Akane looked up to her colleagues with a twitch her in ears and a new happiness in her glowing feline eyes. She spoke in a hushed tone as to not catch the attention of the nearby Pearl who was guarding the cell.
"Hey, guys, let's get out of here!"
Haruka and Shiho looked up from their sulking positions. Working under a new hopeful energy Akane had brought the group, the three quickly planned a method of escape. They would catch the guard's attention and make her open the door before knocking her out. Upon their escape, Haruka suggested, they should temporarily separate and kill the sleeping Columns before rendezvousing just outside Garderobe's grounds. This was to ensure they wouldn't be chased and could spend the rest of their lives supporting each other in the wild. Shiho happily agreed with Haruka for the first time since the team's original mission together, and Akane walked to the cell's door to begin her frantic act.
"Guards, help me! Shiho's gonna get meee!"
When the unsuspecting Pearl opened the door to alleviate Akane's false worries, Haruka stepped out of the corner of the room grinning and disabled the poor young woman with a well-placed uppercut. Akane's team found their baton weapons in a room near their cell, then sheathed the blades in the sashes of their uniforms and went about their grisly plan. After each defenseless Column was put to rest with a stabbing strike to the heart, Akane's squad kept their weapons as survival tools and made their way to the thick woods of Windbloom.
Unknown to Akane and her friends, their bodies had been chemically dependent on Garderobe's mutagen injections for some time, and they quickly began feeling the effects of a fatal withdrawal process after their first missed medication. Despite keeping themselves well-fed off the resources of the forest, Shiho and Akane soon began exhibiting symptoms resembling serious sleep depravity, and the once sparkling clear leaves that hung from Haruka's hair were becoming shriveled dry husks. Furthermore, the mental conditioning on Akane and Haruka slowly wore off, and they both became emotionally unhinged when broken and incomplete memories of their original lives returned to their minds and they realized what they had done as the Columns' soldiers. Akane had viciously gunned down her precious Emperor Kazuya, and Haruka had orchestrated the murder of her close Garderobe classmate, Mai. Both girls were suffering from great psychological injury in addition to the growing physical pain of their bodies gradually shutting down. The trio spent their last struggling breaths together questioning what strange illness had stricken them. Since they had hidden themselves well into the forest, their bodies were never found.
Now lacking all form of leadership, Garderobe quickly surrendered in the War of the Five Columns and allowed Empress Mashiro to restore the world to its previous state. Although it was all thanks to the indirect efforts of Akane and her unusual friends, the Columns' abrupt deaths were accounted for only by rumors of an expert group of assassins sent by an unknown neighboring country. Akane and the story of her special squad of Meisters soon disappeared from history.
THE END.