't just because of the height. "Looks like we got off on the wrong foot, although it seems we have met before...would you mind telling me your name?"
"Kyouko Sakura. Yours?"
Another smile. There were always lots of those. "Saki."
"Saki...?" Kyouko repeated, drawing out the final syllable in a way that ventured the divulging of a surname.
The girl placed elegant fingers on the table. "Just Saki."
"Oh."
The stranger nodded, and took a sip. "So, Sakura-san, I would imagine that you have many questions to ask me."
Hell yeah she did. First of all, who the hell was this girl? How did she know Mami? Did Mami know her? Was she family? Friend? Foe? Just an acquaintance? Where had she been all this time? Scratch that, why was she here now? Why was this girl so damn mysterious? Why did that remind her so much of Homura? Why did that piss her off so much?
Blinking and realizing that she had gone off on a tangent again, Kyouko tried to get back on track. "Erm, well..." She stirred at her coffee with her wrist, but only managed to stain her sleeve brown. "How...how do you know Mami?"
"I'm family," Saki replied calmly, meeting Kyouko's eyes with her own colorless ones.
Kyouko frowned. "Excuse me for saying this, but Mami doesn't have family. Or she did, but they're all dead now."
"I'm sure that's what she told you. But I'm saying that is not really the case."
Kyouko pursed her lips and glanced down the hallway they had just come from. "Did you tell her that? That you were family, I mean."
Saki took another sip from her coffee. "No. It would have given her undue stress. I just wanted to check up on her."
"Oh," The redhead replied unduly, leaning back and accepting the explanation before realizing that it actually made very little sense. Distance cousins or estranged aunts didn't just drop out of the sky at the most random of times. Well, actually they did, but this wasn't some goddamn anime. This girl had to be here for a reason.
Kyouko raised her cup and eyed Saki over the rim. "What...kind of family did you say you were, again?"
Saki seemed to give the inquiry some actual thought. "It's complicated," She finally said, setting her drink down. "But let's hope that I turn out to be the good kind of family. Are you a friend of hers?"
"...Yes," The spear wielder replied after a moment's hesitation. She didn't know if that title belonged to her anymore, but it was easier to agree than to try and explain her whole situation.
Besides, she didn't see the point in explaining herself when Saki was obviously hiding something as well.
The older blonde closed her eyes as if to focus her mental energies on the coffee. "Close friends...Mami was never the type. Well, I suppose time changes people. Mami will need people by her side to get her through this."
Kyouko narrowed her eyes at Saki over the table, chewing on the inside of her mouth as discreetly as possible. She didn't like this. Some part of her thought that this girl was lying about being family, and it was only the fact that she didn't know for sure that kept her from outright accusing Saki of deceit. Still, she found herself irritated, as if she had been cheated somehow, like a rug she hadn't been aware of had been pulled out from under her feet.
The redhead set her cup down on the table a little too forcefully, spilling several drops of cocoa liquid over the surface. The movement and sharp sound drew Saki's attention, as she watched her intently.
"If you really are family," Kyouko drew out, knowing that her hostility would feel sudden but not caring, "Why are you only here now? What about a month ago? What about years ago? If you knew about Mami, and how alone she was, why did you wait until she was hospitalized to come check on her?"
Saki pursed her lips. "I have my reasons. Don't be so angry."
"I have my own reasons to be angry," Kyouko growled, squeezing the cup between her fingers and feeling it give a little. "I've had her back for years. How could you leave her alone for this long if you knew about her?"
"It's not as if I'm her sister or anything," Saki hissed back, suddenly pausing when she apparently realized that she had given away something about herself. Shaking her head, the girl said, "Things happened...circumstances made it impossible for me to contact her. I won't go into detail about any of that, not just yet."
Kyouko bared her teeth. "But you're family."
Saki's eyes narrowed, and suddenly her shrewdness was made clear as day, despite the shroud around the rest of her face. "I know that. But family isn't the solution to every problem. You, of all people, should know that."
The redhead's veins ran cold at those words, and the inside of her mouth went dry. Parting her lips, she tried to say something back in response, but failed and closed her mouth again instead. Those words. What was Saki implying? Could she...no. Impossible. This girl couldn't know of her past. But what else could there be, then?
Opening her mouth a second time, Kyouko finally managed to croak out, "What...just what are you trying to say?"
Saki closed her eyes. "Nothing. Just an inference."
Kyouko's nails scratched quietly at the edge of the table. There were too many unknown variables to keep track of. Reaching out with her consciousness, she tried to find any traces of magic and uncovered none. "If you can't tell me anything..." She trailed off, head whirling. "If you can't even tell Mami anything, then why did you come? If it was so difficult to see her until now, why even bother? If she doesn't even know who you are..."
Saki smiled, humorlessly. "She did know me, once. But that's different now."
"Maybe she would still remember you if you'd been there for her."
"Mighty words," Saki replied, staring down at her coffee. She spoke without anger and without emotion, making Kyouko feel like she was the one instigating the hostility around them. "Don't you have someone you should be with right now? Someone just as important as Mami?"
There it was again, that uncanny awareness of the situation. But it was said almost regretfully, like Saki didn't want to know what she did. It made Kyouko realize that the older girl didn't want to argue with her, but circumstances had somehow made it inevitable.
"How do you know about that?" Kyouko asked softly, not exactly expecting a straight answer.
Saki straightened up, and met her eyes. "I'm a very good listener," She said simply. "And very good at not being noticed."
For a moment then, the fog seemed to clear around her face, revealing the contours beneath with startling clarity. Kyouko saw a beautiful face, pale blonde hair pulled back, deep molten eyes, and a strange maturity in them. It was a face the redhead vaguely recognized. It was like the face of Mami Tomoe.
She really was family.
She blinked, and the fog was back, blocking her vision. Kyouko bit her lip as she waited for her mind to catch up, briefly realizing that where there had been none before, she could now feel magic infusing the air around them.
"I'd suggest that you go after her," Saki continued, the coffees now forgotten between them. "I waited two years; for you, it's only been two hours. Go now, before you're too late.
"Like I almost was," She added after a moment.
It was strange. The blizzard was supposed to be outside, but Kyouko felt the winter cold inside her chest, chilling her to the bone.
"Who are you?" She muttered, half to herself.
Saki smiled, and this time there was humor. "Someone you can trust. Now go."
Kyouko stared back at the mysterious blonde for a moment longer, then slipped out of her chair and ran out the door, pulling on her jacket as she went.
[I don't like this,] Kyubey voiced.
"Shush," Homura murmured as her footsteps clicked ominously against the aged chrome plating of the platform she walked upon. She tried not to think of how rare it was for the alien to express his own opinion on something.
Meanwhile, she also tried to focus on something else besides the smell. Mitakihara was, for all intents and purposes, a city of the future, but this term apparently did not apply from keeping trash from reeking. They had improved on everything else concerning sewage system, including the strength of the infrastructure and even distribution, but the endless tunnel stretching out before Homura still felt very much like a traditional sewer, dark and dank.
She forged onwards, holding the hand that contained her Soul Gem before her as the jewel glowed softly and lighted her way. A slow stream of water, pure or not she could not tell, flowed steadily beside her, only a thin metal railing separating her from a twenty foot fall. She followed the river of trash wherever it was going, making sure not to lose direction lest she become lost.
As she walked, she considered possibilities within her mind. Assuming the demons really had been holed up in here all this time, she had to be prepared to fight some enemies. Probably a lot of them. She would be unable to use her wings effectively within the tight confines of the sewers, and it was too dark to use her bow without increasing the chances of her missing more often than usual. That meant her guns and her time magic were her only viable weapons, but it had been so long since her last Grief Seed that she knew without checking that she was incredibly low on power.
The more she thought about it, the more her logical side was telling her to turn around and get Kyouko to help her out, but she repeatedly pushed the notion away.
Her footsteps ceased momentarily when she came to a crossroads. The walkway she was on split away to the left and disappeared into the encroaching blackness, and to her right, a fathomless set of steel stairs let down into the deeper levels of the sewers, further into oblivion.
After a moment's consideration, she took the stairs.
The weak illumination from her hand fell upon the walls once she descended, and Homura knew immediately that this section of the sewers was older. It wasn't exactly stone, but the designs were more rusted and twentieth-century. A haphazard array of wires crawled along the ceiling, following the manmade river of sewage still making its way into the earth. She paused for a moment, realizing that she had come this far running purely on instinct, then resumed her progress. She had nothing else to go on.
[There are only exits to the surface on the first level of the sewers,] Kyubey said as they walked. [The deeper we go, the further we are from a possibly needed escape.]
"Who said we'll need to escape?" Homura murmured back, but there was little conviction in her words. The sound still echoed off the uncaring walls and came back to attack her ears, ringing more largely than they were in the darkness.
[Nobody did. I am simply reminding you.]
After several minutes had passed, Homura found another set of stairs also leading down. She hesitated a little longer this time before descending. Her shoes clicked more soundly against the floor and she knew without having to look up that she had reached the third and final level of the sewers. The entire structure around her was a warped mixture of stone and metal, dating back many, many decades. These tunnels were old, and had received the least attention from the city during remodeling.
With the suffocating darkness crowding around her, she felt like an enormous hand were pulling her back in time, back to the inevitable beginning of the universe where she would no longer exist.
She took a moment and approached the crumbling railing to her left, and peeked down at the black river rushing by far below her. She wondered how far it ran. She didn't want to find out.
Exhaling slowly, Homura turned to continue her search when she felt it.
Freezing, the time traveler closed her eyes and refocused. There...yes, there. Faint, almost unnoticeable if she wasn't looking for it, but it was the unmistakable trace of despair. There were demons nearby.
Spinning on her heel, Homura quietly activated her shield and drew a handful of grenades before half jogging down the length of the stone tunnel, Kyubey following on foot this time. The moisture-slick walls twisted past her as she made her way deeper and deeper into the sewers, following the thickening path of despair that she knew would lead her to her prey.
Despite the new lead, it still took her another ten minutes of walking to pinpoint a specific location. Breathing shallowly out of her nose, Homura stalked her way through a completely different section of the river, her sense of direction by now thrown considerably far off. But she could worry about that later.
Narrowing her eyes against the faint light, she crossed a bridge extending over the river of garbage and approached a solid steel door set into the wall. Bending down and holding her hand up to a corroded plaque screwed in by the handle, she read its contents. Storage and maintenance base.
Standing back up, Homura faced the door warily. This was it. The smell of despair wreathing through the air was so thick that it was rivaling the stench of the sewage rushing by twenty feet beneath her. If there really were demons left in Mitakihara, they were here.
Drawing in a deep breath, she kicked the door open.
What revealed itself to her on the other side made her soul pale.
Oh, she had found the demons all right.
All of them.
As she stood and watched in horror, the literal hive of demons huddled together in the massive cavern of the storage room shifted at the new disturbance, awakening slowly but surely. Her eyes skimmed frantically over the sea of white backs and shrouded faces. There had to be at least two, no, three hundred, perhaps even more. And Homura knew that this couldn't be all. That was just how many she could see.
Her eyes traveled beyond the demons, further into the caverns, and broke out into cold sweat when she realized that the hive continued for dozens of yards, each square inch covered with a manifestation of despair, packed so thick that it looked more like a single entity than a coalition of lesser beings.
And somewhere, hidden among this writhing mass, was the demon anomaly.
The demon slumbering closest to her foot snapped its empty eye socket open, immediately zeroing in on her.
Stumbling backwards, Homura's hand instinctively flew to her shield, and time ground to a halt around her.
Grabbing hold of the doorframe to steady herself, her mind went into overdrive as she frantically tried to deduce her next move. Glancing down at her arm, she saw that she had only had ten minutes of time-stop remaining. Ten minutes and counting. Opening a storage portal and taking a self-inventory, she almost swore when she saw that she only had a few firearms and a meager array of explosives at her disposal. She was severely unprepared. A fool. She was a blasted fool!
Looking back at the mess of demons frozen in space before her, she shivered when she inadvertently made eye contact with the one that had noticed her, its vacant eyes still fixed on her face. The painful truth had occurred to her that there was nothing she could do. To have come so far, but alone and unprepared. She had nowhere near enough resources and power to take on every demon in Mitakihara alone, and experience could only close the gap so much.
She bit her lip. It wasn't as if the demons were still unaware of her presence, either. She had, among her many other follies, failed to remember that the presence of a magical girl agitated demons more than anything. There was a reason why they targeted girls over regular civilians in battle. Just one more mistake among many.
Meaning there was only one thing she could do.
Homura backed out of the storage room and ran for her life.
The angry storm outside had turned into a full-fledged blizzard.
Kyouko had no idea what might have cause the tempest to worsen at such an unpredictable rate. Meteorologists had solved the problem of inaccurate forecasts years ago, and weathermen hadn't been wrong for years at this point. So it was perfectly reasonable that when she stepped outside the protective doors of the hospital, she was more than a little surprised to walk into a wall of ice.
Narrowing her eyes against the cutting storm-winds tearing at her jacket, she drew her clothes around her and employed a little magic to keep herself from freezing to death while she was out here. Standing still on the curb and expanding her magical radius, she tried to detect traces of Homura's movements. She picked up on the girl's trail almost immediately and began following it, battling her way through the blizzard.
The redhead gritted her teeth when the wind tore away her hairband and sent her crimson locks flying everywhere, shivering when the cold found its way to her now unprotected scalp. Everything beyond three feet of her was hidden behind an impenetrable veil of white, and as she walked the circle of clarity moved with her. She would have created a shield to block out the storm, but she was low enough on magic as it was. She couldn't afford to be frivolous.
Her conversation with Saki ran through her head for the fiftieth time. She had long since given up on solving the mysteries surrounding the blonde, but the surreality of their conversation was still galloping through her progressively frigid mind. She had somehow known about Homura, and their argument. She had known everything. Even about her family.
She was never going to figure out that part on her own. But Saki was right, she knew. Kyouko was still stinging from the fight that had occurred only hours earlier, and she didn't know if she was ready to admit fault or not. But she did know that Homura might be lost somewhere in the middle of a goddamn blizzard, and hell if she was going to let her friend freeze to death without someone to die with her.
Well, she was over thinking it. Homura had enough magic left to keep herself alive, of course. Anyways, she had to focus on finding the damn girl.
Shielding her face from the howling whiteout, Kyouko followed Homura's trail to the foot of a building, where it suddenly vanished. Momentarily confused, she cast about, straining to make out details past the walls of ivory around her. There were only the outlines of a few cars and a manhole. No traces.
Cursing under her breath, Kyouko was about to backtrack and try to rediscover the trail when something landed on her shoulder.
Reacting on instinct, she twisted around and tried to punch the foreign object off her person, but the alien riding her shoulders simply evaded the move.
[Calm down,] Kyubey scolded her. [We don't have time. Homura's in trouble.]
Kyouko froze and said something back, but her words were snatched away by the wind, so she switched to telepathy. [Kyubey! Homura? Where is she?]
[This way.]
The alien leapt down to the ground and began leading her down the street. Kyouko had to run to keep up, because Kyubey's fur coat made him virtually invisible unless she kept a close proximity. Eventually she settled on keeping her eyes fixed on the purple insignia burned into his back, bobbing before her like a beckoning specter of winter.
She thought about Saki again, and realized that finally, Mami might have found someone else to stand by her side. It made her feel like she had truly lost the blonde she had spent so much time fighting for. She couldn't repeat that mistake. Whatever happened, she couldn't lose Homura.
Or she'd have nothing left.
Homura's footsteps were clicking across the floor again, but this time they fell much faster.
Thick wreathes of miasma developing low against the ground whispered their way apart when Homura broke through them, thrown away by sheer momentum as the girl sprinted at as quick a clip as she could without burning out her muscles with magical overload. The aged walls sped past her as she fled, blurring together into one cohesive tale of escape, the need for freedom, the story of someone who dreaded death but had encountered it.
One more mistake of hers. She was deep, deep within the labyrinth of the sewers, and she didn't know if ten minutes would be long enough for her to get the hell out of here before the demons started coming for her soul. Even as she ran, Homura had to laugh at herself. Labyrinths. She was stuck in another one, even in this universe.
Her heels struck the first flight of stairs with a dull clang, and a moment later she was running through the second level. The river was still beside her now, frozen in time with its perpetual stench. At least it didn't smell like anything when it was taken out of time.
Opening several storage portals, she reached in and clutched at random pieces of equipment, tossing whatever her hand came into contact with behind her and littering her path with a myriad of explosives and automatic traps. She was going to run out of time after all. Measures had to be taken to slow the enemy.
As she crashed up the second set of steps, she swung her arm up and checked her shield.
Two minutes.
She was surely lost, but only vaguely. By taking the stairs she had managed to return to the level closest to the surface, but there was no way for her to tell which path would lead her back to the manhole she had entered through. She would have to leave through another one, then. Homura really didn't care. As long as she could get out. The walls were back to chrome plating now, and her footsteps echoed in a more metallic manner, as if the city were slowly welcoming her back into its fold. She kept setting traps.
Homura was still two hundred yards from the nearest exit when she felt the timer on her shield click, the sound ringing in her ears like the death call of a greedy siren. Almost immediately color washed back into what had been black and white, and the river of garbage began roaring forward again. The feeling in the air changed, too. She didn't have to look, because she could sense the despair thickening as literal thousands of demons awakened from their slumber, groaning and clawing and climbing up over each other, starved of souls for so long and hungry as they crashed through the tunnels and came after her-
She heard a deep rumble below her, and knew that her first wave of traps had been triggered. She grunted in her sprint. They were moving more quickly than expected. She pushed herself to run faster, heels sparking with crudely distributed magic and sending purple shadows leaping across the walls like banshees.
Another rumble, closer and more profound this time. The second level of traps. It had occurred to Homura while setting them that the explosions might cause an entire section of the city to fall into a sinkhole, but she hardly had to time to worry about that when she was literally running for her life. The explosions stopped, and Homura knew that all of her precautionary measures had been exhausted. Now nothing stood between her and a wave of death. All that mattered now was how fast she could run.
She was a hundred yards from the nearest manhole when she felt the demons emerge onto the same level as her. Falling into the trap of yet another mistake, Homura made the poor judgement of looking back, giving into the morbid curiosity which drove her to do so.
She immediately wished she hadn't. A flood of sick-looking white monsters was swamping down the length of the tunnel towards her, spilling over the railing due to their sheer numbers and falling down into the pit where the river ran, but even that space was quickly choked to fullness as more and more demons added to the congestion. There must have been more, many more, hundreds of thousands more crowded on the levels below, and it was only the narrowness of the tunnels that had kept them from all catching up so far.
Homura almost cried in relief when she saw a small pillar of light streaming down from the manhole. Digging her heels into the walkway, she used her momentum to leap high into the air, summoning her wings for a brief second for that extra bit of altitude as she lashed out with one arm and grabbed onto the last rung of the ladder that led to the surface, to freedom, to salvation.
The ladder was rusted through and peeling, cutting into Homura's palms as she gritted her teeth and hauled herself up with her upper body strength alone, ignoring the sharp stabs of pain lancing down her wrists. She finally rose high enough to get one of her toes on the rungs, and she all but lunged her way up the ladder, gasping with watering eyes as the stench threatened to smother her before she pushed forward and felt her fingers graze against the manhole-
Then out of the blackness and into the whiteness, as Homura's head emerged only to be engulfed by the force of a massive snowstorm.
The change in her environment was so sudden that it tore her breath away, and she actually slumped over the edge of the hole for a moment as she gasped to recover her stamina. Then the adaptive part of her that had kept her alive all these years kicked in, and she hauled herself onto the surface and kicked the manhole back in place, before quickly placing several raw magical barriers over the circle of metal.
They wouldn't hold long. Two more minutes, if she was lucky.
Homura jumped when she heard something crash against the underside of the manhole, and the chrome disc began rattling violently in its place, held back only by the purple strings of magic she had placed over it. Motivated by this sound, Homura bowed her head and sprinted away from the street, not caring which direction she went in as long as it was away.
Her footsteps crunched now rather than clicking as the time traveler struggled blindly through the snow, her thin frame swaying precariously in the wind. She couldn't see two inches in front of her blasted face. The tempest cut straight through her depleted magical armor and struck her straight on the bones, dropping her body temperature to extreme lows almost immediately. Homura tried her best to keep on running, knowing that it would keep her from contracting hypothermia, or something much deadlier.
She didn't get very far before the demons broke through her bonds. A little mental snap told her that her defenses had been shattered, and Homura turned to see the faint outline of a manhole flying away, flung over the top of buildings by the force exerted upon it.
Under that, a growing column of demons, swirling in a vortex like they always did. Their numbers were staggering, even as she watched from this distance; there were already more than there were the night Kiku had died, and there were more coming. Many, many more.
Panic finally began to set in as Homura continued to run without direction. She was essentially out of any sort of magic now, short of healing any possible injuries, and it would be several minutes before she had the energy necessary to stop time again. Her bow was an accuracy weapon, useless against hordes like this. Her firearms were too weak and too few. The winds were too strong for her to fly.
She had so many tools, and all of them were useless to her.
Homura slowed to a jittering walk as her muscles finally gave out, unable to operate after all the magic she had run through them to get this far so quickly. Her legs were burned out. Gasping for breath as she fell to her knees and the snow swallowed her up to her hips, she wondered how so many things could have gone wrong in such quick succession. Only two hours ago she was combing the city to find just one demon, and now here she was fleeing like hell from a hundred thousand of them. It was borderline ridiculous.
Rising from the drift, she tried to take a few steps, but it felt like her knees had been replaced by gelatin, and she collapsed back into the snow. Homura swore and punched the powdery crystals in frustration. She hadn't meant for things to turn out this way. She had just wanted to show Kyouko...she just wanted...for her...
Closing her eyes, Homura wished at that moment that she wasn't so alone, in a world that had turned its back on her.
Kyouko! Kyouko!
But of course, there was no answer.
There had to be something supernatural about this storm.
Kyouko's legs felt numb and detached from her person as she trudged through the piles of snow standing in her path. She was fully transformed into magical girl garb by now, and though her crimson coat helped to raise her body temperature it still left her calves unprotected. Kyubey, noticing that she had slowed down, reduced his own pace so that they wouldn't lose each other.
It didn't add up. Massive blizzards didn't just roll into heavily populated areas out of nowhere. Something was causing this. Based on the context of her search at the moment, she could only assume that it had something to do with the demons. Maybe Homura had found them after all.
The redhead looked up with narrowed eyes again, only to notice that Kyubey had stopped dead in his tracks. She crossed the distance between them quickly and squatted in the snow beside the furry alien, hugging her knees and shivering thoroughly. Her unbound hair kept whipping in the wind, but she gave up on trying to secure it.
[The trail goes cold here,] Kyubey explained as he lashed his tail, his long hooped ears flapping behind him like flags. [I don't know why. Something is contaminating Homura's magical signature. I can't determine her direction anymore.]
Kyouko pursed her lips, forgetting the cold for a moment. She reached out and brushed the snow beneath her fingers. [Could it be miasma? It has that affect.]
Kyubey shook his head. [I'm not sure. That would mean that demons really are back in Mitakihara, but there's no evidence of that. Either way, I don't know where to go from here.]
[Well, we should at least try and look-] Kyouko abruptly broke off when a third, very familiar, presence broadcasted its mental wire through hers.
[Kyouko! Kyouko!]
[Homura!] The redhead shouted, rising to one knee as she spun in a circle, trying desperately to locate the source of the sound. [Are you alright? Where are you?]
But the mental connection was already severed, lost somewhere in the storm.
Kyouko cursed and kicked a clump of snow into the air, where it was quickly swept away by the winds. So close, and so far...how the hell was she supposed to find her like this? She was about to kick more snow around when she paused, feeling something tingling at the end of her mind.
Of course. Homura's signature.
She spun on her heel and started running in a seemingly random direction, Kyubey wordlessly pursuing her, inferring that the girl had figured something out, which she had. She couldn't communicate with Homura just yet, but their brief mental connection had divulged the time traveler's general location to her.
I'm not my way, Homura.
Shit!
Her mental curse was almost drowned out when a searing bolt of energy blasted into the ice a mere five yards to her right, searing the crystals into water instantly and sending a column of steam hissing into the air. The demon who had fired the shot screeched in frustration when it realized that it hadn't hit anything and circled back towards the main pack, already charing another attack.
The demons hadn't exactly found her yet, thanks to the disorienting affect the storm had on all of them, but they had picked up on her general location. And when their numbers were so great, it made sense for them to start taking potshots. If a hundred thousand of them fired beams in the same direction, one of them was bound to hit something. That something being her.
Homura shook off the snow that had rained over her head as a result of the explosion and kept running, relying solely on the energy held within her fragile human body. She had no more magic to spare in combat. Around her, countless beams of malicious energy rained down upon the city, as if it were hailing on top of everything else. Most of them missed by a wide margin, but quite a few struck the ground near her by sheer luck, sending more chunks of ice flying into her face.
She had no idea where she was running anymore. She couldn't even see where she was anymore. It had occurred to her several minutes ago to kick down the door to a building and hide inside, but now the storm was too thick to find any buildings. Besides, what would she do once the demons tracked her there? She didn't want to get innocents killed.
Stumbling blindly through the cold, Homura wondered if this was how she was going to die. All of her magical weapons taken away by simple bad luck, and the biggest horde of demons in history on her ass. What a way to go.
Another bolt blasted into the ground in front of her, and Homura barely altered her momentum in time to avoid getting melted on the spot. Instead she took the force of the impact on her side and went flying, crashing into the deep grip of a snow drift several yards away, the impact smashing the wind straight out of her lungs.
Homura gasped and her eyes went wide for a moment, a ringing sound in her ears as her vision spun dizzyingly around her. Her body had struck the snowdrift and tunneled itself deep inside, and she was surrounded on all sides by the suffocating ice. For a moment, she considered closing her eyes and sleeping there forever.
Then she blinked and shook her head, dragging herself out of the snowdrift. This was not how she wanted to die.
Once she kicked herself back to the surface, she saw that the cloud of demons in the distance was gaining on her, slowly but surely. A storm within a storm. Black in white. The rotten core.
Breathing in through seared lungs, Homura kept running.
A few moments later she felt something crunching beneath her feet as she ran, but she thought nothing of it and forged on. Then her foot struck something harder, not snow anymore but solid ice, slippery and unforgiving as always. Taken by surprise at the sudden change in terrain, Homura lost her balance and fell to the ground, sliding several yards on the expanse of frozen water.
Groaning and rubbing at her bruised elbows and knees, Homura looked up and realized that she was at the center of the lake.
She hadn't been able to see where she was running, and had unwittingly stumbled right into the frozen heart of the city. Homura gritted her teeth and got back on her knees, then tried to rise to her feet before collapsing again onto the ice, her legs burning. She had been running for what felt like an eternity, and she was exhausted.
Flopping over onto her back and gulping in huge gasps of breath, her chest heaving, Homura looked up at the maelstrom of white flakes whirling all around her. She had lost her coat to the wind earlier, and now the cold sank its teeth into her exposed arms and legs, drawing her closer into its frigid embrace. It made her want to give up.
Another chorus of screeches in front of her, and Homura looked past her feet to see that the torrent of demons was much closer now. Of course they would be. Much easier to catch up to a target when it wasn't moving.
She let her head drop back onto the ice with a dull thud, still struggling to catch her breath. It had been a mistake to overcharge her body with so much magic while running. Then again, she might not have made it this far otherwise. Not that it mattered anymore.
Homura knew that she had to keep running if she wanted to live. The flood of demons had broken the line of buildings surrounding the lake, and the despair pouring from them was so thick that it was making her woozy. Another thirty seconds and they would be upon her, and she had no magic with which to fight back.
But she was so tired. She had never been this exhausted before. Even in her countless battles with Walpurgisnacht, she had never been this drained.
All she could do now was hope for a miracle.
She closed her eyes.
Kyouko...
[HOOMMUURRRAAAAAAAAA!]
Eyes flying open a split second later and looking up just in time to see a streak of beloved crimson flying through the air, arcing through the snow-dirtied sky before descending upon her. Kyouko Sakura landed on the ice beside her so hard that the thick surface cracked slightly, stumbling down to one knee as her body absorbed the impact. Homura could only stare, eyes peeled back as wide as they could be, still too stunned to say anything as the redhead scrambled over to her, yelling something over the storm.
"God! Homura, I thought you were-"
Her sentence was cut off as she looked towards the opposite bank and paled when she saw the demons bearing down upon them. Moving almost entirely on instinct by this point, Kyouko dropped everything but her spear and threw up her hands, summoning a barrier around the two of them.
A second later, the demons hit.
Kyouko, who had been standing at the very edge of the shield, gasped when the force of the impact sent her tumbling back to where Homura lay sprawled at the center. Meanwhile, a literal wall of demons roared and thrashed at the redhead's defenses, pushing forward with a strength that made their souls falter.
The spear wielder snarled and regained her footing, rearing back and sweeping her spear through the first wave of enemies. Dozens of demons exploded into nothingness as she spun again and again, managing to push the line back another step before more demons simply arrived to fill the gap. Kyouko took another step back and began limiting her attacks, instead deciding to focus more of her energies on maintaining the barrier, which was eating away at her already sparse stores of magic.
This was bad. She barely had the juice to keep this shield running for another two minutes, and that was being optimistic. The demons were so many, so staggeringly many that it felt like the two of them were in a crimson bubble that had sunk underwater, and the ocean around them had turned black and white. She could not see the moon, or even the snowstorm that was currently hiding it from view. Nobody knew that they were out here, not even Kyubey, because she had lost him while she sprinted here. Homura was down, and she was about to follow suit.
The wave of despair reared back and smashed against the walls again, making Kyouko groan and fall to one knee. She raised her arms and slashed again with her spear, ridding herself of a dozen more demons, but it was all moot when there were so many more.
Ragged breathing behind her. Turning her head, Kyouko saw Homura dragging herself up into a sitting position. She wanted to yell at the raven haired girl to get down, to let her handle this, but how was she supposed to live up to a promise like that? It was only a matter of time until her shield failed and they both died.
She went back to hacking with her spear, but found her progress once again impeded, this time when Homura reached forward and grabbed onto her sleeve.
[Don't die here with me,] She told her, through badly flickering telepathy. [Leave, while you still can. While you still have power...I don't want us both to die. If it has to be one, let it be me...]
"Shut up!" Kyouko roared, shaking the girl off and delivering another flurry of strikes with her weapon, a deranged fire burning in the pits of her eyes. "We're getting out of this together!"
[Kyouko...]
"I said shut up! I'm not leaving you!"
As the redhead delivered her words of denial, Homura stared up at her from her position against the ice, eyes filled with wonder. She could see all of it, the magic glistening through Kyouko's form, the lethal intent behind her spear, the endless cacophony of the demons clawing at her barrier. Her ponytail was loose and her locks flew free with the wind, and her face was cut by demon claws and pieces of ice.
Her eyes were the ones of someone ready to lay down their life.
How could Homura ask someone like that to leave her to die?
Gritting her teeth, Homura opened her last storage portal and pulled out one of her last remaining pistols, aiming the gun at the whirlwind of demons a mere five yards from her leg and firing with wild abandon, not even having to aim because there were so many viable targets.
The two of them fought like that for a moment, Kyouko with her ever weakening spear and Homura with guns that barely had any ammunition, caught in a perpetual instant of struggle that encapsulated them both completely and impossibly.
Then things changed. Something inside of Kyouko let go, and for a second the crimson orb around them flickered. It was just a brief slip, almost minuscule, but it allowed two demons to lunge past the gap and slash Kyouko from shoulder to hip.
Homura heard Kyouko scream and turned to shoot the two infiltrators, her last bullets pinwheeling through their already dissipating bodies. But it was too late. The redhead stumbled to the ice and clutched at her chest, hands shaking at the blood already staining the snow beneath them. Homura tried to crawl over to help but she was thrown off again, as Kyouko groaned and stood back up.
"I'm fine," She growled, lifting her spear again as more blood splattered from her wounds, magic already sparking over them. "I can...I can keep going."
Feeling the beginnings of tears clouding her vision, Homura looked back at the demons and realized that something was different.
They were pulling back. No...they weren't. The rush of demons was roiling back in on itself, tumbling away from the edges of the barrier not unlike the way tide tide receded from a beach. They clumped together and rose higher into the night sky, more of them joining into the coalition as the group continued to ascend, until they finally reached the apex of their arc and began to fall.
Homura's eyes widened, and Kyouko actually whimpered. So that was their plan.
The column of demons rushed down upon them like a mighty hammer, moving faster than the eyes could follow and crashing straight through the ice.
The entire ice sheet buckled underneath the two of them, and before Kyouko could grab Homura they were thrown into the air by the impact, the world rotating like a kaleidoscope around her. More demons regrouped and crashed through other sections of the lake, breaking up the ice, making the platforms that they stood on rise and fall with the suddenly choppy water.
Kyouko hit another free-floating ice floe hard, feeling a sharp lance of pain drive through her skull. Biting her tongue so hard that she drew blood, she looked through blurred eyes for Homura.
There she was, also just starting to pick herself up, on another floating chunk of ice several meters away. Kyouko scrambled to her feet and screamed the girl's name, already running to dive into the water.
Homura heard her and extended one arm in her direction, as if desperate to be with her.
One heartbeat later, the demons broke through the ice from beneath her.
Kyouko's heart stopped as she watched the demons, which had remained hidden under the water, crash through the bottom of the ice floe, sending the entire thing flying apart as if it had been subjected to an explosion. Homura was caught up in the impact and sent spinning through the air again, arcing over the surface of the lake before splashing into the frigid waters, out of sight.
Part of her waited for the girl's familiar black haired head to emerge from the waves, spluttering and gasping, but still very much alive. But this never happened.
That was when she remembered.
Homura couldn't swim.
Kyouko's coat was torn off and thrown aside a second later.
"HOMURA!"
It was blissfully cold around her.
A strange feeling, certainly, Homura thought as she sank slowly to the bottom of the lake, watching the remaining air in her lungs leave her through the bubbles rising steadily towards the surface. Escaping from the blackness of the sewers into the whiteness of the storm, and now back into the blackness, it was so blissfully cold...
She remembered reading something somewhere, as her eyelids drooped halfway down and brought the blackness a little bit tighter. She remembered reading somewhere that before a person died from cold, they experienced an intense warmth inside their bodies. That very warmth was permeating her soul at that very moment, but to her, it wasn't that the coldness of the water was killing her.
It was the coldness of the world.
Homura almost smiled as she watched the water fight itself above her, and the demons fighting themselves beyond that. She had always known that being a magical girl would likely end in her untimely demise, but she hadn't expected it to come at such an inconvenient time. Not when she had finally found someone she cared about in this universe.
Suddenly the water broke above her, and that very person was swimming down towards her.
Kyouko was screaming something at her, but it was lost in the thickness of the water. Bubbles were streaming out of the redhead's mouth as she shouted unintelligible things; it was almost comical. But the redhead didn't seem to realize this, as she kept swimming after her, the ruby in her chest flickering weakly.
Such an inconvenient time, Homura thought again, as she raised an arm and reached out for Kyouko once again. Such an inconvenient time. Why was it that it took extreme conditions for humans to realize the most basic truths about themselves? Why was it that she had to die to know how she really felt? All the emotions that had been riding inside of her until this moment, this moment of her demise, had gone uninterpreted until now. And she deeply regretted having failed to see the answer much earlier.
For in that infinitesimal moment, surrounded by the closing grace of the lake where it had all begun, Homura knew that she could have loved Kyouko.
And she was going to die before she could even say anything.
A glaring light was shining behind Kyouko's back, and Homura didn't know what it was. But it didn't matter anymore. Nothing would matter anymore, once this was all over. The light grew in strength and intensity, growing so bright that it almost swallowed up Kyouko's form in its brilliance. Once again, Homura wondered what it could be.
Maybe it was the pathway to the afterlife.
Closing her eyes, Homura fell asleep wondering if she would awake with her first love or her second.
Please leave any thoughts in the reviews. I am sure there will be many this time.
~Banshee
