The lights of the tunnel flickered for a moment, something interfering with their circuits. After a few seconds, the flickering stopped and they began to shine at their modest warm glow again, the problem forgotten. A few more seconds passed, and the lights went out. The tunnel was plunged into darkness.

The armored body of Oktavia von Seckendorff crashed into the tunnel entrance, causing half the structure to crumble and the road to crack. Nagisa ducked under her and ran, making her way down the tunnel as fast as her legs could carry her. That red monstrosity was still chasing her, but Oktavia kept getting in the way. It didn't look like acting heroic like this was benefiting Oktavia very much, but Nagisa was thankful for the help. Oktavia righted herself again, grabbing her sword just in time for Uvhash to pounce on top of her, crushing the tunnel under their combined weight. Nagisa barely managed to roll under a steel beam that would have crushed her as it fell.

Uvhash's tentacles wormed their way around Oktavia, plunging into the ground and tearing it apart. The cracks that grew in the ground, opened up ever wider and seemed to chase Nagisa as she ran in the darkness. In a single glance behind her, Nagisa saw some light coming from below somewhere. She remembered that this entire world was a massive construction with endless rooms and halls below the ground. She might be able to stall Uvhash's pursuit in those halls, and there wouldn't be as much risk to other people down there. The only problem was that, while Uvhash was able to squeeze his way into the smaller spaces, Oktavia would not so easily be able to follow.

She would have to take her chances, and hope Oktavia could make Uvhash lose track of her. Nagisa waited until one of the cracks reached her and simply jumped in, dropping into the inner workings of the world. As soon as she fell past the initial crust of metal and pavement, several meters thick, the chasm opened up below her. She was falling into a deep ravine with metal walls, everything fading to blackness far beneath. There were machines, circuits, and balconies along the walls at seemingly random intervals. Whatever they were for, she only saw them at this moment as something to grab on to.

As she fell past one of the antennas sticking out over the ravine, she reached out her hand to catch it and stop her fall, only to be dismayed when it snapped right off. "Oh, fucking come on!" A balcony, a bridge, something to land on and stop her fall. Her hands grew numb after only a few more seconds of trying to catch herself on anything near enough to her. She saw an elevator far below her, its walls opaque and silvery. Angling herself just right, she steered her body towards the elevator. She knew it would hurt, but this time she was ready to take it. She closed her eyes and...

Oktavia's hand wrapped around Nagisa's small body, pulling her away from the wall as the two of them continued to fall. Nagisa twisted around to look up above them, where she could see Uvhash tearing through the layers of the world in pursuit. She looked back down, the way they were falling, and still couldn't see a bottom. So long as they kept falling at this speed, they might be able to stay away from Uvhash indefinitely, but she knew the world had to have a limited size. There was only so far they could fall before they hit something. It turned out Oktavia didn't intend to hit the floor, though, as she brandished her sword with a flourish and thrust it into the wall next to them. A huge gash opened up behind the sword as it dragged down the side of the metal ravine, slicing through floor after floor of unexplored hallways, bit by bit slowing their fall until, suddenly, they stopped.

Nagisa didn't feel heavy. This was strange. Oktavia pulled her sword free and, releasing Nagisa, pointed the sword up at Uvhash. Nagisa, meanwhile, floated away from her friend slowly. There was no more gravity pulling her down. She was so near the center now, there there was no gravity, or nearly none. She looked up again, seeing Uvhash drawing nearer. She looked to Oktavia. Finally, her friends had found her. Oktavia was hurt, bad, but she was still standing after how long fighting this monster, Nagisa had no idea. The others couldn't be far behind. She waited. Uvhash drew nearer. Something was wrong.

"Where are the others?"

Oktavia's grip on her sword weakened. She was quiet for a moment before answering. "This world was built around you. All of you."

"But I never... I never saw them..." Nagisa watched as Uvhash grew in her vision, the world above them lost behind its massive form. The others were here somewhere... weren't they? "Where are they?"

Oktavia drew her sword back, and smashed it into the wall, rupturing a cluster of conduits and circuitry. A strange concoction of energy began to spew out of the machinery, black darkness entwined with strands of pure light being flung out into the air and blasting through the walls, smashing and burning its way through. Oktavia pointed at the streams of energy. "That is ours, Nagisa! This entire world is run on energy from us!"

Nagisa blinked in confusion. The world was powered by their friends. She could see the streams of energy, powerful beyond imagination. Uvhash slowed in his approach, wary of the new source of destructive energy. He began tearing chunks of the walls out and flinging them downward, watching as they disintegrated when struck by the beams of power. It was true. It had to be. How else would Nagisa and Oktavia be the only ones to have found each other. That energy had to belong to the others. So Nagisa just needed to follow it to the source.

"Go, Nagisa! Find them! I can't defeat him on my own!"

Oktavia grabbed Nagisa and threw her down, towards the core of the world, just as Uvhash pushed his way around the streaming energy, losing several tentacles along the way. The two colossal beings slammed into each other, trading blows and tumbling through the distance as Nagisa fell further and further from them. And Nagisa kept falling. And falling. For what seemed like hours, she fell towards the core. The metal transitioned from what she had seen before into something else, and she could feel why. The atmosphere had grown dense and thick, heavy with strange forces. It wasn't that the materials she was seeing now were needed for this environment due to their strength. No, these were metals that wouldn't maintain their solid form in any other environment. Pressure and heat and magnetism pushing and pulling their atoms and the contents of those atoms in so many ways, they were forced together into solid forms that would never be stable in another place.

Nagisa shot out of the bottomless ravine into an enormous cavern, the core, filled with brilliant light that threatened to blind her. She was struck with wave after wave of inconceivable energy as the center of the core spun, a piercing white ball of tightly condensed energy. A pulsar. Such immense power, Nagisa had never felt anything like this before. No one had. She felt the heat burning her skin, but more than that was happening. Peculiar particles were bombarding her. She could feel them, smaller than atoms, making changes to her body, combining with the matter that made her. It hurt, it burned, it was soothing, it was agonizing, it was freezing, and it was everything. It was strange.

Through the blinding light, she saw it. A thin frame of some crystalline metal forming a harness around the pulsar, containing it like a bauble or a gem. And at the intersection of four long pipes, she could see a sphere. Made of some clear, opaque matter that she could see through, but couldn't. Out of this sphere, which looked to be only a few dozen meters from the surface of the pulsar, luminous golden light fed into the piping and away from the star, feeding into the rest of the world.

Some time later, Nagisa crashed into the pipe, which she found to be a power conduit several meters across. She crawled along it, barely able to keep herself from reeling in pain from the endless bombardment of radiation and exotic particles. She could feel it changing the very structure of the atoms in her body as she went, closer and closer to the sphere. She could feel the metal under her hands, rough and bulbous as if it couldn't be made smooth in the first place. The extreme forces it had withstood for countless, possibly billions of years, had changed it so much. It was warped, mutated. Made not of some conventional metal, but of something far beyond the normal periodic table. Some element that could only survive in unimaginable cosmic turbulence.

She reached the sphere and climbed onto it, making her way around the shell. She couldn't see inside, but she knew what must be there. Standing on the side of the sphere, she looked down at it, seeing the raging pulsar beneath. This was the world's source of power. If she disrupted it, it could spell death and doom for her family. They were still out there, alive. She could be hurting them.

Allowing Uvhash to continue his rampage, allowing him to defeat Oktavia, would spell certain death for all of them. Oktavia needed help. She was relying on Nagisa. Nagisa felt her body growing heavier by the second, particles being added to it, crushing together until they fused and became heavier elements. Stronger elements. Nagisa raised her fist and brought it crashing down on the surface of the sphere, and it cracked. The crack spread along the surface for several meters in every direction. The shell threatened to break with another blow, and Nagisa obliged. Bringing her fist down again, Nagisa broke through the shell. It shattered like glass, and Nagisa floated in the air for a moment as the shards scattered, revealing what was inside.

There she was. Floating in the center of the sphere, golden energy flowing from her as she rested in a fetal position, sleeping, naked, Mami Tomoe. Nagisa grabbed the edges of the hole she'd made in the sphere's shell and pulled herself in, floating slowly towards her long lost friend. She reached out and caught Mami by the shoulder. Wrapping her arms around her friend, she tried to wake her. A little shaking wasn't doing the trick, so Nagisa resorted to leaning in an giving her a kiss on the mouth. It worked in the cartoons, and it worked here. A moment later, Mami's eyes fluttered open.

"...Nagisa..."

Finally, she wasn't alone anymore. "Hey. It's time to go."

Mami looked around her, confused. "Where are we?"

"Don't worry. It's time to go anyway. Come on, wake up." Oktavia needed them. They had to go.

"But... I am awake."

Nagisa shook her head, feeling her body begin to crumple under its own weight. "No... wake up... all the way." Nagisa's body fell apart, shattering into crystalline shards that drifted off in every direction. Mami watched in wonder as Charlotte uncoiled before her, glowing with light. The huge creature turned back to Mami, it's gaping maw hanging open questioningly. "Are you ready to go?"

Mami nodded. "I understand. Thank you." Yellow ribbons of light sprouted from her hair, and the angelic dress formed over her body. Candeloro appeared in a burst of light.

Charlotte smiled. "Get the others. We need to save Oktavia."