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Interlude
Can You See the Light?

She doesn't want to go to sleep. In fact, she hates sleeping – hates it, hates it with every fiber of her being, a strength she never thought to have possessed. But her body craves it, yearns for it. She can't ignore the sand weighing on her eyelids, the poison that slows her movements and dulls her senses to the point of numbness.

She doesn't want to sleep, but she is human. She needs her rest no matter how much she resists.

It's five in the morning. Daylight will soon be breaking.

With great reluctance, she slips under the sheets and within minutes is lost in darkness.

Time may be lost here, but the instant she enters it comes along. Like an aching, eldritch thing from deep within the morass of eternity, it takes her and coils her in serpentine amore.

I missed you, it hisses sibilantly. It leans in close, so close. Its words send shivers down her spine and she shudders, wracked with heavy, damp cold. You've been a very busy girl. What have you been doing lately?

She tries not to shrink into herself, tries not to tear herself from this iron-clad grip.

Come on. What have you been doing lately? Hm? It exhales, and she smells smoke and blood and ozone and blood and tears and despair and the blood the blood there was so much blood.

"I," she grounds forth, slowly and stolidly as she can make it sound, "I've been observing. Everywhere I go…I'm always watching, studying."

What have you found?

"There are…some places I have in mind, suitable for our purposes. I'll show them to you…unless…you need more time to...?"

Dearie, I can take on anything. I'm not afraid and you, it pulls her in, tightens its hold like a constrictor, you shouldn't be, either. It presses against the slope of her neck, and she can taste the smile, feel it gnawing heartstrings taut as piano chords. I believe in you, you know that? I really, really do.

She wants to scream. She wants to cry. She wants to run away and never look back.

…She wants to die, sleep the dreamless sleep all people will eventually be called to do.

Can't letcha do that, honey; there's much more that needs ta be done, yeah. I can't continue if you croak on me.

"The world would be better off if we were gone," she whimpers. "The universe would be better off if there were no more Incubators—"

Oh, I couldn't agree MORE, it snarls, curling protectively around its charge (she tries not to shiver). If it weren't for those brown-nosing rats, we'd have the energy all to ourselves. Who can say the world will end in fire? Who can say the world will end in ice? This…THING…they call entropy? Bah! A possibility it may be, but we've seen the end haven't we? The world won't end in fire or ice or thermodynamic shutdown. No; it will end in the enslavement of the human race! Our survival demands it!

"I shouldn't be alive…You shouldn't be alive." She sniffs, and like a dam breaking under pressure the tears begin to flow. "I destroyed you – I alone – when none were able! I rid the world of your presence!" She grinds her teeth. "I did it all for her…."

A rumbling chuckle. So you say.

"I did. I did it for her. No one else. I have no regrets."

That's right. You have all the power you can imagine in your hands. You wouldn't be the same girl today had you not come to me.

"I never came to you. I...I had no choice. For Madoka…for everyone…."

Lies, it hisses. You care only for yourself, rely only on yourself. Your friends are just a means to an end. That's why—

"No…."

THAT'S WHY—!

"It's not true! IT'S NOT TRUE!" She fights to escape, pushes and shoves and claws and pulls. "God Almighty, it's not true!"

The thing grins. God? Little girl, WE ARE GOD, and soon this world…this universe…will be ours for the taking.

In the absolute dark, a hidden hand takes her by the chin and motions her to face the gaping maw of the abyss.

You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?

"There's something that's been bothering me," Sayaka says as she observes her companion in meditation.

Kyouko opens an eye, and the iris staring back at her is blank and unfocused. "What's that?"

"The Rossa Fantasma...how did you manage to manipulate it like that?" She indicates the glowing red portals that are spread before her companion in a semi-circle. "I thought it had something to do with illusions."

"It does, but with the state we're in I can do much more that I couldn't before. This place here…it's absolutely overflowing with energy. You don't even have to expand your mind to sense it; it sticks to you like static cling on fabric." She taps the center of her forehead. "Illusions are distortions of reality. Illusions make the brain assume it's seeing something when it really isn't. And perception can sometimes override the other senses.

"In the old days I used Rossa Fantasma on people. I could make them do anything as long as I maintained control. However, in the past couple resets, there was one thought that always kept coming back to me." She opens her other eye, and in this one it is bright, clear, and alert. "What if I could trick myself?"

"No one can do that," Sayaka grunts. "Even if you repeat a lie to yourself a thousand times, it won't work. If you repeat that lie to somebody else, then yes that person will eventually come to believe the lie to be the truth."

"It's the same with casting Rossa Fantasma on myself; I know how it works, therefore it won't have any effect on me." Her eyes closed. "However, the solution is very simple: I need only the spell, a reflective surface, and a suggestion to project onto the surface."

"It still won't work."

"You don't remember our fights, do you? I can construct my image on an illusion and weave so many layers I can place on it you would think it was real. I can swap places with it and you wouldn't notice til the last second. But yes, that's what I do: I conjure the projection, have it cast a suggestion on the reflective surface, and dispel the projection. The information it gathers upon dispelling will return to me."

"And that's how you're able to distort the space around us." Sayaka gives the gateways an appraising glance. "You figure this out all on your own? I'm impressed."

"What you lack in strength you make up for it with brainpower." She lifts a hand and reaches out toward the gateway before her. "The Sailor Senshi are all we have left. If they fail, there won't be another retry. Everything we've been doing up to this point will be for naught."

They don't speak after that. Sayaka contents herself to watching Kyouko breaching the spaces in between reality, combing the nether for the data they required to advance their plans into motion. Now and then she will open her eyes, reveal the glossy film of her entranced state or the brightness of an errant iris.

They aren't sure when the Witch will strike again. They cannot so much as predict how she will attack.

Always be on your guard. Never let your guard drop, not even when you think her presence is nonexistent. Don't slack off, for there is never time to rest.

Rest. Sayaka wishes she could rest. She's tired.

They're all tired.

(But that day has not yet come.)

"I can't wait for it," she says aloud, lying back against her palms, staring up at the unmoving stellar sky.

"Hrm," Kyouko agrees, too deep in her meditation to communicate further. From the portal she extracts her arm, revealing a tangled, stringy mass of limp, ethereal energy. An eye squints open, and through the haze she can images, moments captured in time, tiny characters moving in a tiny space of a tiny environment.

Maybe, just maybe, the answers lie within—

You shouldn't have done that.

The blood in their veins grow deathly chill.

Kyouko's eyes snap to wakefulness, and she sees—

"Sayaka, behind you!" But she's too late; it takes a second for the realization to dawn, and in the next a black tentacle pierces the girl's chest. The tip ripples and morphs into a four-pronged hook. "Sayaka!"

C-o-m-e…

P-l-a-y…

W-i-t-h…

M-e….

The stunned look on her face, of numb confusion, has never been more real. "What…?"

There's a sickening, meaty CRACK.

Something hot and wet splashes across Kyouko's face.

And Sayaka howls. A dark aura rises from the floor and, like the jaws of a dread, eldritch beast, swallows her whole.

She runs as though she has never run before, as though her feet have caught aflame and she cannot put them out, but yet she presses onwards. She leaps through the spaces in between spaces, blazing through realms like a comet's sputtering tail.

"Madoka! Madoka!"

The planes shift, fold in upon themselves. A vast, sprawling desert baking under a sweltering sun; an ocean of ice dominated by a clear sky buzzing with flocks of screeching, winged fish; a lonely rural village basked in the light of alien moons.

She doesn't stop. She refuses to stop.

"MADOKA!"

Suddenly, she's in Mitakihara, and for a second she almost careens to a halt in the middle of the street. They're packed with cars hoping to beat the evening rush, pedestrians crowding the sidewalks as they comingle and while the day away, the far-off notes of airliners set on their destinations.

She shouldn't be here. She can't be, because…

Because in that moment she remembers this isn't Mitakihara, and she quickens her pace when she catches sight of them up ahead. "Madoka!"

"Kyouko?" Madoka asks, surprised. "What's wrong?"

"It's Sayaka! She's…."

"What's happened to Sayaka?" Usagi asks. "Is she okay?"

"I wouldn't be here if she were!" the other girl pants. She straightens up, takes a moment to collect her breath, and turns to her fellow magi. "Madoka…."

She nods somberly. "I know. Usagi, I'm sorry, but I need you to go back to sleep."

Usagi clenches the hands at her sides into fists. "I want to help, I really do…but I'll only get in the way. Just…be careful, okay? Even if she's a Witch, Sayaka's still Sayaka. She can be brought back, just like you said."

"Walpurgisnacht works in many ways," Kyouko says quietly, features sobering. "There's the possibility we won't revert her to normal form, and if that happens—"

"It won't," says Madoka. "I won't allow Sayaka to be lost to the darkness…and regardless of what you say or feel you will do the same. Because she's our friend and because," she pauses, puts her fingertips to Usagi's head, and in her eyes both girls peer into depths of endless red, depths that contained the red of blood spilled and histories mired, "because there's always hope."

There always is, Usagi wants to say, but the words are never spoken.

They needn't be.

When the aura recedes, the last plate of iron slides into place.

"Now…let's raise some hell, yeah?"

Oktavia von Seckondorff snarls as the space around it warps and shifts. It grips its swords, turning its head as the first of the prey materializes into being.

It is red. Red hair, red clothes, red red SO MUCH RED—

"Sayaka," it says.

The word doesn't register, doesn't bear any semblance.

It is mad, it is confused, and it is hungry.

Oktavia bellows to a heaven that isn't there.

"Madoka? Whatever happens…we'll always be together…won't we? Even if…one of us should turn…we're still friends…right?"

"Of course we will. Whether or not we like it, the choice we made was our own. We have to live with it…but that's not such a bad thing. That's what life's all about: struggling to make ends meet, struggling to preserve and live to see another day."

"Are you afraid?"

"I am…but with you by my side…I can do anything. We can do anything."

"Madoka…."

"It's okay. We're here for you." She takes her hand, "Count on it," and smiles.

Mami never could forget that smile.