37: Cicero
Mami's guests reached the dregs of the cornucopia she had prepared when a megaphone sounded outside. It buzzed, unwanted, into her apartment, its cacophonous drone reverberated across the walls. What meant this? An earthquake drill, or construction on the complex across the street? Although at first the sounds failed to converge into coherent words and sentences, after her brain adjusted to the percolation Mami recognized it as English.
Sloan dropped her fork and hopped to her feet. "Oh fuck."
"What's the big deal," said Kyoko, likely stirred from her meal by one of the two English words she knew.
"Remain here," said Mami in Japanese. "I will investigate." She repeated herself in English for Sloan. Neither Kyoko nor Sloan seemed interested in following her request, but they remained at the table regardless as Mami progressed carefully toward the window. She peered between the curtains, over the railing of her rarely-used balcony onto the open patio behind the apartment complex. A street ran parallel and behind it additional apartment structures promulgated in needless array.
Two young women stood on the patio below, beside the complex swimming pool and recreation area. One, who held the megaphone, wore a dress and was of African lineage. The other wore a school uniform and was Asian, with a purple streak in her hair.
The young woman in the suit again bellowed into the megaphone. English was difficult enough in normal conversation, but with the amplified sonic distortion Mami could make neither head nor tails of it. Instead her eyes surveyed the surrounding landscape. The two women below were not alone. Figures crept along rooftops, in shady alcoves, on balconies.
"What is it," said Kyoko.
"We shall see." Why were they using a megaphone? Telepathy ought to suffice. All they did was risk dragging regular humans into whatever they intended. Or perhaps they intended to use the public setting to their advantage, in case they butted against forces beyond their strength? No. There were many Magical Girls lurking around. At least ten. They had little to fear in regards to an attack. The public setting rather worked in Mami's favor. She drew aside the curtain and unlatched the doors to the balcony. Unafraid, she stepped outside, held the railing, and stared down at those below.
"What is it you want?" she asked in Japanese.
The first one said something to the Asian beside her and handed over the megaphone. The Asian yelled, in poorly-pronounced but passable Japanese:
"Where is Sloan Redfearn! Where is Fargo! All we want is Sloan Redfearn! All we want is Fargo! Please save me, these people are insane!"
She lowered the megaphone. Oh dear, thought Mami.
"Did she say what I think she said," Kyoko whispered from inside. Behind her, Sloan stood, hands crammed in the pockets of her new coat, her shoulders slumped and a severe glare etched in her eyes.
Mami considered her words carefully before she replied, although she realized her words would be strained through the translation of a girl with a tenuous grasp on their meaning. "I will not even consider capitulating to demands without knowledge of who makes them. Identify yourselves immediately, including those who are in hiding."
The Asian grimaced before she turned to the one beside her and muttered something. The first one, the leader, cut off her hostage(?) midsentence and said something back, louder, but in English. The Asian cowered beneath the deluge of words and, once the speech finally ceased, raised her megaphone to translate.
"Her name is Cicero! She is from Chicago! They have twenty girls, you are surrounded! Please save me they are going to kill me! All they want is Fargo, all they want is Sloan Redfearn!"
Mami had no idea who these people were, or their connection to Sloan. Or what kind of person calls themselves Cicero, after the Roman senator who murdered Julius Caesar (if her assemblage of mental facts dredged from the murky depths of World History failed her not). From the interesting interpolations the translator injected into her communication, it took little imagination to deduct what they intended to do when they got their hands on Sloan. Twenty girls or fifty, Mami would not sentence a guest—possibly a friend—to certain death.
"I know nobody by the name Sloan Redfearn, or Fargo."
The translator flinched. She relayed to Cicero. Cicero laughed and said something. The translator said: "She knows Fargo is in there! We can trace her! Do not lie or punishment will be severe! These people are insane, don't do anything they say! Help me, save me!"
Kyoko burst onto the balcony beside Mami. She seized the railing and leaned far over it. "Hey! Buster! Tell your boss or whatever that we don't like foreign chicks stomping around our territory! Tell her she can fuck off or all twenty-seven Mitakihara Magical Girls will punt her ass back to America!"
While the translator scratched at the collar of her school uniform and shifted her eyes left to right, Mami placed a hand on Kyoko's shoulder. "Calm yourself, Kyoko. They have girls with long-range weapons stationed on the nearby rooftops. Best not to provoke them unduly."
"Bah! Let's kick their asses. If chicks show up and you don't show em who's boss, they start getting ideas. They didn't send this many out here for just Fargo, they're thinking invasion. Well, not in my city!"
The megaphone blared. "She says you don't have twenty-seven girls! She says there are only three of you! Blonde and redhead and Fargo! Acquiesce or die! Can't you see they're insane?!"
"Mami," said Sloan. She kept further back in the apartment, but not as far back as Mami preferred. "It's okay. These girls are strong. You can't win. I will go."
"No." Mami strained to remember her English, especially with so many other things on her mind. "There is no need, I will fix."
Sloan sighed. She tightened her coat around herself and stepped forward. "This'll end badly. I can already tell. I don't have what they want anyway."
Before Sloan took another step, already dangerously close to the door, Mami tossed her hand. Ribbons lashed out, wrapped around Sloan, and pushed her back inside, binding her safe behind the kitchen counter, far from all windows. The principles at work here were rather stark. Unpleasant aggressors wanted to harm a guest in Mami Tomoe's apartment. It was Mami's duty to protect those she invited into her home. She would allow no other resolution than—
Kyoko grabbed her from behind and forced her down. A projectile sailed overhead and smashed into the wall. Fired from a rooftop girl. Mami glanced at the bullet: it had latched to the doorjamb, a small blinking pellet that flashed red and orange.
The pellet exploded. A swollen lump of flame burst, shattering the walls. Cracks spread across the plain façade of the back of the apartment. The balcony ripped from its supports. It, and the railing, and Mami and Kyoko flew away from the apartment.
No time to hesitate. Mami sent a ribbon spiraling through the open and misshapen door and latched onto the first solid thing with which it came in contact—the leg of the triangle table. She sent another ribbon that coiled through the falling debris around the leg of Kyoko. Projectiles zipped by them, either projectiles or debris, as Mami reeled herself and Kyoko toward the apartment door.
However, the small triangle table proved a poor anchor for the combined weight of both Mami and Kyoko. The ribbon snagged and went slack for a moment as the table overturned and its glass top shattered, leaving Mami's ribbon tied only to a useless peg. (And Mami really liked that table, too...) As they fell again, she probed the ribbon deeper for something stronger to hold. She found the kitchen counter, but they had already dropped nearly to the ground. Gunfire rained around them, creating stellated cracks against the mortar walls. Kyoko summoned latticework barriers to deflect some of the attacks, but her barriers only offered partial protection versus small projectiles. A hot shard sailed into Mami's elbow. She clenched her teeth and stifled the pain as she reeled them in.
In the doorway appeared a hovering machine gun turret. One of Sloan's. Its cannon rotated; a stream of light rocketed across the pavilion, cut through the pool, and forced Cicero and her translator to dodge in opposite directions. The storm of enemy bullets diminished for a brief moment. Enough opportunity for Mami to pull herself and Kyoko inside.
They staggered away from the windows, which had already been shot—even the ones of the opposite wall. The gunfire from outside resumed. Plates and pictures shattered. Puffs of plaster burst. A cabinet door dropped off its hinges. Mami pulled Kyoko to the base of the kitchen counter, where Sloan lay bound in ribbons.
She undid the binds while she inspected Kyoko's wounds. Beyond scratches and grazes, she had been hit twice, once in the muscle of her lower leg and once in the gut.
"Damn!" Kyoko crouched over her wound. "Bastards."
"Please remain calm." Mami held her hands over the wound on Kyoko's gut. Her threads wove deep into the puncture and pried out the bullet lodged inside. Kyoko winced as a fresh spurt of blood trickled down her dress while the ribbons stitched her back together. The wound on her leg took less time to fix.
Sloan controlled her machine gun mentally, covering them while Mami went to work on her own wounds. Not so many, and quicker to resolve. All extraneous information flushed from Mami's head as the logistics and tactics of war rushed to the forefront.
Unfortunately, she needed to retain her English. "Sloan," she said as she summoned multiple rifles from the threads strewn across her apartment, "Know you these people?"
"Yeah," said Sloan. A small explosion ruptured the wall. A chunk fell outward to douse them in sunshine. "They're from Chicago. They want grief cubes they think I have. But Omaha has them."
Kyoko crouched between the chairs, propped against her spear as her eyes scanned the various entry points into the apartment. "What the hell are they doing, making so much noise in broad daylight? People will see em."
"A force of twenty Magical Girls likely has a wide variety of powers at its disposal," said Mami. "If they are being this aggressive, at least one of their ranks likely has the ability to obfuscate the perceptions of normal humans."
"Bah!" said Kyoko.
The gunfire halted. Mami craned her neck to see the pavilion. Both Cicero and her translator had disappeared, and the angle made finding the other girls impossible.
"This is not a fight we can take," said Mami. "Even if they were unskilled Magical Girls, which their organization suggests is untrue, they outnumber us too significantly."
"Dammit, I know that!" Kyoko felt her hand on the counter above her until she located the demolished turkey and wrenched off the remaining leg. "But we can't just let em do whatever. I've been in their shoes before, you give a chick an inch she takes the whole damn city."
The megaphone screeched. "All they want is Sloan Redfearn! They're certifiably insane! All they want is Fargo!" It added in English: "Fargo, give yourself up peaceably! Accept your rightful doom!"
Shut the fuck up, Hennepin, said Sloan telepathically.
Fu—I mean, eff you, you left me to rot, the translator replied. Mami did not know what "eff" meant, or if it were even spelled the way she thought it should be.
Sloan tapped Mami on the shoulder. "I'm going out there. You two don't need to get involved."
"I already said no." While she spoke, Mami span her minuscule threads out the shattered windows to probe the surrounding area in case any enemies had attempted to sneak close. "I have plan to end the fight easy."
"End it easy." Sloan gave a dubious look. "How?"
"Homura Akemi control time," said Mami. "Time stop, twenty Puella Magi do nothing."
Yes. Yes, that was the plan. Elegant in its simplicity. But then again, such powers as Miss Akemi's afforded a simple end to all problems. One crank of the gears in her shield and the twenty girls from Chicago stand frozen and still. It becomes then but a trifle to disarm them of their Soul Gems and resolve this conflict without bloodshed.
She related the plan to Kyoko. "We must reach Homura Akemi. She can stop this."
Kyoko tore flesh from the turkey leg with her teeth. "Homura ain't said a word to us since Sayaka and Nagisa went missing. We even went to her damn house, why would she help now?"
"As you said, this threat is to our city, not solely us. Which means Homura Akemi herself is threatened. And perhaps more pertinently to her, Madoka Kaname. She will respond. She must."
With remarkable efficiency Kyoko cleaned the turkey leg and discarded the useless bone. "Well, you wanna send the SOS or should I?"
Mami already had her phone out. But when she tried to turn it on, the screen fizzled with scrambles of static. She tapped the buttons but nothing happened. The static eventually resolved into two words transcribed in English with bold, red lettering:
GAME
OVER
She showed the phone to Kyoko. Kyoko took out her own phone and after a few random buttons presses revealed an identical screen. "The hell is this?"
"Twenty Magical Girls is a lot of magical tricks." Mami watched out the window at the swimming pool and pavilion below. The momentary peace resumed. Perhaps they waited in case Sloan made the response they desired.
"You think they're jamming our signal or something?"
"Something in that vein. It would be to our benefit to be prepared for other surprises."
"But what do we do? How do we get in touch with Homura?"
They would do what Mami had already suspected they would have to do whether they contacted Homura via phone or not. "We shall pay her a visit at home."
From the shed of pool supplies behind the aquatic recreation area, Cicero observed the apartment with a spyglass. Her soldiers had done devastating damage to the walls, but they remained structurally sound enough to prevent visibility of the adversary inside. From certain angles at occasional intervals she espied a hand or arm flitter in a pocket of her field of vision, but she could not confirm whether the limb belonged to Fargo or the two Mitakihara Puella Magi with which they had held negotiations.
"Lombard, status appraisal."
"Yes, milady." Lombard crouched between the pond scrapers and colorful floatation devices. She spoke into an enchanted radio: "Status appraisal, Addison."
The radio crackled. "Position at Rooftop 6. No visibility on the Target. No telepathic communication."
Lombard made a mark on a whiteboard that showed a top-down cartograph of the layout around the apartment complex. "Status appraisal, Burbank."
"Position at Pavilion 2. No visibility on the Target."
Another mark on the whiteboard. "Status appraisal, Maywood."
"Position at Rooftop 3A. No visibility on the Target."
"Status appraisal, Darien."
"Position at Apartment 17. Hinsdale has a positive on magical signature and says three Magi at most. Three Magi but strong."
Several marks on the whiteboard. Cicero grabbed the whiteboard from Lombard and examined it.
"Status appraisal, Norridge."
"Position at Platform 1. Hennepin has blundered out of range of her Soul Gem, she's dead on the ground at what looks like Pavilion 1B."
Cicero poked her head out the doorway and took a visual of Pavilion 1B. Sure enough, Hennepin lay facedown on the concrete, completely motionless, the megaphone beside her. Cicero handed the whiteboard back to Lombard to make the appropriate mark.
"Status appraisal, Alsip."
"Position at Rooftop 2. I jammed their electronics. It appears they tried to call for help."
"Likely other Mitakihara Puella Magi," said Cicero. "Even with inefficient levels of harvest, this city could support several."
"Milady, it's possible they attempted to contact Omaha or another third-party," said Elmhurst, who knelt at the front window of the pool shed with her massive arquebus mounted on a stand and aimed at the apartment.
"Indeed. Astute observation, Elmhurst."
"Thank you, milady."
Lombard gave Elmhurst a glare that she thought Cicero did not notice. Cicero had more pressing concerns than to reprimand her for allowing jealousy to enter her heart, although such reprimands would come at the end of combat operations. "Resume the status appraisal, Lombard."
"Yes, milady. Status appraisal, River Forest."
"Position at Apartment Main Office. My judgment field has muted the perception of all normal humans in the facility."
More marks on the whiteboard. Lombard hailed the final independent component of the status checklist (all unaccounted Puella Magi under the command of platoon members already hailed). "Status appraisal, Berwyn."
"Position at Safehouse 1. Prepared to assist the battle when commanded, milady."
"Everyone accounted for, milady," said Lombard. "All are in their prearranged positions. What are your orders?"
Cicero considered the whiteboard. They had the apartment surrounded. Three Puella Magi inside. One (Fargo) with strong offensive magic, one (Blonde) with what looked like ribbons, and one (Redhead) with weak barrier magic. Granted, none had revealed the full range of their powers, but even strong Puella Magi only had so many illusions. Cicero had to weigh that assessment against the home turf advantage the Mitakihara girls held, both in terms of cultural and social acumen (including the possibility of receiving local reinforcement) and in the literal sense of an actual dwelling. Cautious types tend to rig their own homes in case of intrusion from rivals. Mere victory was not enough. Their numbers alone ensured eventual triumph. Anything less than flawless victory Cicero could not tolerate within herself. If a single girl under her command lost her life in such a minor skirmish, the blood would cling to Cicero's own hands. She refused to add a name to the seven she had lost before.
At the same time, given the severe imbalance in numbers between the two forces, a sane foe would prioritize flight over fight. Fargo had done so before in Minneapolis, aided by Omaha. The portal had not taken her far; she had resurfaced only a block from the point of origin. Had Cicero anticipated such behavior, she could have tracked her down before she managed to board a flight to Mitakihara.
"My orders are thus: Addison and Maywood remain at their positions to provide cover fire and enhanced visibility over the area. Burbank and her sub-squadron approach from the front to draw the enemy's attention. Darien and her sub-squadron drill from below for a pincer attack. River Forest remains on crowd control, Alsip monitors electronics usage. Berwyn remains on standby." She double-checked the names on the board. "Norridge fetches Hennepin and revives her in case we need the language. That is all."
That way, Darien took the brunt of the offensive. Cicero placed utmost faith in Darien's competence.
"Yes, milady," said Lombard. She relayed the orders one at a time through the radio.
"And what shall we do, milady?" asked Elmhurst.
"Wait for our adversaries to flee."
The gunfire had paused for a suspiciously long time. Sloan kept her head low but searched from shattered window to shattered window for a trace of movement. Mami and Kyoko continued to whisper in Japanese. Better to whisper. In twenty Magical Girls, at least one could read telepathic channels well. At least one could probably do all sorts of stupid bullshit. Sloan had totally forgotten Cicero and her stupid horse and gold-armored bitches even existed. She never even entertained the possibility they might follow her to Mitakihara. How did they even manage it? By interrogating Hennepin? Hennepin knew jack dick about anything, what the fuck could she tell them. Did they get Anoka? Anoka didn't know where she was going either. Kyubey may have told them. Or they dredged something up in Clair's files. Clair kept meticulous notes.
It didn't matter. They were here. Test number one against Sloan's new resolution. She would ensure Mami and Kyoko made it out of this alive. Dying to goons from Chicago, what a useless and stupid thing. Chicago was such a stupid place, vapid bullshit from its impenetrable vortex always wound up getting in Sloan's way during her Minneapolis stint. Refugees begging for handouts or with ambitions of their own. Weird emails from a certain "Centurion DuPage" laced with vague threats and ominous stipulations (To the Puella Magi with Current-But-Perhaps-Not-Perpetual Governorship Over the City of Minneapolis-St. Paul), emails Sloan let Clair handle. Why were they even involved? Why were they even real? Didn't the universe have better things to worry about?
Well, Sloan was not the universe. A stupid thing to worry about fell right in her wheelhouse. She knew what she had to do. First chance she got she had to offer herself up to them. To let Mami and Kyoko go free. Although she had reservations that Cicero would uphold that end of the bargain, or even bargain at all. She wanted Sloan to get to Omaha to get to the grief cubes. Sloan could not bring her what she wanted, so she would tear this city inside-out to find it. Any girls she found—especially those she knew had communicated with Sloan at some point—would not be spared her ire. Take Hennepin as Exhibit A in that regard.
Shit. No easy self-sacrifice ploy for her. Damn, and she'd been so ready for it too. Imagine had she given herself up and Cicero fucked over Mami and Kyoko anyway. Christ, Sloan had not even considered that before, and she was so close to doing it too. Jesus, did she ever fucking think?
Mami cut off a sentence to Kyoko and raised her head, stirring Sloan from her thoughts. She held a hand for quiet although nobody said a word. Outside birds chirped, a plane rumbled overhead.
She whispered a terse sentence to Kyoko. Then she said in English: "They come. Front door."
Sloan shuffled around the counter and aimed her turret at the door, spattered with bullet holes from the previous assault. She brushed back her hair and waited. Mami knelt beside her, a rifle in each hand trained to the shattered front window. More rifles floated disembodied to watch other portals inside. Kyoko braced her knees like a sprinter ready to set.
Footsteps creaked on the planking outside. Sloan's hands tightened. The sound of Mami's breathing filled her ear.
"This is your last chance to surrender," barked a voice outside (neither Cicero nor Hennepin). "Throw out your gems and we will guarantee your survival."
"Fuck you," said Sloan.
"Fak yuu!" added Kyoko.
"Very well," said the voice outside. "Your profanity shall be remembered when you face judgment at the hands of Lady Cicero!"
Then stuff happened. A girl in gold armor leapt through the front window. Mami's rifles erupted and Sloan pivoted her turret. The body flopped backward as bullets and light sailed into it, but it took only one toss of its rag doll head for Sloan to realize it was some sort of golem, not a real girl. By that time, however, the floor between the kitchen and living room bulged upward, causing the strewn remnants of the triangle table to clatter and topple as from the apex of the bump burst a gigantic drill. Kyoko scampered out of the way as the ripping, tearing tooth shredded through the wooden floor. Sloan glanced back at the front window as another gold-armored body cartwheeled inside and swung a ball-and-chain at Mami. Mami raised a spent rifle to deflect the blow; the spiked ball wrapped around and snapped the rifle in half.
Sloan lifted her turret to fire while the front door burst open and two more girls dashed inside. For a pivotal moment Sloan hesitated, unsure whether to fire at the ball-and-chain girl or the two new ones. The moment cost her as the first of the two girls smacked Sloan in the face with a paper fan, the kind used by fancy ladies and Super Smash Brethren. Before Sloan's head finished recoiling from the first strike, a second came, and a third, and a fourth.
A flurry of gunshots rang out and the girl with the fan flew back. The girl behind her charged forward with a can of pepper spray and sent a noxious blast directly into Sloan's eyes. Unfortunately this girl had attacked literally the one thing Sloan could heal, so Sloan quickly recovered and blasted her. The light from her gun rattled with a raindrop din against the girl's golden armor, but the force propelled her backward out the door and over the railing.
When Sloan turned to assess the rest of the enemies, a spiked ball crashed against her chest and sent her rolling into the refrigerator. She maintained her grip on the turret and raised it to fire at her attacker before a second strike came. The moment she unleashed her light, however, she realized she was firing at another golem. The puppet body disintegrated into dust.
Sloan pulled herself to her feet. The girl with pepper spray (it wasn't pepper spray, it was a paint spray can) ran back through the door and aimed her can at Sloan; Sloan bashed her with a single sweep of the turret and sent her again hurtling the way she came. Sloan turned only to catch a bullet to the frontal lobe. A splatter of blood spurted across the pockmarked remains of Mami's apartment, but it did little to stop or slow Sloan, she was used to running around headless anyway.
Her twitching eye shuttered the chaotic scene before her. A thick gaggle of girls clashed weapons, some still climbing from the hole in the floor where the drill had once been. The drill now swung wildly left and right, handled by a gold-armor girl engaged in fierce combat with Kyoko. Each time Kyoko swung her spear on the oversized and impractical drill, sparks scattered in all directions. They landed on cloth and paper and set it aflame. Tiny blazes sprouted along the ground as the unstoppable forward motion of the drill forced Kyoko back step-by-step. Among the burning things, Sloan noticed her old jacket.
She pivoted her turret and loosed a volley at the drill girl's unprotected side. But before the light struck her, another armored girl dashed forward, holding only a tremendous shield emblazoned by a renaissance escutcheon. The shield deflected the light, which crashed in various places around the apartment.
Fuck shields. Sloan charged the girl and leapt. Her aim was to clear the whole damn thing and rain fire on the drill girl from above. But she misjudged her height and rammed her head against the ceiling. A massive hole punctured in the paper-thin material and a torrent of plaster and asbestos poured over her. She fell onto the girl with the shield. A sharp edge jabbed her side.
Shield-girl levied flimsy punches at Sloan's back. She was a younger girl, maybe twelve or thirteen, and Sloan's awkward lanky body and fancypants coat engulfed her. At the same time, when Sloan tried to rise, her limbs became entangled between the girl and the shield and she had difficulty getting anywhere.
Sloan contorted her body and looked back in time to see another armored girl charge her from across the apartment. The girl clutched in two hands a sword of comedic proportions, at least twice the height of its wielder, broader than her waistline even including her armor. It looked like a buster sword in a Japanese video game, which was probably the inspiration. She swung back the sword over her head. It sailed through the ceiling as though the ceiling were not there and left a precise gash before the girl brought the sword down toward Sloan's neck.
Ribbons sprouted from seemingly nowhere and wrapped around sword-girl to stop her swing. Across the whole apartment similar ribbons appeared, first in a grid pattern as they emerged from nonexistence and then in ornate patterns to strike at the gold-armored girls. Into neat cocoons of yellow thread they went, the sword girl and the drill girl and the fan girl and the spraypaint girl who had only moments prior emerged through the front door for the third time. The ribbons wrapped under Sloan's waist and pulled her away from the shield girl, and then they tied up the shield girl too. Sloan staggered back against the wall and rubbed her bleeding head while more threads tended to the wound and stuffed her empty brain with straw.
All told, nine armored girls stood suspended in ribbon around the room. Not even half the force. Not even including Cicero.
"Very fortunate I prepare," said Mami. She clapped her hands and inspected the bundled ball-and-chain girl beside her, before saying something in Japanese to Kyoko. Kyoko ducked from beneath the tied drill girl and responded.
While most of the armored girls said nothing or muttered to their closest neighbor, the girl with the ridiculous sword, frozen mid-swing, laughed. "If you intended to stop me with naught but thread, you have made a grave error."
"Show them, Captain Darien," said the girl with the shield.
"Make them tremble beneath your might!" said the girl with the fan.
Captain Darien's arms quivered. Her eyes focused on her half-swung sword before her, affecting stern concentration as a small tip of her tongue pressed against her upper lip. The ribbons that bound her behemoth blade stretched. Individual threads separated and snapped. Sloan started to yell for Mami to do something but the next moment the blade crashed down and sundered the whole damn bundle.
Mami raised her hand to send more ribbons at Darien. But with unseemly agility Darien lashed out her blade, long enough to reach halfway across the apartment. The blade passed first through the knees of one of Darien's own soldiers, then at a diagonal angle through Mami's midsection, and finally cleaved off an upper portion of another bound soldier's skull. Body parts plopped to the floor or hung suspended by Mami's threads. Blood ran down the length of Darien's blade.
"So strong," said the girl with the spraypaint can.
"Watch your back, Darien," said the girl with the ball-and-chain (who now lacked her legs).
Darien wheeled around as Sloan revved her machine gun. She fired, but Darien held the sword vertically in front of her, covering her entire body with the stupid broadness of the blade. Sloan's light ricocheted off and sailed into the ceiling above Sloan's head. It dislodged a massive chunk of roof that crashed down on her. She rolled to evade it, at which point Darien already beset her with a swift vertical slice that chopped another thick gash through the ceiling. Sloan kept rolling and managed to scrape outside of the sword's arc moments before it sank into the floor.
The instant it did, Kyoko charged forward, running across the sharp edge of the blade with her spear aimed at Darien's face. Darien did not even blink. Her hand lashed out and seized the spear by the shaft while its point hovered an almost imperceptible distance from the bridge of her nose. For an instant they stood locked, their arms shaking, their faces glaring into each other. And then, almost casually, Darien turned the spear aside. The spear's blade passed harmlessly past her head and Kyoko lost her balance on the edge of the giant sword. But as she stumbled to the side, her outstretched spear broke into segments linked by chains and coiled around Darien's head. With a single strong tug, Kyoko slammed Darien to the ground.
Darien rolled onto her back and lashed out the sword. Kyoko jumped to avoid losing her feet as the sword sliced through the wall facing the back pavilion. Kyoko's spear snapped back together and she twirled it to bring down on Darien's prone body, but Darien flung herself aside, cartwheeled to her feet, and made another horizontal slash, this time aiming high. So high it traveled over Kyoko's head without her even needing to duck. But the true intention of the swipe became clear immediately. She not only severed many of the strands that kept her allies suspended around them, but made another long cut across the back wall of the apartment. Its structure unsound, the entire wall with its doorways and windows cleaved from the rest of the building and toppled outward, into the pavilion below. It smashed into pieces.
The entire back wall of the apartment now hung open. Sloan, unable to intervene in the Kyoko—Darien brawl due to the high likelihood of her frying Kyoko more than Darien, realized they were now exposed to the snipers on the distant rooftops. Sure enough, the moment the wall peeled away a barrage of bullets descended upon them.
Sloan cartwheeled under another sweep of Darien's outrageous sword and launched herself at the girl with the shield, who had fallen from the ceiling when Darien severed her binds. Sloan slammed the turret on her head, snatched her shield away (it was attached to her arm, so her awkward body jerked after it), and used it to defend herself from the gunfire. From relative safety she searched for Mami and Kyoko in the mayhem. Kyoko had ducked out of her fight with Darien and hid behind the kitchen counter; Mami's two halves lay in the opposite corner, thin yellow strands attempting to stitch them back together. The Chicago girls meanwhile fought to extricate themselves from the remaining ribbons that Darien had not yet severed. Although bullets hailed like a blizzard throughout the apartment, not one struck a single Chicago girl. One girl knelt beside the two that Darien had maimed earlier. She summoned what looked like toy soldiers, who carried severed pieces like ants to put back together again.
We can't stay here, Sloan tried to tell Mami, although most of the girls in the vicinity could probably hear too. She kept an eye for Darien, but in the tight confines and with all their adversaries in the same gold armor, she had blended back into the fold.
What they needed to do first was get out of the hellfire these snipers had unleashed. But with the whole façade gone, they had almost no cover.
Sloan's eyes settled on the massive hole in the floor the drill had made. Yes—but communicating to Mami and Kyoko what to do would take too long. Instead she did things the old fashioned way. She swung her turret's rays into the floor, starting at the edge of the hole and fanning out across the surface in erratic lines and patterns. The Chicago girls darted out of the way; a few in no immediate danger ran at Sloan herself. Someone—Darien—kicked the shield out of Sloan's hand and raised her sword to bring down. But when it came to property damage, Sloan's gun was second to none. Coupled with the previous work the drill had done, it took only a few moments of sustained fire to punch out the structural support. The floor collapsed in two halves, curling inward to funnel everything atop it into the vicious gashes Sloan created. Chairs, ribbons, Christmas ornaments, platters of food, girls, weapons, and Sloan toppled into the vacant apartment below. Sloan aimed her descent for a sofa, missed and cracked several ribs against an armrest of surprising hardness. The girl with the shield landed on top of her and the shield's sharp bottom edge gored her side.
Shield chick rolled off her, but the damage was done. Sloan slid to her knees, propped against the sofa armrest, agony on both sides. Many of the Chicago girls moaned with similar complaints, although the full armor they wore probably meant less actual damage.
She had little chance to chew the scenery, because a thick pane of metal smacked her in the head. The blunt side of Darien's sword. Sloan slumped over as Darien pointed the tip of her blade under Sloan's chin.
"With the power invested in me as a Lesser Captain of the Holy Order of the Knights of Chicago," she said, "And as a loyal adjunct of Third Centurion Cicero, I am placing you, Fargo, under arrest." She turned her head toward the injured subordinates behind her. "You fools, get up and catch the other two already—"
Ribbons coiled under Sloan's arms and yanked her from under the tip of Darien's sword. The ribbons snaked Sloan through the crushed furniture while the last bits of debris toppled from above, until they pulled her to the front window where Mami (now in one piece) helped her up.
"Come, quick!"
A single rifle shot shattered the window. Mami hopped between the curtains and pulled Sloan after her. Sloan was about to ask what happened to Kyoko when the girl in question swung from overhanging remnants of the ceiling and flipped out the window behind them, deflecting a projectile attack from a Chicago girl with a spear.
The Chicago girls charged after them, but Kyoko sealed the exit with her red lattice barrier. It occurred to Sloan that her two companions were communicating in Japanese telepathically to coordinate attacks or plan ahead; their incomprehensible drone had filled Sloan's mind for awhile now, but in the chaos of battle she had a tendency to filter out stuff that didn't make sense. Mami said something aloud to Kyoko and Kyoko nodded before they both took off down the walkway that lined the apartments. Sloan decided not to question their long-term goals. She drew up the back of the line and watched, turret ready, for the Chicago girls to break through Kyoko's barrier. They had pressed in a glut against the window, outstretched hands slipping between the latticework, but until Darien yanked them aside and began pounding on it with her sword they made no progress. Then Sloan rounded a corner.
Conversation between Mami and Kyoko jittered in Sloan's head. They appeared in disagreement about something, although both carved a path through the entrails of the complex with concise and efficient movements. Sloan swiveled her turret to face down every open door and corridor lest more Chicago girls tumble to fight them. They leapt one after another down a short staircase to the lobby, a sparse square with a counter and seats. The landlord sat behind the counter, nose buried in a newspaper and enveloped in a plume of cigarette smoke. He did not look as they sprinted past him. Like his senses could not even perceive them—
A Chicago girl slid in front of the exit before Mami and Kyoko reached it. Mami spawned a rifle and aimed, but the Chicago girl raised an object—a book—over her head. The pages fluttered open as a swirl of violet aura pervaded outward, carrying with it a deluge of words in neat Times New Roman font that bulged to tremendous sizes and encompassed the entire room, blotting it out with their messages: YOU WILL OBEY. YOU WILL BECOME PLACID. YOU ARE IN A SAFE PLACE. YOU WILL STAY.
The words covered everything, swirled in Sloan's vision. Mami and Kyoko stood stunned in their wake until they too disappeared beneath the sentences.
A trick. Like the kind Clair played, but with weaker power and less creativity. Sloan imbued her sight with magic to decipher the illusion. The text around her faded, dissolved back into the lobby of the apartment complex. The Chicago girl held a book above her head like a totem. In her other hand she clenched a radio.
"River Forest to Commander. River Forest to Commander. I have them pacified in the main lobby. I repeat, I have them—"
Sloan blasted her with a volley of light. River Forest rolled through the glass door in a cascade of broken shards and skidded against the sidewalk. She writhed as the residue of Sloan's power sparkled across her chest, the mangled remnants of her golden armor in pieces around her. But her pained gurgles indicated she had not died, which presented a hitherto-unconsidered problem: Sloan had no clue where these Chicago chicks kept their gems.
If they moved fast they would never need to answer that question. Sloan gave Mami and Kyoko each a strong shove to rouse them from whatever stupor the words had worked on them. They blinked and looked at her and needed only an outstretched finger to continue moving the way they had, past the crippled body of River Forest.
The distraction had killed the argument between Mami and Kyoko, which gave Sloan's head a respite from the obstructive rattle of an incomprehensible language.
Mami led them to her scooter, chained to a post outside the apartment complex. She snapped a finger and the lock around the chain fell away. Kyoko yelled something at her in Japanese while Mami boarded. Hands gesticulated toward Sloan and then the single backseat. Mami said something back, Kyoko grunted in frustration.
Sloan got the gist of this argument. She coiled her arm around Kyoko's waist and made her weightless with a small dose of magic. Maintaining her grip on the struggling girl, Sloan hopped onto the scooter with her back against Mami's, giving Kyoko room to sit on Sloan's lap. It was awkward as fuck, and Kyoko's flailing limbs indicated she disliked the arrangement, but it got them all onto the scooter and didn't overburden them with excess weight. So Kyoko better shut up and sit still.
The scooter trundled out of its spot and maneuvered onto the road. Kyoko settled down enough for Sloan to get a better grip around her waist, but then she turned to snap something in Japanese to Mami and knocked Sloan's jaw with her thick skull. Sloan tried to arrange a simple enough English sentence to convey to Mami she should tell Kyoko to chill the fuck out, but before she did she noticed something a tad more pressing.
From around an alley or driveway or something that led behind the apartment complex barreled a golden horse comprised of constantly shifting plates and segments, its legs and neck moving with absolute fluidity despite their mechanical construction. Atop the horse rode Cicero, the visor of her helm down, the turquoise plume billowing behind her, an arm extended with the halberd clutched within it. The steel blade of the axe glinted in the daylight. All of Cicero glinted, her golden armor and her golden steed, a bright orb of light charging after them.
"Go, go," said Sloan. Mami glanced over her shoulder, acknowledged the danger with a nod, and stepped on the gas. The scooter sputtered forward at a terribly underwhelming speed.
Oh god. Sloan kept one arm wrapped around Kyoko and summoned a new turret to hover beside her. Her free hand directed its aim toward the equestrian and bid it fire.
The light streamed out in a strong torrent. Cicero made no attempt to evade; her horse stormed forward undaunted. Which made sense, because when Sloan's light hit, it plinked harmless against the gold and ricocheted into a random direction without even slowing Cicero's progress.
Ha! said Cicero as she rapidly gained ground. My armor is blessed by the Empress herself, an Apostle of a Rightful God! Your magic cannot so much as scratch such power.
"Ah shit," said Sloan. She maintained her gun on Cicero, but seconds of repeated exposure passed with no change in the reflective properties of the golden armor. Nobody knew jack dick about the actual girl Chicago (popular theories on the net suggested she did not exist, merely a puppet entity for honchos in the area to maximize influence), but the fact was she had put a many-million-people city under her thumb and had done so since before Sloan was born, if rumors spoke sooth. Nobody put so much territory under control without serious power to back it up, so an enchantment from such a mythic Magical Girl might pack serious punch. The sheer fact someone could maintain an enchantment when the enchanted object in question was halfway around the globe from the enchantress spoke volumes enough to its potency.
Sloan shut off her gun and watched with no idea what to do as Cicero galloped closer and closer. The good news was that Mami's scooter had picked up acceleration, so at least the rate at which Cicero closed the gap had slowed. Fucking math.
Kyoko shouted something in her ear, which sounded less like Japanese and more like a generic cry to get her attention. Sloan craned her neck to see past Mami's head at the road in front of them. Two gold-armored girls stood on either side about half a block ahead. Each toted heavy-duty weaponry in their hands, old-timey guns/cannons, one maybe an arquebus, the other a blunderbuss (Magical Girls being the only people outside of military historians who can recognize such things at a glance from afar). Sloan had no time to communicate the threat to Mami, which was fine because Mami was conscious enough to see the threat herself and didn't need it pointed out in a language she barely understood.
But it put them in a precarious spot. Mami leaned over the handlebars of the scooter as it accelerated faster. Sloan pivoted her turret from Cicero to the more dangerous-looking of the two girls ahead, which was the one with the arquebus because the arquebus was the bigger gun. But the arquebus fired before Sloan could aim right. A thick, smoky explosion burst from the barrel and sailed like a meteorite toward them. Mami swerved and Sloan had to cling tight to Kyoko to stop them from falling as they zoomed past the craterous eruption that billowed where the blast struck. Blunderbuss chick fired next and her aim was surer, or else Mami had less time to evade. Fire sprouted in front of the scooter's tire and the scooter itself catapulted skyward.
As they revolved, Sloan left the scooter and hurtled in a random direction. Her arm remained wrapped around Kyoko mostly out of habit. The world rolled around her, street and sky and skyline like a globe propelled down a staircase.
A ribbon snatched her ankle and jerked her back into the pull of gravity. She tried to orient herself and perceive the world around her and she managed to sight arquebus girl altering her aim for another shot. But if Sloan knew dick about old guns she knew they were slow as fuck to reload. With magic who knew what random bullshit they could do but why was Sloan even still thinking she oughtta just DO—
—So she swung her turret and fired. The light chewed up the street in a line that intersected the arquebus girl. Except at the last moment arquebus girl ducked out of the destruction and scrambled into the street. The ribbon around Sloan's ankle wrenched her in; another gripped Kyoko. Mami reeled them to the scooter as it righted itself and landed on the ground with the aid of more ribbons. Like the blast had simply unspooled them, and now Mami rewrapped the skein. Sloan and Kyoko landed on the back of the scooter and Sloan searched for arquebus girl and blunderbuss girl and at the last moment remembered Cicero before the halberd crashed down for her skull.
Kyoko's spear slammed against the axe-blade. The resulting force nearly knocked Kyoko out of Sloan's arms and off the side of the scooter, but Mami had them snared in enough ribbons. Her blow deflected and her velocity far beyond that of the scooter, Cicero skidded past as her horse whinnied and twisted its golden limbs to slow itself. Kyoko elbowed Sloan rough in the sternum to get her to let go. A swift swipe of her spear severed the threads that tied her and she bounded from the scooter onto the back of Cicero's horse.
She brought her spear down on Cicero's helmet, and this time it was Cicero's turn to deflect the blow. Their respective polearms clashed with a spark of energy as Mami rode the scooter parallel to the stallion. She aimed a rifle at Cicero and fired, only for the bullet to bounce off the armor. Cicero appeared more concerned with Kyoko, their weapons striking in a lightning display of sweeps and slices.
Sloan searched the surroundings for the antiquated gun girls, or any others from the Chicago army. She did not have to search long because their rapid forward momentum had carried them close to the one with the blunderbuss. She held her weapon with one arm and pointed for Mami's head. Sloan had no time to try and shoot her first. She grabbed Mami by the hair and forced her head down as the blunderbuss erupted. The shotput of a bullet sailed over them and struck the side of Cicero's horse before it exploded. The scooter veered away from the blast but it did not even dent Cicero. Kyoko, on the other hand, went hurtling.
"Mami, help Kyoko!" Sloan shouted. Kyoko herself yelled telepathically.
Ribbons sprouted and weaved around the horse to catch Kyoko before she hit the ground. Cicero swung her halberd and severed them, only for more to emerge. She swept her axe with frenetic strikes to try and cleave them before they reached Kyoko. Kyoko meanwhile turned and twisted in the air as ribbons grabbed her, let go of her, and grabbed her again in a constant struggle.
They zoomed past blunderbuss girl and presumably arquebus girl too. In some ways that was a clear strategic victory, because it cut Cicero from her numbers advantage. But at the same time, Sloan had only tenuous plans to deal with Cicero herself. Their best bet was to bind her with ribbons and render her useless, but at the speed she handled her halberd success seemed dubious. A distraction? Or maybe the best bet was to keep ahead of Cicero until they made it to Homura Akemi.
Lombard. Cicero's mental voice cut clear and precise through the blur of sounds around them. Contact Berwyn. Have her intercept. Organize the rest of the soldiers and follow us.
Yes, milady, another voice (Lombard) said.
Did Cicero know Sloan could hear her? Or did she think her telepathy too strong to read. It didn't matter. A weirder question was how could they race down a normal city street in broad daylight, Cicero on a golden horse swinging a giant axe, Mami hoisting Kyoko with ribbons, and no normal people were freaking the fuck out. Sloan glanced at the pedestrians and storefronts. They did not look up, they did not seem to perceive anything but the vague path ahead of them. No police sirens or chaos. But they had moved significant distance from the majority of the Chicago girls, so unless Cicero herself wielded obfuscation magicks no logical explanation existed for why the civilians acted the way they did.
Unless. Sayaka said Homura Akemi was an archon. Dullness, lack of perception, general ignorance—typical symptoms of humans in a miasma.
Well it mattered little. Gave Sloan free reign for as much magic as possible. Which currently was zilch, because her gun failed to dent Cicero's armor. Maybe with sustained fire (because that's the Sloan Redfearn credo: If shooting it doesn't kill it, try shooting it some more), but she risked wiping out the gaggle of ribbons stretched between them and Kyoko. So Sloan sat on Mami's scooter kinda worthless while Mami did the hard stuff, zipping between cars and cyclists and civilians with measured recklessness while keeping Kyoko afloat with ribbons strung between the legs of Cicero's horse. But Sloan didn't like being worthless and she didn't like letting someone else do the heavy lifting. Besides, she had made a promise to herself, right? That she would make sure Mami and Kyoko got through this safe, because this whole debacle had nothing to do with them and also because they deserved to not die, which was more than Sloan could say for herself.
So Sloan leapt off the scooter, over the descending swing of the halberd, and onto the back of the horse. She extended a hand for Kyoko. Except Kyoko instead drew her spear and slashed the blade through the ribbons to sever herself. She hit the ground already bounding forward, carrying her previous forward momentum and with tremendous strides actually managed to keep pace with the horse long enough to jab her spear between its galloping legs. The spear divided into segments and the chains between them wrapped around the hooves.
Sloan wished she knew enough Japanese to thank Kyoko for waiting (it seemed almost specifically) for Sloan to jump onto the horse in order to pull this gambit.
The chains snagged between the hooves and then, surprisingly, snapped. Kyoko's eyes widened for a brief moment at the mangled remnants of her spear, and then she pitched directly into a parked car on the side of the road. The hollow twang of face against metal reverberated for but a moment before the car—and Kyoko—disappeared fifty, a hundred feet behind them. The gap broadened with each passing second.
We lost Kyoko, said Sloan.
"Expect to lose much more," said Cicero.
Oh. Right. Sloan was on the horse now. She tried to calculate the best way to jump back to the scooter, but Mami had to swerve aside to avoid a car and left Sloan marooned.
Cicero seized her by the collar and pulled her close, face to golden facemask. "Delinquent! Where is Omaha? Where are the grief cubes dropped by the Minneapolis archon?"
Sloan shoved her hand against the visor and summoned a blast of pure light into Cicero's face. Cicero recoiled and grunted and pawed under her visor at her singed eyes, while her horse moved with either a mind of its own or extrasensory detection of its surroundings, gliding between the vehicles of the street undeterred by its rider's plight.
The tinny electric vroom of the scooter surged into Sloan's ears. She glanced over her shoulder as Mami zipped beside the horse and coiled ribbons around Sloan's torso. The ribbons tugged hard and Sloan jerked away, but Cicero's hand remained clenched around her collar, the fingers unyielding. Sloan's lower body tilted toward the scooter while her upper body remained fixed where it hung, which basically put Sloan in the position Kyoko had been in before. She disliked the arrangement. Cicero raised her halberd and made tenuous swipes at the air around Sloan, perhaps searching for ribbons, hampered by blindness.
Sloan slammed into the back of a truck. The glass and carriage frame caved around her as her head snapped back and a splatter of blood ran down her face. Cicero's arm twisted at an odd angle, almost a complete one-eighty from normal orientation. Her fingers loosened. The next moment Sloan again sailed through the air, turning, twisting, seeing sky then ground then sky then a vomit of color. It gave her motion sickness and it took a damn long time for Mami's ribbons to stabilize her and pull her back onto the scooter.
She slumped against Mami's back. Face numb. She touched it; shards of glass stuck out the skin. Mind scrambled, she picked at one. It came out slow and with more blood. Pooling on her shoulder, staining her new jacket. She gave up on the shards and clung to Mami's waist. More cars, more buildings zoomed past.
"Kyoko, Kyoko's gone," Sloan whispered. As her brain collected itself she scanned for Cicero. They had landed into dense traffic, with only the narrowness of Mami's scooter allowing continued forward progress. No sign of gold.
"Kyoko strong. Kyoko be fine," said Mami. "We close."
Through the tinted glass of economy-sized cars Sloan espied the stallion. It ran a lane parallel to them, undaunted by Cicero's lack of vision. If Sloan listened, its alloyed nostrils snorted. White puffs of steam rose to mark its position.
The scooter veered again. Sloan thought at first to dodge another car but instead Mami lurched off the main road onto a branch that looped downward between the towers and pillars of Mitakihara. Daylight turned to shadow as the spires blotted out the sun and cast them in darkness. Cicero's steed leapt onto a vehicle and bounded over another to follow them.
Lombard. They have departed the main road. Redirect Berwyn's route. They are heading into Sector F7.
Dammit, Cicero's lackeys were still in telepathy range? It felt like they had covered a significant amount of distance already, but the goon squad must have kept some semblance of pace. Had they caught up to Kyoko? Dammit, Sloan should have helped her. Mami seemed unperturbed, and Mami probably knew Kyoko's capabilities better, but still.
Too late to worry now. Without any weird obstacles and with a much surer shot, Sloan aimed her turret at Cicero and fired. She held the trigger down, let the light stream out and reflect off the shifting golden surfaces both human and equine, carefully tracked her beams to keep even and steady. Five seconds, ten seconds passed. Nothing happened, no change, Sloan's magic simply could not pierce the enchantment. She tried to tell Mami but Mami was already talking—in Japanese. The language buzzed in the back of Sloan's head, two voices, Mami and Kyoko. Which meant Kyoko had kept close too. Sloan knew nothing of Mitakihara geography, perhaps a girl on foot could follow shortcuts between the roads.
Between the roads. An idea popped into Sloan's head. She tilted the gun barrel downward, not at Cicero but at the ground directly in the path of her horse. The light tore into the gravel, churned and spat up rocks and clumps of black ash. Long lines carved deep through the roads, twisting and weaving as Cicero's horse scampered left and right to keep on undemolished surfaces.
It was working. Cicero did not stop, did not even stumble, but she did slow. The distance between her horse and the scooter quit shrinking, even began to widen as they entered a long decline into a portion of the city darker, lower, sparser, unencumbered by mindless humans to clog the passages of transport, walled in by sardine tenements. The Homura Akemi district. Sloan fired her magic wildly along the length of the narrowing streets, wrecking whole swaths of terrain, cleaving smaller and smaller pieces of stability for Cicero to use. Close now. Maybe a few more minutes. Then Chicago is done and Sloan finally gets the chance to meet Satan herself.
Cicero spurred the back flank of her horse with her halberd. The horse loosed a neigh and snort of steam as it bent its legs and bounded off the ground and landed on the wall of tenements to the left. It hit the wall at a ninety-degree angle and continued its charge without pause, defying gravity as both Cicero and the horse hung parallel to the ground. Its golden hooves clattered along the brick and mortar structures, making easy leaps at rare gaps between them. Sloan started to adjust the angle of her gun to fire at the walls instead. But people lived in those houses—probably. Her magic would punch through the curtained windows and thin bricks and rain destruction on the dullards. Rip them to shreds without hope of magic to heal the wounds.
She hesitated.
It was enough. Cicero's horse powered forward and leapt from the wall. It soared toward the scooter, Cicero's halberd raised, her other arm limp and her head at a lazy angle, but the horse's eyes saw, two stones of pure turquoise set deep in the gold plates. The halberd swung down. Sloan ducked as the blade traveled over her head, nicking the skin on the back of her neck. Mami cried out. The scooter dropped and skidded. Sloan ejected from her seat and careened down the path. She scraped until friction stopped her. Half her face—half her whole body—hissed with heat and rawness.
She rolled onto her side and pushed herself up. No clue where her turret had fallen. Best to summon another and worry about magical expenditure later. One arm hung stiff and difficult to move, so the other clasped the turret as she scanned the dead street for Mami. The scooter lay in two clean pieces on the opposite end, the part with the motor still chugging as it span in a slow circle. Mami lay facedown nearby. Not moving. Shit. Sloan staggered toward her, but the next moment Mami's head rose and she propped her upper body on her hands.
Cicero's horse trotted between them. She rode spine straight, halberd straight. Her head lolled. "Congratulations. I will admit I underestimated you somewhat. Forgive me; it has been some time since I have dueled a Puella Magi outside of a training context."
Her horse stopped beside Mami. Cicero held her axe an inch from the flower-shaped gem on the side of her head.
"Don't kill her," said Sloan.
"I do not intend to commit murder on this excursion," said Cicero. "Although if necessary I shall not hesitate. It is your own pointless struggle that bears you closer to death. Had you surrendered peacefully, such violence would be evaded."
Sloan sensed something approach from behind. She glanced over her shoulder as three Chicago girls flanked her, although only two held weapons. A crossbow (like Bloomington) for one and a saber for the other. Sloan pressed her back against the nearby tenement wall and aimed at the girl with the crossbow. Nobody attacked.
"Impeccable timing, Berwyn," said Cicero.
The girl with no weapon bowed her head. "I am thankful for your praise, milady. You appear injured. Have these unkempt wenches harmed your ladyship?"
Cicero rolled the shoulder of her broken arm. "The one in the coat blinded me. My fault, I allowed her too close. As for the arm, that's my own recklessness. You understand the way I prefer to war."
"Aye, milady," said Berwyn. She quite casually strolled past Sloan to the side of Cicero's horse. In her hand materialized a syringe which she jabbed between the plates of Cicero's armor into her thigh. "Although it is not my place to advise strategy, perhaps in future expeditions it would be most prudent to keep your chief medic with the main core of the army rather than as the lead of the reserve squadron."
The lever of the syringe went down. Cicero rolled her shoulder again and this time instead of a limp response her arm bent and turned like a normal arm. "You could not have kept pace either way," said Cicero. "I would rather have a competent commander to helm the reserve squadron than an extra healer to bolster the ranks. Regardless, now is improper time for such discussion. Lombard will arrive shortly with the others and we can place Fargo and her companions under arrest. Now, my blindness."
"Aye, milady." Berwyn drew another syringe and plunged it into Cicero. Sloan searched for an avenue of escape while they were distracted, but the other two girls had their weapons trained on her. Sloan could probably take the goons, but she had nowhere but straight empty street to run afterward. Plus, she'd leave Mami behind.
Given the surroundings, Homura's apartment could not be far, but Sloan had no clue how to reach it. Where were Homura's stupid dolls? Shouldn't they tell Succubitch the situation here? Or did Homura not—
A spear launched from a rooftop and nailed Berwyn through the throat. The two girls watching Sloan turned their attention to the figure tumbling from the air toward Cicero, so Sloan turned her gun and fried both goons with a quick sweep. Kyoko pirouetted onto her spear, bounced off its springy shaft, and wrenched it out of Berwyn's throat as she lunged at Cicero herself. Her spear locked with the blade of Cicero's axe.
Sloan staggered for Mami while Kyoko and Cicero clashed weapons. She hopped over the kneeling, blood-gurgling Berwyn and grabbed Mami by the wrist to jerk her away from the melee. "Mami, are you okay?"
"Yes, am fine." Mami nodded and helped herself to her feet. She noted Kyoko and Cicero engaged in combat (Cicero remaining mounted atop her horse while Kyoko dodged and dashed around her) and summoned a rifle into her hand.
"No," Sloan grabbed her wrist. "Her army is coming. Even if we beat her, they'll surround us." Please understand, Sloan did not have time to explain this better. "Get to Homura Akemi. Stop time. Kyoko and I will distract her!"
Mami said nothing, only stared. Did she understand? Did the words make sense? Sloan held her breath. The clash of Kyoko's spear and Cicero's halberd made the only sound in the dark and barren space.
Finally, Mami turned her head toward Kyoko and used telepathy to ask something in Japanese. Kyoko darted under a swing and barely deflected a blow. She shouted one terse word.
Mami pulled her wrist away from Sloan and nodded. Her rifle devolved back into ribbons. "Okay. Back soon. I promise!"
She sprinted down the street, past the prone bodies of the roasted Chicago girls. Sloan wasted no time. She turned to Kyoko and Cicero, Kyoko still ducking and jumping to keep up with Cicero's measured and precise strokes. It took only a moment to appraise Kyoko as being on the worse end, her shoulders and arms glistened with sweat and she huffed for breath. Each swipe by Cicero struck closer to Kyoko before the spear blocked it. Each moment between strokes allowed Kyoko less time to reposition.
But what could Sloan do? Her weapon had no effect whatsoever. She stood useless and pondered a strategy as each blow beat Kyoko lower and lower. Her eyes flitted across the battlefield for anything and settled on the kneeling form of Berwyn, who had summoned another syringe to inject into the gaping wound of her throat. She had removed her helmet, or it had fallen off, allowing her dark hair to drop around her shoulders. From her ear twinkled an azure gemstone. Her Soul Gem? If the Chicago girls kept them in the same place...
Sloan bounded onto the stooped head of Cicero's horse while Cicero levied another blow at Kyoko. She seized the golden helm with both hands and tugged. The helmet popped off with surprising ease, so much that Sloan's excess force propelled her into Cicero, their faces nearly touching. Sloan's eyes searched her ears.
No gem.
Cicero socked Sloan in the jaw. Sloan staggered, lost her balance on the horse, and dropped onto her back.
A blow from the halberd followed. Sloan held up the golden helmet to deflect it and it somehow worked, the axe rebounded off the blessed piece of armor without even a reverberation of its force traveling through Sloan's arms, as if the attack had dissipated entirely the moment it struck.
But it did not dissipate, because the recoil brought the halberd back up to Cicero. Her body jerked with extreme ferocity. She flew from her horse and bounced against the ground.
Sloan stared at the helmet. Kyoko glanced at Sloan and then pounced on the opportunity. She launched her spear at the prone Cicero, gunning directly for the exposed head.
Out of nowhere, Berwyn threw herself between Kyoko and Cicero. The spear pierced her less-blessed armor and drilled into her heart as she latched her hands onto the shaft and tried to wrench the weapon out of Kyoko's grasp. Cicero rolled to her feet and struck a defensive position between Kyoko and Sloan.
The horse, no longer mounted, folded inward on itself. The shifting plates and pieces shuffled and scraped until the entire horse compressed into a single tiny cube of gold that disappeared in a puff of powder. Meanwhile, Kyoko kicked at Berwyn's body to pry it from the tip of her spear. She eventually succeeded and flung Berwyn far from the immediate arena.
"Very well," said Cicero. Her eyes flitted between both adversaries. "Until now I had weakened my blows, intending to incapacitate rather than murder. But you have proven an adequate contest, and thus it no longer behooves me to handicap my own strength."
Cicero's head and bob of short hair stood exposed to assault. And while her gem remained concealed within her defenses, she had no innate healing ability. Blast a girl's brain to bits, gem or not, and it'll sure stop her from swinging her damn axe. Sloan shoved the helmet on her own head—it barely fit over her stringy hair—and grabbed her gun from the ground.
"I've beat archons," said Sloan. "I can sure as fuck beat you."
"Heh." Cicero swung her halberd onto the ground. It smashed through the street with a cataclysmic force. Cracks spread to the buildings on either side, and then spread up the buildings. Windows shattered, their glass shards spewing onto the road. The ground beneath Sloan's boots burst and sent her flying.
A horrendous warcry filled the air. Cicero bounded skyborne at Sloan and raised her halberd high for another devastating attack. Kyoko leapt at her but as the halberd came down it cleaved clean through the spear and continued toward Sloan. The helmet! Sloan tucked her head to absorb the blow with her one piece of armor. Despite its protection the blast rattled her skull and plowed her straight into the ground. Sloan had no time to collect her senses before Cicero bore down from above, halberd already raised. Ignoring all pain Sloan rolled to the side but she had no clue if she dodged or not because the impact of the axe hitting whatever it hit caused another seismic pulse that flung her far.
She hit the ground, bounced, rolled, stopped against a curb. Nausea and pain overwhelmed everything. Her sight blurred and odd colors crept across it. But eyesight was the issue she could fix. With a quick blink everything became coherent and Sloan's eyes settled on the arena between her and Cicero. Cicero wrenched her halberd from the ground and turned toward Sloan as the buildings behind her lost their support and crumbled down, bricks and beams and columns snapping, roofs caving inward, the ground rumbling with tremors. Ash and dust swept across the street as tenements collapsed into rubble, swallowing Cicero for a brief moment in their wispy sandstorm, but even in the obscurity her golden armor gleamed bright and vengeful.
"You should not have tested me," she said. "I consider restraint a key virtue for a noble woman. But I always remain willing to tap into my untamed roots when the need arises."
The dust lowered. Sloan coughed—needed to retaliate. She summoned a new gun and aimed at Cicero's head and fired. The light sailed through the settling sediment. Cicero did not dodge. Instead, she pulled back her halberd and swung again, swung at the light itself. The blade of her axe cut clean through the encroaching beam and split it in halves that glanced off and forked in opposite directions. She cut the light. She cut the light with her axe.
"Remember, the option of surrender always exists. I grant that basic right, if none other."
Sloan gaped. Her mind went blank. No ideas. No strategies. Unsure if she could even move. Her body felt wedged in the debris of the battlefield. The voice of Delaney Pollack filled her head: You need to be more creative, love. Creative. Creative how. Creative HOW, Delaney? No creativity came. Only one brief idea: more power. Sloan remembered her finisher. But so deep beneath the skyscrapers of the city, only glancing needles of sunlight seeped. Not enough.
No, wait, no. You don't need to beat her, just distract her long enough for Mami. But how long would Mami take? How long did it take to run to Homura's apartment? Time to pray. Pray for a miracle. A sudden deus ex machina, except instead of deus it was diablo or whatever the Latin for devil was. Time stop. Stop now, time. Please stop now.
A wall of red lattice sprung between Sloan and Cicero. Cicero barely even registered the barrier; one casual swing severed it cleanly. She continued toward Sloan undaunted.
Kyoko flung herself at Cicero. Or rather, at the ground next to Cicero. But she moved so fast and from such a periphery that while Cicero made a clean horizontal slice at something she suspected was headed straight at her, Kyoko dipped beneath the stroke, jabbed her spear against the ground, vaulted back up, and whipped her weapon at Cicero while the axe-stroke finished. The spear point sailed through Cicero's throat into her jaw. Kyoko jerked the spear and the jaw unhinged like a zombie, lurching from the rest of the skull with a deluge of teeth and blood to hang by a strand of cartilage around the base of Cicero's neck.
With her free hand, Cicero seized the upper shaft of the spear and snapped it with one squeeze. Kyoko looked at the shattered stick for a moment before the halberd raised again and crashed down on her. A direct hit. Kyoko sailed back, the air itself bending around her body as it soared across the street and stopped only when it hit a solid brick building. The impact caused the façade to shatter. Kyoko's body bounced and landed facedown on the sidewalk.
Sloan did not watch idly. As Cicero's stroke terminated, Sloan hoisted her gun and fired at the mutilated face. The halberd turned to deflect, but Cicero had too little preparation. The light hit her, scored a direct blow, KNOCKED HER FUCKING BLOCK OFF. Cicero's body jerked, the gold armor gleaming with the glow of Sloan's light as it tore into the unprotected head. Sloan held her ground and fired, and fired, and fired, until Cicero's body ceased jerking and collapsed to the ground. It no longer had a head. The bloody stump of neck oozed with occasional spurts.
"Holy shit," said Sloan. "Holy shit." She turned toward where Kyoko fell. "Kyoko—"
A syringe sank into her neck. In an instant, all feeling numbed. All control left her. Her body slackened and her legs no longer supported her. Hands wrapped around her shoulders to catch her as she fell.
Berwyn whispered in her ear. "Hush now, poppet. Hush now. You're safe. I never hurt anyone."
She laid Sloan gently on the ground. Sloan tried to open her mouth to speak but the sedatives rendered her incapable of anything. She tried to communicate telepathically but nothing happened. She tried to use her mind to make her gun fire, but nothing happened. A complete and total block.
After patting Sloan's head, Berwyn rushed to the side of Cicero's body. More syringes appeared, larger, filled with fluids red and pink and green. She injected each in turn into the headless stump. Berwyn's body blocked Sloan's view, but she had a fairly good idea of the intended purpose of the syringes. Strange gurgling noises filtered from Berwyn's workplace, sounds like vines creeping over a trellis. Like slugs crushed against a patio. Vivid, wretched noises that churned Sloan's already-churned stomach. Most of all because she knew what it meant.
It meant she fucking lost.
After maybe a minute, Berwyn stepped back and regarded her work. A fully-formed head had reappeared on Cicero's shoulders. Cicero blinked, pushed herself up, brushed her armor. Looked around. Stretched her limbs, cracked her neck.
"Thank you, Berwyn. It appears I allowed myself to fall into an embarrassing situation."
"Aye, milady. But you can depend on me, as always."
"Indeed. Thus I may depend on you to keep this matter quiet, especially to the other soldiers. They have no need to know what happened here."
"Aye, milady."
"Attend to Niles and Westmont. They are injured."
After another aye-milady, Berwyn hurried to the bodies of the two girls Sloan had fried at the start of the fight. Quick dosages of medication had them on their feet with little aplomb. The more unsettling thing in Sloan's field of vision was Cicero, who clomped over to Kyoko's body. Kyoko's Magical Girl clothes had vanished in favor of her usual street attire.
Cicero turned the body over and inspected it. She knelt and picked up a small piece of something between two fingers and held it close to her eyes. Even from a distance, Sloan's strong eyesight detected a ruby glint in the particle.
"It appears my strike was too strong for this one," said Cicero. "Her gem shattered."
Everything inside Sloan sank. Sank or simply vacuumed out, leaving only a hollow pit where once had been intestines, spleen, stomach. No. No dammit no. Kyoko. Hours ago they were opening Christmas presents together, no no no no no. Sloan had done it again, done it a-fucking-gain, a girl was dead because of her, for no fucking reason, she had no reason to be part of this, now she was dead, embroiled in the vortex of fuck that encircled Sloan since the day she was fucking born, and Sayaka, Sayaka had asked one fucking thing—keep them safe—one fucking thing, it wasn't even ending the whole goddam universe/god/devil whateverthefuck like she originally planned, it was just keep them safe, Kyoko and Mami, Sloan could not even manage THAT, could manage NOTHING THE FUCK AT ALL. Nothing. NOTHING.
She did not even have the chance to hate herself more because Cicero had already turned to her, now accompanied by Berwyn and the other fucks, four gold-armored assholes staring down at her. Cicero pulled the helmet from Sloan's head and put it back where it probably rightfully belonged.
"For what duration of time will this one be paralyzed?" said Cicero.
"A natural hour. But I can administer an antidote immediately if you so desire, milady."
"I do desire it. Lombard and Elmhurst will meet with us shortly, along with the rest of our forces. Once that has happened, we shall have Hinsdale and Hodgkins track the trail of the blonde-haired one. I want no girls to escape. Any of them may have critical intelligence as to Omaha's whereabouts or the whereabouts of the Minneapolis archon grief cubes. It is a pity I underestimated my own strength and slew the red-haired one. I did not wish to kill."
Time stop. Please stop, time. Please stop and never resume.
But time kept ticking.
Note: I decided to split this chapter in two. Chapter 38 will come next week, 2/26.