Chapter 28
Loose Ends
Kyoko stared up at the stars, glazed eyes unaware of the infinite expanses before her. Instead, what she saw was a vision of the past. The appallingly finite past, something so ephemeral that it faded, washing away, every single day, until nothing but a hollow sense of... emptiness, a nagging itch that something you knew once was now gone, missing.
She couldn't remember the sound of Momo's voice.
It had come to her, the other day. She remembered how the sound had echoed in her head, painfully reminiscent of her lost life, but somehow comforting as well. Soothing. It was important to her, one of the few things that, deep down, really mattered. Not forgetting the ones she loved. Kyoko knew that she was possibly the only person in all of Japan, and therefore all the world, to really remember her sister.
At least, other than as a faceless victim. Those damned haunted Sakura house stories...
Wiping away something annoying tickling down her cheek, she thought hard, feeling fingers of anguish hovering just beyond her, slipping in as she recalled the fuzzy, faded memory of Momo. Indistinct, blurred... a cute little shape, but out of focus.
She caught herself on the second sob, clearing her throat and spitting noisily. Smearing moisture across her face with the back of a hand, Kyoko got up off her knees.
All things must end. This, too, shall pass. She'd heard it somewhere. A movie, maybe... possibly school? Or a book? There was a kind of cold comfort in the thought, intermingled with inevitable dread. Nothing was forever... which was comforting when the universe had you by the throat, but only until you finally found something you cherished. Something you needed, that made you... more complete. That was a loss she didn't want to contemplate.
Shaking her head, she looked down, sadness giving way to a growing twinge of worry. The blunette gazed up at the sky, sightless eyes reflecting the light above them. Leaning close, Kyoko could see the rise and fall of her friend's chest, but otherwise she appeared comatose.
A few minutes, the red-head thought to herself. Then-
She had nothing beyond that. The sickening sensation inside of her stomach uncoiled, beginning to spread... until she angrily bit down on feelings, and her tongue just to be safe. "No reason to worry," she muttered to herself, tasting hot coppery blood as a canine bit through the soft flesh of her tongue, unable to keep from thinking: Yet.
Helpless. That's how she felt. It didn't help that girls had died tonight, although that in itself was something she'd become jaded to long ago; it was the thought of the sisters, never to see each other again, a lifetime of shared experiences and meaning gone, in an instant. And for what?
How the fuck could she have done that? she thought, sucking on her tongue. Through long practice, she latched on to the feelings of anger and resentment, always a balm for the deeper emotional turmoil of pain and remorse. Such a goddam idiot, look what you did, you stupid, stupid bitch. Look what happened because of you. I hope you're fucking happy with-
Something changed.
Kyoko noticed, and was on her feet, alert, in an instant. The red-head hadn't heard the sound like cracking glass, or the whisper of sand falling to the pavement. Swiveling, she saw the sisters; the dark-haired samurai having crawled over to the skeletal remnants of the younger one, lying face down across the gruesomely exposed ribcage. Clutching... a hand. The limp fingers intertwined with that skeletal hand was just about the saddest, most horrifying sight Kyoko had ever seen.
Her resolve wavered, the pretty, tear-streaked face crinkling with a pained grimace, blades of pity stabbing at her heart, imagining the suffering, the lonliness, the pain of the surviving sister...
Suffering. Pain. Loneliness. Uh-oh. It was as if the instant her mind conceived of the threat, it manifested. A wavering bubble seemed to reverse-explode into a small, black sphere that hovered above the entwined sisters, and Kyoko felt herself pulled violently into the Witch's barrier.
Kyoko landed on her feet, the long red ponytail whipping back and forth behind her as her veteran instincts kicked in, scanning the area-
She leapt sideways, and amazing dive, hands outstretched. Catching the limp, falling body in her strong arms, she cushioned the worst of the impact, wincing momentarily as her arms dragged across the pavement.
She heard the other bodies fall to the ground with a combination of thuds and splats. Something groaned.
Letting out a breath, she let go of her friend, gently laying her down. The blue eyes continued to stare, cloudy and sightless. Kyoko brought her fingers down over teh blunette's eyelids, and was relieved when they stayed closed. Although, after the fact, it seemed an incredibly morbid thing to do...
Resuming her scanning, she noted several features common to newly-spawned Witch barriers. For starters, it was relatively solid. That was often true for the "entryway" portion of barriers, the spillover reflection of the real world that masked the psychedelic nightmare of surreal symbolism that lay at its core.
The place did indeed resemble the dockyard where they stood in the "real" world. It appeared to be a gigantic, geometric maze, reminding her of a hedge maze she'd seen on a television show. It stretched up and up. And it was empty.
No familiars buzzing around confusedly... or with sinister intent. No glowing runes, no shifting glyphs and undulating walls and bizarre grainy quality to the light. Yet.
Decisions. Kyoko looked at the flotsam that had washed inside the barrier along with the blunette and herself. There were several... pieces, laying scattered about. A severed, leather-booted leg, a skeletal forearm, the lifeless husk of the girl who was now at the very center of this barrier, ready to hatch...
And a groaning pile of blood-soaked meat, reaching out with clutching fingers, grasping at the air. The choking groan was the only sound to break the fresh labyrinth's oppressive silence. Kyoko glanced at her friend quickly, but everything seemed just like it had been ten seconds ago, so she approached the moaning figure, marveling at the extent of the girl's injuries.
Damn, Sayaka really did a number on this one, she thought, unable to keep her eyebrows from climbing in surprised appreciation. It was like the girl had swallowed a grenade, which had then exploded from within her stomach. Most of the meat of her abdomen was gone... from the right angle Kyoko could see the girl's spine.
The moaning, shattered wreck of a girl inspired none of the feelings of empathy or remorse that the pair of sisters had. This was the giant who had tried to crush her head with that metal banded club as she lay helpless, trapped by that leather-wearing sadist's chains. The thought sparked something inside her, and she kicked the twitching figure, hard in the ribs.
The figure moaned louder for a moment, then went silent. Kyoko bent down, fiddling with the girl's outfit. Satisfied, she stood, stuffing something down her skirt. Why couldn't I have someplace cool to hold stuff. I mean, Sayaka's got that cape, Homura pulls out freaking elephant guns from that little shield of hers... Kyoko sighed. She could have used a snack.
She stomped down on the growing sense of unease that was slowly but surely building up inside her. Sayaka lay still, unmoving. Almost like she was asleep. Her face, peaceful and serene... Kyoko couldn't help but stare for a moment. Thinking the eyelids would flicker, opening to reveal those sky-blue irises.
After a minute, Kyoko bent down, picking up her friend easily. Slinging the girl over her shoulder, she began walking away.
"W-wait..."
Kyoko paused, but didn't turn around. The gurgle in the voice spoke of ruptured lungs filled with fluid.
"Y-you... g...otta h-help me..."
Silence.
"P-please. H...elp me. I... I'm s...orry."
"No you're not." Kyoko still didn't turn, merely shifted the burden over her shoulder to a more comfortable position. "You just don't want to die."
The ruined giant seemed to hiss, that broken body twitching. She was crying. "Y-you... can't... c...an't just... l-leave me... here..."
"Watch me." The red head walked forward along one of the paths, turning a corner and leaving the weeping survivor of the ill-conceived robbery, or assassination attempt, or whatever the hell had been the motivation behind the attack... she knew Sayaka wouldn't have left the girl behind... but she wasn't the blunette. She didn't want to save the world. She just wanted to get Sayaka out alive. And she sure as hell couldn't do that carrying around two useless bodies. One was bad enough.
She also knew, after around a hundred steps or so, that the weeping would have stopped. She paused, digging around for something. Her hand opened, and she watched something, dull but with a faint sparkle, fall to the pavement.
Kyoko lifted up a knee-high crimson boot, bringing it down violently. Something crunched, and a puff of white mist seemed to envelop her boot for a moment.
No need for Sayaka to know about that, she thought a little guiltily. Still, she knew the blunette might not understand. There was simply no way Kyoko was going to risk that girl getting eaten and adding to this Witch's power, or regenerating and coming back for revenge, or any of the other possible ways the girl could cause harm to Kyoko and the one she cared about.
Necessity makes monsters of us all.
As Kyoko approached the center of the maze, hemmed in by the infinitely tall walls of corroded metal, she began to hear things. Oh no, she thought in dismay. Don't tell me...
Barking. Or rather, obnoxious, high-pitched yipping that tried to pass itself off as barking. It was coming from ahead of her, and turning a corner the landscape changed abruptly. Instead of being penned in by the high, rusting metal walls, she found herself in a wide open space dominated by a huge home.
Adjusting the caped package held over her shoulder, Kyoko goggled at what lay before her. The house was, indeed, huge... but not in the traditional sense. This was no mansion; it was a single-family home, probably two bedrooms, two bathrooms. Kyoko recognized this from the layout, unconsciously comparing the design to several of the dozens of similar homes she'd broken into over the years. It was immense, stretching up into the sky, as large as the Mitakidome Arena complex.
The yipping turned to howling, the keening, irritating baying seeming to assault the red-head from all sides. It must be waking up. Glancing around, she failed to find a safe spot to drop off Sayaka; too open, too exposed to leave her anywhere...
And then the dogs began appearing, circling around the veteran, hunched over under the weight of the blunette held draped across her shoulder.
The dogs were larger than she'd expected, given the sounds of their barking, but Kyoko's spear materialized instantly, ready to dart forward into the pack of fluffy Pomeranians, the cute, almost cartoonish faces marred only by the slavering, fang filled jaws that snapped the air in anticipation.
Bzzzzzzz. The spear... slipped out of her grasp, clattering to the ground. Frowning, she allowed it to fade, creating another in its place, only to feel it jerk around, almost like it was trying to wriggle free from her grasp. Bzzzzzz. What the fu-
The dogs attacked. One by one, each ran past her, drooling snouts nipping at her, fluffy hair rippling as they seemed to fly by. Wrestling the spear, buzzing like a nest of hornets, Kyoko brought it down, seeing the blade seem to blur, widening. As it passed through one of the canine familiars, the creature came apart in five different places, severed chunks of dog fading into black fog that disappeared into wispy nothingness. Bzzzzzz.
The giant Pomeranians came together, attacking as a pack. Dismayed at the bizarre behavior of her weapon, unwilling to let go of her friend, Kyoko tried summoning a spear of energy. Watching in horrid fascination, the ground before her began to ripple, and an immense, gleaming pyramid began to poke up out of a freshly formed crater ten meters wide. The dogs seemed to be smart enough to get out of the zone of rippling earth, but one was too slow. The red-head watched as the beast was hurled high into the sky as the immense, tree-sized shaft burst out of the ground, the truck-sized spike at its tip gleaming in the light of the Witch's fake sun.
Oooookay, then. Gripping her spear with both hands, one arm slung awkwardly around Sayaka's legs, Kyoko felt like she was fighting with her weapon instead of against the dogs. The buzzing haft of the spear seemed to be trying its best to escape from her grasp, but every time she managed to swing it through one of the familiars it cut them into pieces. She began to enjoy herself; usually she had to settle for poking, stabbing, and occasionally slashing things... rarely did she get to actually sever and cut stuff in half, which was viscerally satisfying on a whole different level.
Several of the beasts had fallen, but the remainder seemed to gather, forming a huge ball of fluffy, snarling faces below their cute, cartoon eyes. Her spear going wild, Kyoko fought against it desperately as the creatures charged. Wrestling the thing between her legs, she clamped her knees together tightly, holding on as the slavering Pomeranians charged forward.
Kyoko felt the buzzing vibration rattling her bones, shaking her teeth. She saw the tip of her spear expand, translucent, a fan of blade and energy. She watched the shaft of the spear seem to bend this way and that. She stared as the dogs flew through the hazy, almost invisible blades that appeared to hover in midair, superimposed and transparent. The spear continued to vibrate, kicking like a mule. It broke free of her legs, sliding up and crashing into her pelvic bone. "Ow!" The dogs, leaping across the shimmering tip of her spear, fell apart, small puffs of black smoke dissipating into thin air. Oooh, nice.
The veteran surveyed the scene, face flushed with victory, holding on tightly to her spear. It wasn't until Sayaka, some seconds later, began to squirm, that Kyoko allowed the weapon to fade away, no danger immediately apparent. Putting her friend down, the red-head smiled uncharacteristically sheepishly, but the blunette was too busy trying to get herself together that she hardly noticed.
"You... okay?" Kyoko asked hesitantly.
Sayaka looked up, and her eyes were like spheres of ice. So cold.
Whoa, Kyoko thought. This is gonna be good.
Thank you all, who are reading this (28 chapters in)... I've greatly appreciated your comments, observations and interest. Please continue to leave whatever feedback you'd like me to know about.
X-special thanks to angel0wonder, Psykoakuma, Otaku4eva99, ShadowStealerr, and kyosayalove. Your incredible reviews-the things you enjoyed, ideas you have of where I'm going, observations and critiques... the depth and length to which you've gone in your reviews fills me with gratitude. As I've said before, very motivating to hear your responses, and you and everyone else who've taken the time to write something back deserve a good chunk of the credit for whatever meager joy this tale is capable of providing. I'm not saying it eloquently enough, but basically, thanks.
I have to say, one of the favorite comments I've ever heard about two of my favorite characters in any context has been what kyosayalove wrote last time:
"Felt bad for the girl who died at the end.
But thats what you get for messing with sayaka and kyouko"