For a moment, nobody dared to make a move. Breaths were left held or unfinished, oxygen trapped within throats and lungs. All eyes were on Kyoko, who had her iron sights set on Sayaka in turn.

It was rather like an old Wild West showdown… or maybe more of a duel in general, seeing as neither of them were carrying six-shooters or any kind of firearm. Then again, both of their weapons could be considered ranged, given the spear's chain gimmick and Sayaka's uncannily accurate (if not simply powerful) throwing arm.

Whatever it was though, the tension in the air was undeniable. Perhaps that was the culprit for everyone's lack of motion; it could be a dense, thick beast, heavy enough to have a physical presence and weigh down all present. Or maybe it was their sudden awareness of the innumerable volts of ambient electricity in the air, just waiting for someone to make the mistake of twitching and becoming a conductor so they could fry them into a blackened caricature - to say nothing of what they would become once they were hit by the almost-visible current of sparks traveling between the red and blue girls' retinas.

Then Kyoko glanced sidelong at the rest of us. "The hell's up with all 'a you? I don't got beef with any of ya." After a second, her eyes darted off elsewhere, and she amended the statement, gesturing at Madoka and I. "Well, not with you two at least. Yer fine. You 'n me," she pointed at Homura, "we still got shit to work out, but that can wait." Back to Sayaka she went. "Right now, it's the little rookie I'm after. So you can all just do whatever as long as ya don't get in the way."

And just like that, the feeling suddenly became bearable. Make no mistake, it was still there, it just wasn't as crushing as it had been before.

"Soooo, uh," I posited while I started forward. "Does that mean you won't mind if I just, y'know..." I bent over, reaching for the Grief Seed sitting between them that we'd neglected to pick up earlier for some reason. "Tuck this away?"

The lancer's face twisted up into a scowl, before she blew out an annoyed breath. "Ugh… yeah, sure, go ahead. It's yer kill anyhow."

"Cool." My hand snapped the little black trinket up and quickly shoved it into a pocket before I backed away. "Have at it."

Once I got clear, Sayaka took the floor. Her hands were bereft of weapons, but it was clear that she was ready to pull some out at a moment's notice if need be. "All right, what exactly is this 'unfinished business' you have with me?"

Kyoko jabbed her spear at the blueberry in response. "C'mon, newbie, the clueless act doesn't suit ya. I know you know what I want."

"No, I… oh. Wait." Her eyes widened with the realization. "The bridge."

"Aww," the redhead mocked in an overly sweet tone, "you do remember! Fer a second there, ya had me thinkin' that ya actually forgot about how I was gonna kick yer teeth in!"

Huh, that's right. They kinda were about to try and start killing each other before I and everyone else stepped in, and Madoka threw souls.

Sayaka made to scratch the back of her neck in slight embarrassment at the accusation. "Well, I sorta did forget for a bit. I think my brain's been trying to repress most of my memories of that night ever since it happened. 'Cause, you know… well, you were there."

"Oh, pfft." Kyoko blew that justification off. "It wasn't that bad. The white shitstain just decided to come clean 'bout a few things after someone got a bit too stressed 'n accidentally tossed someone else's soul into a highway, that's all."

"You speared Kyubey to the concrete and kicked his head clean off, Kyoko," Sayaka shot back with a flat look. "That didn't look like a very 'it wasn't that bad' reaction to me."

The girl didn't appear to take much issue with being called out. "So I got a little excited. Big deal. 'S not like what I did was all that bad, anyway."

I leaned back in slightly, angling a pointer finger up. "Friendly reminder that the only reason you didn't completely snap and make Vesuvius look like a science fair project was because I took a bullet for you."

"Piss off, this ain't about you," was the immediate counter.

Thoroughly destroyed with facts and logic, I held up my hands in surrender. "Understandable, shutting up now."

"Well, either way," Sayaka cut back in, rerailing us to our original destination. "You're right that we never got the chance to finish what we started." Her arm began creeping backwards, heading towards the invisible space that existed between her cape and the small of her back. "Would it be too much to hope that you only swung by just to pencil in a date for that?"

My peripheral vision indicated that Homura had already escorted Madoka back to what could be considered a safe distance.

I opted to do the same when Kyoko let out a dangerous chuckle. "Oh, you don't need to worry yer pretty little head off, freshie. The details've already been settled." She stepped forward, resting her spear on her shoulder. "Day of Reckoning, Pain Town, Ass-kicking o'clock. In other words…"

The spear came down, now held with two hands. "Right here," she shouted as she suddenly rocketed towards her target, "right now!"

Her charge was met with a sword pulled from nowhere, heralding the start of the battle as sparks flew from the point of contact. The clash was short-lived, lasting only a second before Sayaka deflected the lance upwards, grabbing a second blade from the ether to swipe at Kyoko while she was open. The attempt was blocked by the spear's shaft, which then proceeded to stop the flurry of slashes the bull rained on her opponent, moving so quickly it became a blur.

Sayaka had to let up eventually, and when she did, she was forced to guard against a heavy swing. Smashing into her defenses, the blow packed enough force to send her flying. By this point however, she had become accustomed to aerial maneuvers, twisting herself around into a position that would let her land without issue. In the process, she flung out a batch of new swords at Kyoko, taking advantage of the newly-created distance between the combatants.

Like her previous assault, the spear served as an impregnable wall, batting away each and every blade that came its way with almost contemptible ease. The cessation of the ranged attack marked Kyoko's return to the offensive, and she hurled her weapon at Sayaka in return, dashing after it at a pace that would make Olympic medalists sputter in disbelief.

The projectile, too fast to dodge, necessitated a block. Magi-steel pushed against magi-steel, neither side yielding, before the buildup of kinetic energy exploded outward, sending the spear spinning upward and Sayaka's swords to her sides. This left a massive opening for Kyoko to capitalize hard on, and she drove back a fist before slamming it into her opponent's center of mass.

I could've sworn time itself slowed down when the punch landed, carrying all of Kyoko's weight, strength, and the speed of her sprint behind it. In that moment, I could make out the way the air split around her arm, the shockwave it emitted, and the flecks of red-tinted spittle Sayaka coughed out as all the air in her lungs was sent right back the way it came. And that wasn't even addressing the sound. I may have only had a senior-year-level biology education, but even I could tell that she wasn't walking away from that one without at least three broken ribs.

As you can probably imagine, all that force was more than enough to send the poor blueberry tumbling away end over end, intermittently bouncing off the ground before crashing into a wall.

Kyoko gazed upon her handiwork with a look of smug satisfaction, rubbing the knuckles she'd used to do the deed for effect before holding out her hand. As if on cue, the spear fell right into her waiting palm, and she transitioned the catch into a showboating bit of weapon twirling, capping it off by once again pointing the business end at the downed form of her opponent.

For my part, the lull let me recognize that my jaw had fallen open at some point, and enabled me to fix that.

...wow.

Making a contract and obtaining a Soul Gem effectively turned you into a superhuman. This was a fact, and it was one I'd known for a good couple weeks now. After all, I was one myself.

Another fact I'd known for a while, however, (and one you're probably getting tired of being reminded of at this point,) is that there is a marked difference between simply knowing something, and understanding it.

Up to this point, most of the times I'd ended up fighting as a contractor were actually rather tame. When I'd escaped from Gertrud's labyrinth, it had been at a regular dead sprint. My bout with Homura would look like an everyday New York alley brawl if you ignored the two time-stops. During my first witch hunt with Mami, the only thing I ended up doing that could be considered extraordinary were the super-jumps, none of which were flawless. Against the doodling witch and Kyoko directly after, just about all of the maneuvers I'd employed, save the genre-typical dragoon leaps and that impromptu reverse-Scorpion move I'd pulled, could probably be replicated by normal human athletes possessing sufficient skill and conditioning.

Hell, the same held true for the hunt I'd just gone through. The only times I ever deliberately did anything superhuman were when I jumped. Everything else - the reflexive twitch-dodges, the dexterity and precision, the sudden bursts of strength, even the capacity to take hits - every time I'd made use of them, it was an incidental, unconscious choice that my body made for me.

By contrast, the twenty-odd seconds I'd just witnessed were most definitely not something any human could ever hope to pull off. Everything about it practically screamed superhuman, from the dashes to the throws to the blisteringly fast-paced close combat. More than that, these two girls knew what they were doing, and what they were truly capable of. Or, Kyoko did, at least. The strategy she'd just executed wouldn't have worked otherwise.

Speaking of which, that exchange also let me realize just how much the redhead had been holding back when she'd tested me. What I was seeing now was Kyoko when she was actually trying, and I got the distinct feeling that she was still just playing with her food. If she had decided to fight me like she was fighting Sayaka now when we had come to blows back then, I probably wouldn't have lasted even fifteen seconds. And when I considered that I had only managed to land a single solid blow in that match, which itself was a product of a set of visions, lucky circumstance, and the fact that I'd caught her off-guard, well…

Jesus bloody Christ, I'm actually shit at fighting.

Suffice to say that my combat rating wasn't looking too hot.

I was actually starting to wish I'd been able to see more of Kyoko and Sayaka's first battle, if only so I could've come to this revelation earlier. From the rapidly-decaying memories I possessed of that scene from the show, it was a fairly flashy spectacle with no small amount of impossible feats. Even the tiny bit of it I'd managed to catch before Homura stepped in had been pretty wild, and that also wasn't counting how Kyoko had managed to leave via wall-jump in spite of the bullet in her… wait.

...roof-hopping. Fucking. Roof-hopping. The literal bog-standard method of travel for pretty much every kind of magical girl. The only superhuman thing I ever do is the jumping, and I never even tried to fucking roof-hop.

My hand came up to cover my eyes as I let out a groan of extreme proportions, once again reminding myself that I was a complete and utter dumbass. That kinda seemed to be a thing about today. Not only was I evidently about as emotionally intelligent as an average harem protagonist, I was also about as self-aware as a member of PETA. And, well, my psychological knowledge was already long invalidated thanks to how I had no degree in it, but it was invalidated even further by how I'd completely failed to predict Sayaka's rather flippant reaction to the whole Hitomi situation.

Oh, and as an added bonus, I had also ended up reminding myself that I was a little bit of a garbage can of a person. I'd lied, manipulated, and played just about every side possible here, for no other reason than how I thought I knew better. Sure, I had a not-dead Mami and a slightly more stable (maybe) Sayaka to show for it, but that wasn't the point.

The writing was on the wall. The signs were out in the open. The breadcrumbs were laid right at my feet. The message was abundantly clear, and it was high time I pulled my head out of my own rear end to see it. I needed to make a change, and I needed to make it sooner rather than later.

Ugh. Thank god I caught all this before I ran out of safety nets. My luck's saved me before, but I can't keep falling back on RNJesus to pull my ass out of the fire. First thing tomorrow, I'm gonna need to get the jump on trying to fix all that. Here's hoping Mami'll be willing to give me a crash course on Meguca 101.

That would have to come later, though. The sound of a newly-regenerated Sayaka charging an unimpressed Kyoko reminded me that there was still a fight going on, and that I would be better served getting lost in spectating it rather than in my own head.

I turned my eyes back on the combatants just in time to see the lancer shove away Sayaka's opening slash and attempt a counterswing, which was stopped by the sword in her enemy's other hand. With the weapon occupied, the bull took the opportunity to stab at Kyoko, only to see her twist out of the way, using the momentum to amplify a horizontal sweep.

Rather than guard again however, Sayaka instead chose to flip over the attack, clearing the bladed edge of the spear as well as its wielder entirely and landing behind her. This unfortunately amounted to little, as she immediately found herself assaulted by the heavy-looking cap on the back end of Kyoko's weapon, eating jabs to both her collarbone and her temples before she was able to stop it. This prompted a third swing of the spear, which continued the trend of being unsuccessful when Sayaka backstepped out of its reach, and moved in to retaliate with a double-bladed swipe.

Kyoko, however, continuing to establish her absolute dominance on the battlefield, simply leaned out of the way of the attack, before adding insult to injury by seamlessly transitioning into a backflipping handspring that also happened to send one of her boots up into Sayaka's chin. With her foe now unbalanced, the redhead decided to try and go for the finisher once she landed on her feet, performing a great leap of her own.

Sayaka, after regaining her bearings, was treated to the rather terrifying sight of a human-shaped ballista bolt in red, white and black screaming towards her person. Thankfully, she managed to not freeze up, jumping away mere milliseconds before she could suffer what would've been a rather extreme case of impalement. The concrete she'd been standing on was decidedly less lucky, fracturing under the force of the blow and leaving a prominent spiderweb of cracks where the spearhead had impacted the ground, accompanied by a collection of small and not-so-small shards of rubble.

Landing a reasonably safe distance away, Sayaka paused to take stock of her situation and perhaps re-evaluate how she might approach the unstoppable force she was up against.

Kyoko, of course, decided to spend that time taunting her. "Come on, rookie, quit screwin' around! Don't tell me that pathetic bullshit's still the best ya got!"

"Of course not," the bull fired back, putting on a smile. "Don't you know I'm not left-handed?"

Haven't you been using your… hm. Does that line still work if you're ambidextrous?

Deaf to my inner commentary, she ran right back in, appearing to use the same strategy as before. The exchange played out pretty much like the previous two had - Kyoko blocked, then negated the rush of attacks, Sayaka dodged the counter, failed to punish it, and got one of her swords knocked away by the riposte.

It began to diverge, however, when Sayaka redirected Kyoko's next stab to the side in order to grab the shaft herself and give it a good yank. The sudden weight shift left the redhead off-balance, and opened her up for a pommel strike to the face, further stunning her for a follow-up knee to the gut. Sayaka then made to slash again, but found her remaining sword arm halted by a sudden iron grip around its wrist, which itself preceded a crash-into 'hello' delivered to her own face from Kyoko's fist. Said fist pulled back and was about to make the greeting stick until it was also stopped by its own iron grip from Sayaka's other hand, leaving the spear to clatter to the floor.

Both fighters were now deadlocked, each with one trapping arm and one trapped arm. They threw every drop of strength they had into breaking the lock in their own favor, visibly shaking from all the force they were exerting on each other. However, it was soon made clear that Kyoko had the advantage, as she began to overpower the bull with her better-trained, more experienced muscles.

With her arms busy pushing and both legs occupied with maintaining her foundation, there was really only one thing Sayaka could do in response. Changing gears on a dime, she swapped from pushing to pulling, and reared her head back. Kyoko, caught unawares by the maneuver, was once again sent forward.

The crack that resounded throughout the area when both of their foreheads collided made Madoka and I visibly cringe and Homura's eyes twitch minutely. They were gonna be feeling that one for a while; trust me when I say that nobody ever wins in a botched headbutt like that.

Still, Sayaka, being the instigator, was left with the upper hand while they both recovered from having their brain buckets rattled. Kyoko's grip on her sword hand had loosened from the impact, enough for her to rip it away and once again swing the blade at her enemy. Kyoko, dazed and smarting from the impact, reacted to the attack a hair too late, and ended up taking a nasty looking cut across her torso before she could get clear.

"BITCH!" She didn't take that very well. Faster than Sayaka could stop, she lashed out with a spinning roundhouse, smashing a foot into the side of the bull's thick skull. While her quarry then busied herself with recovering, Kyoko walked back over to her spear, kicked it up, and gripped the shaft with an aura of restrained fury.

Despite that, however… "Whaddaya know. You do have a brain somewhere in there." She began looming over Sayaka, in spite of the distance between them. "Shame it won't save ya."

The weapon split into pieces, snaking towards the blueberry with its fangs on full display. Sayaka was forced to take evasive action, then defensive action, with not a thought spared for offensive action. One hit from the spear turned into two hits, then three hits, then four. Swords were created and wrenched away within half-seconds, just barely fast enough to block the next strike, then the next, then the next.

The blows began increasing in speed, leaving her less and less time to react. Half-seconds became quarter-seconds. Quarters became tenths. Twentieths. Fiftieths. Until there was no delay between the spawning of a sword and the impact of the metal serpent.

Then the next strike came just a little bit faster.

I don't think I'll ever forget how Madoka screamed at the sight of her best friend's left arm flying away from her body. Honestly, I still consider it a wonder that she didn't try to summon Kyubey and make a wish then and there.

Sayaka was thrown away, rolling over the ground and leaving a trail of red behind before coming to a stop. Kyoko reeled her weapon in, still pointedly ignoring her own bleeding wound.

"You get it now, don't ya?" If I could see her eyes, I would've noticed they looked a bit duller than usual. "The real world ain't some sugary fantasy land that runs off sparkles 'n happy thoughts." She began slowly stalking towards her incapacitated opponent. "It's a cold, cruel, unforgiving shithole of a place to live." The bloodstained spear came to rest on her shoulder. "And neither it, or the dicks that call it home give a flyin' fuck about what you want."

Kyoko came to a halt over the disarmed girl. "The moment ya leave yerself open, it'll crush ya like a bug 'n throw ya out with the rest of the gutter trash. I learned that the hard way." Convinced she'd made her point, she turned away. "If you can't get it in yer head that yer better off keepin' yer powers to yerself, then ya might as well go write yer last will 'n testament now, while ya still have fingers left to do it with."

She was about to walk away when she heard something that compelled her to stay.

"So what?"

Looking back, she was met with the sight of Sayaka struggling onto her elbow and knees. "Who cares if the world has it out for me? What's it matter if it beats me down every time I try to help someone else up? It won't stop me." Getting her feet under herself, the blueberry shakily rose. "You could go on for hours and days about how nobody will ever thank me for saving them, or tell me I'm doing a good job, or even notice I did anything at all, and I'd still do it anyway." She almost slipped, but caught herself before she could crumple. "Even if I really do end up just hurting the people I try to help, that's no excuse to quit. All that tells me is that I need to do better and learn from my mistakes, so that things'll be different next time." Keeping her right side forward, she squared up. "Because I know that the moment I stop trying… that's when I've lost for real."

Sayaka glared defiantly at Kyoko, refusing to back down. "So you can go take your defeatist philosophy crap and shove it right up your ass. I don't care what you or Kyubey or anyone else tells me - I'm not giving up. Not now, not ever." Drawing a sword, her one hand brandished it in an overt challenge. "After all, someone's gotta pick up the slack that all the girls like you leave behind."

"Stubborn all the way to the end, huh?" The redhead frowned at the performance, appraising the battered form of her surprisingly tenacious opponent. Taking it all in, she then closed her eyes. "Fine, then. Keep yer faith." They flicked open again, sharp as her lance. "See where it gets ya."

The climax beckoned. Sayaka, left with little other options, chose to raise her blade and rush forward for the last time, screaming out a battle cry that released everything that she'd been bottling up throughout her struggle against this insurmountable obstacle. Kyoko didn't budge an inch, letting her quarry come to her with a mask of dismissal on her face, which couldn't quite keep the rage simmering below from seeping through its cracks.

To say that Madoka and I were on the edge of our seats would be an understatement. We could both feel it - what we were about to witness was the moment of truth. I'm certain Homura knew it too, though she of course didn't show it. Regardless, three sets of lungs paused a moment before it happened.

Throwing in every last bit of her weight and every ounce of power her body had to offer, Sayaka swung.

And in one fluid motion, Kyoko batted the sword away and drove her spear straight through the bull's chest.

If time had slowed down earlier, it had all but stopped now. Everything froze - nothing but the wind dared make a sound, for it might disturb the image pictured in reality.

A drop of crimson spilled out from the corner of Sayaka's mouth. Then another, and another.

Then it curled into a smile, in stark contrast to Kyoko's own lips.

"Too bad, rookie." The fury seemed to have cooled somewhat. "You lose."

A few seconds passed, and I began to hear gurgling choked noises coming from Sayaka.

It took another second to realize that she was laughing.

Annoyance flashed in Kyoko's expression. "Did I give ya brain damage or somethin'? I said ya lost, joker. What's so funny 'bout that?"

Sayaka quieted down, still grinning like a madwoman, before rasping out two simple words that completely drained the color from her opponent's face.

"Game… over…"

The redhead's eyes grew larger than I'd ever seen, and their pupils slowly began to trail downward. Past Sayaka's dripping-red chin, the spear impaled through her breast, and the rapidly growing pool of blood at her feet, before stopping at Kyoko's own Soul Gem… and the sword pointing directly at it, barely a centimeter away.

The sword held in the bull's newly-regenerated left arm.

She started chuckling again. "Never… underestimate… a white mage…"

That was all she managed to get out before Kyoko snapped a leg up and kicked her off the lance, ripping the barb back through her body. Her free hand slapped over her Soul Gem, much too late to serve any real purpose. Glancing around wildly for a few moments, she inevitably came back to Sayaka's broken form, and for a moment, a special kind of fury surged out for all to see. But it disappeared as quickly as it came, and Kyoko was left with nothing but smoking embers.

Having lost the will to continue, she instead chose to do some thinking. Sayaka took this time to start patching herself back together, her whole body beginning to give off a soft blue glow while she rolled over onto her back. Kyoko took notice of this, but did nothing to stop it.

Once it was done, however, she walked up to the healer's prone form, standing her spear up next to her. Looking back at her spectators for a brief moment, she sighed, then addressed Sayaka.

"Gotta admit, that took balls." High praise, coming from her. "Thought me 'n miss Crazy Yankee were the only ones around willin' to pull batshit insane crap like that."

Sayaka grinned. "I guess you could say I learned from the best, huh?"

"Right," Kyoko snorted, rolling her eyes before hardening again. "You sure this is what ya wanna do?"

"More than anything else." The bull sat up. "I've got a promise to keep, and I don't think I'd ever be able to forgive myself if I broke it."

Red irises flicked back over to us for a moment, before closing. "All right, then. If ya still wanna be a dumbass after all that, then I don't think I'll ever be able to convince ya otherwise." She turned away. "I'll let ya have this one, Sayaka. But mark my words: this ain't over." Her head twisted around to hit Sayaka with one last glare. "Not by a long shot."

With that, she super-jumped away, landing on a nearby roof and dashing out of sight.

Sayaka stood, staring out at where the redhead had left, bringing a hand up to her chest and closing it.

"Sayakaaaaa!"

She was then forced to try and ward off an extraordinarily worried best friend who'd just had to watch her go through what amounted to a meat grinder without being able to do so much as lift a finger in assistance. "W-wait, Madoka, don't! My clothes are-!"

The pinker couldn't be bothered to give fewer fucks about the blood-soaked garments clinging to Sayaka as she all but crashed into her chest, spilling out words that were two steps away from completely incomprehensible. From what little of the garbled speech I could process, it sounded like she was trying to apologize, tell Sayaka how happy she was that the bull was okay, and hammer in exactly how unbelievably worried she was, all at the same time. It was rather disgustingly heartwarming - in an uncomfortably literal sense, considering all the vital bodily fluids staining everything.

Sayaka tried to reassure the girl that everything was fine now, but she was proving to be all but inconsolable. Homura and I were soon given a wordless request for help, of which we were both reasonably certain that we would offer nothing of value towards. Upon receiving my helpless shrug and Homura's minute shake of her head, the rookie sighed.

"C'mon, at least let my change back to my regular outfit…" Why she didn't do so anyway when the transformation clearly wasn't harmful in any way and was practically instantaneous, I have no clue. Probably something about Japanese customs or personal space.

Eventually, Madoka managed to pull herself together and step away, taking a deep breath. "Please don't scare me like that again, okay?"

"Uh…" The blueberry looked away, shamefully raising a hand to scratch her neck. "I'll try my best, but I don't think I can promise anything if Kyoko's the norm. If I hadn't managed to catch her sleeping at the end there, she probably would've handed my head to me." Her severed arm caught her attention, and she went just a bit paler. "Hell, she still almost did, even with the hits I landed."

"For the record," I cut in, "you did a lot better than I would've. Compared to that whole cage match, the 'initiation' she gave me might as well have been a catfight with wet noodles, and I got pounded into the freakin' dirt."

Homura then finally entered the conversation, and to my shock, decided to do so while backing me up. "Kyoko Sakura is a veteran fighter. What you saw was not her full strength, but against lesser Magical Girls, that much force would have been more than enough to completely wipe them out." Lo and behold, she actually gave Sayaka a nod of approval; a tiny one, but a nod nonetheless. "For someone with so little experience, you performed surprisingly well."

For the second time today, words failed Sayaka. She'd likely been expecting a lot of things from the detached bodyguard, but I doubted praise (even if it was backhanded) was one of them. "...thanks, Homura." Her eyes found mine before going back to the girl. "And I, um…" She paused, before stamping out her remaining traitorous thoughts and going forward. "I want to say I'm… that I'm sorry." She failed to keep eye contact, pupils dropping down to the floor. "For treating you like a jerk. You didn't deserve that."

It was difficult to make out, but the time traveler was left equally stunned. Something told me that getting a real apology from Sayaka for letting her first impressions color her thought process so much was an extremely rare occurrence, if it had ever even happened at all in the loops past Timeline 3.

...man, this girl desperately needs some real, honest companionship.

"You are forgiven," was the only thing she could really get out in response after an awkward pause. Clearly unprepared and unwilling to deal with the situation, Homura made to switch topics. "You should check your Soul Gem. That much healing must have taken a lot of magic."

"Right, right, yeah." Sayaka obviously recognized what she was trying to do, but elected not to mention it and went along with the shift, likely because she felt the same way about it all. Detransforming and sparing a moment to inspect her gem, she balked at the mass of corruption that had built up inside it. "Oh, good lord that was costly. That might be the most gunk I've ever gotten from a fight. And it wasn't even from a witch…"

I had to hold back the urge to gulp as she pulled out a Grief Seed. "Hardly any of that had anything to do with offense, either. It all went straight to fixing the laundry list of lumps you took." And what a list it was. "Shots to the collar, that one to the chin, one to the face, three separate holes through your chest, all those broken ribs…" I couldn't stop myself from taking my own look at the freshly-butchered limb lying a little ways away. "Not to mention that arm. If you hadn't almost died, I'd probably be cracking a masochism joke right now."

"Honestly?" She looked up, her face nearly fooling me into thinking it was drooping. "After the day we've had, I think we deserve a little humor break. If I can't find a way to laugh at any of what just happened, I might actually go insane."

"Point," I acknowledged. "Unfortunately, my brain seems to be too busy complaining about how much today sucked donkey balls to come up with any good material. Not that I blame it, 'cause hoo-hoo boy, this day. Am I right?"

A sage, solemn nod was Sayaka's response. "Oh, yeah. Definitely. This freakin' day." It was quickly followed up by a smile. "But you know what? We survived. It threw everything and the kitchen sink at us, and we took it all like the champs we are."

I stared at her, then realized she had a point. "...yeah. We did."

"Damn straight." She gave me a friendly smack on the shoulder. "So chin up, all right? I mean, sure, it would've been nice to have at least a day or two of rest between beatings, but I'm not gonna complain about stuff that's outta my hands. It's not like I could've stopped Kyoko, anyway."

I locked up.

...no. No, she couldn't.

My mouth opened. "But I could."

A/N: Five months. Pain. Lemme tell ya, college and Quest Hell is one devastating combo.

To tell the truth, I could have posted this chapter… probably around mid-January. But me being the dumbass I am, I thought I could fit this fight scene, and then the two scenes after it all into one chapter. Then I actually started writing the next scene, and fast-forward to today when I took a look at the wordcount and said "oh, holy shit." And the first scene isn't even done!

So, yeah. I banged out a few transitional paragraphs to split it in two and called it a day for this one. But what a day this is turning out to be for the poor girls, huh? I mean, by the looks of it, it's gonna take four whole chapters and over twenty thousand words just to cover all of it!

Anyway, Sayaka finally gets to really test her mettle… or at least how many hits she can take. That being 'all of them.' Sure, she's a quivering mess in front of the guy she crushed on for years, but put her between Madoka and a threat and she will absolutely refuse to ever stay down. Which is pretty handy for the meguca life, if you just remove the guy factor. Madoka Magica is a testament to a lot of things, one of which being how just a few problems that would be insignificant under normal circumstances can end up snowballing into catastrophic clusterfucks if given the chance to grow. If that chance isn't given, however… well, you've just seen what happens.

But that's all for today. Hopefully, the next update will take less time to come out than this one did. I wouldn't get my hopes up, though; considering how many stumbling blocks I've run into in just the first part - which, may I remind you, still isn't done - it's probably gonna be a miracle if I manage to get it out before Summer rolls around. But, well. I've done crazy shit before. That wouldn't be anything new.

Oh, and before I forget - hopefully, before you finished reading this, the new version of chapter 5 went up. So if you want to see Audrey and Homura throw hands at each other without the whole thing reading like as much of a cringefest as it used to, go check it out.

'Till next time.