Omake: Empty Doll
She didn't mean to.
Kaina didn't mean to do it.
Infinity Princess moved regardless.
Surely, it was the logical move, because Infinity Princess did it.
Kaina no longer understood the logic.
All she could see was Alice's bloodstained lips, smiling because of one last stolen kiss.
The passive scanning equipment she uses tends, as a trade off in exchange of operational longevity and low energy requirements, to not give too precise results, only really giving general trends to direct more dedicated scans, patrols and searches.
It's telling, then, that the explosive spike they detected can be pinpointed to the top levels of Kintsugi Biotech's headquarters.
Maxine tries to get into contact, but she gets no answer from Kaina. Nobody else is answering, either.
There is, unfortunately, no time to waste, and whatever this is preceding can't be good. Maxine calls upon her Raiment, and takes off, dropping everything else.
Possibilities flick through her mind, worries crawl through it like ants around a piece of food. Scenarios, innumerable and growing evermore outlandish, play out as she pushes herself to go as fast as she possibly can.
She finally touches upon the roof in an eerie, discomforting quiet. The expected reactions, the automated defenses and corporate security goons and all those sorts of things, don't come. The hustle and bustle of the city in this area is absent.
The building, and even surrounding buildings, are unlit.
Silent.
Lifeless.
Empty.
The only thing she can detect, whether by her technology of her own senses, is the overwhelming amounts of Essence, and the source of it.
Making her way inside is easy.
It feels like breaking into a tomb, or a remnant of something that once was. Rooms empty, arranged for a life that'll never come..
She doesn't encounter anyone. She doesn't encounter anything. It's all empty. She continues on her way.
Whatever's happened, she'll get her answers behind that next door, a bone-deep feeling reinforced by the intensification of the ambient grave-like chill.
Her limbs feel like ice. Like cold, unfeeling metal.
The door opens, and her heart feels like it stops.
Kaina stands, her Raiment twisted and corrupted. Pitch black, radiating cold and death, and regal still. The only touches of life remaining upon her breathing, and the golden color of her hair.
A queen of the dead.
Kneeling before her is Alice Takanashi. As beautiful and alluring as she ever was, save for the torn outfit, showing the ugly, horrifying scar that now marks her body, a wound none but the toughest of Magical Girls could've possibly survived.
The lifeless, empty eyes of the former CEO turn to Steele.
Frozen, all she can do is open her mouth.
"Kaina?" Maxine's voice is small as she asks. She doesn't know why she even asks. Maybe she wants it to be a dream. Maybe she wants to hear Kaina say it is, or for her to say that it's all a misunderstanding, and to explain all the overwhelming evidence of just what's happened away.
"Everything is fine. Everything is fixed. You can go home now. Alice is fine." The words are, perhaps, what she wished to hear, but their toneless, monotone delivery make them just another proof of how things are.
Alice gets up, her movements clumsy and strange.
Like a doll one hasn't learned how to play the strings of quite yet.
"Everything is fine. I am fine." The empty doll says.
AN: Had an idea. Not sure how the execution actually ended up, because I'm tired and am writing this before I pass out go to sleep