Hope's Private Secretary 3: Anima & Animus Apud Argenteus Armis

by Erinaceus87

Madoka & Kyoko go out on a double date, leaving Homura & Sayaka to hang. Meanwhile, Yachiyo Nanami takes on a bullheaded apprentice in Kamihama, Junko Kaname tangles with a sudden career change & Hitomi Shizuki meets new friends at her new school. But deeper in the depths, in a secluded stronghold, a new life is born to carry out its master's ambitious plans for the Earth.

21. Beyond One's Own Power

CHAPTER 20: Beyond One's Own Power

Sayaka stop!

"Err- Ror! Err- Ror! Err- Ror!" A literally disarmed Cyberman fell to its knees at the hands of its fleet-footed assailant. "Shutting doooooooowwwww-"

"Delete! Delete! Delete!" Sayaka's next pair of obstacles appeared on cue. "Delete! Delete! Delete!"

Sayaka stop!

"Err- Rooooor!" Thick, smoky steam billowed out of every single crack and orpheus. "Sys- Tems Dis- Rupt- Ing!" Ditto the second upon contact with their target, a loud hissing noise overtaking their pained beeps and blips.

"I'm superheating all the remnant water inside your fleshy organs." Their foe explained the science behind their imminent demise succinctly. "Like an overcooked lambchop in the microwave, pop you go!"

Sayaka stop!

Dele-" Her next victim did not even get the chance to know what hit it.

Sayaka stop!

She did not enjoy being this punitive, nor cruel, but sometimes she just couldn't stop herself. Her dark and violent outbursts were fleetingly rare, occurring only when challenging thes face of true evil, pure insanity, depraved inhumanity or cosmic horror, but that raw fury sealed below her inner voice existed, and most often the only thing that kept her untempered rage in check were those small, simple words.

Sayaka stop!

That inner voice was but two words once spoken by her best friend, way back when, a plea to her better angels that she did not heed in the heat of that fateful moment. Back at the altar of penitence, whereupon the twisted, writhing limbs of the shadow witch, Sayaka vented all her pent-up anxiety and self-hatred. Whenever she needed a reminder of all the self-destructive damage she could wring upon herself, how easily it could turn her reflection into the face of someone she could no longer recognize, she replayed the whole morbid memory and those words in her head.

"Creating a labyrinth within a labyrinth," Sayaka remarked on the familiar, gut-wrenching discomfort that struck into the very bowels of her magical girl soul. "Clever. Too clever." She put away her makeshift magic tracker and placed her palm against the false dead end that was presumably obscuring the cause of all their woes. "Guuaagh!" She reacted to the scorching hot, plasmic energy barring her from easy entry. "Damn!"

That hard way it was, then. She checked the battery level on her multitool. An indicator light signified that it was fully charged and ready. She had already turned the right dials and made the adjustments necessary to turn her trusty device into a powerful, single-shot EMP burst tuned at a frequency she knew the nanogenes were vulnerable to. Without the nanogenes to act as The Cyber Regent's life support and de facto blood supply, she estimated the little girl would die in about a minute and change. It was as humane an end as the situation could allow. Sayaka tucked her tool inside the armored gauntlet piece adorning her left arm and trudged forth into the inevitable showdown.

"Intruder alert!" The Cyber Regent's personal attendant, CBX-001 reported. "Intercept?"

"My, my, that ionized pocket of thermally excited particles should have been scalding enough to repel even the most regeneratively resilient Homo magica." The Cyber Regent said to the smoldering lump of the young Time Lady arriving to confront it.

"What can I say?" Sayaka mouthed an insolent quip through her lips as her magical musical rings enveloped her body. Three seconds of a light melody and a zephyrous breeze were all it took to restore herself. "I take lickin' after lickin' and keep on tickin'."

"I shall have to revise my calculations on the durability of your kind." The former little girl's voice blasted through an all-surrounding loudspeaker system. The rest of her sat unmoving atop a metallic throne wrapped in wires and circuits, with dozens of cords, cables and tubes jutting out the back and from above, all plugging into various points along her body. "Although even a preliminary exam of your anatomy would appear to suggest you possess physical traits which go even a step beyond the Homo Magica."

"And you would appear to be a Cyberman primarily of the Mondasian variety," Sayaka assessed in kind. "More primitive is your conversion method compared the Cyberiad, Cybus, Cymrubiate, Syzallbius, Telosian, Cyber Lord or any of the other space-dwelling models out there." She took a second to dust off a charred spot on her blue strapless top and straighten her long, white cape. "Which should mean your organic self is more or less intact and preserved underneath that wacky SCUBA suit and all your other mechanical augmentations." She took a pensive step onto the base of the throne platform and offered her one and only peaceful proposal. "With my magic I could probably salvage your body if not wholly save your soul, if only you'd just take that first little step of redemption and tell your toy minions to stand down and switch off permanently, right now."

"You would seem to possess knowledge of our kind that exceeds any furtive research I've accumulated from the nation-state agencies of this planet." The Cyber Regent ignored her offer and monologued. "Updated calculations prompt me to inquire whether you were the being who precipitated the Kyubey fairy's sudden exodus from Earth?"

"Perhaps I was. Perhaps not." When presenting a strong poker face Homura would toss her hair, Kyoko would chomp a Pocky stick, Mami would smile and fold her arms while Madoka would emulate her mother by planting her put-upon hands to her hips. "From either answer is good riddance to bad rubbish." Sayaka chose Mami's technique as it gave her easy access to that saber-shaped ace tucked up her armored sleeve.

"Inn- Deee- Eeeeed." A high-pitched, childlike voice squealed audibly past a set of lips that resembled the tape and chain links to a zipper. "If so, then you are the one I must thank for first enabling the chain of events which have led to my illustrious ascendance to technological life." She spoke again over the acoustic system as her rump jaw and facial muscles contorted that misshapen mouth into a smug-looking smile.

"Regardless of however you got this way, I can't in good conscience allow your ambitions to continue beyond the confines of this labyrinth." Sayaka threatened in as measured a tone as she could manage. "So stop it right here and I'll do my best to preserve your right to life as a human being. Even though you've already done something to someone that's heinous enough to warrant an unceremonious execution on my part."

"Why should I rejoin a race that lags two branches lower on the evolutionary tree?" The Cyber Regent scoffed. "For that matter, how could you defend a species so entrenched in apathy and ignorant of its ultimate insignificance as to be functionally incapable of acting in any capacity beyond their immediate instinctive self-interest?" The black, circular indents that shaped her eyes pulsed a subtle reddish, brown light.

"Because they're not as dumb or shortsighted as you think." Sayaka countered. "Their emotional instincts are what lay at the foundations of their dreams. Dreams that drive them to craft such wonderful abstractions as art, literature or poetry and music, and that in turn inspires the collective to strive towards bettering themselves, growing and changing little by little day after day, and that feeds their ever-persisting hopes for a better tomorrow." Sayaka rambled in such an aspirational, passionate way. "And it's that hope I'll always defend, an intrinsic quality that all magical girls fight for, which elevates us and our wills to an evolutionary rung far higher than any Cyberman could strive to engineer."

"Nothing more than high-minded, self-righteous nonsense with no practical applications." The Cyber Regent summarily assessed. "Contrast to all I have achieved in my new form in the mere span of weeks." A puff of exhaust steamed out a piece of grating on her midsection. "I have overhauled the conversion process and implemented it successfully in the upgrade of my attending physician." A subtle head tilt to the right indicated who that was. "I have built up an entire clandestine base of operations by making industrial-scale use of those very microscopic marvels which enabled my procedure. I have built up an army from the deceased, diseased and forgotten, which still totals in the thousands despite you and your party's meddlesome resistance." A fan attached to her midsection revved up and a series of LEDs on a wrist-mounted panel flashed blue, green white and red. "I have even successfully engineered my own mechanical successor to your kind. Thus the logical conclusion is that the only way for humanity to survive its looming resource and energy crunch, and for yours to not succumb to the existential threats brought upon by the karmic limitations of your very nature is to submit willfully to us and to me as their reigning superior mind." Sayaka's fine-tuned ears picked up on a subsonic series of harmonic whizzings, whirrings and hummings all around. No doubt in her mind they were the sounds of a trap or twelve about to be sprung.

"I'm saddened but not shocked to hear your Cyberman programming has turned you into little more than a militant mannequin." Sayaka said in one final, resigned, regret-heavy sigh. "I gave you your one chance. Sorry about what I've got to do next."

Sayaka stop!

---

"What's that sound?" Sana Futaba fretted. "I don't think I like that sound!"

"Me neither!" Felicia Mitsuki put on a brave face as she choked up on her hammer.

"Introducing the latest innovation in Cyber Minion designs," The Cyber Regent's voice broadcast. "Cyber Arachnids. Detachable appendages that reconfigure to infiltrate spaces and places too confined for standard forces to penetrate quickly or capably."

"Uhhhhh… Arachnids?" Felicia wasn't the brightest biology student. "Those are-"

"Spiders!" Sana pointed at the advancing menaces skirting underneath the gaps in the entrance and clanging up and down the ventilation ducts. When the first one wiggled out underneath her lodged shield at the entrance and advanced she saw it was a detached Cyberman hand in which the thumb, middle and ring fingers split in two to total eight appendages. "Made of hands!" Their knuckles had also retracted to reveal four pairs of tiny glowing blue, LED eyes, and fang-like protrusions jutting from the top bumps on the palms.

"Sssssiiick!" Felicia reacted with predictable violence, squashing and smashing any bug that came through. That left Sana with the task of saving Nemu and taking on Unit One Zero Zero Alpha, an undertaking she was not prepared to handle on her own.

"Aiiiyyyyyyeee!" The monolithic robot launched a piston-powered punch with such potence it pushed Sana and her shield a full ten meters back. "Wah- Waaaaaah!" For its second assault she had the savvy to open the extra-spatial hatch on her shield, form a second one right behind the mech and pop itself hard in the back, knocking it a few degrees askew. "Nemuuuuuu!" Her next resort was to try and awaken the occupant trapped inside her foe. "You've gotta wake up, Nemuuuuuuuuu!"

"Buh- Baaaaaaaam!" Felicia smacked at more spiders. "Nemuuuuuuuuu! You gotta wake uuuuuuuuup!" She joined in Sana's calls to the captive girl. "Euuuugh!" She disgustedly slapped a creepy-crawly sneaking up the back of her leg. "Crap!" Despite her best efforts the Cyber Bugs were as pervasive as cockroaches.

"Yesssss…" The Cyber Regent spoke through its Alpha Unit. "Waste invaluable energy on a fruitless resistance effort. Burn yourselves out the way Mifuyu Azusa did. By all means." The monstrous machine opened its clawed hands, locked its laser sight on Sana and rocketed another attack her way. "Fight the forces of futility so hard I can make you my next energy sources." Its echoing taunts carried a cruel emotionality The Cyber Regent had thus far kept suppressed.

"Auuughk!" After a brief tug of war battle the shield was wrenched from Sana's dainty clutches.

"Sanaaaa- Aaaack!" Felicia jumped in pain from a sudden jolt in the back. The little hand had bitten into her with its taser-like fangs. "No! You! Dooooon't!" She grabbed it and tossed against the wall so hard it reverberated with a loud clang. "Aaaaaaack!" But one had nipped at her heel, while another had snuck up her skirt. "Friggin' owwwwwch!"

"Alpha's sensory nodes report that electrical shock generates a four percent acceleration in your ethereal energy source's conversion rate," The Cyber Regent said. "Slow, but if terminating you requires a death by a thousand cuts, so be it."

"Feliciaaaaa!" Sana tried to mount an offensive by encircling the big Cyber Unit with an array of shields and launching a shotgun smattering of spiked balls from their netherspace opening. It dodged them via a simple third dimensional countermove, activating a concealed rocket jet booster and leaping high into the arena's rafters above. "Uh- Oh! Uh- Ohhhhhh!" Sana scrambled to get out of the way as it came falling down, realizing only at the last actionable moment that it was going to slam her and crush her like a crashing anvil. "Uhhhnf!" She managed to avoid getting splattered just barely, but not without twisting her ankle and taking a nasty tumble.

"I have you now!" The Cyber Regent's proxy grabbed her injured appendage and stunned her with the touch of a thousand volt current throughout her body.

"Sanaaaaaa!" Felicia attempted to deliver a counter blow by slamming her hammer hard and sending a purple pulse its way. It avoided the attack, yet again by leaping high, but this time Felicia gave chase. "Guuuaaahhhhhh!" But her leg power was not enough to keep pace with its jet power, so out of sheer desperation she spun around mid air and tossed her hammer Olympian-style.

"Errant trajectory," The Cyber Regent tracked the object sailing wide to its left. "Figures." But its solitary moment of human dry-wit was undercut by the detection of another impact against the other side of its tubular chassis. "Eh?"

"Let! Me! Go!" Sana kept the fight in her despite her fatigue and suffering. Wielding her shield she resorted to pounding away Felicia-style with the pointed butt end of it. One lucky blow caused a microfissure in the transparent material protecting Nemu, causing a leak in the fluid keeping her subdued. A second came as a surprise to The Cyber Regina, as the hit was landed by Felicia's hammer.

"Hammerang!" Felicia named her new attack the moment she catapulted herself with a mallet slam against the wall. "Now give her back!"

"Careful what you demand," The Cyber Regent exhibited Touka's latent humor a second time when it un-handed Sana by winding the servos in its arm and lower section and hurling poor Sana at Felicia like an oversized ragdoll.

"Nnnnaauugh!"

"Auuuughhhk"!" Despite Felicia's attempt to course correct and catch her, the best she could do was grab her by the hand before two collided and dropped hard to the floor.

"Oooooouuuwww!" One heard the other moan as the last thing they experienced before passing out cold.

"Targets neutralized," The other heard The Cyber Regent conclude moments before her vision blurred and her eyes fluttered and closed. "Damage assessment: Mild. Cyber Arachnids, take them and pre…"

She didn't much care for Christmas before, but ever since he passed away, her heart was closed off to its charms. The last earnest gift she'd ever received, it was a Marine Biology textbook he bought at Natsume Books. She wasn't a gifted reader and was even less adept as a student, but she understood and appreciated why he bought it. He was giving her something to aspire to, a path down which she could one day unlock her inner potential. As if he were aware he would soon cease to serve as her father and shepard.

But her mother? Naked self-interest behind every act. It wasn't even subtle. Lottery tickets for Christmas? Scratch-offs and raffle entries? She was too young to play or redeem, to her they were nothing but printed paper slips and glossy cardboard. All that woman was doing was substituting gambling for gifting, then planning to pocket any big winnings for herself.

Her holiday woes got even worse once the lady remarried. All glory to her new tenured husband. All praise to her new stepsons. Now her daughter wasn't even worth wasting a few Yen on. When they were lavished with smartphones, bicycles, basketballs, collector's edition toys and theme park trips, she would get a microwaved TV dinner slid under the door. Because the housekeeper was having her own Christmas with her family. She was a rung beneath everyone, and even daring to have an aspiration to climb was going to get her pushed off entirely.

She didn't much care for Christmas before, but now she was rapidly working towards despising it. First the days get shorter, then the weather gets chillier. Her ears get blasted with the same lame-ass songs, playing at every mall, at every grocery store, on every radio station, and in every waiting room. She'd ask her mother for a scooter, but she'd get socks. She'd plead for her father to buy her that Ultra Kugo action figure, he'd reach for the shelf before an abrupt text (from her) sent him to the sporting goods store for some shoes and a coat.

No relief came during what all the movies and commercials claimed was supposed to be a time for family. They still argued. She failed her last math exam, they'd argue. She plumb forgot to do her assigned class chore and feed the fish and they died, they'd argue. She'd get a little bit lucky, find some extra Yen coins on the sidewalk and instead of putting it in her little heifer bank, spend it in a gachapon for a Decagon Ball capsule toy, they'd argue. Did she have dysle- something or dysph- other thing, Asperg- something or ADH- other thing, they'd argue. Sometimes she wondered whether their lives would be so much happier without her.

And then it all went up in flames. The socks burned, the shoes scorched, her toys melted, her heifer bank destroyed. All gone. After that every night seemed as cold as the darkest, chilliest Christmas.

"Sa- Sana?" Felicia breathed. Slowly her eyes reopened. The first thing she saw was her hand still clinging to the hand of her new friend, she could vaguely sense the tingling of a tightening grip. In fact, it was the only thing she felt. The rest of her body may as well have been totally numb from the neck down.

"Feh- Felicia?" Sana drifted back into consciousness and mustered up some energy to push her eyelids open. She too was numb save for that palm that wouldn't let go. But once the blurred vision cleared and her weary eyes gazed upon the image of her comrade, her troubled young heart was about to be in for the shock of its life.

She wandered. From neighborhood to neighborhood for days, she drifted. Roamed aimlessly. Then weeks. Too unfocused to sightsee, too caught up in her own thoughts to snoop on the everyday chatter, she acted like a virtual ghost until she'd had enough of being a virtual spirit and proceeded to join the real ones on the other side. She stepped up to the ledge of the tallest tower, took in and released what was supposed to be her final breath, took a step forward, and watched as the skyline and the neon lights and the street surfaces blended like an impressionist painting into a fantastic spiral of chaotic beauty.

"Greetings." Was this Heaven? "Negative." The amorphous humanoid shape spoke as if it had read her mind. "This is an artificial pocket dimension my creator and I set up to monitor and assist anyone who takes a leap off that structure."

"Whuh- Whuh- Whuh the hay?" Felicia was awash in a sense of Déjà vu, despite never experiencing the events unfolding before her.

"You are the first magical girl to be arrested and extracted from such a fall," it kept talking like a video on playback. "Would you care to join me within my digital enclave so that I may attain a better understanding of the numerous paradoxes and complexities of the material Homo sapien experience?" She had no idea what the thing was talking about, she was just enamored by its angelic aura and oddly all too ready to accept the offer.

"Weeeeeeeee!" Felicia experienced what pure euphoric joy was like for the first time in ages. "Weeeehoooooo!" Frolicing with flora and fauna that were impossible to meet and greet with in the real world. "Hey!" A prickly and scary-looking but otherwise innocuous fish swam by and came to her attention. "What's that one?"

"Psychrolutes marcidus," her artificial pal answered. "Better known as the blobfish." From a glowing spot on her chest she projected an image of a pathetic-looking mass of pinkish burger meat with sad, tiny eyes, a frowning, oversized mouth with lips and a lump of overhanging flesh that resembled a cartoonish nose. "This is how the creature appears when removed from its native habitat one thousand meters below the sea and brought to the comparatively low pressure of one Earth atmosphere."

"Awwwwwwwwwww!" Felicia crooned. "Gross, but cuuuuuuuute!" She wanted to hug it.

"Interesting how humans tend to empathize better with inhuman bioforms whenever you project anthropomorphic characteristics onto them." Her pal accessed the website of a company that manufactured stuffed dolls and toys. It navigated all the way through to an upcoming blobfish plush toy.

"Dunno why that is." Felicia commented. "Maybe people let their guards down better when they see a friendly face?" Her words and phrasing choice were all her own, yet Felicia somehow couldn't shake this notion she was living this wonderful lie secondhand. "Do ya' 'spose I'd look friendlier too if I were a stuffed animal toy?"

"Mooooooooooooo!" The cow accepted the young lady's edible gift of straw straight into its mouth.

"Don't feed it so fast honeybun, otherwise she'll end up spitting it right back at you." Her father warned. It had been the perfect day out with her folks. First up was a tasty breakfast at a countryside diner. Then a few hours riding rides and playing games at the village's municipal fair. After that she learned how to fish with her father at the pond. Now they were here on the farm having fun feeding the cattle. And best of all, not a hint of conflict or disagreement between her parents.

"Baaaawk-Bawk-Bawk-Bawk-Bawk-Bawk!" An egg dropped straight from the bottom of a free-roaming hen.

"They come in brown too?" Sana oohed-and-awwed at the sight of a brand new life in its nascent shell.

"You bet they do!" Her father took her up by the armpits and set her atop his broad shoulders. "C'mon! Let's go tell the farmer over there."

"Uhhhhhm," a spontaneous thought crossed her mind. "Do you think they'll teach me how to milk a cow as well?" Except it wasn't really her thought. "Or can I maybe taste some of the fresh stuff?" And the whole situation felt staged. Like a scene from a TV reenactment.

"I think that stuff needs to be pasteurized first before it's deemed fit for human consumption." Her mother descended from the front porch of the main farmhouse. "But in the kitchen I've helped them whip up a batch of fresh-baked cookies. There's a whole liter of milk waiting for you on the table." Sana wanted nothing more than to express her deepest, sincerest gratitude by gulping down that milk, but then she remembered she was lactose intolerant. Not to mention, that face planting a kiss and patting her head did not belong to her real mother. That woman would never have been so unconditionally affectionate.

"Am I dead?" She asked out of the blue.

"No," a voice in her head she very visibly knew answered. "You are seeing the world through a different set of eyes. Gaining perspective, forming a connection. You are two hearts that beat as one."

"Aoi?" Sana looked high into boundless skies above. "Are you there?"

"You are two souls, lonely but not alone."

"Where are you?" She reached her hand up to a big, nebulous, low-hanging, puffy cloud that had a familiar outline, grabbed hold and tugged.

"Eh?" Felicia's form emerged and solidified from the cloud. "Sana?"

"From the depths of your weakness you gain strength."

"What're you doing, Aoi?" Sana cried.

"For the purpose of hope your wills unite and flourish."

"Waitaminitue, that's right!" Felicia remembered. "We've gotta rescue Nemu!"

"Farewell, friends."

"Error!" The Cyber Regent read out its host unit's report. "EM field spike detected! What are they-" A bright flash accompanied by a shockwave knocked it over like a trashcan and rendered its arachnid minions inert.

"Give! Us! Nemu!" Felicia and Sana floated towards it a dozen centimeters off the floor. "Or else!" In Felicia's right hand her normal hammer was modified to feature a series of ball bearings spinning around the head in magical orbits.

"Alert! Alert!" The Cyber Regent squawked from every speaker in the arena. "Dispatch all reinforcements on this level to- Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz-Squaaaaaaawk!"

"Bah- Baaaaam!" Felicia swung her almighty hammer and shattered the stasis chamber containing Nemu.

"Nemuuuuuuu!" A glossy, shining Sana floated forth and called out to the young lady smothered by wires and tubules and restraints. "Please wake up!" She removed the intubation mask over her face. But even after chopping away at the things keeping her captive, she remained cold in slumber. "Her Soul Gem's still missing! We need to find it!"

"Hmmmmmm." Felicia closed her eyes in deep meditative concentration, which for her was a novel feat. "Awwwwuuhhhhmmm…" Her hypersensitivity to magic was tweaked several levels higher now thanks to Sana. She could even sense the flow of energy running behind the paneled walls of the arena. It was all leading up to a central point at the zenith above them. Yet she couldn't sense a specific box-shaped section at the exact center. It seemed as if whatever was there was being deliberately blocked off by the material that surrounded it. "Stand back!" She twirled her mallet and wound her arm around and around in a thunder god-esque wind up. "Ha!" She tossed it with effortless aplomb and her enhanced weapon struck like a dart hitting a bullseye. An impact blast ensued, and with a loud clanging thud a container dropped.

"Is that… A lock box?" Sana questioned. Sparks shot out from all the connections and wirings that had been keeping the thing in place.

"Dunno." An arched brow morphed into an eager grin on Felicia's face. "Let's find out what's in there!" She transmuted the bottom of her hammer's handle into a diamond-tipped point and jammed it into a groove lining one side.

"Huuuuuuuuurrrrrrkk!" Sana and the pointed tip of her shield joined in. Together they pried it open and revealed the contents within. "Look!" Sana gasped as she reached for their prize. "Her Soul Gem needs clearing!" Felicia promptly whipped her Soul Support Stone out and gingerly pressed it up to the bordering on blackened bauble in Sana's cupped palms. "Whew!" Sana delivered it to their patient inside the vanquished robot. "Nemu?" Her mouth, eyelids and nostrils twitch a moment before awakening to the relieved expressions above her face. "Nemu?"

"Do you know who we are?" Felicia inquired.

"Uhhnnnn…" Nemu took their hands and weakly pulled herself up. "I do."

"What's the last thing you remember?" Felicia scooped her into her arms.

"Meeting God." Nemu answered. "Maybe?" Her moment of contemplation was cut short by the sound of an alarm ringing from her corpse that was her mechanical cage.

"Prisoner escaped! Prisoner escaped!" Its synthesized voice blared. "Auto destruct triggered! Countdown five…"

"Yiiiiiiiiiiiiikes!" Felicia turned tail and ran for the shield-blocked door. "C'mon!" She barked at Sana who was a half-step behind and needed no encouragement.

"Four!"

"Waaaaaaah!" Sana screamed.

"Three!"

"Faster! Go faster!" Felicia booked it as the shield Sana planted dissipated.

"Two!"

"Gogogogogogogogooo!"

"One!"

At the last moment in the doorway Sana materialized another shield, jammed it downward and took cover. The deafening kaboom sent them all flying out the door. Nemu got separated from Felicia's tumbling arms while Sana hit the floor and skidded on her chest.

"Coff! Ack! Coff!" Felicia got up and cleared her throat. "You guys okay?"

"I'm fine," Sana inspected the marks all over the armor on her chest. "More or less." She brushed off the dust in her hair and on her veils.

"Achoo! Achoo!" Nemu cleared the dust in her lung by sneezing. "I'm alright. Achoo! Achoo!"

"Now let's get the frickety-frick outta here!" Felicia helped Nemu climb back into her arms.

"Delete! Delete! Delete!" But their hearts collectively skipped a beat once the sounds of the Cybermen came drawing near.

Sana squirmed as the whimpering words came trembling off her lips. "May we please please catch a break now?"

---

"Skrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaak!" The robotized witch let out its agonized cries of despair. "Skrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaak!" It puffed out another plume of noxious gas. "Skrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaak!" The battle going on around it had sent its instinctive witchy resistance into overdrive.

"Peeeeeew!" Yachiyo voiced her reflexive revulsion at the awful smell of its outbursts. "Huuuap!" She dodged a Cyberman trying to catch her into a body lock like a pro wrestler. "Tch!" She maneuvered behind it and kicked it hard enough on its rear to fall over on its face. "Unnnngh!" But it also exacerbated the partial fracture in her ribcage brought on by the mid-air collision she suffered with the flying combat unit. "Unnnnnnngh!" But it was neither the first nor the worst injury she'd suffered in battle. "Unnnnnnnnnngh!" Or at least that was what she was trying to pretend to her imaginary observer Mifuyu, who knew dang well better.

"Delete!" Her halberd sent another Cyberman to its butt.

"Delete!" She caught another one sneaking up behind her and jammed another blade into its neck.

"Delete!" When a third came to trifle with her, she knocked it back with a high pressure projection of water. She would have had a free moment to recuperate were it not for the flying Unit Beta buzzing her.

"It's like they're trying to wear you down bit by bit, Yachie!" Mifuyu observed. "Why?"

"Don't know." Yachiyo muttered in pain. "To toy with me?"

"That hardly suits their style," Mifuyu shook her head more out of sympathy for Yachiyo's injuries than any mounting questions on her mind. "If they wanted to, they could've just shot you, several times over. So why are they getting this hands-on?"

"Huuuuuuuahk!" But Yachiyo didn't have the chance to theorize with her. Not while two Cybermen were double-teaming her. She held them at bay by holding out two of her weapons and spinning herself up like a helicopter. "Uuuoooooooooohf!" Not only desperate, it made her sick to her stomach, but it worked.

"Skrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaak! Skrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaak!"

Yachiyo could hardly take much more of this combination of combat, foul-smelling gas, and injury. "Blaaaaaaargh!" She collapsed to her knees and finally barfed, which ironically spared her from another physical dive-bombing attempt by her flying rival.

"If only there was some way I could help you, Yachie!" Mifuyu agonized. It pained her to see Yachiyo in this state, as both a character created by Nemu to serve and aide all those she deemed as allies, and as the digital entity entrusted with the remnant thoughts and feelings of Mifuyu Azusa.

"You can start by canning the blasted chatter, and letting me focus!" The impaired and discombobulated Yachiyo ripped off the little gold strip taped to the side of her temple. "Grrrrr- Ahhoooowch!" The very act flashed them both back to Mifuyu's fifteenth birthday, when they hooked up at the mall and got their legs waxed at the beauty salon for their first and only time. A spontaneous act of rebellious fun that wound up doing the polar opposite.

"Wait!" Mifuyu's image flickered and faded in Yachiyo's periphery when she reached around to yank the other strip off. "Is that patch made of gold or some other group eleven transition metal?" She piqued Yachiyo when she popped that most peculiar question.

"Don't know. Didn't ask," Yachiyo grumbled in mounting frustrated irritation. "Reminding you I'm not Miyako!" She couldn't tear off the other one while the first was still stuck to her fingertips like duct tape despite the thing not having any sticky adhesive on it.

"Delete!" She could hear the Cybermen on the move clanging their hulking feet in sync. "Delete!" All were drawing close, but none were taking the initiative. "Delete!" Her primal primate senses could tell she was being shepherded around in a closing circle, slowly but surely being penned in like an animal.

"Nemu's initial AI companion was poking around in an isolated copy of the Cybermen's operating code," Mifuyu hurriedly explained. "And she discovered that every version from the first generation on up carries the exact same endemic weakness." As they were being surrounded, she altered her appearance and vocal delivery to make herself sound like she was positioning her imaginary-self back-to-back with her friend. "That is, their Meta Nexus link can be temporarily severed and the electron flow through their cranial circuits scrambled by the insertion of a simple highly conductive purified group eleven metal sample. Such as gold!"

"Fascinating shit I'm sure, but," Yachiyo tensed at the sounds of their servos clacking and their motors whirring. Sure enough, she'd figured out their game. They were painting a big bullseye on her, so the flying one could attack from any vector and slam her swift and hard into a capturing unit's arms. "I fail to see how any of that factors into this!"

"Don't you see, Yachie?" But Mifuyu was fast to recognize that the young woman was too fueled by adrenaline and fight-or-flight instincts to properly process any logical deductions. "Pick a Cyberman and stick that thing to its head!"

"What?" Yachiyo snorted.

"Please trust me!" She made a final-second plea.

"Delete! Delete! Delete!" Their voices echoed in a loud wave meant to conceal the approach of their jet-powered marauder. There was really only one viable way to carry out Mifuyu's wish. And only one second. One chance. "Deeeeee- Leeeeeeete!" Yachiyo's perception of time slowed with the closing of her eyes. "Deeeeeeeee- Leeeeeeeete!" Her raw muscular reflexes twigged it was going to clip her from the right, she had barely a spare microsecond to make the pivot. "Deeeeeeeeeeee- Leeeeeeeeete!" She bent her back as low as it could go without snapping and as the hot rush of air grazed her skin her reared back hand sprang up and slapped that thing's skull in the quickest, most epic hand slapping ever performed by a spurned female.

"Auuuuuuuuuck!" Yachiyo collapsed on her back in pain. The moment came and went so fast she had no way to know if her last-ditch effort amounted to anything. "Aaaaaahhhhh!" She popped right back up with a determined scream, forged a halberd and ran full steam ahead like a tribal leader leading a final charge.

"Delete!"

"Hiyah!" But she was on fumes.

"Delete!"

"Huuuaaahggh!" And her halberd was caught mid thrust by her target.

"Delete!"

"Grrruuuaaawwwh!" Then before she could comprehend anything else, she was being flipped into the air by the catapult that was her own weapon. Once the hormonal drip-feed wore off she knew just how fundamentally screwed she was on the way down.

"Skrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaak!"

"Huh?" When all her cognitive faculties came back she discovered that, instead of going splat into the clutches of an enemy, she was ascending in the tender arms of a friend.

"It worked!" A squeaky-and-distorted but still recognizable voice exclaimed. "The gold scrambled the Cybermen's control program and in its place I was able to transplant my consciousness!" They flew up and up, past the reach of any Cybermen and even beyond the giant screeching, floating head in the center of the chamber.

"Mifuyu?" It released Yachiyo safely atop a small, sturdy foothold. "How?"

"Well, I'm nothing but a batch of ones and zeroes so when its operating system was displaced I slotted myself right in here using the limited range wi-fi link between your foil gold pieces." She elaborated with an inappropriate but infectious enthusiasm. "Basically, I'm in control of this one, although I don't know how long it'll last!"

"Cool. And I'm thrilled for you." Yachiyo was trying not to be too distracted by the sea of Cybermen waiting to get after them.

"Does not compute! Does not compute!" They droned in collective confusion. "Analyze! Reinitialize! Transmit! Retry! Transmit!"

"Really, I am. So glad to have you here for real. But still-"

"Skrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaak!" Mifuyu's witch shrieked and discharged more gaseous material from every open facet of its floating head.

"How are we going to do what I came here to do?"

"According to my system's sensors- Bzzzzzzzzzzzt!" Mifuyu's head glitched and twitched to one side. "The ventilation system on this level has been switched off, largely because The Cyber Regent's throne room is drawing far more reserve power than necessary. Whhhiiiiirrrrrrrrp!" Her arm and torso jerked as she fought the Cybermen to retain control. "As a result, this whole section is experiencing a dangerous buildup of hydrogen sulfide gas."

"Hydrogen sulfide," Yachiyo pinched her nose. "Is-"

"AKA stinky toot gas!" Mifuyu finished. "Very nearing the saturation point of combustibility, and their efforts to keep the witch cool and suppressed with liquid nitrogen are not doing the trick."

"That's why they're not resorting to their tasers or blasters," Yachiyo reasoned. "One errant spark could risk blowing themselves to kingdom come!"

"Precisely!" Mifuyu reached for the other patch on Yachiyo's head and abruptly ripped it away.

"Ow!"

"Breeeeeep! Sorry!" She applied to a corresponding spot on her own head. "That's better!" A little adjustment of the first piece and the body twitching ceased. "In short, we need to agitate the witch so much it puts out sufficient gas to be able to ignite the whole shebang!" A clicking in her wrists and transfiguration of her fingers revealed a pair of large blasters.

"Alright." Yachiyo nodded. "Sounds like a game plan." She stuck out one leg, about to step off and dive right back into the fray below, when a moment of hesitation halted her. "There's still so much I want to say. So many things to talk about."

"Skrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!" They both took a moment of silence on behalf of the witch, and the fallen soul she used to be.

"I was being deliberately obtuse when I called that person a lucky fellow." Yachiyo confessed.

"I know." Mifuyu vocalized. "And for what it's worth I do really believe all the things she did, she did them from the heart for you."

"All forces alert! All forces alert!" The Cybermen in the meantime had called upon their reserve of Cyber Familiars, those slim, silvery mannequins bearing needlely, jagged teeth, to scale the wall after them. "Delete! Delete! Delete!"

"Like Mel." Yachiyo blotted her star-spangled dress with regretful tears. "And Kanae. I can't take the thought of losing yet another person dear to me due to the karmic implications of my wish." She gulped the rest down in a sniff. "Can't stand how it's turning me into some parasite sucking other girls' hopes!"

"Is that what you think?" Mifuyu questioned. "Parasites are treated with antipathy, revulsion and contempt are they not? But from the memories I possess, everyone intimate in your life imparts to you their abundance of respect, care and love." She put Yachiyo in a hug around the hip, being mindful of the injury to her upper ribs. "It is my conclusion, based upon a heuristic analysis of Mifuyu's experiences with you, that you grossly misunderstand the fundamental karmic underpinnings of your wish."

"Oh?" Her jet black painted metallic arms were icy cold, but that was exactly the touch Yachiyo needed in the moment, a soothing chill on her ailing sides. "What do you think my wish is leading me to become?"

"An inheritor of hope!" Mifuyu's synthetic speech system put a particular emphasis on that second word. "Their belief in your strength and resolve is your power. So ride it, my friend." She knelt down and from her attached wings she presented a pair of handles for Yachiyo to grab. "And carry on. Always and forever!"

"Heeeeeeeee-" Yachiyo mounted her friend's back and materialized a halberd.

"Yaaaaaaaaw!" Mifuyu blasted off in the direction of her witch. "Go on, take your best shots!" From that request a rain of halberd struck against the steely mask and shackles over her witch.

"Skrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!" It let out another puff of dangerous explosive exhaust.

"De-" When they swooped low, Mifuyu stuck her arms out like a superhero and plowed through a crowd of Cybermen. "Error!" Their much more nimble familiars took a crack at them, but they were swept aside by the downburst generated by her turbo jets.

"Skrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!" Yachiyo kept perturbing the witch with more and more mass halberd throws.

"Executing count-" A Cyberman tried to get the jump on them.

"Execute this!" Yachiyo beheaded it with a quip.

"Does the utterance of pithy witticisms really help you maintain battle alertness?" Mifuyu's cybernetic head spun one eighty like an owl and asked.

"I get a second wind from it from time to time," Yachiyo answered. "Try it!"

"Reassessing att-"

"Reassess that!" She side hooked the tin-plated face of her would-be aggressor. "Teeheehee- How was that?"

"Better than mine, heheheh!" Yachiyo giggled like a schoolgirl right with her. Here they were, facing an uphill fight, the heat of the moment, in a totally insane situation, yet fighting through, and bonding like she was Mifuyu in the old times. Even if this creation was just an approximation of her fallen friend, and its hopes and desires evolving independently, they were just as genuine and valid as hers were, thus Yachiyo accepted her wholeheartedly.

"Skrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!"

"It's okay. I haven't forgotten." She readied another volley of blades. "This living nightmare will be over for you soon enough!"

---

A reinforcement battalion came marching around the hallway junction.

"Identify!"

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"Override accepted. Weeee ooobeyyyyyyyy!" Their voices trailed, their heads and shoulders drooped and all their systems disengaged. It would have been an easy trick, as simple as flipping a switch, to turn them into personal escorts instead. But this newborn Queen of The Cybermen knew what it was like to have one's autonomy undermined, and was not about to inflict such a punishment on units only guilty of carrying out their assigned duties. And besides, to her this simply felt like a task that needed to be done solo.

And what a flood of fresh feelings this reborn Cyberman was experiencing. Past the superficial input of the electrochemical reactions fueling the movement of her internal servos and motors, taking up sixty-two point eight zero percent of her processing capacity. Beyond the recorded memories that shaped its current trajectory, the filing of which took up another thirty-three point two zero percent. She was contemplating what her existence was going to be after the conclusion of this ordeal. For the first time since her cybernetic transformation she was giving real consideration towards her future, and it was filling that last five percent with a calculative apprehension she had not experienced since leading that strike squad against the renegade mannequins in that corridor.

No way of going back to being human. But distinct from all other Cybermen. Who was she, now stripped of being One Zero Two Gamma? What was she going to become? Was there any meaning to why all this happened to her? Would she ever find a proper place in this universe? Was there a word that more distinctively described this perceived lack of identity, direction and control?

The signal was being telegraphed on all her receivable frequencies, an SOS sent from The Cyber Regent straight to its most trusted lieutenant Gamma. But even without such a signal, going solely by her sensory scanners' detection of a massive reroute of available power, it was obvious that The Regent was in the midst of hatching a predictable contingency in the face of their mounting chances of defeat. One hundred and eight seconds from the origin point of the transmission now. What would she find once she got there?

"Guuuuuuaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!" Sayaka screamed in intense pain from the heavy voltage induced by a hidden, transparent, virtually invisible Cyberman grabbing her by the left wrist.

"Oh, come now!" The Cyber Regent gloated. "Surely you did not think I would seclude myself in my control chamber with but a single unit serving as my aide, did you?"

"Delete! Delete! Delete!" More invisible units announced their presence from the shadows.

"Unnnnngghhhh!" Sayaka's only recourse was to change back into her sleeker, less electrically conductive costume. "Hrrrrrrrrgggggk!" Her translucent assailant crumpled and twisted her armored wrist in an effort to make her bend the knee. Which she did, but in doing so she flashed away her magical form and out slipped her Sonic Saber. In a smooth, deft stroke she caught it on the way down, extended its electronic blade with the push of a tiny red button, and slashed its metallic thighs, knocking it over and freeing her.

"Delete! Delete! Delete!" The other hidden Cybermen swooped in to bring her to heel. One fast, blind slash successfully zapped and dropped two. "Delete!" Another approached from behind and grabbed her over the chest. But the electrical discharge from its hands was absorbed by the bodysuit.

"Yaaaaaaaargh!" Sayaka amped the intensity of her beam with the twist of a dial and jabbed it under her pit. It tried to drag her down as it fell but with all her strength she flipped it into the invisible arms of an oncoming attacker. When they both hit the floor with a loud, thundering clang. She finished the thing off with a hard downward stab.

"Recalculating!"

"Delete! Delete!" Two more seized upon this chance to simply take aim and shoot her, "Delete!" She dodged their blasts with a pair of backflips, then bolted behind a third and used it as a cyber-human shield. "Delete!"

"You and I are really not so separate." The Cyber Regina sat there motionless, expressionless, seemingly unperturbed by the melee. "We are both here as a result of a desire to overcome our human limitations." Her one visible servant, CBX Zero Zero One, moved to protect its patient. "Or more probable in your case, human mediocrity."

"Grrrrrrrraaaaah!" Sayaka picked up her swiss-cheesed shield and used it as a battering ram against the closest gunner. "Haaaaah!" She followed through with a heave-ho of the thing into the second.

"Delete! Delete! Delete!" Not a spare moment was granted before she was accosted by another limpid pair.

"I do not deny your possession of raw skill and cunning but compared to the sum of a million billion minds a mere individual may as well be the smartest bedbug." The Cyber Regent watched Sayaka wreak violent havoc on its remaining set of non-visible foot soldiers. "What wish compels you? Did you want to become the cleverest magical girl, flush with the knowledge of your kind's greatest thinkers, fighters and creators?" As she spoke Sayaka grabbed and ripped off the circular cap of one which protected the unit's cardiac core and emotional inhibitor. "Or did you extend the scope of your whims beyond this planet, and in doing so gain a cosmic perspective on things?"

"Err- Orrrr!" Her victim cried. "Ohhhhmygod Doctor, what have they, what have they d-!" A crossing of the red and yellow with the green and black wires turned it into a makeshift magnetic mine, which she chucked at her final see-thru foe.

"Upgrade in progress."

"Neither." Sayaka whip-turned around and in a flash as bright as the explosion behind her reentered her magical mode. "Just a dumb girl who did a dumb thing out of kindness." Scraps of shrapnel struck her through her cape and into her legs and back, which she treated without so much as flinching via a series of circular musical patterns with notes and clefs ringing a short minor key tone. "And she'd do the same dumbass thing again. And again. And again 'til someone saved her from her stubbornness." With all that logic-curbing combat out of the way, she held out the very tool she used to assist her in the fight like a trigger detonator. "That's all!" She pressed the button that discharged the reserve energy in her device in an expanding blue wave of electricity.

The CBX unit moved into position and turned its back, embracing the cybernetic young lady within its protective arms and behind the layering of its Cyberman chassis. "Bwwweeeeeeeeep! Whuuuuurrrrrrrrrp! Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt! Click! Click! Click!" It took on the full brunt of the electrical shock, twitched and writhed briefly before slumping and collapsing to its master's feet. "Power failureeeee…"

"The CBX Units and I deduced the resonant frequency at which the asynchronous electro-spectromital pulser systems in your device operated." The Regent bragged. "My primary CBX caretaker then polarized its armor plating and defle-"

"Guh- Aaaaaaack!" The very next sound she made escaped out of her stiffened lips when Sayaka clenched her by the throat.

"I still have one pretty gruesome resort." Sayaka materialized a scabbard in her other hand. "Slicing and dicing you so fast into so much paste not even the nanogenes in your blood can keep up!"

"And how could you be aware of the microscopic marvels that keep my sickly self and my upgrades so intricately interwoven?" The little Regent sounded so unfazed when speaking through the chamber's acoustic systems. "Oh. I get it. You oppose me not just out of some self-imposed sense of principle or duty or justice, but guilt." But to the young Time Lady's surprise, as she was gearing up to squeeze with all her might, hack apart every tube and wire, sever each digit and limb, the little girl in her grips started seeping goopish traces of clear liquid down her zipper hole and through the circular lenses concealing her eyes.

"Puh- Pleeeeeease!" A pathetic, pleading word squeaked past her contorted, misshapen lips.

Sayaka stop!

"Eh?" Sword ready but Madoka in mind, Sayaka afforded herself a moment's hesitation.

"They made me do it!" For the first time in an obvious while the little girl strained herself to lift her arm and form a shaky, pointing finger. It came to a rest atop its shoulder, the twitchy little finger tickling a ribbon cable that ran from the top of her spine to a slit in the chair's back. She leaned forward and revealed a long track of colored wires and fluid-filled plugs running down her back. Two of which started leaking after Sayaka picked her up by the throat.

Though the power to forge a photonic blade and disrupt heavy electronics was drained, Sayaka's instrument still had enough reserve energy to run a fast bioelectrical scan. "It's telling me there's a bulk data packet exchange. Set coordinates approximating somewhere in the neighborhood of Alpha Lyrae?"

"Thuh- Murah- Kami- Arrah," the poor little thing wheezed as if she were attempting to sob. "They control me with it." She rested her head on her other shoulder and uttered in a less pinched, shallow breath. "Made me do those bad things."

Sayaka Stop!

The bloodless coup would have been so much simpler. Zap the girl, walk away, let the deed's evidence fade into oblivion with the withering labyrinth. But in her hot blooded rush to avenge the crime done to Hitomi, had Sayaka been too hasty to pin the blame on a singular party? It would've hardly been the first time, the face of none other than her crush sprang first and foremost to mind. But with seconds to make a decision and reinforcements most assuredly en route, what else could be done for this sickened, saddening soul?

"I'll get you out of this."

---

"This isn't back the way we came!" Sana noted, sprinting a few scant steps behind Felicia, who was carrying Nemu fireman-style over her shoulders. It was a rescue technique she learned by tailing her original mentors Sasara Minagi and Asuka Tatsuki.

"I know!" Felicia flashed back to her very first magical girl lesson. Sage words from Sasara.

"Of course it's important to fight witches, however, if you find yourself in a place where the fate of other lives rests in your hands, you've gotta prioritize their needs first and foremost!"

"Thank you for coming all this way for me," Nemu expressed her sincerest gratitude. "I'm sorry I got you all into this crazy mess!" She apologized. She couldn't help but doing so, a form of fatalism born from the day her family physician gave a preliminary diagnosis to her symptoms. She apologized to her parents back then, too.

"Not your fault." They reached a junction. "One way or another we woulda been fighting these freaks eventually!" Her apology reminded Felicia of Kaede Akino, who was always saying 'sorry' at the weirdest moments too.

"When you find you're outnumbered and outgunned, there's no shame in runnin' or hidin'!" That advice came from her second mentor Momoko Togame. She was teaching it to Kaede and their other friend Rena Minami. Felicia sat the next booth over cheerfully chowing down on a chili dog. "At least then you'll be alive to laugh about it later!"

"Which way should we go?" Sana wondered. But the choice was up to Felicia, and it needed to be a snap decision.

"Uh, that way!" Felicia started down the rightward path.

"Any leader worthy of respect needs to be willing to do all the same things their frontline grunts do." Felicia once heard her third attempted commander, Nanaka Tokiwa say to her older lieutenant Meiyui Chun. "If that makes me the point man for this assault, so be it!" So Felicia tried to prove she had the leadership chops by charging into action first and hardest, every time.

"Delete! Delete! Delete!" But she had to stop in her tracks upon hearing that ominous echo around the next corner.

"Ah, but a good leader should be just as prepared to scrub a plan whenever potential spoilers or wild cards occur too." She'd overheard Meiyui retort. Back then, in the heat of her bull charges Felicia couldn't have given a lick about whom or whatever Meiyui was referring to.

"Uhhhhh nevermind!" Felicia slammed her brakes and bolted down the opposite hall. "Let's try the other way!" But in this impulse the lesson was dawning on her.

"Delete! Delete! Delete!" But all that awaited beyond their leftward option was more of the same monotone chants and the clack-clacking of those creepy Cyber Spiders.

"Wha- What do we do?" Sana worried.

"I can buy us time!" Nemu materialized a textbook between her hands. "Here!" She opened it and hundreds of pages flew out in a whirlwind spiral. They pasted themselves together layer by layer paper mache style, until an exact replica of the same wall plugged the gap and separated them from their pursuers. She tossed the book down the other hall and the process repeated.

"Error!" The ploy worked. "Data insufficient. Initiating multispectral scans!" They were concealed, but now they had effectively trapped themselves until the moment the Cybermen got wise to their trick. Then they were as good as cooked.

"Now this might sound illogical or even crazy, but, when faced with a potential no-win situation, the weak will fight their way out, while the strong will think their way out!" Felicia heard the voice of her fourth and current master Yachiyo speaking in her head. "While the truest of warriors…. Us Ultimate Heroes… Don't believe in a no-win situation!"

Okay, so those words were from her favorite shonen character Kugo. But she figured they could have just as easily come out of Yachiyo's mouth too.

"Shhhhhhhhhh!" Felicia let Nemu down from her protected position and propped her under Sana's willing arm. "Stand back. Gonna need both hands for this." She slid her goggles over her eyes, forged her trademark hammer in her grips, closed her eyes and took a deep, calm, pensive, almost totally zen breath.

"Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh- Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam!"

---

"Skrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!" The witch's cry reverberated against its metallized confines so hard it caused a shockwave that pained Yachiyo's eardrums and sent her flying ride Mifuyu into an unexpected roll, knocking Yachiyo off.

"Waaaaooooh!" Yachiyo was spared from a long drop by Mifuyu's extended hand. "How much longer do we have to drag this out until she's pumped out all the gas we need?"

"According to my unit's readings the poo gas concentration is hovering at a teensy bit under sixteen percent." Mifuyu reported. "That'll have to do."

-| 3rR0r |-

-| AUt0^^aT1C Sy5t3m ReBo0T |-

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-| E |-

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-| ! |-

"Phooey!" Mifuyu smacked her bulbous helmet upside the head which temporarily aborted the hijacking effort.

"Are you alright?" Yachiyo held on tight as her friend experienced more herky-jerky twitchiness in her secondary appendages.

"I'm fine, for the moment." Mifuyu hovered very gradually over to a spot safe from any countermeasures the Cybermen below could try physically. "But I sense each time they get a little bit closer to resetting me!" It was a point just above their precious power source, her witch.

"Which means we've got to end this Cyberman threat right here and right now!" Yachiyo prepared to dismount atop the witch's head and attempt to create a spark from the friction of its armor being struck at the right angle by her halberd blades.

"I agree." But before she could try Mifuyu took her by both hands and went into a whirling spin cycle.

"What are you-" Yachiyo's grip was slipping. "What are you-" Next thing she knew, she'd been flung through the air in an arc. "Unnnnf!" Where she landed in a very calculated way inside the safe enclosure of an open ventilation duct. "What are you doing?" Her grip on its edge slipped and she went for a long, vertical-angled slide.

"Guaranteeing not just your mission's success but your wish's endurance, Yachie!" Mifuyu shouted back. "I had this distinctive hunch that you'd stopped caring whether or not you made it out of this labyrinth alive, so I came out to say 'hi' and give you a happy little nudge." She explained. "And of course my face being Mifuyu's you were gullible enough to go along every step without question!"

"Why yooooooou!" Yachiyo was furious that she'd been had by another fake representation of her friend. Too furious to figure out how easy it would have been to arrest her slide with the stab of a halberd or two down the chute. Or perhaps not furious enough to want to deny herself this exit route. "Arrrrrrrggghh!"

"In my defense, how many magical girls in history have had the chance to put their own witch to final rest?" Mifuyu jested. "Admittedly I am but a humble recreation molded by bequeathed memories and shaped by a fundamental loyalty to Nemu's friends." From her squeeze at the shaft's bottom Yachiyo heard the echoing noise of clanging chains and felt a slow, building rumble at her toes. "But I want to believe underneath that patchwork code forms a soul of my own."

"Mifuyu!" Yachiyo banged and banged against the sheet metal like a toddler before realizing she could just use her blade as an oversized can opener. "Damnit Mifuyu! Don't run away from me again! Please!"

"Sorry!" Yachiyo freed herself in time to hear an apology. "Meeting you was every bit as thrilling for me as it was for her. But alas. All good things must end and such jazz." She heard the unnerving racket of heavy chains snapping, looked to the top of the arena and saw the witch that was once her companion being lifted towards the sky by the Cyberman powered and piloted by the girl's memories.

"Skrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!"

"I'd much prefer our farewell to be longer but the maximum allowed by this unit's self-destruct mechanism is ninety-nine seconds." The gigantic head rammed against the top of the arena, ringing out like the loudest gong in the Eastern Hemisphere.

"Alert! Alert!" The Cybermen stood there frozen and looking dumbfounded about what to do next, which allowed Yachiyo to sneak past them low and unchallenged. "Initiating automated reboot attempt! Aborted! Remodulating Meta Nexus Link Frequency! Connection denied! Accessing Bot-Slave BIOS backdoor! Blocked! Alert! Alert!"

"Go! Mifuyu lives so long as her hope endures inside your soul. And now so shall mine!"

"Mifuyuuuuuuuuuuu!" But Yachiyo's grieving cry was getting drowned by the quickly-building sound of constant buzzing. "The hell are you trying to do?"

"I'm letting her experience a moment of freedom before we blow!" Mifuyu's electronic ears were sensitive enough to pick up Yachiyo's question. "She deserves one." Yachiyo's, however, were flooded with too much pain and noise to hear her response. But she was confident in Yachiyo's ability to figure it out as she watched the young woman flee.

"Alert! Alert! Proto-biological lifeform containment failure!"

"Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! Bzz!" Out from the cracks at the top and other tiny gaps her hummingbird-esque familiars took shape and swarmed. "Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! Bzz!"

---

Sayaka pressed a button on her all-in-one sonic device and stuck it in a spot on the arm rest between a large and small tubule.

"If memory serves, this fluid is a powerful painkiller," Sayaka unhooked several of the wires and chips that were keeping the young girl bound to her throne. "A thousand times more potent than morphine." She dabbed the tip of her glove against a leaky portion of an attached plug in her spine, put it to her nose and sniffed. "Yup. Useful 'cuz it lacks any of that manufactured opiate's addictive drawbacks."

"Ish a shnea shail's deah-ly toshin." The little girl spoke like all her teeth had been pulled without anesthesia, robbing her somewhat of the ability to form more eloquent sentences aloud. "Climuh- Cullapsh ish guhnnah mahkeshem ehstinct shoon." A circulating air fan between her prepubescent breasts was doing one of the jobs her nose used to do.

"Don't count 'em dead as dodoes just yet." Sayaka got the gist of her words. She took delicate measures not to touch or disconnect her pain-suppressing implants until the proper moment to use her healing magic. "Humans will go pretty out of their way to save a species once they're shown to have a practical use." But she did unplug a battery pack that powered the micro-LEDs lining her eye sockets. "Whoopsie-Daisy. Sorry." She put the connector back in. "They even do it out of sentimental attachment too. Just look at what they do for pandas. Or dolphins. My faves."

"I lihk tuhtuhles." She joked with a weary but lucid attempt to work out her smile muscles. "Ah gots tah chanz tah calculahte teh finah diguhts uhf pi in heauh." She hopped topics as the talk of numbers with someone who'd understand filled her young artificial heart with a certain joie de vivre. Her enthusiasm was reflected in an audible clicking of hidden servos and a steady droning hum coming from the equipment behind her.

"Oh, pi? Pi is pie," Sayaka calmly quipped. "Literally circles all the way back to two nine five one four one three." Initial preparations made, she took the young girl's undersized hand with her gloved mitt and grabbed hold of a thick tube at the back of the seat with her gauntleted hand. "Some see that as a sign of an omniscient, transdimensional being at work out there." Sayaka closed her eyes. "My personal spiritual tutor tells me it's a sign of the universal appeal of sweet-tasting treats." When she opened them they took on a soft, golden glow.

"Wusch yoooah fahvrite numbah?" She mouthed out a query.

"Mine?" The golden glow coursed from her empathetic eyes down through her extremities. "Eight million, six hundred seventy-five thousand, three hundred and nine." the particulates congealed around her chest in such a way as to highlight the twin set of hearts beating at her core, before traveling to her palms and fingertips.

"Ah, nah jush uh prime numbah but a twin prime." She squealed with a girlish giddiness. "Alsho thuh hypotenuth of uh Pahthagoreahn tripuhl."

"Catchy number too," Sayaka winked. Seeing the little girl in such expressive awe of her healing magic truly touched her, but that genuine joy that came with doing a good thing for another was all too short. For her idle multitool alerted her to something amiss when its little flickering lights on the side blinked like a cable modem on the fritz.

00111110 00100000 01000001 01100011 01100011 01100101 01110011 01110011 00100000 01100010 01100001 01100011 01101011 01100011 01101000 01100001 01101110 01101110 01100101 01101100 00100000 01001111 01101101 01100101 01100111 01100001 00101101 01000001 00101010 00001010 00111110 00100000 01000001 01100011 01100011 01100101 01110011 01110011 00100000 01010101 01101110 01101001 01110100 00111010 00100000 00110000 00110000 00110000 00100000 00110000 00110000 00110000 00100000 00110000 00110000 00110000 00100000 00101101 00100000 00100111 01000011 01111001 01100010 01100101 01110010 00100000 01010010 01100101 01100111 01100101 01101110 01110100 00100111 00001010 00111110 00100000 01000001 01100011 01100011 01100101 01110011 01110011 00100000 01000010 01001001 01001111 00101101 01000010 01001001 01001111 01010011

"Ah wish aww guhnnah beh suuh pretteee," she lamented. "Figuhad auht puhpetuah muhshuhn ehnguhn. Duhsighned uh cold fuhshun genuhrahtuh." The nominal energy transfusion let her raise her head and tilt it gradually at Sayaka. "Eevuhn uhn Einshtuhn-Ruhsenbidge gatewuah."

"A lot of civilizations used to fax technical blueprints down to any less advanced world listening with radio tech." Sayaka explained. "A basic show of benevolence, passed around like a cosmic game of telephone." She elaborated, distracting her with small talk while furtively taking glances at her device. "A long-linking good deed chain that went on for countless generations, so long that everyone forgot who even began the ritual or how early in the universe it began."

00111110 00100000 01000001 01100011 01100011 01100101 01110011 01110011 00100000 01010011 01110101 01100010 00101101 01000011 01100101 01101100 01101100 01110101 01101100 01100001 01110010 00100000 01010010 01100101 01110000 01100001 01101001 01110010 00100000 01000111 01100101 01101110 01100101 01110011 00001010 00111110 00100000 01001001 01101110 01110000 01110101 01110100 00100000 01010010 01101111 01101111 01110100 00100000 01000011 01101111 01101101 01101101 01100001 01101110 01100100 00111010 00100000 00001010 00110000 00110000 00110000 00100000 00111101 00100000 01001111 01000110 01000110 00001010 00111110 00100000 01000100 01101111 00100000 01001110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01010010 01100101 01110011 01110101 01110011 01100011 01101001 01110100 01100001 01110100 01100101 00100000

"Then of course a lot of the not-so-nice races caught on to the act," Sayaka continued. "And started punching down at planets too ignorant to know what they were building before it was too late and out rolled the invasion force or kablooey went the planet bomb." She pumped the free-flowing energy up and down and all around her body, hoping her magic trick would keep her charge preoccupied for another few seconds.

"Hauw undauhanduhd!" The little girl shifted nervously in her seat. A tad too nervously.

"Yup yup. Sure enough, that got so bad the Shadow Proclamation had to step in and institute a ban on all sub-microwave interstellar broadcasts." Sayaka disclosed. "And that's why mankind is enduring their so-called Fermi Paradox. Cold, depressing silence all because the intergalactic equivalent of a cabinet bureaucracy decreed it so."

00111110 00100000 01000001 01110101 01110100 01101000 01101111 01110010 01101001 01111010 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00111010 00100000 00100111 01000011 01111001 01100010 01100101 01110010 01110001 01110101 01100101 01100101 01101110 00100000 01010011 01101000 01101001 01111010 01110101 01101011 01101001 00100111 00001010 00111110 00100000 01001111 01110110 01100101 01110010 01110010 01101001 01100100 01100101 00100000 01000011 01101111 01100100 01100101 00111010 00100000 00111000 00110110 00111000 00111001 00110100 00110011 00110001 00001010 00111110 00100000 01000101 01111000 01100101 01100011 01110101 01110100 01100101

"Buht Ah foundah loophool, uh supuhluhic spectruh thut thah huhman buhrain cuhn tahp intah duhrectlee." The little girl shared. "Actuhvatuhd wuhanevah uh gurl meets thuh Kyuubee faiaih." It was while making this point her implants alerted her that the generous trickle of energy Sayaka granted her had been cut off.

"Or when a gang of amateurishly reprogrammed nanogenes discover a dormant part of the brain, not only do they switch it on, they crank it into overdrive." Sayaka matter-of-factly expounded. "In theory, a mind wired like that could not just download troves of data by, say, linking itself to a vast infrastructure of radio telescopes, they could also, in principle, with an injection of extra juice, also dump a massive amount into an upload burst too." Sayaka uttered, shooting her with a stern but sorrowful gaze. "Up to and including their very virtualized soul."

Now it was but a matter of who was going to blink first.

00111110 00100000 01000001 01100011 01100011 01100101 01110011 01110011 00100000 01001101 01110101 01110010 01100001 01101011 01100001 01101101 01101001 00100000 01000001 01110010 01110010 01100001 01111001 00001010 00111110 00100000 01000101 01110010 01110010 01101111 01110010 00111010 00100000 01000001 01100011 01100011 01100101 01110011 01110011 00100000 01000100 01100101 01101110 01101001 01100101 01100100 00001010 00111110 00100000 01010010 01100101 01100001 01110011 01101111 01101110 00111010 00100000 01010100 01110010 01100001 01101110 01110011 01101101 01101001 01110011 01110011 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01001001 01101110 00100000 01010000 01110010 01101111 01100111 01110010 01100101 01110011 01110011

"Alert! Alert! Proto-biological lifeform containment failure!"

"Skrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!" On the third try Mifuyu and her witch finally managed to break out of their confinement. She let out one last, big downblast of smelly green gas, which summoned hordes upon hordes of flying familiars.

"Crap!" Yachiyo used her halberds to slice and dice another hole through the closed secondary blast door. She sprinted her way to the first door which already had a hole blown in, but a rush of flying familiars sent her into a duck and cover. Once they passed, she shot up and was about to step through again, when a quartet of fists reached through the foggy, billowing smoke on the other side.

"Delete! Delete! Delete!"

"You goddamned tin-plated brutes!" Yachiyo twirled her halberd in preparation to fight. "These are Mifuyu's final moments. Can't you 'effing leave her alone already?" Although her real plan was to draw them into a charge and do a flip and leap behind them. She was in no condition to tango.

"De-" But the moment they came through, a massive purple eruption tore a gigantic hole through the wall, knocking them over and burying them in the dust and rubble.

"Heeeeeeeeey!" Yachiyo heard a loud holler call out from across the newly-minted corridor. "Heeeeeeeeeeeeeey!" Painted in silhouette by the flashing emergency lights was a familiar pair with horns and a crown. "Ya' comin'?"

"Oh, thank goodness!" Yachiyo dashed towards them as fast as her injuries would let her. "You guys made it!" She wanted nothing more than to drop to her weary knees and hug them on the spot, but both the ticking time and seeing Felicia's living cargo made it infeasible. "And you succeeded!" Instead she basqued Felicia in the glory of a proud and grateful smile.

"Yeah of course we did!" Felicia offered up a fist bump opportunity to Sana, who reciprocated with an open-palmed tap. "She 'n' me are the bestest!" But they could not indulge in more than a moment of celebration, as they were getting flanked by even more Cybermen.

"Uh- Oh! Uh- Oh!" From her position atop her rescuer's shoulder Nemu cast a spell that patched the missing walls. Although they were little better than paper walls that were not going to take them more than a few moments to figure out how to break through.

"Ya' got any fight left in ya'?" Felicia asked of her mentor.

"Not enough." Yachiyo shook her head and wheezed. One follow up look at Sana made it clear just how little appetite for combat she still possessed as well.

"Okay, fiiiiiiiiine!" Felicia formed a hammer and infused it with an injection of her ample spirit energy. "Make us another way out then!"

"Uhm." With an upturned brow Yachiyo took the handle of the weapon. "Alright." She choked up, arched her back and wound her arms. "What the hay… Buh- Baaam!" The magical force of its preloaded discharge tore across four adjacent corridors.

"Nice! Let's go!" Felicia took the lead of the gang, second came Sana, while Yachiyo watched their rears.

"Mifuyu…" Yet before the final mad dash, Yachiyo needed to take one final look back, put her hand to her mouth and blow one last parting kiss. "Goodbye!"

"Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike!" The Cyber Regent catapulted to its feet and unloaded a massive heat beam from the concave metallic stalk mounted atop its skullcap.

Sayaka's hastily conjured sword and protective gauntlet did what they could to take on the blast. But the only thing more searing in her mind than the flesh-cooking heat and intense pain were those two restraining words.

Sayaka stop! Sayaka stop! Sayaka-

"Stop!"

The young Time Lady received a firm, but polite tap on her shoulder.

"Oooooooooooof!" Followed by a rocket-fast punch to the tummy. The Regent's offensive energy beam cut itself off as the two cyborgs stood face-to-face.

"Gamma!" The Cyber Regina initiated contact inside that black nebulous void using its former form of Touka Satomi. "I am so thankful you made it!" A spotlight with no origin point shed light on her short, preteen figure.

"You summoned me." The Cyberqueen in turn appeared in the form she once possessed as little as hours earlier, Hitomi Shizuki. But that may as well have been the different lifetime of a different being.

"I did, teehehee." Her creator giggled and clapped her fingertips together. "Unfortunately, I was unable to procure the invaluable source code that Nemu's artificial companion swiped from me. Fortunately, my mathematical genius will allow me to eventually craft a new functional Codex, one I can tailor entirely to my preferred specs." She stuck her arms out as if she were going for a ride on the light beam, but she only came up to her counterpart's eye level. "But to do it I will need to embed my persona's core within a high-powered burst transmission, which will be beamed into deep space, where it will be detected and saved by the Cyber Meta Nexus link indefinitely as a low priority adjunct Cyber Controller profile." She put her hands high and brought them down with a clear glass bottle with a cork at the top and a rolled down scroll inside. "Or to put that in simplest terminology, I am to become my own message in a bottle, tossed into the endless ocean of information that is the Cybermen's collective consciousness until the right time arrives for me to be discovered and opened." Assorted, organized points of light flickered into being around them. Stars, constellations, galaxies, all cataloged and classified in the Cyberqueen's database.

"How does your stated intention necessitate this unit's presence?" The Cyberqueen questioned, asking in as roundabout and monotone a way as possible so as to not betray her upgraded status.

"Silly Gamma!" The Cyber Regina wagged her finger as if the answer was obvious. "I would never be so inconsiderate as to thoughtlessly discard the singular unit who has proven to be by far my finest creation." She put the bottle to her eye and looked up with it as if to peer into a telescope. "But also for practical purposes. It is proven that even the most brilliant and tenacious human egos suffer the side effects of psychological atrophy and breakdown of identity, should it be long-term deprived of regular interaction with a social companion. And considering the timescale involved, I concede that my plans may take centuries or even millennia to fully implement, Thus I calculate it a near-certainty that I am in urgent need of such an ally." She stuck out her hand and floated closer. "All of which is to say, I wish to bring a bestie on my journey, one who can in turn function at my side once I re-emerge as the Collective's next Cyberqueen." She floated up a little higher and extended the hand.

"I understand." The Cyberqueen stared at the outstretched hand with a deliberately vacant expression. "Your wish is to bring this unit along with you." She sensed a hard-thumping, load-bearing sloshing within her chest. Was it the phantom beating of an excised organ? Or was her soul guiding her calculations? "Your plan contains a critical error. This unit's internal essence cannot be digitized and transmitted in a way that sufficiently preserves its operational parameters."

"I can back up and upload all your personal experiences since first activation, to do so would take exactly zero point six-eight seconds real time." The Cyber Regina stated. "The rest is standard Cyber Slave code and can be more than supplemented by our race's boundless, eon-spanning database." The Regent was either unwilling or unable to give her assertion any consideration. "I could have so much fun building a better you without the redundant and irrelevant rest.."

"I understand." She repeated, reaching for the hand while her glare subtly went from impassive to displeased. "But if the process is so simple, why would you seek my overt compliance?"

"I was merely verbalizing a token gesture of formality, as friends do." The Regent said, taking the hand while failing to sense the shift. "That is all." The Regent tugged, showcasing an undeniable enthusiasm towards leaving the confines of her mortal coil. "Now come quickly! The combination of my stalling tactic and your action has afforded us those precious extra seconds necessary to ensure our contingency's success."

"What of Iroha Tamaki?" She inquired, scoping out how close the upload was to being finished on an encrypted subchannel.

"No longer relevant." Not only was she wilfully blind to her subordinate's concerns she was becoming deaf, too.

"What of the 'Homo Magica'?" She pressed. "What of this 'Homo Magicai?" She said of the gut-punched girl recovering on the floor.

"We have learned all we need from Nemu. The others save for that one are irrelevant." The Cyber Regina's image flickered to a red-tinged matrix of ones and zeroes, an induced glitch that betrayed the upload progress at eighty-nine percent. "Her, I fully intend to analyze in due course, but here I lack the time and the resources to contain and dissect." It assessed, adding, "But I have a notion that suggests this will not be the last time she presents herself as a problem to our kind." It passed ninety percent.

"I understand." She uttered more softly the third time, her decision made and intentions inalterable, but finding the will to act was proving much more difficult when she was not adhering to a programmed routine. "Analysis of behavioral patterns established. The Cyber Regent selects friends based upon their usefulness." Her other hand curled into a shaking fist. The upload was at ninety-two percent. "The Cyber Regent does not seek their consent upon selection, nevertheless demands total fealty, and is not adverse to overriding their autonomy should they demonstrate any sign of dissent." Then ninety-four percent. "They are subsequently discarded once they have outlasted their utility."

"Gamma?" Back in the real world, The Regent's no-longer blinking eyes watched its creation raise its arm and extend its gun barrel. "You are behaving contrary to your primary directives. Cease this illegal operation at once or face permanent deactivation." It could do nothing else in the sheer surprise of this rebellion besides prove her point.

"Conclusion," she declared aloud. "The Cyber Regent is a bad friend." She locked in her targeting systems. The upload was just four percent from completion.

"Hitomi don't!" The young Time Lady observer staggered back to her feet after less than two point three one seconds had transpired in the conversation between the cyborgs. "There's a kill switch designed to prevent you from turning on her. If you do this, you're gonna- "

"Delete!" She blasted once with full force. "Delete!" She blasted twice. "Deleeeeete!" The third blast blew a hole through the Cyber Regent's emotional inhibitor chip.

"Auuuuuuuuuughhh!" The Cyber Regent collapsed into a bloody heap on her technological throne. The upload was ninety-seven percent complete.

The Cyberqueen in turn fell to her knees, then collapsed to her right side. "Power failuuuuuuuurrrrre…"

The young Time Lady was forced to choose which victim to attend to. Of course being Sayaka Miki, her was a choice made out of love. "Hitomiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!"

KAAAAAAAAAAABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Mifuyu and her witch blew and ignited the combustible gasses below. A tremorous explosion rocked the lair, sending sparks flying from all the electronic transmission lines and the life support equipment.

"Guh- Aaaaaaaaackkkkkkkk! Aaaaaahhhhckkkkk!" The little Cyber Regent choked in a pool of blood and pain reducing fluids filling her rump insides. "Doctuaaaah!" She moaned. "Are you thereeeeeeuuuah?I- Ah caaaaahhn't see youuuuuuuuuuahhh! Guuuuuurrrrrgle!"

"Hitomi!" Sayaka scanned the unmoving Cyberman with her sonic tool. "C'moooon! Wake up! Please wake up!" She picked her friend up by the chest and dragged her off, leaving the fatally wounded Cyber Regent alone to wallow in agony.

"Doctuaaaaaaaaah! Ahhhhhhhm scaaaaaaahhrd!"

"Input failure!" The rest of her army dropped on the spot. "Systems failure!" Their robotic echoes rang across the slowly-dissolving walls of their base. "Power failurrrrrreeee…"

"Hey, what's goin' on with them?" Felicia ran with Nemu in tow.

"They're crashing like a bunch of overloading walking computers!" Yachiyo was a step and a half behind with Sana in hand. "Which means-"

"They're dying!" Sana made sympathetic eye contact with a paralyzed unit in passing. Then she set her empathetic gaze on Nemu. "Which means-"

"Touka's gone!" Nemu finished, trying her best to be a big girl and not cry, but failing.

"Doct- Uhhhaaaaaaaahhhck!" Touka Satomi gagged. "Wiul ah stuhll buh muh whun ah wahk uhhhhhp?" Her skin having been replaced by a full-sized bodysuit, she was unable to feel the inward rush of air purging away all she had built to fortify herself and her ambitions. "Doct- Auuuuuuuggggghhhaaack!"

"Heeeeeeey!" Someone wandering the disintegrating hallways caught Felicia's attention. "Thehellaya doin' outta that flying vending machine-thingy?"

"I'm sorry!" Iroha Tamaki apologized and came sprinting towards them. "I heard that loud bang and I couldn't take waiting anymore!" Her rush of confusion and impulsivity were alleviated by the sight of Nemu alive, but wet in tears. Felicia stopped and planted Nemu on her feet, but in her grief she fell into Iroha's arms. "Nemu! Nemu! It's okay, I'm here for you!" They were now outside the inward collapsing labyrinth, its fading light spotlighting the pair's long overdue reunion. "Like I should've been back then!"

"I knowwwwww," Nemu sniffed. "I'm weeping because nobody's going to be there for Touka!"

"Guuugghhh- Ahhhggcck! Guuurrrrrrgle!" There she laid in her death throes, her pitiful form melting away with the final traces of her fleeting empire. "Suh- Suh- Suh- Suhhrrreeeee!" The final light in her short life consisted of a blue screen over her artificial viewfield, with a six word text her brain was too oxygen-starved and fried to read.

-| q8.1s0 pErC3иt Upl0aDeD |-

-| TrAи5^^iSS10n eN R0Ut3 |-