"Kazumi! We're busting outta here right now!" Kaoru shouted as she and Niko raced up the stairs together.

Niko stopped just short of the top step, letting Kaoru run on ahead. She turned and faced down the stairs, sensing that something was coming. "Get her and let's go. We are out of time."

Behind Niko, Kaoru rushed to the nearest door and threw it open. "Kazumi!"

The doorway exploded in flames.

Kaoru was sent flying past Niko, crashing into and through the far wall and landing outside somewhere. Niko turned, everything around her seeming to slow down. Splinters of the door and the walls flew around in the air, which she shielded her face from with her arm. Stepping through hole where there had been a door, a giant horned monster held Kazumi with its huge clawed hand wrapped around her neck. It glared down at Niko with burning fiery eyes.

"You care for this one?" Its voice was something straight out of hell. It didn't wait for her to answer. "Then she will join the others." The beast took Kazumi's soul gem, holding it up for Niko to see. It seemed to admire the gem for a moment, inspecting it. Then, at its touch, the gem began to grow dark, clouding with the sheer evil being poured into it by the monster's presence. It seemed to smile. "This is the fate that awaits all of your kind. Your bodies will become revenant. Your souls lost."

Flames erupted from Kazumi's soul gem, and it floated out of the monster's hand. Kazumi began to writhe, her body cracking like it were some porcelain doll that had been dropped. It released her, letting her fall to the ground. Eyes blank, she stared at Niko. There was nothing there anymore. He body broke apart, crumbling and falling away like a cocoon. The flames around the soul gem obscured the stone from view, but something was growing inside the fire. Just as the fangs of the lost soul became visible, molten gold dripping off of it, the first skeletal arm of the revenant reached out of the fading ashes of Kazumi's body.

Niko wasn't about to wait around to see more. She kicked off the top step, launching herself at the hole in the wall Kaoru had made. One of the monsters, she couldn't tell which, fired something explosive after her, blasting apart the entire side of the house as she landed on the grass. The undead horde, those that hadn't been caught in the explosion, quickly moved to surround her. She instinctively readied her crowbar weapon, swinging it at the closest zombie and taking off its head.

They were closing in on her. As much as she swung the crowbar around, shattering their skulls and splitting their bodies, more crowded in. She lodged her crowbar in another of the shambling corpses, but lost her grip when the weapon got stuck in its rib cage. When she tried to grab the weapon to pull it free, the zombie snapped down at her arm. To avoid being bitten, she jumped back, but the circle had closed in even more around her and she fell back against a wall of undead. They immediately started to try and bite. One lucky zombie sunk its teeth into her forearm.

That was the last straw. Niko knew now what had happened to the others. Umika and Saori, Saki and Mirai, they were all gone. Even Kazumi, and probably even Kaoru were gone now. Not only were they gone, dead, but they had been changed into worse monsters than the zombies themselves. She wouldn't be another one.

Niko's free hand morphed into the shape of a rotary saw. It whined as it spun, and she sheered through the crowd with it. Bringing it up, she closed her eyes and brought the blade down on her other shoulder, even as she transformed her lost arm into a rocket. Stumbling forward again, she swung the blade around her, cutting through every zombie in the front row. Their blood and bowels spilled all over the grass as each of them collapsed. She aimed higher as the next line moved it, splitting their throats open and sending heads flying. The horde moved in behind her, and was quickly flattened as the severed arm exploded.

The giant demon appeared at the hole in the wall, dropping down to the ground with a force that made the whole yard shake. Lost souls rocketed past it, screaming and burning as they flew. The beast snarled at her. "Why keep resisting? When you know there can only be one end."

Kaoru appeared, falling from the sky. Where she'd come from, Niko had no way of knowing, but Kaoru was still there. She wasn't alone.

The blonde Magical Girl landed on a pair of undead, splattering them from head to toe. She looked up at the beast. "I wanna know what happens to you when you die."

It roared. The lost souls that had been circling around the horde flew up and dove in at the pair of Magical Girls. Kaoru kicked at a pair of zombies that had lunged at her, then jumped back, doing a handstand and kicking one of the lost souls out of the air. It shattered and exploded. She righted herself and turned to Niko, who was spinning around and around, cutting any and every zombie that came near into several parts.

Kaoru stopped her from spinning. "Time to leave. For real this time. Do what you gotta do." Kaoru jammed her fingers into the open would on Niko's shoulder, where there had been an arm. "Pick a good weapon and change me back when we're done!"

Struggling to use more of her power, with the tremendous pain of losing an arm making it all the more difficult, Niko managed to transform Kaoru's entire body into an oversized steel-plated arm attached at her shoulder. Balling it into a fist, she brought it up and snatched two of the lost souls out of the air, crushing them into dust as flames burst out of the fist. Smashing it onto the ground, she switched the hand into a cannon. When she moved the arm to aim the cannon at the beast, she flattened another three zombies. A lost soul swooped in overhead, but she swatted it away with the saw arm, sending it spiraling into the horde where it exploded.

The revenants burst through the roof of the house, climbing out and focusing their gazes at her. There were three. She couldn't see the other two, as she assumed there were two more. They had what looked like cannons of their own attached to their shoulders, which they were aiming at her. She raised her cannon and fired at the first revenant. A bolt of plasma scorched the air, going right through the last lost soul like it wasn't even there, and smashing the revenant's rib cage apart. It collapsed and fell off the roof.

The other two launched rockets at her from their own cannons. She rolled forward, slicing through two more zombies and keeping the cannon steady. The rockets screamed past her, blowing up the horde behind her and scattering their burning remains around the yard. She fired again, taking the head off the second revenant. Just as she was aiming for the last revenant of the three, the other two appeared around the corner of the house. The giant demon took a step toward her as well, snarling and lighting a green fire in its hand. The two revenants launched their rockets at her.

Niko spun, detaching her arm and hurling it at the beast. On the way, it transformed back into Kaoru, who was now flying at the beast feet first. Of the four rockets heading for Niko, she angled herself to dodge three of them. The fourth hit her in the shoulder where she was once again missing an arm, but she morphed it into a new arm the instant she made contact. Niko rolled forward, changing her saw hand into a shovel which she dug into the ground. At the end of her roll she flung a shovel full of dirt at the pair of revenants. Midair, the dirt changed into napalm, hitting the revenants and burning into them, cutting through the bone that made up their bodies. They fell apart and burned to the ground.

At the same time, Kaoru hit the demon. It had tried to grab her, but when its hand met her feet, its entire arm exploded. Flying past, she grabbed the side of the beast's body and landed behind it. She jumped at the wall of the house and kicked off, spinning through the air and bringing her foot down on its head. The beast fell into itself, its head disappearing into its body and its torso splitting open. It spurted ichor and puss for a moment before falling forward and splattering on the grass.

"Kaoru!"

The zombie horde was still closing in, and the last revenant was preparing to fire. Kaoru ran to Niko and jumped on her back. As soon as she was there, Niko slammed her fist into the ground, sending a shockwave of transformation through the entire property and making a crater. Zombies scattered and flew away in pieces in all directions. The house was blown away, taking the last revenant with it.

The dust settled. Kaoru jumped off Niko's back. She let out a low whistle at the sight of the destruction around them. "That's pretty impressive. Why haven't you done that before?"

"It is extremely taxing." Niko groaned as her Magical Girl outfit faded. "We can't do that again. We need to get out of here."

"Where do we go?"

Niko sat down, taking a deep breath. She looked up at Kaoru. "Kazumi is gone."

Kaoru looked away. "...I saw."

"She's the reason we all became Puella Magi." Kaoru was about to respond when Niko beat her to it, answering herself. "I guess all we have left is... the reason she became one."

Kaoru looked back at her. "What? What do you mean?"

Niko stood up. "The Puella Magi that saved Kazumi, and was the reason she chose to become one as well. If it wasn't for her, we would have died a long time ago. We owe it to Kazumi. So we owe it to Mami Tomoe."