Resonance Days

by TakerFoxx

Falling their mutual demise at each other's hands, Kyoko and Sayaka wake up in a strange world. Now, with Kyoko's soul gem missing and Sayaka's humanity and personality only partially restored, they must band together to survive.

30. Monsterland, Part 1

Monsterland, Part 1

There was no denying that the afterlife set aside for the unfortunates who had been suckered into taking the Incubators' curse was a weird and wild place. Stitched together from the minds of the damaged children from over a dozen species, it was as strange as their various fairy tales and just as dangerous, and the small patches of civilization that had been forced upon it were less the norm and more of oases of sanity in a wasteland of madness.

There were forests filled with monsters, mountains of living flesh, skies filled with eyes, and rivers of blood, one of the few places that the substance could be found. Packs of the deranged hunted the unwary, and in some of the darker places, those who had succumbed fully to the pain lurked, hidden within their labyrinths. It was a world of dreams, which meant that there were as many nightmares as there were wonders. More, perhaps.

The spawn sites were the worst of it. It was there that the newly dead would arrive, confused and afraid, and more often than not they brought more than their fair share of dark energy with them. Over time, that energy would accumulate, stack in on itself and build like a hardened crust of insanity. Most of them took the form of cities, with dark buildings and nauseating lights. But now and then they took on other forms.

The Velocity Terminal had apparently decided to rebel against popular trends and became a network of highways. A rather bewildering network of highways that no self-respecting vehicle could navigate without ending up as a heap of twisted metal somewhere. Kilometers upon kilometers of twisting roads that floated high in the sky with no visible support, it seemed to resemble an asphalt rollercoaster more than a road. Or rather, several asphalt rollercoasters that had gotten themselves all tangled up.

Here and there were round towers with pointed tops and pointed bottoms. They too hung suspended in the sky in defiance to the laws of physics, their lengths refusing to reach all the way to the ground. Windows dotted their outer walls, and the roads sometimes snaked through one window only to reappear out of another tower entirely. There were also large, flat discs of concrete, ringed by concrete trees sitting in concrete planters. Whether they were meant to be a parody of city parks or landing pads for aircraft that will never arrive couldn't be guessed.

But of the greatest interest was the sky. Curiously for a spawn site, it was bright blue and always sunny, even if the sun itself neglected to make an appearance. Wispy white clouds sat in neat, orderly rows and were always moving quickly in neat, orderly lines, as if in a hurry to get somewhere. Some days they headed west, other days to the south, but they were always moving.

Though if it were the wind that blew them, it could not be the same wind that those traveling the roads felt. For the Velocity Terminal had one last odd quirk about it, in that no matter who you were, how many of you were there, and which way each of you faced, the wind was always strong, and always to your back.

Naturally, given that everyone in the afterlife was already supernaturally strong and quick, if anyone wanted to go for a nice jog, they could move pretty damned fast.

Kyoko's feet pounded asphalt as she charged forward up and down one of the roads, moving faster than any car could. Her arms were spread out behind her like wings, and she had a furious grin upon her face. The wind was pushing her forward almost as much as her legs were as she ran and leapt her way through the nest of roads and towers. Had it not been for her opponent, she might have let out a whoop of exhilaration. Maybe she would anyway. Danger or no danger, this was just fun.

Pity Annabelle Lee had to be there to ruin it.

The legless idiot was swooping up and down with her, weaving in and out of the roads as nimbly as a bat, keeping pace with Kyoko while searching for opportune moments to strike. That in itself wouldn't be much of a problem, but Annabelle Lee had a gun.

And that…was definitely a problem.

The road Kyoko was on suddenly rose up above the others. Seeing her moment, Annabelle Lee turned to her back as she flew next to Kyoko and fired. Kyoko threw up a series of shields to protect herself. Bullets rattled the plates, sending a spray of sparks into the abyss below. Kyoko kept the shields steady, legs pumping as the road started to dip down again, back into the cover of the tangle. Annabelle Lee stopped firing, no doubt readying herself to dodge and weave through the asphalt labyrinth.

Suddenly, before the road plunged down completely, Kyoko pivoted on her heel and leapt to the side, right at Annabelle Lee. The wind carried her farther than her strength could, and she lashed out with out of her spears, the pole separating into links to whip about like a bladed nunchaku. Taken by surprise, Annabelle Lee forgot her gun and tried to stab at Kyoko with her blades. She managed to deflect the spearhead before it cut her, but that just gave Kyoko the opportunity to kick the back of her head and rebound off onto the next road.

Annabelle Lee dropped her rifle. Cursing loudly, she swooped down, grabbed it before it hit something solid, and fired again. But by then Kyoko was already deep within the tangle of roads, and Annabelle Lee's bullets only struck concrete and asphalt.

Laughing, Kyoko called, "Give it up, Annabelle Lee! You're just gonna end up embarrassing yourself again!"

Whatever tug of conscience that had compelled the former Void Walker to show mercy back at the remembering field had long since withered. Annabelle Lee cursed again, and swooped back down after her. That was fine with Kyoko. She was having the time of her life. This was a fight she could get behind. No tricks, no weird politics, no trying to fight after prolonged periods of pain and starvation. Just her, her friends, her opponents, and plenty of space to jump about in. Violence without bullshit, just the way she liked it.

Annabelle Lee darted in, spraying bullets in short bursts whenever there was an opening. Kyoko leapt and ran, dodging where she could, throwing up shields when she couldn't, keeping one step ahead of her, waiting for an opening.

She saw one. One of the towers was now directly beneath her, floating like a giant two-sided top. Kyoko leapt off the road she was on and let herself drop. She hit the round, sloping roof, slid down, and hopped onto an inclined road that entered one of the windows. The road's slant was too steep to stand upon, so she adhered a pair of small shields to the bottoms of her boots and slid all the way down through the window.

For a brief moment everything went dark, and all of a sudden she was sliding back out into sunlight, emerging from another tower entirely. Kyoko had discovered that neat little trick entirely by accident after Annabelle Lee had managed to knock her off one of the roads and she had leapt into a tower for cover. The sudden change in location had been disorienting, but since it had dropped her directly over the emaciated sociopath's head, Kyoko wasn't complaining. She had almost taken Annabelle Lee's head off coming down, and did manage to tag her with a kick to the jaw. Now she wanted to do it again.

Unfortunately, this time when she came out, Annabelle Lee was nowhere to be seen. Blinking, Kyoko leapt onto a more even road and vanished the plates she had been skating on. Though it was hard to tell, this cluster of roads didn't really resemble the one she had left, and now she was standing alone with no one in sight.

Kyoko sighed. She should have thought of that. There was no guarantee that the tower trick would drop her off any place close. For all she knew she was now clear on the other side of the spawn site.

Well, at least it gave her a few moments to catch her breath. Kyoko hopped her way up to the top of the layers of road and looked around.

In three directions, she saw nothing. Just endless roads, all twisting around one another under a blue sky filled with clouds in a hurry to get somewhere. But as she glanced this way and that, she soon became aware of the sounds of shouting. Squinting, she peered down the fourth as best she could. There, a good distance away, was one of those flat disks. And on it, she could just make out a couple of figures. Judging by the way they were jumping about and flailing their limbs, they were currently engaged in kicking the crap out of one another.

Kyoko blinked. Then she grinned. Well then, since her little trick had deprived her of her dance partner, the only thing to do now was to find some other dance and cut in.

…

Charlotte prided herself on her hand-to-hand skills, or at least she had. For the last two and a half years she had been attending weekly classes on self-defense, and since until very recently she had no magical powers to develop, she had put all of her attention into honing her physical abilities. It only made sense, as even without her magically enhanced strength and agility she was naturally athletic, and was able to quickly pick up on a number of offensive and defensive techniques. Punching and kicking? Easy. Dodging and deflecting? Nothing simpler. Impressive aerial acrobatics? Good times. Submissions? Pressure points? Timing? Not a problem.

Though she hadn't exactly been at the top of the class, she had been up there, and had even done well in a couple of tournaments. As such, she had always walked around with the idea that if things ever came down to violence, she would be able to handle herself just fine.

Unfortunately, Arzt was now reminding her of the difference between going to a class on Saturdays and actual combat training, as well as the difference between relenting training mats and hard concrete. And that damned wind kept throwing her off. It was a lesson that Charlotte was not enjoying.

She managed to block two quick jabs and duck a third, but that just left her open to a low dropkick that took her knees out from under her. Charlotte quickly rolled to one side, barely in time to avoid having Arzt's syringes jabbed into her neck. During the fight, she couldn't help but notice that three of them were filled with red liquid and two of them with green. Based upon what she knew, that meant Arzt intended to blow her head up and then prevent it from growing it back for at least a week. And all it would take for that to happen was one missed step against someone who was quickly proving to be her superior. Not an enviable situation at all.

But what was worse was that Charlotte really had no idea why she was in this situation at all. Given everything that had happened, they ought to have been free from these guys by now, either through them getting caught in Starlight Motors or just giving up. What in the world did they have to gain by still going after Charlotte and her friends?

It was a real puzzler, so she decided to find out. Rolling into a crouch, she stood up and said, "Why?"

Arzt looked like she had been preparing to take another swipe at Charlotte. But hearing the question, she paused. "Why what?" she said, her face scrunching up in puzzlement.

"Why the hell are you guys still chasing us? What do you got to gain from all this?"

Arzt let out a snort. "Wow. Really?"

"Yes, really! You've already been fired, there's no way in hell the Matriarch is going to be happy with you after that whole fiasco, odds are Reibey doesn't want anything to do with you idiots ever again, so what the hell are you doing? What can we possibly offer you guys? Why not just…I don't know, go to Etherdale and be heroes again or something? Just leave us alone!"

It was a decent speech for one so short, and Charlotte certainly filled it with plenty of passion. But alas, its intended recipient was unmoved. "Because A, nothing to lose and B, hope against hope that if we do get you guys for good we can still work something out, because C, they lose nothing by doing so, since D, releasing us will make us go away and they still get your ugly friends in the process, and E, even if they don't want to deal, we really don't have anywhere else to go because, F, Etherdale is dumb and annoying and you couldn't pay us to go back to that maggot heap, and G, we still hate your dumb guts and opening you up like a smoky trash bag sounds like a lot of fun, so H, why the hell not?"

Charlotte paused. As odd as it sounded, those were actually some fair and logical points, and she didn't really have a decent response. "Uh, because…it'd be really, really mean?"

Arzt pursed her lips. "Oh dear. How awful. Well. We're just going to have to live with that."

She tensed up, reading herself to leap forward to open Charlotte up like she had promised, but Charlotte had finally thought up a response. Where words had failed her, wires would have to do.

She shot off all ten of them at once, a web of glistening gold grasping for its prey. She hoped to wrap Arzt up as neatly as she had back at Cloudbreak, but unfortunately this time the blonde freak had a better idea of what Charlotte was capable of. She darted swiftly to one side, so Charlotte thrust her arms after her, directing the wires to follow-

-only for Arzt to suddenly shove back with both legs and leap back, body flipping neatly over the wires. As she did so, her flesh hand darted into the natty leather jacket she was wearing and produced a nasty looking knife. It wasn't as vicious looking as those used by her teammate Ticky Nikki, but the edge was sharp enough to sear through Charlotte's wires. She landed in a crouch and then lunged forward, slashing away wires as she went.

Charlotte yelped as the shredded wires retracted, and then jerked back as Arzt slashed twice at her midsection in short, quick jabs. She was still wearing her protective undershirt that she had snatched from the Persephone Protectorate, but while it protected her just fine from bullets and provided a measure of padding from fists, she didn't want to test it against blades.

"Oh, she's a slippery one," Arzt giggled as she kept darting in with her blade. "I like. Unfortunately, all it takes is one missed step, and I'll cut you open from crotch to chin!"

Charlotte believed her, just as she also believed that Arzt would be more than happy to kick her right off the platform into the gaping abyss that lay below the tangled layers of roads. Charlotte knew more about the afterlife than most, but she wasn't too familiar with the Velocity Terminal and whether or not it had an actual bottom under all that blue. And to be truthful, she was in no hurry to find out.

"Ah!" she cried as one of Arzt's slashes came too close. It tore rents in both flaps of her jacket and sliced a neat cut across her shirt.

Arzt laughed. "You're getting sloppy, Charlotte! All I got to do is get you once, and it doesn't matter which hand I use!"

That was true. A cut would end the fight as readily as an injection. However, even in the panic of the moment, Arzt's words brought something to Charlotte's mind, something her training instructor had said to her.

"Weapons are useful tools, yes," she had said, as they learned how to defend themselves barehanded against an armed opponent. "But they can be weaknesses too. Most people with a weapon put all their attention on it and it alone, making lose sight of everything else. Take advantage of that. You have an entire body to work with, they only got the one point."

When Arzt lunged in again, Charlotte spun to one side and wrapped her arm around Arzt's upper. She locked her hands together and threw herself back, sending Arzt flying. Unfortunately, Arzt landed on her feet and spun around in less than a second, ready to start stabbing again.

So Charlotte ducked her arms punched her in the face.

The knife fell clattered to the ground as Arzt stumbled back, holding her nose. She shook off the dazedness and dove for the knife. Charlotte snagged it with a couple wires and tossed it to the side, sending it to the far edge of the disc. Annoyed, Arzt swiped at her a couple times with her syringes. Charlotte dodged the first, deflected the second, and snapped a palm right into Arzt's already throbbing nose.

The wordless cry of rage and pain filled Charlotte's heart with joy.

Now it was time to take the offensive. Charlotte move in close by keeping Arzt on her guard with a series of punches, only to follow it up with a leaping knee to the jaw. It was a trick that had gotten her into the semifinals at the last tournament. Unfortunately, Arzt apparently read from the same playbook, as she merely took half a step back, caught Charlotte's knee as it came up, and used her own momentum to flip up and back, giving Charlotte less than a second to get her arms under her to catch herself before pancaking painfully on the ground.

Then Arzt settled her previous debt by kicking her in the head.

Her vision reeling, Charlotte flopped back, hands flailing as she tried to discern which of the seven Arzts now approaching her was the real one. She picked wrong, and a boot hit her in the chest, shoving her down. The back of her head hit concrete and she saw stars.

Moments later, Arzt was on her. Literally. Charlotte felt a warm body slowly slide across hers and found herself staring up at a pair of honey-gold eyes. Blonde hair fell across her face, framing a warm, sensuous smile.

It was a position that Charlotte had found herself in several times in the past, and normally would be a sign of wonderful things to come. But given the who, what, when, where, and why, it just filled her with terror and disgust.

"Oh, sweetie," Arzt crooned in a low, throaty voice. She started to slowly moved her hips, rubbing them against Charlotte's lap. Her pink tongue slipped out to run over her rosy lips. "So brave, so determined. You are adorable, you know that?" She reached up to lightly brush the needles of her syringes across Charlotte's cheeks. "Don't worry. Even if this isn't your first time, I'll be gentle with-"

"Get off," Charlotte growled, and unleashed an entire thicket of wires out of her fingertips into Arzt's chest. She had hoped that their sharp tips would cut through her body like they had the circuitry of that metal glove she had worn back when she was being controlled by the Persephone Protectorate, but unfortunately it seemed that Arzt had learned a trick or two from the Tomoes and had also donned some kind of armor under her clothes. Whatever it was, it was tough enough to keep Charlotte from perforating her.

Still, it was enough to launch Arzt flying. The exiled Void Walker was sent flailing through the air, and for a split-second Charlotte actually dared to hope that she would go all the way over the edge of the disc and be sending tumbling into open space.

She ought to have known better. Arzt seized the top of one of the concrete trees that ringed the disc and arrested her momentum. She clung to its pale grey branches and glared at Charlotte, murder in her eyes. "Now that was uncalled for. I think it's time that I-"

"Hey. Ugly."

Bewildered, Arzt turned just in time to see a pair of worn boots making for her face. They took her in the jaw and again sent her flying. She tumbled across the ground, rolled over her shoulders, and stood up.

Of course, that just left her open to the weighted end of Kyoko's segmented spear. It wrapped around her, its chained links smacking painfully against her body as it constricted. Crying out in pain, she fell to her knees, her arms bound to her side.

Unfortunately for her, Kyoko still had a grip on the link with the spearhead. "Alley-oop!" she crowed as she hoisted it up and dumped Arzt right over the edge of the disc. Arzt screamed the whole way down.

Then she let out a pained grunt as she presumably hit something solid.

Then she was silent.

Panting, Kyoko let her spear come back together. Placing one hand on her hip, she peered down over the edge of the disc, that weird backwind blowing her ponytail out in front of her. Whatever it was that she saw, it made her wince. "Ouch," she said.

Then she walked over to where Charlotte was still trying to get to her feet. "Hey," Kyoko said, holding out her hand. "Sorry I took so long. Crazy flying girl wanted to shoot me, you know how it is."

Charlotte shot her a sour look, but took the offered hand. "I could've taken her," she said as Kyoko pulled her to her feet.

"Sure, I believe you. But now you don't have to, and we're down one bad guy." Kyoko grimaced. "Besides, she was starting to get a little…rapey. It was getting gross."

Charlotte shivered. "Yeah, well, what do you expect from someone that sleeps with her own sister?"

There was a pause, and then Kyoko said, "Wait, huh?"

"Arzt," Charlotte said. "And Nie. They, uh…" She held up two fingers from each hand and scissored them together. "Well, they're not exactly…subtle about it, you know?"

Kyoko stared. "Okay, I knew they were freaks and all, but c'mon. That's just messed up."

Charlotte shrugged. "Well, right now I'm more bothered by them still trying to capture us. So how about we find another one and put them down too?"

"Sounds good to me." Kyoko looked around. "Though we seem to be kinda by ourselves here. Where's the others?"

"Oktavia, I don't know," Charlotte said as she bent down to pick up the knife Arzt had dropped. It was a pretty mundane weapon, especially when compared to what everyone else was packing, but she was going to take any edge she could get. "She went speeding off somewhere with Ticky Nikki flying after her, haven't seen them since. Mami should be easy to find though."

"Yeah, I remember," Kyoko snickered. "Follow the explosions?"

Charlotte nodded. "Yup. Follow the explosions."

…

Mami missed Grief Seeds.

It was a terrible thing to think, she knew, and it made her feel horrible to do so, but she couldn't help it. Back in the day, before her death, she could just go all out during battles, swinging this way and that on her ribbons, firing off muskets and cannons in reckless abandon. Because it didn't matter how much magic was spent, at the end of the day she had a handy way to recharge back to full power, and came out of it none the worse for the wear.

Of course, learning that Grief Seeds were really vessels for the tortured souls of psychologically abused children meant that there was no way she could use one even if one made itself available, but even so, she still wished that the afterlife could come up with some sort of working alternative that would do the same thing without the horrific consequences. Because if there ever was a moment that she wanted to cut loose without worrying about spending too much power, now was the time.

She and Nie were playing a rather deadly game of cat and mouse through the highways of the Velocity Terminal and had been doing so for about five minutes. And unfortunately, Mami was stuck playing the role of the mouse. Though the destructive shots fired off by her muskets were undeniably superior to Nie's tiny little bullets, each musket was good for only one shot, whereas Nie seemed to have infinite ammunition. That meant that Nie could continue firing to her heart's content while Mami couldn't afford to let any shot go to waste. After all, there was no telling was other dangers awaited them before she could get some rest.

Mami ran toward the side of one of the highways and vaulted off its edge. She sailed high, flipping fully over another highway that was curving overhead. Behind her, she could hear Nie laughing as she leapt after her, firing like a deranged cowboy as she went.

As Mami cleared the highway, she snapped off a quick ribbon to one of the lampposts that bordered it and swung back and under to seize the metal girders that ran under the street. From there, she clung fast while listening as Nie sailed up over the highway as well, praying that her assailant hadn't seen her double-back.

There was a short pause in which the only sound were Nie's footsteps against the asphalt and the wind at her back. They scampered over to the side that Mami had leapt off of, paused, and then ran back. Mami breathed in slowly through her nose, wishing that her phantom heartbeat weren't quite so loud. It was a miracle that Nie couldn't hear it herself, given how strongly it was pounding. Then again, seeing how Nie had a healthy backwind of her own, that could explain why she hadn't heard anything.

"Hey," she heard Nie's high, nasal voice say. "Where'd you go?"

Mami allowed herself a long, careful sigh of relief. Okay, her trick had worked. Now all she had to do was wait for the best moment to take advantage of it.

"Mami? Mami Tomoe! Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

Mami considered her options, and then allowed enough magic to be spent to form a single musket. She briefly wondered if a cannon shot through the highway itself was the answer, but that was too much magic with too much risk. Nie's reflexes were excellent, and chances were she would already be dodging out of the way before the blast could even break through the concrete.

Another option would be to do what she did before and wrap Nie's whole body in ribbons, thus immobilizing her long enough for Mami to take her shot. Another expensive option, magic-wise, but if this fight continued for much long, the smaller expenses were going to keep adding up.

Mami slowly crept across the girders to the side of the highway opposite of where she had last heard Nie. She gripped the edge and slowly hoisted herself up to peek.

As predicted, Nie was standing on the other side with her back to Mami, pistols in her hands and knuckles pressed against her hips and she looked around with a scowl of frustration. Mami wasn't going to get a better shot than this.

"What do you think you're doing?"

The sudden, unexpected voice startled Mami so badly that she almost lost her grip. She caught herself before she fell and looked wildly around, expecting to be under immediate assault.

She wasn't, as the voice hadn't been addressing her. As she watched, Annabelle Lee came floating down out of the sky, her wild, amethyst hair blown around her face; one hand still gripping the handle of her sleek assault rifle; to hover in front of Nie. For her part, the overall-clad sharpshooter didn't seem all that thrilled to see her teammate.

"What does it look like?" she demanded. "The fat bimbo gave me the slip, and I'm trying to find her again."

Mami's eye twitched.

"Well, hurry it up!" Annabelle Lee snapped. "We don't have time for you to be just standing around!"

"Could say the same thing about you," Nie retorted. "What happened to your little rat, huh? You can fly and she can't! How do you lose someone like that?"

"Shut up, Nie," came the growling response. "I don't have time for put up with your-"

Then Annabelle Lee's head snapped up, her eyes suddenly zeroing in on where the top of Mami's head was peeking over. Realizing that she had been spotted, Mami quickly dropped down just in time to avoid having her scalp torn apart by a sudden burst of gunfire.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, Mami chided herself as she swung her way down, Nie and Annabelle Lee in hot pursuit. She ought to have ducked fully out of sight the moment Annabelle Lee had shown up. Now she had two gun-wielding pursuers coming after her.

Mami bounded her way down several layers of road, the way behind her ripped apart by the snarling bursts from Annabelle Lee's rifle and the loud, pinging shots from Nie's pistols. If it weren't for the abundance of cover she would have been ripped apart in seconds.

One of the floating round towers with the pointed tops and bottoms hovered nearby, its dark windows gaping invitingly. Mami had no idea what was inside, but she would have a better chance of getting the drop on her pursuers inside one of those. She turned her path toward it, praying that she would be granted a few seconds of safety. Just a few seconds, that was all she needed.

Apparently she had been praying to the wrong gods. As she bounded over one road toward another, a pair of legs suddenly swung up to seize her by the neck. Mami gasped as she was suddenly swung down by Nie, who had managed to outpace her and had been lying in wait under one of the highways.

"Annabelle Lee, here!" Nie called. The sharpshooter was hanging from one of the girders with both hands, one leg wrapped firmly around Mami's neck and the other tucked in tightly around the first, leaving Mami dangling in a vicelike grip. "I've got her, so-"

Mami swung a musket up at Nie's head and fired. Nie's eyes bulged and she instinctively let go with all four limbs.

The two blondes fell straight down. Directly beneath them was a wide, circular platform. It wouldn't serve her well against her enemies' guns, but then, it wouldn't cover them from hers. And it was about time that she stopped holding back.

Mami kicked Nie in the stomach with both feet, and using the added momentum, she flipped up and around to land in a crouch, another musket already in her hands. She didn't need to look up to know that Annabelle Lee was swooping toward her. She could feel it.

Mami pointed the weapon up and fired. To her satisfaction, she heard Annabelle Lee snarl and abruptly change course. Unfortunately for her, Mami had already fired another shot in that same direction.

The next thing Annabelle Lee knew, she was floundering around in a sky filled with anti-air fire. Mami fired shot after shot after shot, keeping the legless girl from regaining her senses and taking aim. Mami saw her look of grim determination give way to panic, and though she wasn't one to enjoy taking violence against another human being, much less one that she felt a measure of pity for, she had to admit that she was enjoying herself.

Annabelle Lee wasn't an idiot though. And she had no reservations about rabbiting once the tide of battle had turned against her. At the earliest opportunity she abandoned her attack and shot off for the cover of the twisting streets and was gone.

Mami considered giving chase. Annabelle Lee may be lacking in magical abilities and weapons, but she was still dangerous. The girl was wily and determined, and probably more than a little unhinged by now. Putting her down now would take a huge chunk out of their opponents' offense, as well as deprive them of their leader. As much dissention as there was within their ranks, Annabelle Lee was still talented in keeping The Twins and her unstable sister in line, so perhaps taking her out would encourage the others to flee.

After a few moments, Mami decided against it. Inferior firepower or not, Annabelle Lee still held the edge when it came to maneuverability, and within the tangled labyrinth of concrete she would hold the advantage. Better to fall back now, find the others, and regroup. Besides, she already had one of the ex-Void Walkers to dispatch.

A pained moan grabbed Mami's attention. She looked over and saw Nie struggling to her feet. The sharpshooter did not look well. One of her long, golden twintails had been blown clean off, and the skin around it was covered with a nasty red rash and dotted with blisters.

Mami blinked. So, when she had shot at Nie earlier to get her to let go of the girder, she had also managed to take a piece off of her as well. That was surprising. Usually these guys only got hit under appropriately dramatic circumstances.

Well, Mami wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. She summoned a musket, lifted it, and, ignoring the still-persistent quells of conscience, fired.

Nie was blasted right off her feet and fell over the edge of the disc. She made no sound.

Panting, Mami lowered her arm, the emptied musket dissolving into golden light. She jogged over to the side of the disc and looked down. Below, Nie's body was sprawled over a highway. Mami sighed and let her shoulders relax a little. She felt tired, but not the heavy exhaustion of having spent too much magic. That was good. There was still some fight left in her.

She felt them approach before she heard them. "Whoa," Kyoko said, slowly clapping her hands together. "Ding-ding, call for the bell. That was awesome."

"Thank you," Mami said as she turned to face Kyoko and Charlotte. "Are you two okay?"

"Us? Yeah, we're fine. Actually, we came to see if you needed help."

"A little late, aren't you?"

"Sorry, we got held up." Charlotte looked Mami up and down and her eyebrows rose, a cheeky grin tugging at her lips. "Besides, it looks like you had things handled. Did I ever tell you how hot you are when you go full badass?"

"Yes, but you can say it again," Mami said as she gratefully let Charlotte bring her into a tight embrace. They held each other for a time, thankful to have come out of another battle intact and together.

Then Kyoko cleared her throat. "Er, not to be a pain, but there's still a couple more out there, and we're short one fish…"

"Right, right," Mami said as she and Charlotte separated. "Who's left of our opponents?"

"Well, Arzt is roadkill, so we won't have to deal with her for a while," Kyoko said. "And you took out the other one, so it's the other sister set we have to worry about."

"Four to two, huh?" Charlotte said. She grinned. "Y'know, I kinda like those odds."

"Don't get too cocky," Mami said. "They're still dangerous, and we still don't know if Oktavia is…"

Her thought trailed off. A new sound had drawn her attention. It was far off, rather faint, but still shrill, probably loud, and rather panicked sounding.

Charlotte tilted her head to one side, brow furrowing. "Uh, is that Tavi?"

"It certainly sounds like it."

"She sounds…scared. And fast."

Kyoko wordlessly bounded up the highways to get a better look. Then, after a moment, she called back, "Uh, guys? Get your asses up here. You have got to see this."

…

"YYYEEEEEOOOOWWWWWW!" Oktavia shrieked as she sped her way up and down the rollercoaster-like highway, partially out of terror, partially out of delight, with more than a healthy helping of exhilaration. Her wheelchair bumped, screeched, leapt at times to come down into teeth-rattling landings, and came terrifyingly close to tipping over on some of the sharper turns. The glowing magical wheels adhered to the mundane steel ones it had been built with spun faster than buzzsaws, leaving burn marks in the road behind her, and the wind that always seemed to be coming directly behind her pushed her ever on.

"Ooooooh…" she breathed as the road took a sudden curve upward. It rose higher and higher, getting ever steeper as it went, until it was nearly at a ninety degree angle and Oktavia could feel the gravity and G-forces pressing her back into her chair. If it weren't for the magic in her wheels, there would be no way she would have been able to keep ascending, and given what was after her, she didn't dare slow down, even though everything within her was screaming at her for going so high.

She hated it here, she really did. It was all high places and no ground. The next time she saw Charlotte, she was going to punch her in the face for leading them here.

Then the road suddenly evened out, but Oktavia didn't have time to feel relieved. Because it had immediately decided to dip straight down into a heart-stopping long drop, one that was just as steep as the way up.

Oktavia came to a screeching stop, one that bucked her against the ribbons Mami had helpfully provided as a harness. She stared down at the drop, marveling at the insanity of it and regretting that she driven herself to the peak. Now there was no way out except straight down in either direction.

She leaned forward a bit to peek down the slope. Then she snapped back into her seat, her face pale. Oh yeah. That wasn't happening

Then she peeked over the side of the chair to examine her magical wheels. Maybe she could create one big wheel, maneuver the chair on top of it, and use it as an elevator. If she could figure out how to fuse the wheels together, it would provide enough stability to-

Then something whizzed right past her head, shearing off a few strands of blue hair. Oktavia froze.

"WOOOOOOOOOO!" Nikki howled in a passable imitation of a police car's siren. "Pull over! Fishy was going too fast! Nikki's gonna ticket your face!"

Annabelle Lee's mentally unstable pint-sized sister was soaring in close. She had some kind of glowing yellow membrane stretching from her wrists to her ankles and was using it to glide along between the twisting roads. Oktavia hadn't known that she could even do that, and considered it to be incredibly unfair. From the look of things, she wasn't actually flying, but given the constant backwind everyone was experiencing she might as well have been. Ticky Nikki circled around the steep hump of the highway, rising higher with each revolution and did so at an alarming rate. Every now and then she would sacrifice a little altitude to hurl a knife in Oktavia's direction.

Now, despite all the unfortunate altercations Oktavia had had with that girl, she had actually been unconscious or otherwise engaged during most of her team's fights with these guys, so she really hadn't gotten much of a chance to see what they could really do. However, she had no doubt that despite her nuttiness Nikki was probably a dead shot with those things. Which meant that she was likely missing on purpose just for the fun of it. And given that Oktavia was currently a sitting duck (or a fish in a barrel, though neither were really all that accurate), as soon as Nikki tired of the game she would no doubt make good on her old promise and turn Oktavia into a platter of sushi.

Again.

Having absolutely no desire to give her another chance, Oktavia braced herself with a deep breath, grimaced, and moved her wheelchair forward.

Strictly speaking, the actual plunge didn't last much longer than seven seconds, but during those seven seconds Oktavia still found the time have her entire life (admittedly only a few weeks, but eventful ones) flash before her eyes, make peace with God, think of every mean thing she had ever done and regret them all individually, and partially black out, all while completing her earlier thought that she had been voicing upon ascending.

"Crrrrraaaaaaaaaappp!"

Suddenly the road evened out again and she was off, navigated the twists and turns, feeling her stomach lurch with every hump, while all the while Nikki gave sharp pursuit. Oktavia could hear her laughing with demented delight as she swooped after her.

Oktavia was going to kill Charlotte.

Suddenly, as she came up to another bend in the road, Ticky Nikki leapt up from under the highway in front of her. "Surprise, fishy!" she shrieked as she threw herself at Oktavia's face.

Oktavia shrieked in return, and swerved her wheelchair around. She managed to avoid having her face peeled off, but a dull thump and a sudden increase in weight told her that she was now in trouble. Nikki had boarded, and was now clinging to the wheelchairs handlebars.

Crap.

Oktavia put her chair back into motion, hoping that the sudden acceleration would dislodge her stowaway. No such luck. "Heh, heh, heh," Nikki chortled as she hauled herself up. "Oh fishy. Chasing you was fun, but Nikki's still gonna peel you like a grape and stuff you full of cotton!" She lifted her knife high with both hands, the point sticking down at the top of Oktavia's head. "And that'll be the most fun of all!"

Oktavia threw up three train wheels into the sky, directly in Ticky Nikki's path. Unfortunately, while it did the trick of keeping her from fulfilling her intentions of taxidermy and got her off of the wheelchair, it do so in a manner she had been hoping. Before she was hit, Nikki leapt off the chair and onto the first wheel. From there she jumped catlike to the second and then to the third. Using her momentum to flip it vertical, she bounded off, spread her membrane wide, and soared high.

"Missed! Now you die!"

And with that, she threw her knife. There was an explosion of white smoke, and dozens of tiny blades came flying out of the cloud, all of them swooping for Oktavia's head like a swarm of voracious flies descending upon a rotting carcass.

Oktavia yelped and sent her wheels spinning into the blades' path. She turned them sideways and had them spin fast to keep the blades from slipping between the spokes. Unfortunately, while her train wheels were empowered by magic, so were Ticky Nikki's little knives. Each wheel disintegrated into sparks after being struck by enough blades, and she had to throw up four more to get them all.

Unfortunately, while she was successful in preventing herself from being punctured, shielding herself took up a bit more of her attention than she could afford to spare, and she sort of forgot to keep her wheelchair on track. She looked up just in time to see another sharp bend coming, and realized far, far too late that she didn't have time to make the turn.

Once again Oktavia felt her stomach plunge as her wheelchair dipped down to descend. Unfortunately, unlike the last time, there was no road beneath her wheels to straighten things out. Or much of anything really.

"Oh no. No, no, no…"

She fell.

"NOOOOOOOOO!"

Highways passed in a blur, and it was a miracle that she didn't splatter against any of them. It was only a matter of time though. Either she would end up as a mess of twisted metal and broken flesh against the asphalt or she would keep going and going forever into the void below. She didn't know if the Velocity Terminal even had a ground, but she was willing to bet that it didn't.

Then all of a sudden, her perspective flipped and she was again falling, only now it was up instead of down. Oktavia gaped as she ascended as quickly as she had tumbled, highways shooting past as gravity pressed her back against her chair.

I'm flying! she thought numbly. But how-

Then she passed through the top level and soared high through the swiftly moving layers of clouds.

"STOP!" Oktavia shrieked.

She stopped. And stayed.

It took a few seconds for Oktavia's mind to catch up with the rest of her. When it did, she came to the realization that she was still hovering high in the sky, wheelchair now completely horizontal, with her lying flat on her back and staring straight up. Eyes darting back and forth for some kind of explanation, her hands dug into the armrests tight enough to turn her knuckles white.

When nothing immediately presented itself, Oktavia slowly craned her neck up to get a look. What she saw made her eyes bulge wide.

There, directly beneath her wheelchair (or directly next to? The change in perspective made such positional modifiers a little confusing) was one of her train wheels, one that she didn't remember summoning but was there nonetheless.

Did…did I do that? she thought. Like, by reflex or something?

Well, if it was truly hers, then she could control it. Oktavia hesitantly sent a mental command for the wheel to go flat and straighten her wheelchair out.

It obeyed, and soon Oktavia was upright again. Still dozens of meters in the air, but upright. Breathing heavily, she dared a quick peek over the side.

What she saw made her feel sick.

She already knew that she was high up, but she hadn't known that she was that high. Below, the roads of the Velocity Terminal looked more like a plate of pasta than the large highways they actually were. Even an eagle would balk at her altitude and tell her to come down and stop being so reckless.

Oktavia quickly jerked back and slumped down into her seat, her breath coming out in quick little pants. Her brief look had told her what she needed to know. Somehow she had managed to summon up a third train wheel directly beneath her wheelchair, and the two she had placed over the steel and rubbers wheels of the chair itself had fused with it, providing a floating platform. Through it, she could now actually fly.

Joy.

"I hate heights," she moaned as she sank deeper into the ribbons' embrace. "I hate heights, I hate heights, I hate heights…"

"Aw, so sorry to hear that."

Oktavia's breath caught in her throat. Annabelle Lee floated up into view, one hand holding onto the handle of that rifle she had been shooting Kyoko with the last time Oktavia had seen them, the other planted on her waist. A very nasty grin cut across her features.

Further proving that the universe was in a sour mood and determined to take it out on the mermaid, from below Ticky Nikki soared up, completely unconcerned with the lethal fall beneath them all. She folded her arms and the membrane disappeared, allowing her to drop onto Annabelle Lee's back and cling fast with practiced ease.

Annabelle Lee lifted her rifle. "Some of us quite enjoy them. Personally, I find a great big sky with lots and lots of space to fly around it to be relaxing. Helps me think, you know?" Her grin sharpened. "But hey, if you're uncomfortable up here, I guess the only thing to do is bring you back down."

…

"Mami," Kyoko said, staring upward.

"On it," Mami said. She held out her hand. Golden light and golden ribbons flashed, and a long-barreled sniper rifle appeared in her grasp.

Holding the weapon with both hands, Mami brought it up and stared through the scope. Unfortunately she had little to aim for. Annabelle Lee was presumably still wearing her armored shirt, so the torso and arms were out. She didn't have legs. That left her head, which was far from the best shot she could take. Maybe if she aimed for the rifle or shot her in the chest anyway it would distract her long enough for Oktavia to make her getaway.

Then something rose up on Annabelle Lee's shoulders. Mami blinked, and adjusted her aim. She fired.

…

Oktavia flinched and Annabelle Lee jerked when they heard the sound of a gunshot, the former believing that the exiled Void Walker had made good on her promise to shoot her down and the other rightly deducing that she was under attack from below.

A few moments passed, and both girls slowly came to the realization that they had not been shot, though Oktavia kept her eyes squeezed shut. Annabelle Lee however merely glanced down and frowned. The three other twits were directly below her, and given the very long gun in Mami Tomoe's hands and the grim look on her face it didn't take a genius to figure out where the shot had come from.

Annabelle Lee's first thought was that Mami Tomoe had missed. It only made sense, given how far up she was. The woman was probably used to firing from mid-to-short range in the heat of battle. Calculated sharpshooting probably wasn't something she was practiced in.

But if that were the case, why wasn't she trying again? Instead of taking aim for a second shot, Mami Tomoe was staring up at her with the dark intensity of someone that had hit exactly what they had been aiming for.

Then Annabelle Lee had a sinking thought. Her shoulders and back had just become a whole lot lighter, after all.

She glanced over her shoulder to see Nikki falling as limply as a scarecrow, a long trail of yellow mist leaking from her chest. Annabelle Lee blinked. Then she muttered a curse and dove after her.

…

"Nice!" Kyoko exclaimed. "All right, now-"

Then, without pausing her descent, Annabelle Lee whirled around and opened fire. "Scatter!" Charlotte said, and the trio all leapt in different directions, throwing up their respective shields as they went. Mami, who was actually somewhat thankful for the distraction as it meant she wouldn't have to dwell on the fact that she had just shot a little girl off her sister's shoulders, crouched down low behind a large, flat "metal" disc formed from ribbons.

Nothing hit, but still, someone screamed.

Blinking, Mami peered out of behind her cover. What she saw made her breath stop.

The three of them on the highway had not been the target. Oktavia was.

Annabelle Lee had shot the train wheel out from under her, and now she was plummeting down, wheelchair and all. As for Annabelle Lee, she had already snatched Ticky Nikki out of freefall and was coming back around, ready to eviscerate.

Mami lifted a musket to stop her, but someone else had already beaten her to it. Kyoko came flying feet-first to hit Annabelle Lee in the head, sending her tumbling away. "Get the fish!" Kyoko yelled, and she took off running. Moments later Annabelle Lee swooped around to give chase, snarling out loud curses.

Oktavia, right. Mami dropped her shield and sprinted to the side of the highway. Fortunately Oktavia had been very high up, else she would have already fallen out of reach. Mami held up a hand and waited to snare the chair with her ribbons.

Then someone hit her in the head.

Mami reeled, but before she could recover that someone had already grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around. Mami had just enough time to register a very pissed off looking Nie before the enraged sharpshooter leapt up and wrapped her legs around Mami's neck and one arm. Then she came down, squeezing Mami's head and shoulder together pressing down on the back of her head with both hands, shoving Mami's chin into her chest. Mami gasped, but whatever Nie was doing prevented her from bringing in any air, and already black spots were forming in her vision.

…

No, Charlotte thought numbly as Nie brought Mami down, cinched her tightly in a triangle choke. Mami flailed and struggled, but the hold was already sapping her of her strength. She would be unconscious in seconds.

Charlotte immediately started to rush forward to help her, but a sudden flash of intuition brought her short. She whirled around to see Arzt's hate-maddened eyes right in front of her own, syringes held high and ready to plunge into Charlotte's neck.

Acting purely on reflex, Charlotte screamed and jerked back. Her foot snapped up, taking Arzt in the jaw and knocking her clean off her feet. Arzt's shoulders hit the ground, but she merely bunched up her legs and shoved, leaping right back up to her feet.

Then she jammed her needles into Charlotte's stomach.

Charlotte gasped as they pierced through her shirt, and Arzt smiled, injecting all of her deadly poisons at once. The two witches locked eyes in a way that so many predators had done so with their prey through the eons.

However, the smile didn't last long, and soon withered into a frown of bewilderment. Arzt and Charlotte looked down to see red and green fluids dribbling down Charlotte's stomach, soaking up her shirt and running over the front of her pants. Arzt lifted her hand. Each and every one of the needles had snapped off, unable to pierce through the protective undershirt Charlotte was still wearing.

"Bulletproof, bitch," Charlotte snarled, and punched Arzt in the face, sending her reeling. Then she seized her by her stupid striped shirt, yanked her back, and punched her again. And again. And again. Then she shoved her open palm into Arzt's face, swept her legs behind the sadist's calves, and pushed. The back of Arzt's head hit asphalt and she jerked once. Then, with one last moan, Arzt lay still.

Charlotte would have liked to have taken a few moments to soak in her victory, but she had not forgotten her companions' plight. She turned around to go after the other one, praying that her wife was still in one piece.

She needn't have worried.

It seemed that when she had been struggling with Arzt, Mami had managed to summon up some deep, inner reserve of strength. She had braced her legs, seized a handful of Nie's overalls with her free hand, and pushed up.

Sometimes Charlotte forgot just how strong Mami was. She was always so calm and demure and considerate of others, and even during their moments of intimacy they both had gotten so used to taking care not to hurt one another, even when things got a little rough. However, gentle nature and domestic life or not, Mami was a Puella Magi still, and seven years of working the kelp fields had built upon what magic had given her. Even Charlotte, who was arguably even more physically active than her wife, wasn't able to match the pure physical power that Mami had.

Mami stood up, with Nie's legs still wrapped around her and her hands grasping at her head. However, the former Void Walker wasn't so much concerned with choking her out anymore as she was with hanging on for dear life. She ought to have released the hold immediately and went for something else while Mami was still groggy.

But she didn't.

Alas.

Mami lifted her high, walked a little closer to the side of the road, and put her back down again. Hard. And right on the edge. Nie let out a sort of croaking sound but didn't fully release her grip. So Mami picked her up again and reintroduced Nie's back to the sharp, concrete edge.

This time Nie let go.

Mami shot her once, again right between the eyes, and kicked her off.

Breathing in shallow, ragged gasps, Mami straightened up. She rubbed the spot where her shoulder and neck had been squeezed together and winced.

"Mami, are you okay?" Charlotte said as she ran over to her.

"Ow," Mami said, still favoring her neck.

"Here, let me see," Charlotte said as she tried move Mami's hand away.

"No, don't touch it, it'll be fine," Mami said, pulling away.

"Are you sure? Because something might be hurt."

"Char, I'm dead. If something's hurt it'll clear up in about an hour anyway. Just leave it alone."

"Okay, but-"

"It's fine, it's fine. Really. Just give me a few moments."

Charlotte was still dubious. "Well, if you say so, but you know how temperamental that phantom anatomy is. If it starts deciding to get realistic at the wrong time, it could really screw things up. I mean, we are still kind of in a combat situation here."

To this, Mami just sighed. "Charlotte, I know you love being pragmatic, but we do need to make our first aid supplies last. We don't have that many and-" Then horror filled her eyes. "Oh my God, Oktavia is still falling."

Charlotte started stupidly at her for a second. Then realization hit, making her feel stupid. "Shit," she said as she sprinted to the edge. To her dismay, Oktavia had just then reached the final layer of roads. And thanks to pure chance, she had fallen through one of the rare, narrow open spaces where no highways passed through.

For a second Charlotte wondered why Oktavia didn't simply summon up a new magic train wheel and fly away. But the answer to that was simple. She was just too scared. Her fear of heights and falling had paralyzed her, and her friends had not been there to help.

Charlotte wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted someone to hit her right in the face for being so negligent in letting her get caught up in a dumb argument when her friend was still in deadly peril. And now, they were too-

No, she thought. To hell with that way of thinking. "Come on!" she shouted to Mami, and the two of them dove down into open space.

…

Once again Kyoko was flying through the elevated streets with Annabelle Lee giving chase. Again she was dodging between the highways to block what shots she could and throwing up shields to save herself from the ones that got through.

This time it was a bit different though. For one, Kyoko was all too aware of the importance of keeping Annabelle Lee's attention on her. Should her rage start to clear, Annabelle Lee might realize what was going on and double-back to take out Sayaka anyway.

For another, there was the rage itself. Before, there had been plenty of hate and malice, sure. But now Annabelle Lee had gone beyond simply desiring to hunt down a loathed rival and bring her down to sell off or whatever. This was all about the now. Annabelle Lee could no longer see past the act of killing Kyoko and making it hurt, which was making her assault doubling aggressive.

Kyoko intended to keep it that way.

"Nice try, horseface!" Kyoko shouted over her shoulder. "But you're still batting a bit fat nothing against us!"

Asphalt flew up in chips right behind her. Then it did the same to her right and left, and the shields exploded. Kyoko shut her mouth. She had Annabelle Lee's attention, no need to mouth off for more of it. Now she just needed to concentrate on not getting filled with holes. So Kyoko pounded pavement and sped forward, keeping an eye out for some sort of opportunity to turn things around.

She found it.

Ahead the road cut off abruptly. For a moment Kyoko thought that she had come to a dead end, but as she drew closer she realized that the road was still going, but had decided to dip down suddenly into a ninety-degree drop. Coming up to the drop, Kyoko leaned over and peered down. Yes, it did straighten out eventually and keep going, but it went so far down before doing so that the rest of the road looked less like a highway and more like an inky stain.

Of course, Kyoko could simply hop a bit to the left or right and mount a different highway, but she was starting to get an idea.

Soon Annabelle Lee appeared, as infuriated as ever. She had ditched her sister's body somewhere, and looked fully ready to shoot Kyoko full of holes and spit on the pieces. Naturally, as soon as she saw her prey, she immediately lifted her rifle to do just that.

Kyoko didn't move, and Annabelle Lee didn't shoot.

She knows something's wrong, Kyoko thought. The rage was starting to clear. Though she didn't put the rifle down, Annabelle Lee's scowl was changing from one of anger to one of puzzlement. She smells a trap.

Finally Annabelle Lee lowered her gun just a bit to glare at Kyoko from over the barrel. "Okay, what's your game?" she demanded. "You're not running, you're not attacking. What's going on here?"

To this, Kyoko just shrugged. "Hey, I've been running all day. Girl gets tired after a while, so I decided to take ten. Is that so weird?"

Annabelle Lee stared at her with a mixture of loathing and disbelief. Kyoko, who becoming really familiar with the exiled Void Walker's looks of contempt, was starting to take note of how much her hatred increased every time they fought. And in all honesty, it really was kind of flattering to be hated so much by another person. It made her feel like she mattered.

Annabelle Lee shook her head. "Oh, fuck it. I don't care." Then she snapped up her aim and opened fire.

Naturally, Kyoko threw up some more shields to deflect the bullets, but only one layer. As her fence of red diamond-plates was shredded, she had already leapt up and flipped back to let herself fall into the expanse behind her.

And from there she fell.

…

Mami and Charlotte all but dropped in freefall in their desperation to reach the bottom level. Charlotte sprung off of girders, rolled her way across roads, and vaulted off the sides of the towers, while Mami merely blew her way through everything that was in their way. Neither of them were at all concerned with conserving magic anymore. Their only focus was reaching their friend before it was too late.

They weren't nearly fast enough.

"No," Charlotte said when she landed on the bottommost road. Below, she could see Oktavia falling into the great expanse below. "No, no, no…"

Thankfully, Mami didn't so much as pause. "Charlotte. Get ready to jump."

Charlotte blinked. "What?"

Then ribbons flashed into existence. Some wrapped themselves around Charlotte's ankles, tying them together, while others secured Mami to the road. "Jump, Charlotte!" Mami ordered as she held tight to the other end of the ribbons binding Charlotte's lower legs. "Do it now!"

Then Charlotte got it. Sure it was insanely dangerous and only had a small margin of chance for success, but it was still a chance. Before she could second-guess herself, Charlotte threw herself over the side of the road and plunged down through the clouds.

Even when falling straight down the wind was with her. Charlotte held her arms straight out in front of her like a diver and held her body as straight as she could. It was odd, to be falling at such a rate and encounter no wind resistance, but she wasn't about to complain. Regardless, pressure was building behind her eyes and against her ears, and she heard a loud rushing inside her head. Charlotte squinted and focused all of her attention on the tumbling dot of Oktavia's wheelchair, which thankfully was growing larger.

Charlotte stretched her fingers out as far as they would go. But right before she released her wires, she found herself wondering if they would fly out faster than she was falling. If not, then this was pointless. Their only shot would be a misfire, and Oktavia would be lost to them, and-

Charlotte's neck tightened. She told herself to shut up, re-checked her aim, and fired.

To her immense relief, her wires shot out straight and true. They cleared the distance between her and Oktavia in seconds and wasted no time in wrapping themselves around every armrest, attached bag, wheel spoke, handle, and any other place they could find purchase. Charlotte even snared Oktavia's limbs and waist, just in case.

Got her! she thought, the relief bringing a smile to her face. Oh, thank you God. Thank you-

Then she realized that her limbs and fingers were still outstretched and there was a very painful jerk coming as soon as the wheelchair came to a stop.

Charlotte tried to bunch up her extremities, but the wheelchair ended up yanking them straight out again anyway. And as it turned out, it was just as painful as she had anticipated.

Charlotte hung there for a time, swaying in the middle of a huge, blue expanse, suspended by her ankles by a long stretch of yellow ribbons, heavy wheelchair and comatose mermaid hanging from her fingertips by ten thin, golden wires. It wasn't exactly what one would call comfortable.

She looked down (or up, as it was) and gingerly moved her legs. Her knees ached a little, but seemed to be okay. She tested her shoulders and found them to be in satisfactory condition. Then she looked to her arms. Her elbows ached like a bitch, but didn't seem to be dislocated, so there was that.

Her hands, though, were registering all sorts of agony.

Her fingers had been dislocated, each and every joint. And her right wrist had been wrenched. Yet they still had to support the weight of Oktavia and her wheelchair. Not much of a problem in most circumstances, such as when she was perfectly healthy and had a good patch of solid ground beneath her, but hanging the way she was made that small amount of weight nothing short of a nightmare.

Charlotte let out a small, wheezing laugh. Wow, she didn't have bones or any sort of internal joints, but her body was doing its best to delude itself into believing that her hands were now a mess of mangled joints and torn ligaments. While she figured that all the false realism was probably part of the point of the afterlife, at that moment she could do with a little less of it.

Then from above, she heard Mami call, "I felt a jerk. Did you get her?"

Charlotte sighed and rolled her eyes. "Y-Yes," she called back at her wife. "Pull us up."

Mami obliged, and Charlotte gasped.

"Jesus! Gently!"

…

As gravity took hold, Kyoko heard the very familiar sound of Annabelle Lee's frustrated cursing. She was going to be on her in seconds. Good.

Kyoko summoned up a spear, this one with a head thicker and a bit more blunt on the sides then the ones she normally fought with. Then she faced the vertical face of the road and jabbed it right into the yellow lines that plunged down the center.

The spear dug a furrow through the asphalt as Kyoko continued to fall, but quickly slowed to a sudden stop. The flexible pole then bent with her weight and momentum. Kyoko held on with both hands, waiting for physics to take their course.

Then the pole snapped up, flinging Kyoko back the other way. Kyoko twisted her body around and slammed both feet into Annabelle Lee's surprised face. Physics then exerted even more influence over the situation and Annabelle Lee's path was forcibly reversed. While the shock still had hold, Kyoko took the opportunity to wrench that stupid rifle out of her hands and bring it with her when she fell back again.

Kyoko landed on the pole of her spear like a circus acrobat. She bounced a couple times but soon came to rest. Once she had her balance, she took Annabelle Lee's gun with both hands and brought it down across her knee, snapping it in half.

As for Annabelle Lee herself, she had been knocked silly by Kyoko's trick, but managed to recover before falling to her face. Rubbing her aching face (which was now sporting a very lovely set of red bootprints), she looked around for someone to take her rage out on.

Then she saw what Kyoko had done to her gun and froze, staring.

Smirking, Kyoko held up both halves of the rifle and let them drop. Annabelle Lee's eyes followed them for a few moments before snapping back to focus on Kyoko.

"There, does that answer your question?" Kyoko said.

Annabelle Lee slowly breathed out. She passed her hand once more over her face and let it drop. "You know, every time I think you can't possibly get any more annoying, you go and prove me wrong."

"Damn, that hurts," Kyoko said. She covered her chest with both hands. "Whatever happened to all that holiday spirit? I thought we really had a moment there."

Annabelle Lee shook her head. "It ain't Remembrance Day anymore, Sakura. I told you. You get no more passes."

"Oh, I don't, huh?" Suddenly Kyoko's voice took on a vicious edge. "You found enough compassion in that dried-up prune of a heart to let me off for a day. Something about you learning about my sister made that happen. But now you're all psychopath again, shooting and stabbing us because, I don't know, shits and giggles? Come on! There's no way Oblivion's going to deal with you now! You've got nothing to gain!"

"Neither do you," Annabelle Lee responded. "Your quest is a fool's errand, all but impossible. But you persist anyway."

That made Kyoko show her fangs. "I've got a sister in trouble. To hell with the danger. I'm going to save her."

"The same," Annabelle Lee said. "Only my idea of saving my sister is a bit more thought out than yours." Then she grinned that ugly grin of hers. "Oh, and speaking of which…"

That half-a-second of warning was all Kyoko had. And given that all of her focus had been on the ugly, floating psycho in front of her, it wasn't enough. The next thing she knew, something small landed on her back, and two blades were jabbed into her shoulders.

Kyoko screamed and fell off her perch, with Ticky Nikki clinging to her like a gibbering parasite, yellow mist still pouring out of the wound Mami had given her. As she tumbled, she had just enough time to see Annabelle Lee swoop down after them, blades bared and ready to fillet the rest of her.

…

"Ow, ow, ow," Charlotte moaned as her wires retracted back into her mangled fingers. It didn't usually hurt, but this time around it felt like someone was taking a cheese grater to the underside of her skin.

"Oh baby, I'm so sorry," Mami said as she knelt down beside her. "I should have thought of the finger thing. It's my fault, I should have taken the jump. I just thought I would have a better chance of pulling everyone up when-"

"It's fine, it's fine," Charlotte grunted. She loved Mami with all her heart, but sometimes her wife's habit of beating herself up over everything could get a little wearisome. "Just…med gel? Please?"

Moments after the grey goop had been injected into her wrists she felt her phantom bones melt back into join and the pain eased away into nothing more than an uncomfortable stiffness. "Right, I'm fine," she said as she stood up. She shook her hands and winced a little. "Your plan worked, we made it, that's what's important."

"Are you-"

"Yes," Charlotte said, albeit a bit shortly. She turned toward their younger friend. "'Sides, I think she needs more help than I do."

Oktavia, despite having taken no injury during her fall, was not in good shape. She was sitting slumped in her seat, hands gripping the ends of the armrests tight enough to make vein impressions pop out against her skin, head bowed into her chest and eyes screwed tightly shut. Her teeth were bared in a grimace, her neck was tensed up, and her whole body, from her mussy blue hair to her multicolored fins, was shaking. She was breathing in short, frantic pants, like a puppy that had just been kicked by a stranger.

Mami and Charlotte exchanged uneasy looks. Then Charlotte went over to the panicking mermaid and knelt down in front of her.

"Tavi?" she said.

Charlotte didn't make any indication that she had heard her.

"Tavi?" Charlotte said again. She slowly reached out to gently touch Oktavia's shoulder.

Oktavia jerked back like her she had been burned. Her eyes popped open and stared darted this way and that, frantically searching for danger that she knew had to be there.

"It's okay, it's okay," Charlotte quickly said to her. "It's over, you're safe."

Oktavia focused on her then. Charlotte did not like the look she was wearing. It reminded her too much of some of the wild girls she had seen back at Etherdale. "Charlotte?" Oktavia said hoarsely.

"It's me," Charlotte assured her. "Don't worry. You're not falling anymore. It's over."

Oktavia swallowed noisily. Her trembling grew worse. "No," she said. "No, it's not. I don't wanna do this anymore. I wanna go home. Please, can we just…"

What home? Charlotte thought with a trace of bitterness. But now was not the time for such sentiments. Instead, she leaned forward and gently drew Oktavia into her arms. The mermaid grasped at her tightly and cried into her shoulder.

Despite still being in danger, Charlotte would have been perfectly fine with remaining where she was and comforting Oktavia until she had gotten it all out of her system. The poor kid didn't deserve any of this, and if anything it made her hate Annabelle Lee and the rest of her ilk even more for putting her through this torture.

Unfortunately, as was often the case in these fights, any sort of peace had a very imminent expiration date. However, this time the interruption didn't come from a sneak attack from one of their enemies, but the plight of another of their number.

"Charlotte," Mami said.

Still holding Oktavia, Charlotte looked up to give her a sour look. "What?"

"Look."

Charlotte looked in the direction Mami was pointing. Though it was hard to see through the layers of streets, through one gap she was able to make out a place where one of the roads dipped down for a ridiculously long length at an impossibly steep angle. And along that length, she saw three moving figures. One was flying, so it didn't take a genius to figure out who that was. The other was hopping around and kicking a lot, which gave away her identity. And the other…

As the Tomoes watch, the third figure crept to the edge right up to the edge overlooking the two combatants. It crouched like a vulture, surveying the situation.

Then it dropped.

"Oh no," Charlotte said as Kyoko lurched forward and fell off her perch with Ticky Nikki hanging on.

"Wha-What?" Oktavia said. She still sounded very shaken up, but she pushed Charlotte and Mami aside to look. Then she gasped. "Oh God, Kyoko! We have to help her!"

"All right, I'll go," Mami said as she stood up, a musket already in her hands. "Charlotte, stay with Oktavia, and make sure neither of those twins-"

"Heck with that!" Oktavia snapped. She snapped her fingers, and her wheelchair regained two magic wheels. "I'm coming with you!"

While Charlotte certainly admired the kid's resolve, she was less than sure about her ability to handle the situation. "Tavi, you just got the scare of your life. There is no way you're ready for-"

Oktavia banged her fist against the armrest. "No! Look, that freaked me out a lot, okay? But there's no chance in hell I'm just gonna let that beat me when my friend's in trouble. I'll go to pieces later."

"Oktavia, this isn't a game," Mami said firmly. "I understand your determination, but if you have another panic attack, it could hurt Kyoko more than it helps her."

Gritting her teeth, Oktavia moved the chair forward to bump against Mami's shins. She was still shaking a bit, but it was obvious that she was determined to do this. "No. I t-told you, I'm not gonna let this stupid fear b-beat me."

"Are you sure?" Mami said. "Because if you are, you may have to do something hard."

"Say it," Oktavia said. She certainly sounded determined. Still terrified, but determined. "I'll do it."

Charlotte and Mami exchanged a look. Both of them still had their doubts, but there was no time to discuss it further.

"All right," Mami said. "Then I need you to fly."

…

How Kyoko survived the fall, she had no idea, and she had no opportunity to figure it out. She just knew that she had ended up at the bottom of the dip where the road finally evened out with Ticky Nikki now perched right on her shoulders, her legs wrapped tightly in a figure-four lock around Kyoko's neck and her stupid knives still digging into her shoulder blades while Annabelle Lee descended from above like an avenging angel of death.

She also knew that she was now in an incredible amount of pain, and anything the Tick-Tock Sisters wanted to do to her now, they were going to do without any resistance.

Which isn't to say she still didn't try to fight. Kyoko grabbed onto Ticky Nikki's legs and tried to pry them loose. In response, the nutcase arched her back, doubling the pressure.

"Hold her!" Annabelle Lee ordered. "Keep her steady!" Even as Kyoko's vision dimmed, her blades still glinted. "I want to enjoy this."

Kyoko felt the cold steel brush against her belly, as gentle as a lover's caress. She grimaced and tried to kick, but her legs had lost too much strength. Laughing, Annabelle Lee drew her arm back, ready to plunge it in. "Oh yeah! Finally a good day!"

"Excuse me?"

Annabelle Lee froze. She looked over at something at Kyoko's right and her triumph was replaced by one of dismay. She backed off, hands held up.

"Thank you. Now, your sister as well."

Ticky Nikki released her hold on Kyoko's neck. The knives were pulled out as well. Kyoko rolled to one side, gasping in as much as she could squeezed in through her damaged throat. And by doing so, she got a good look at the thing that had just scared her opponents.

Kyoko stared. She blinked several times, rubbed her eyes, and stared again.

It was…well, it was some kind of war…platform…thingamajig. Sayaka was there in her wheelchair, per usual. And she was hovering on a flying train wheel again, though this one was about three times as wide as the previous one. Charlotte was standing next to her, holding her hand and likely offering moral support. Mami stood in front of her, manning a-

-a-

Huh.

Where in the hell had they gotten a mounted double-minigun?

"You know, I'm a little tired of all this fighting," Mami said to the two stunned sisters. She sounded weirdly calm for someone manning such a large weapon. "I can shoot you both down right now, but I'd really rather that we just end this here. Please let Kyoko go and allow us to leave in peace."

Kyoko was still in a great deal of pain, particularly around her neck and shoulder area, but she still managed to turn just enough to see Annabelle Lee and Ticky Nikki exchange pensive glances. She had to admit, though they all obviously knew that the day was won, she was curious as to how they would react. Annabelle Lee was stupidly stubborn, and probably would continue to fight despite having her body shredded just to make a point.

But apparently, sometimes even she realized that discretion was the better part of valor. Annabelle Lee sighed, her shoulders slumping in defeat. She motioned with one hand, indicating that they should take their wounded comrade and go.

"Thank you," Mami said, not lowering her guard in the slightest. "Charlotte, if you'd be so kind?"

Kyoko felt several thing wires wrapped around her body and lift her up. Charlotte was careful, but Kyoko still grimaced as the movement sent several bursts of pain through her. She would have infinitely preferred that Mami had been the one to do it, though even something as soft as her ribbons would still have hurt like hell.

Charlotte gently laid Kyoko down to Sayaka's wheelchair and immediately began tending to her. Kyoko felt some brief stabs of pain, but given the almost immediate relief those needles brought, she more than welcomed them.

"You okay?" Charlotte said in a low voice.

"Just dandy," Kyoko seethed. Which she sort of was. The cuts on her back were already closing, and the pounding in her head was dying away. "How are you?"

"Hurry this up, hurry this it," she heard Sayaka mutter impatiently. "Get out of the stupid sky already."

"You hurry it up," Charlotte told her. "You're the one driving after all."

"Fine, fine. Just keep them away from me."

Kyoko felt the platform start to move. Grunting, she maneuvered herself into a sitting position. Charlotte helped her prop herself up against one of the wheels of Sayaka's chair, which gave her a better look of what was happening.

The big train wheel they were on was moving away from Annabelle Lee and Ticky Nikki. The two death obsessed emos were watching them leave with the expected looks of frustration and hatred on their faces, though from the look of things Nikki was starting to become a little distracted with how shiny Sayaka's wheel was. Mami kept the minigun focused on them, keeping them at bay.

"Well," Kyoko said as the distance between them increased. "Seems like we picked up a few new tricks. Since when could you do the flying saucer thing?"

Sayaka was shaking a bit, no doubt having another altitude attack. She kept her eyes directly forward so as to keep from glancing down. "Er, s-since Marsters," she said. "K-Kind of figured out how to do this then."

Kyoko frowned. "I don't remember that."

"You were getting your butt kicked at the time."

Kyoko blinked. Then she nodded. "Oh yeah. Brooklyn. Right, that was nasty." She then glanced over to Mami. "And what about you? I mean, I knew you were good with things that go boom and mixing up your ammo and whatnot, but I thought you hadn't figured out how to do anything with more than one shot."

"I can't, honestly," Mami said, sounding a little sheepish. "I mean, I was studying automatic weapons for a while before I died, but could never get the moving parts working right, and making that much ammunition for one weapon was too exhausting. This is really just a bunch of muskets with delusions of grandeur."

Charlotte chuckled. "Well, hey, whatever works. So long as they think we-"

Her thought was unfortunately to be left unfinished, because right about then is when they heard, from rather far away, Ticky Nikki yell very loudly, "Annabelly, the gun's a fake!"

"WHAT!"

"It's true! Nikki just heard-"

"Shit, of course it is! Well, let's go!"

The four of them looked at each other in horror. "What the hell?" Charlotte said. "What the hell! I wasn't talking that loud! How sharp are her ears anyway?"

"Doesn't matter, too late now," Mami said. She fired all twelve barrels in a brilliant display of smoke and sparks. Several roads behind them had holes punched right through them, and one ending up collapsing on the ones below it. Unfortunately, there were no cries of pain.

"There they come," Kyoko said, pointing at two shadowy figures soaring high over the topmost layer.

"Shit," Charlotte said. "Oktavia, move this thing faster."

"I…I…" Sayaka said. She looked frozen by indecision.

"Hey, Swordfish," Kyoko said, her eyes following the two predatory shapes overhead. "Seriously, they're gaining. Step on it."

"I…I can't, I…"

Kyoko's patience snapped. "Look, I don't care how scared you are of heights! Suck it up and put the pedal to the metal already!"

"Don't yell at her!" Charlotte yelled back.

"Don't yell at me! We've gonna get eviscerated if she doesn't get over it! Have you ever been eviscerated before? I have, and it ain't fun!"

"Will you all stop please?" Mami said, firing a shot into the sky. Ticky Nikki dodged it with ease. "You're breaking my concentration."

"Oh, to hell with this!" Sayaka snapped, though not to anyone in particular. Then, before anyone could ask her what she meant, she swooped the disc directly over a road and banished it.

It was a very short drop, but so unexpected that everyone stumbled. "Hey, what the hell?" Kyoko demanded. "This is the opposite of escaping!"

"Says you! We're doing this the same way we did it last time!" Sayaka then patted her lap. "Okay, all aboard!"

Mami gave her a deploring look. "Oh no, this again."

"Hey, if it gets us out of here faster," Kyoko said, coming up behind her and pushing her toward the wheelchair. "Move, move, move."

Again they all were uncomfortably strapped onto a single wheelchair with Mami's ribbons. This time, Kyoko was in the mermaid's lap, Charlotte was practically perched on Sayaka's shoulders, and Mami had cocooned herself to the back of the seat facing behind them, so as to provide better cover fire.

"Y'know, it may be cramped and all," Kyoko said as she threw her arms around Sayaka's neck and made herself as comfortable as she could. "But not a bad way to travel."

Sayaka glowered. "Keep those hands where I can see them, Sakura."

"So long as you keep your eyes on the road and don't drive off a ledge, you don't have to worry about me."

"Please start driving," Mami said, a touch of impatience in her voice. "They're almost here."

"Agreed," Kyoko said. "Burn rubber!"

Sayaka took a deep breath. "Okay, here goes…"

Then the air filled with the chorus of their screams.

…

"GODDAMN IT!" Annabelle Lee roared as her quarry sped off. "Not again! Not this time!"

She was getting really, really sick of this. The universe had to be conspiring against her, there was no other explanation. It didn't matter how hard she tried or how close she got, all she had were an endless collage of those four's retreating backs. Annabelle Lee had absolutely no idea what kind of person she had been in life, but she had to have been a real scumbag. There was no other way to account for this kind of karma.

"Annabelle Lee, what is going on?" she heard a familiar voice say from below.

Looking down, she saw the remaining two members of their party limping toward the pair. Neither looked especially up for a fight. Nie was rubbing her head in a manner that suggested a post-headshot headache, and one of her twintails was still missing. As for Arzt, her face was still noticeably puffy, indicating a rather savage beating, and…Good God, her needles were freaking tiny! As if they had been snapped off and were only just starting to grow back! Which was probably exactly what had happened.

Under normal circumstances, Annabelle might have found immense satisfaction in the sight, and would have only regretted not being able to take part and record what had happened. But now it was just a great big fat inconvenience.

"They're getting away!" Annabelle Lee said, pointing a finger at the speeding wheelchair. "We're going after them!"

The Twins looked in the direction she was pointing with evident dismay on their faces. "Are you nuts?" they said in unison. "There's no way we can catch them now," Arzt pointed out, while Nie added, "Hell, we're still limping, there's no way we can-"

"You can do whatever, we're going after them!" Annabelle Lee snapped back. Then she left them to pursue. Nikki stopped circling and took off next to her.

The wheelchair was very, very fast, but so were the Tick-Tock Sisters. And unlike the chair, they were not overburdened and did not have to worry about any twists and turns in the road. Almost there, Annabelle Lee thought as the distance started to close. She wasn't exactly sure what they were going to do once they caught up, but everything in its proper place. Almost there…

Suddenly the tangle of roads came to an abrupt stop, with several highways simply shooting straight ahead in neat, parallel lines. Dead ahead, the sky changed abruptly, and what looked like a very large concrete wall rose up out of the abyss, one topped with a spiked fence. The Velocity Terminal was coming to an end.

Annabelle Lee gritted her teeth. She was not in the mood for a change of terrain. Focusing on the runaway wheelchair, she dove right at them, blades outstretched.

Then Mami Tomoe saw them and opened fire. "No!" Annabelle Lee cried as she and Nikki had to take evasive actions. "No, no, no-"

The wheelchair headed straight for the wall. As the road simply ended where the wall began, it looked for a second like they were going to crash right into it. But instead, several ribbons wrapped together in front of them, forming a ramp. The wheelchair sped up the ramp, over the wall, over the top of the fence, and went right over.

"NO!" Annabelle Lee shrieked. She and Nikki soared up as fast as they could. If they could clear the fence, they could double-back on the other side, maybe take them by surprise. This time, the mermaid went first, and after that Mami Tomoe. With them gone, the other two would be-

Then, with only seconds to spare, Annabelle Lee finally recognized exactly what kind of sky awaited them on the other side of the fence. This was followed up with the horrified realization as to why in the hell such a high wall had been built around a spawn site. It definitely wasn't intended to protect anyone from the site itself, that was for certain.

"NIKKI, STOP!" Annabelle Lee seized Nikki by the legs and brought the surprised little psycho to a sudden stop.

Nikki yelped and instinctively stabbed at her sister with both knives. Annabelle Lee jerked back, grabbed Nikki by the shoulders, and gave her a hard shake.

"Nikki, quit it!" she shouted. "It's me!"

Ticky Nikki blinked, her fragmented mind trying and failing to make sense of why her sister would snatch her so suddenly off the hunt. "Annabelly?" she said uncertainly, as if wondering if she were dealing with a doppelganger. "Why…"

"Look!" Annabelle Lee said, thrusting a finger at the fence. "Look at the sky! Look where they went! You really wanna go back into that?"

Nikki complied. A few seconds of blank bewilderment followed, and then her mind finally put two and two together and her face went pale. "Oh," she said.

The sky on the other side of the wall was a thick, dirty grey, like a ceiling made of hardened ash. Here and there flares of bright orange would break through and die away, giving the impression of magma bubbling up from a crust of hardened lava, or swelling blisters bursting on dead skin.

Once, a long, long time ago, Annabelle Lee and Nikki had come across a towering wall, much like the one they faced now. Being newly arrived and curious, they had flown over to find themselves under a sky exactly like the one before them. They ended up staying no longer than a couple of hours, but those two hours had been admittedly been an influential reason why they decided to seek out Oblivion so soon after arriving. And, though they never talked about it, Annabelle Lee was reasonably certain that a fair percentage of Nikki's frequent nightmares took place under a grey sky filled with bursts of orange light.

"Down," Annabelle Lee said. Nikki nodded, and the two of them slowly moved away from the fence back down to the roads.

"Okay, that was close," Annabelle Lee breathed out. Close, but also a problem. Those idiots probably had no idea what they had fled into, and even if they did, getting out again was…unlikely. As weird as it sounded, they needed help.

And of course, it fell to her to save them. Of course.

Okay, but how? There was no chance in hell she was going to go after them herself. That would actually land her in hell, and she had quite enough of that, thank you. Fortunately, those that built those walls were usually on call to help those who were stupid enough to ignore the big honking wall and clever enough to somehow get over. There was probably some kind of call box nearby, where she could call for help, though given that they were inside of a spawn site that was unlikely.

Whatever. It wasn't as if they had anything to lose. "Let's go," she said, tugging on Nikki's arm. "Look for a yellow box on the side of the wall." She hoped that they didn't have to fully leave the Velocity Terminal to find one. Every second wasted brought them one step closer to Too Late, if they weren't there already.

…

"STOP!" Charlotte screamed as they flew straight down the side of the wall.

"NO!" Kyoko screamed back. "STOP HERE, ARE YOU CRAZY? KEEP GOING!"

Sayaka, it should be noted, didn't respond to either. However, she did keep going. It wasn't like she had much of a choice in that matter.

As for Mami, she also said nothing. She was too busy keeping from throwing up.

The overladen wheelchair zoomed down the side of the wall. Directly beneath was a dark looking…something or another. It sort of looked like a jungle, but Kyoko was in no position to study it closely. Her attention was on something else entirely.

"ARE YOU CLOSING YOUR EYES?" she yelled at Sayaka. She grabbed the mermaid and gave her a hard shake. "OPEN THEM! YOU'RE THE ONE DRIVING THIS-"

Then, with a few meters above the black tangle, the wall abruptly gave out.

Everyone screamed as the wheelchair burst through the canopy. It hit a long, thick vine the color of pitch and spend along its length, shredding weird looking violet flowers as it went. Then that also gave out, and they ended up bouncing off of one branch after another, each one sending jarring shocks through their bodies.

"STEER BETTER!" Kyoko yelled.

"I'M TRYING!" Sayaka yelled back. "BUT I CAN'T-"

Then the forest opened up, and they found themselves approaching an imposing cliff wall of grey, sharp-sided stone.

"WHOA!" Sayaka yelped as she swerved the chair sharply to one side. The wheels hit the wall and kept going, shooting forward sideways along the wall.

Kyoko wanted to laugh. Kyoko wanted to scream. This was the utter definition of insanity. It was a freaking cartoon. Here she was, tied to a magic wheelchair driven by a terrified mermaid along the side of an alien cliff. And that wasn't even touching the highways to hell they had just left behind.

Then Kyoko did laugh. She couldn't help it. In a flash of that strange, crystal clarity that only seemed to appear in the most stressful of situations, she found herself remembering her first few days as a Puella Magi. How she had marveled at the strangeness of it all! Damn, if she had only known the strangeness that death would bring!

Then she saw an opportunity. "THERE!" she shouted, pointing. "Make for that ledge and hit the brakes!"

Fortunately Sayaka's eyes weren't closed anymore, and she swerved the chair over to the wide outcropping that Kyoko had spotted. She spun the chair off the wall, righted it, and finally brought it to a complete stop.

For a few moments, nobody moved. Nobody dared to even breathe. Kyoko's entire body was tingling, her arms were shaking, her vision was swimming, and she was seriously considering passing out. Part of her wondered if Sayaka's Wild Ride was even over. The world still felt like it was moving. Maybe she had sort of passed out and was currently hallucinating. It wouldn't be the first time after all.

Then, almost as if on cue, everyone let out a pained groan. Mami must have released her hold, because the next thing Kyoko knew she was lying flat on her back, staring at the sky.

The sky was a funny color. Most of it was covered with a flat canopy of ashen grey clouds that sat over the land like a depressed blanket. But spots of hot orange poked in here and there like bursting blisters only to fade away. It sort of reminded Kyoko of eyes peeking through a dirt sheet. That, or exploding zits. Either way, it was sort of gross to watch, but she didn't look away.

Finally the ringing in her ears dimmed and her eyes were able to stay focused. Kyoko blinked, frowned, and sat up. Things swum a little but no terribly so. Okay, that was good.

Coughing a bit, she said, "Roll call."

"Here," Mami said. The blonde was collapsed against a grey, cone-shaped rock and looking entirely unhappy about it. In fact, she looked like she had one whopper of a headache coming on.

"Present," Charlotte groaned. She was sitting with her legs pulled up and head bowed between her knees. "For what it's worth."

Sayaka said nothing, but she managed a weak wave in Kyoko's direction. Out of all of them, she looked the most shaken.

Kyoko wondered if she should say something, but decided to just let her be. Some things were best worked out on your own. Besides, she wasn't exactly in factory condition herself.

On the upside, it looked like Team Rocket had blasted off again and were nowhere to be found. That was a plus. And hey, they had gotten all the way through the Velocity Terminal. That was progress of a sort. But the place they had ended up didn't seem to be much of an improvement.

It definitely wasn't a hunk of Earth. In addition to the sick looking sky, the stone cliff they were currently resting on was…weird. The stones were too polygonal in their shape and were of a dark grey that Kyoko didn't really remember ever seeing back home.

Kyoko frowned, looking everything up and down. Okay, definitely not Earth then. Unfortunately, she hadn't really taken the time to read up on her new extraterrestrial neighbors and the sort of places they lived, so she didn't really know-

Wait a minute.

Kyoko froze as the emotional part of her mind caught up with the analytical. She was standing on alien soil under an alien sky. Sure, she had seen some weird and freaky things since dying, but with the exception of the few bits she had glimpsed while flying to Cloudbreak, they had all been from Earth itself, more or less. Now she was finally standing on another planet, a piece taken from a world that was probably lightyears away from home.

Long before Kyubey, when she had been a little girl (God, it felt like centuries ago), Kyoko had a certain fondness for monster movies, and aliens had been a particular favorite. Papa hadn't really gotten it, though he had at least been tolerant. Mama, however, had completely understood her young daughter's fascination with the weird and wonderful and had made sure to provide an endless buffet of cheesy delights, full of rampaging Kaiju and invading spacemen. And Kyoko had lapped it all up.

Of course, becoming a Puella Magi had changed all that. All of the rubber suits couldn't compete with the monsters she faced regularly, and the special effects had ceased to impress. But as her life had grown harder and her younger self been buried deeper, she had to admit, she had missed that time of joy and wonder, sitting in Mama's lap while gaping as the visitors from above landed their strange ships in the middle of Tokyo. And at night, she had dreamed of returning the favor, taking a rocket to go visit the stars and meet those beings for herself.

And now she had finally arrived.

Scarcely daring to breathe, Kyoko slowly made her way to the ledge and peeked over. What she saw below was…

Well, it was something, of that there was no doubt.

The black jungle was still there. The trees were thick and gnarled in such a way that it looked as if they had melted together. They had no leaves, but there were plenty of vines wrapped around each other. But while their trunks, vines, and branches were all dark, there was still plenty of color. In addition to the poisonous purple flowers Kyoko had glimpsed before growing on the vines, there were also flowers that were of frosty blues, meaty reds, and sickly greens. Great triangular, yellow stalks covered with upturned violet horns stabbed at the sky. Puffy orange bulbs with thorny bodies clung to black branches like lanterns.

It was nauseating in a way, too much black contrasting with too much color. Plus, there were things moving in the forest. Kyoko couldn't really make them out, but most of them looked…sharp.

A tiny bit of Kyoko's excitement ebbed away. She still had no idea where they were, but it was growing increasingly evident that it was a tough neighborhood.

Then she heard a sharp intake of breathe, making her jump a little in surprise.

Charlotte had come up next to her and was also looking down at the forest. Unlike Kyoko, it was plain that she recognized the place, if her widened eyes and tensed neck were any indication. "Oh," she whispered. "Oh."

"What, is this bad?" Kyoko said.

Charlotte looked at her as if she were an idiot. To be fair, it was kind of a dumb question. "Move away from the ledge," she said in a low voice. "Very slowly. Make no sudden movements."

Kyoko frowned, but she obeyed. "Why, what's going on?"

"Keep your voice down. And we're in a world of trouble. We're in-"

Then her gaze focused on Mami, who was still lying against the cone-shaped rock. Surrounding her were several others. Terror filled Charlotte's eyes, and she hissed, "Mami! Get away from that thing!"

"Hmmm?" Mami said sleepily. Apparently she had been dozing off. Sitting up, she said, "What's wrong, Charlotte?"

"Holy shit," Kyoko breathed. The rock was moving. It was risen a few centimeters off the ground, and several segmented appendages were reaching out from under it, grasping for Mami's legs. "Mami. Get over here. Right now."

Confused, Mami started to stand up. "Why, is something-"

Then one of the tentacles brushed the back of her leg.

Mami whirled around and leapt away with a single fluid motion. As she did, the "rock" had stood up on several spindly legs while more tentacles reached out. At the end of each one was a three-pronged pincer, each one looking as sharp as a rose's thorns.

Then another cone started to stir, followed by another. They're like hermit crabs, Kyoko realized. They hide under their shells and wait for prey to pass by.

Prey like them.

"MOVE!" Charlotte yelled. That galvanized the others into action. Sayaka quickly scooted back up into her chair and reformed her magic wheels. Both Kyoko and Mami summoned up their respective weapons, and the four of them quickly ran away from the cones, which were starting to scurry towards them.

"Where are we?" Kyoko said again. They found a path leading down from the outcropping and took it.

"Screwed!" Charlotte said. "This is doc-"

Then the side of the cliff wall sudden fell away, and an insectoid face the size of a large dog's thrust out. It had four serrated mandibles spread wide, and entirely too many thorny limbs. It shrieked at them, sticky goop falling from its…orifice.

Kyoko jerked back in surprise. Mami brought her musket up and shot the thing in its mouth. It slumped, dripping slime everywhere.

"Move, move, move!" Charlotte urged them on.

"Charlotte," Kyoko said as they obeyed. "What is this place? Where the hell did we end up?"

"Only the worst place we could have gone," Charlotte responded. "Guys, we are in a world of trouble. This is dockengaut territory."

…

Well, here we are. One last episode before I get to work on my book. And yeah, I'll admit, I deliberately went with one that was pretty much all monsters and action, mainly because I was really getting burnt out with all the politics, scheming, betrayals, and hordes of OC's.

Though given how therapeutic I find writing violence, I'm not sure if that says anything good about me.

Until next time, everyone!