A/N: *cracks knuckles* A'IGHT. Let's do this.
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SIEBENUNDSIEBZIG
TIMELINE X + N + 1
One moment, Mami had been sitting at her desk in physics class, idly twirling one braid around her fingers as she watched Hitsugaya solving an equation at the board; in the next, she and Hitsugaya both caught their breath and seized up at a distant eruption of magic. They both whipped their heads to look out the north windows; Mami involuntarily stood for a better view of the distant fireworks display of the Asunaro barrier shattering. Their classmates shuffled and made curious sounds at their behavior, some tittering, others trying to figure out what they heard or were looking at. While they couldn't see the magic, they did have a very good view of the flashing flames of a very large, very physical explosion.
"Take cover!" the physics teacher shouted.
Everyone was hustling around in confusion when sound caught up with light and the northern windows cracked. The glass walls cracked. No explosive shattering, but enough sound and shaking to cause a lot of fearful screaming. Until a hand touched her shoulder and it was suddenly silent. And oddly washed out, as though the sun had been obscured by a storm cloud.
"Tomoe," Hitsugaya said urgently.
Mami turned to his voice. His colors were still bright, but everything else in the room was dimmed and absolutely, impossibly still.
"What," she said blankly. She blinked hard, scrubbed her eyes with her hands, and looked around again, baffled. Homura, Madoka, and Sayaka were at the front of the classroom; all of them were tethered together by a glowing yellow rope whose end was in Hitsugaya's free hand. His other hand clamped her shoulder harder and gave her a light shake as he repeated her name. She looked at him and blurted, "What's this?"
She wasn't even sure what exactly she meant by the question. She was pretty sure the world shouldn't be still and washed out as a desaturated photograph, though. And explosions as big as they had seen were bad news.
"This is my special ability," Homura said solemnly. When Mami looked her way, she continued, "I can stop time—"
"WHAT?!" Mami shrilled.
"RIGHT?!" Sayaka screeched, wild-eyed.
Homura ignored them. "—for myself and for anyone I maintain physical or magical contact with," she finished. The girl held up the arm without a shield and waved her wrist to emphasize the band of yellow magic tying her to Hitsugaya and the others. Face cold, she barked, "Either tie yourself to us with your own ribbons or Hitsugaya will tie you himself."
"Real smooth, Akemi," Hitsugaya grumbled with a dirty look her way. He turned back to Mami and squeezed her shoulder while looking her in the eye. "I promise we'll explain. But we have an emergency to deal with first. We need to at least get these two to the shop's wards." He inclined his chin toward Madoka and Sayaka. "Are you in at least that far?"
"Yes," Mami replied immediately. She paused, blinked, shook her head, and frowned. "What about everyone else?"
"We are far away enough from Asunaro for broken glass to be the worst of their problems," Homura replied. "As long as we contain the threat in Asunaro, that is." She looked out the windows to the billowing black smoke in the distance. "There is something large and dangerous there. We need to neutralize it before it spreads."
Mami breathed deeply, swallowed her million questions, transformed, and cast a ribbon that wrapped around Hitsugaya's wrist. He released her shoulder and stepped to the door.
She followed him and the others in a daze as they wove through their school and toward the roof, completely divorced from reality. Madoka seemed as dazed as she was, gawking around at people frozen mid-run, mid-shout, mid-trip. Homura and Hitsugaya were obviously slipping into battle readiness. Sayaka, however, lost her patience and started hounding them with questions as they bent and wiggled and avoided touching frozen people.
"We don't have time for your screaming!" Homura finally snapped.
Sayaka's breath hissed through her teeth. "What do you mean, there's no time?! You can stop it! MAKE TIME to tell us WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING! You can't just freeze time and drag your friends off into trippy— trippy— washed-out bizarro time without even— with nothing more than 'oh, surprise, guys! I can stop time, gotta run!'"
"I did not say that," Homura sneered. But the glare she threw over her shoulder showed her face was flushed and flustered.
"Close e-damn-nough!" Sayaka screeched. "What the hell, Homura?!"
"We need to work on your communication skills, Akemi," Hitsugaya drawled blandly as they ascended the last flight of stairs.
"You sound like your uncle," Homura seethed.
"This is one of those rare times where I won't take that as an assault on my character," he replied with a shrug.
"Plea— please don't fight, guys," Madoka said timidly. "Sayaka, don't be so— so—"
"So what?"
"So you," Homura said acidly.
Sayaka drew breath to yell but Madoka literally clamped her hand over the girl's mouth. Madoka's magic rose like a warm tide. "And Homura, you stop being mean. I know you're— you're really upset, but it's not— not Sayaka's fault. S-so stop being mean to her. I wanna know more, too."
Homura sighed her frustration as she tugged them all across the roof. "I need to concentrate on figuring out whatever disaster is happening. The others at the shop can explain."
"How are we getting there from the roof?" Madoka asked. "We can't do the magic jumpy thing."
Mami opened her mouth to offer to carry one of them as Sayaka threw herself at Hitsugaya's back, put him in something like a sloppy chokehold as she tried to climb him, and snapped, "CARRY ME, JERK!"
Hitsugaya seemed to stop himself mid-instinctive-judo-throw and settle for writhing. "WARN ME NEXT TIME, MIKI!"
Sayaka kneed him in the ribs as though urging a horse forward. "LET'S MOVE IT, SNOWMAN!"
"DAMMIT MIKI!"
Mami carried Madoka on her back as Homura led them across the rooftops. The farther north they went, the more glass damage they saw. They passed birds frozen mid-flight and people frozen milling in the streets in confusion. It was utterly surreal. Their group was silent for the entire trip. It gave Mami a chance to think— to readjust perceptions of Homura.
Time magic. Stopping time. How often had she stopped time? More importantly, how powerful was Homura really? Mami could feel that Homura's magic had latched onto her somehow, was drawing her into Homura's sphere of influence with irresistible force. It was both fascinating and frightening.
When they alighted outside the shop's property line, Madoka and Sayaka regained their feet, and they all entered the courtyard, they found all the outsider allies holding hands on the veranda; Kyōko was at one end looking like she doubted everyone's sanity and Dr. Kurosaki was at the other end, holding his free hand out as if to shake hands. Hitsugaya thrust a hand forward and whipped a glowing yellow rope out to ensnare the man's wrist. Everyone blinked and jumped a bit in surprise. Except for Kyōko, who startled violently and blurted, "What the fuck?!"
"What's happening," Homura demanded of Dr. Kurosaki.
"Don't know exactly," the man replied, "but the barrier shattered and something is causing explosions."
"Feels like a big-ass Witch," Karin added.
"Where are the others?" Homura asked.
"Kisuke and Tessai took Junko and Tomohisa up to poke at the barrier and meet with that detective," Dr. Kurosaki explained.
"They— they're by the barrier?!" Madoka squeaked in distress. "By the— the explosions?!"
"I don't know their exact location, but Kisuke texted me a bit ago to say Tessai was following them to the detective's place to get more info. I do know where Kisuke is."
Homura and Hitsugaya gave sharp nods. "We'll stop with him first," Hitsugaya said.
"None of you can come with us for now," Homura announced.
"Like hell we can't!" Kyōko shouted.
"You're supposed to be dead, Sakura," Hitsugaya argued. He looked at everyone else. "The Incubator doesn't know anyone else is here. Keep it that way until we find out exactly how bad this is." There were a lot of looks of frustration, but no one argued.
"Mami can go!" Sayaka shouted. "She's not supposed to be dead!"
Mami blinked slowly and looked at Homura and Hitsugaya. Both looked at her in question. She firmed her face in determination; she had vowed to be a useful ally and handling this time magic revelation was her first major test. "I'm in," she declared.
After a brief discussion, Hitsugaya released the ropes to the girls and Dr. Kurosaki's hand and left their allies in frozen time once more. It was bizarre, but Mami buried the feeling and followed Homura and Hitsugaya north. They soon found Mr. Urahara on a rooftop with a bunch of equipment. He was staring north and holding one hand out to his side. Mami acted before Hitsugaya and lassoed his hand with a ribbon, determined to show she could adapt to new circumstances.
Mr. Urahara turned to them and blinked surprise. "Oh? You let them in on it?" he asked.
"Yes," Homura said curtly.
"What's going on?" Hitsugaya demanded.
"Something strained the barrier to breaking," the man said. He pointed to the clouds of smoke and flame. "Then something with a massive Hollow-like or Witch-like energy came up. I saw a dark shape rise before it was obscured. My guess for the explosions is disturbed gas lines, but I could be wrong." Mr. Urahara looked at Homura. "We'll have to unfreeze to let the smoke clear and see what it is."
"Where are Madoka's parents?" Homura demanded.
"Put my equipment in your shield and I'll lead you," he replied. "I was tracking them and Tessai requested help evacuating them."
Homura impatiently threw tech into her shield and they set off to the northeast. The farther they went, the higher they tried to stay to avoid falling glass; they soon moved to travel in the eastern shadows of high rises to avoid more and more airborne shrapnel that had frozen on its journey from the explosion site to the west. Rebar, slabs of concrete, car parts, and traffic lights were far more dangerous to bump into than jagged shards of glass. Mami felt ill at the sheer scale of the devastation but forced herself to keep going.
Mr. Urahara stopped on top of a high rise apartment complex and said, "They're on the twelfth floor, eastern side, roughly halfway across. I'm going to take pictures," as he turned to the explosion and pulled something out of a pocket.
Mami followed Homura and Hitsugaya to the building's edge and dropped down with them. They zeroed in on the balcony that had blood spatter and a broken door. Mami's ribbon drifted behind them as they searched the rooms and finally found everyone. Mrs. Kaname and a blonde woman lay in an unconscious heap. Mr. Tsukabishi was holding Mr. Kaname up by an elbow. Both men also held dead Incubator terminals.
"What the hell," Hitsugaya muttered.
"Mami. Ribbon to his ankle," Homura ordered.
Mami obeyed. Mr. Tsukabishi and Mr. Kaname regained color and movement.
"I was wondering if you'd come," Mr. Tsukabishi said with relief.
"Of course I would," Homura said solemnly. "We are allies, are we not?"
Mr. Kaname looked up at them, plainly disoriented. Tessai nudged his glasses back up his face with the back of the hand that held the Kyubey corpse and said, "I didn't think you would reveal the timestop."
Mr. Kaname blinked woozily and looked confused.
"I would have preferred not to, but some things are more important," Homura said to Tessai. "Desperate times call for desperate measures. Now. We have work to do."
Mami's face fell in worry as Mr. Kaname wobbled. "Are you all right, Mr. Kaname?"
"I'll— I'll live," Mr. Kaname said as he forced himself to his feet and gathered himself. "What's going on?"
"Where's Boss?" Tessai barked.
"On the roof taking pictures," Tōshirō replied curtly.
"Right. Put all this stuff in your shield," Mr. Tsukabishi said to Homura. "It all has intel we need. Ah... Tōshirō, take pictures of the map on the wall then roll it up and give it to Miss Akemi. We'll get more pins later."
"I can help," Mami said as Hitsugaya tugged his phone out of his pocket and approached the wall. She moved her hands as though to play cat's cradle and conjured thin ribbons. "What stuff?"
"Binders, books, computer, flash drives, anything not nailed down," he said curtly as he hauled Mr. Kaname up and settled him on his feet. "Tōshirō, look in the drawers for anything Junko might've missed."
Mami nodded sharply and launched ribbons around the room, ensnaring items and pulling them to Homura, who plucked them out of the air and shoved them in her shield.
"A gun?" Homura asked with a raised brow.
"Later," Mr. Tsukabishi said. "Is it safe to put the Incubator terminals in your shield?"
Homura narrowed her eyes at the two dead Kyubeys. "I think so, but I would rather not."
Mr. Tsukabishi nodded, flicked his fingers, and the yellow rope spell Hitsugaya used flashed out and wrapped around the throats of the two terminals. Mr. Kaname let go of his and Mr. Tsukabishi reeled in the the terminals to dangle together from his hand. It reminded Mami of a fisherman carrying his catch on a string. He handed the terminals to Hitsugaya, then knelt and took Mr. Kaname on his back.
"I can carry the women on my shoulders if you tie them to me, but I won't be able to fight if I do," he said as he stood.
"I will keep time stopped until they are safe," Homura said.
So Mami and Hitsugaya helped drape the unconscious women over each of his shoulders and Mami secured all three adults to his body with ribbons.
They returned to the rooftop and found Mr. Urahara frowning at the plumes of smoke and flame with his arms crossed.
"Figure out what it is?" Hitsugaya asked.
"No," Mr. Urahara said. He did a double-take at the Incubator terminals. "Oh, my, where did those come from?"
"Appeared out of thin air when the barrier shattered," Mr. Tsukabishi answered grimly. "One was perched on the balcony rail two meters from me."
Mr. Kaname leaned around Mr. Tsukabishi's head and somewhat drunkenly added, "One was on a book shelf in the office, just out of arm's reach from me."
Mr. Urahara and the others all looked surprised. "You didn't see them before?" Mr. Urahara asked.
"No. Not even the apparent stand-in," Mr. Tsukabishi replied.
"Stand-in?" Homura asked.
"Later," Mr. Urahara said with a wave of his hand. "This... is disturbing." He heaved a sigh and looked back to ground zero. "Tessai, drop the adults at the shop and come back. Tōshirō, go with and drop the terminals outside the wards. Put them in stasis. Both of you ward them the best you can."
"Why not take them inside?" Mami asked.
"If they're even sneakier than we thought, I don't want to risk them becoming a kind of Trojan Horse to cheat the wards," Mr. Urahara said with a scowl. "Come back and we'll unfreeze time and observe. Don't bring anyone else yet."
"What about all the people down by... whatever?" Mami asked with a concerned glance at the explosions.
The others were silent for a long minute. Mr. Urahara quietly said, "Anyone near the explosions is likely beyond help."
Homura softly added, "Magical girls may survive a blast like that if their Soul Gems are protected, but the average human..."
"The most help we can give is to figure out what this is and stop it from spreading to affect more," Hitsugaya sighed.
Mami swallowed hard and considered the sheer magnitude of the explosions. She clenched her fists at her sides and shook. They were right. This was a disaster. People were surely dead.
Mami watched Hitsugaya and Mr. Tsukabishi disappear in the distance, her yellow magic trailing behind them. It was strange how they waited in time outside of time; time passed for them, but not for the frozen world. It broke her brain.
Mr. Urahara murmured a question to Homura; when Homura shook her head in the negative, he looked out at the scene with even more worry. They waited in silence forever until Mr. Tsukabishi and Hitsugaya returned.
"Right. So," Mr. Urahara said briskly. "Tessai, shield us with Danku, please. We'll watch a bit, see if the smoke clears enough to see what this is before we get closer. Miss Akemi, stop time if something else disastrous happens."
Mr. Tsukabishi threw a large translucent wall of magic up in front of them and Homura's shield clicked. The world regained color and noise. Shrapnel pummeled Mr. Tsukabishi's barrier, but it held. A black shadow rose through the smoke and flame. Huge. Its silhouette was like an upside-down woman wearing a ballgown and a stereotypical witch's hat. A vaguely thorny mandala glowed behind it as it rotated upright.
"A Witch?" Mami breathed.
"Miss Akemi, is that Walpurgisnacht?" Mr. Urahara asked tensely.
Mami whipped her head from the Witch to him to the Witch. That was a legend!
"No. It is not," Homura replied, eyes wide and face pale. How would she know?!
The Witch continued to rise through the smoke, giving them a better view. Another explosion blossomed flame and smoke into the air from the eastern edge of the existing conflagration.
"Yeah, gas mains are blowing," Mr. Tsukabishi muttered. "Domino effect chain reaction, I guess."
"I wonder if it started out on the ground...?" Mr. Urahara said quietly.
"I have never seen anything like this," Homura said just before a shockwave of black magic washed through the city faster than they could blink.
§ x § x §
Twelfth Division's Spirit Wave Measurement Lab was full of bright-eyed, focused staff bustling about under the direction of heir department head. While many were doing their usual projects, a small team handpicked by Rin worked industriously to sift data gathered by the fifth version of the search parameters their leadership had come up with to identify discrepancies in population density and spiritual density in the World of the Living. Rin himself was poring over data from Urahara when Akon dropped by to check on the team's progress. He was idly sipping at a thermos of coffee when several of the department's alarms started blaring warnings all at the same time.
Akon startled and dropped his coffee but immediately caught it. Rin stood quickly and looked out at his team in concern. Scientists scurried to their stations with a chaotic urgency akin to an anthill poked by a stick. When they started looking at screens and gasping, Rin shouted, "Hiyosu, status!"
Hiyosu looked at his superior over his shoulder, face pale and eyes bulging more than usual. "Massive Hollow-like reiatsu in Asunaro. Wave forms appear to be extremely amplified Witch frequency."
"Classification?" barked Akon.
Hiyosu glanced at his screen again and looked back to Akon in disbelief. "Vasto Lorde Arrancar class."
Rin inhaled sharply and Akon's brows shot up to his hairline. He opened his mouth to speak, but looked around in confusion as the alarms stopped.
"Uhhh, the Hollow-like reiatsu disappeared?" Hiyosu said as though baffled.
Rin chewed his lip and looked up at Akon. "Should we call for a team to investigate?"
Akon heaved a sigh and thought. Twelfth's Lieutenant smoothly entered the room, requested and received a brief, and said, "Pull up video."
Hiyosu's hands flew across his keyboard, directing one of the surveillance drones they had deployed and hidden in a tall building in a town to the west of their area of concern. Video of Asunaro that looked like it had been bombed came up. Everyone stared.
"Monitor the situation," Nemu said. "Attempt to contact Urahara's base. I will notify the command structure and request further instructions."
§ x § x §
One moment, Isshin was nodding at Tōshirō as he prepared to sever Hainawa and drop them from the time stop until he could return with a plan. The next, the world regained color and animation, but no one who was scouting Asunaro was there. They must be doing something in normal time.
"What now?" Ichigo asked.
Isshin sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Let's get these three inside," he said with a nod to the rescued noncombatants as Tomohisa lost the battle to stay conscious. "Make them comfortable and wait until the others see enough, stop time, and come back. Be ready to be startled if you get pulled into frozen time."
Nods and purposeful movement from all involved save two.
"Why the fuck are you all so calm about this?!" Kyōko shrilled.
"Yeah!" Sayaka yelled. "A Witch-bomb went off and Homura can stop time?!"
"We know," Karin said with a dismissive wave of her hand.
Kyōko and Sayaka spluttered in search of words for a moment. Isshin left Karin to talk to them in favor of carrying the senseless detective inside. He arranged for the three to be brought to the recovery room and set on futons, then checked for injuries. Finding none, he sat back and let Yuzu comfort Madoka, who was fretting over her parents.
Isshin had just gotten back to the front veranda when the overwhelming Witch reiatsu disappeared.
Gone in an instant.
Everyone stared north. Orihime hesitantly asked, "Did they defeat it?"
"Wait and see," Isshin said tensely.
They waited. No call, no contact. The minutes dragged into centuries before Isshin's phone rang. He answered it blindly. "Kisuke, what—"
"This is Akon," the voice on the phone said.
Isshin drew up short and knit his brow in worry. "You guys detected that?"
"Yes," Akon said curtly. "Urahara, Tsukabishi, and Hitsugaya aren't picking up their phones. What's going on?"
"I don't know, exactly," Isshin replied as his stomach sank. His instinct said something was wrong if all three were incommunicado. "They and Homura are doing recon. We don't have anyone here who can leave and run up to check on them without giving us away." Well, save Madoka and Sayaka, who Isshin would allow to leave the safety of the wards over his dead body. They should probably have more visible allies on-site next time around.
"Hold your positions," Akon sighed. "Lieutenant Kurotsuchi has summoned captains and lieutenants here for an emergency meeting. We'll keep trying to contact the others. Wait for further orders."
"Right," Isshin said, fully intending to ignore that if things got weirder.
He ended the call and looked around the courtyard at the grim faces of all the teenagers.
"What now?" Karin asked.
"We wait," Isshin replied.
No one liked that, but no one argued.
Be safe, Isshin willed to his friends up north.
§ x § x §
Kisuke tensed and looked around. Nothing seemed to have changed, but that had chilled his bones and Akemi and Tomoe gasped. "Girls?" he prompted.
Akemi turned and looked behind them, then declared. "This is a labyrinth."
"...What?" Kisuke turned and looked as well. A set of buildings a kilometer away repeated into infinity. "Oh. Well." Was this good or bad?
Well, more like better or worse. This was already very bad. Doubly so with Akemi saying she had no idea what was happening as this had never happened before.
"I suppose we had better defeat the Witch," Akemi said irritably. "Stay together. Watch out for Familiars. I want to conserve magic. I will stop time if we encounter a serious threat."
Akemi led them in a diamond formation. They watched in silence as small figures darted down from the Witch and flew around in the sky, but seemed to focus on one area. Then their group came to a sudden stop as a beacon of white light briefly flashed skyward from that area.
"What was—" Hitsugaya started.
"A contract," Akemi hissed. "A strong one."
"Recognize it?" Kisuke demanded.
"No."
Fuck.
Three small lights rose and darted through Familiars that were flocking around like crows. The indigo and orange seemed to be trying to keep Familiars away from the white light co it could ascend to the Witch, but they all kept scattering.
"Too many Familiars for them," Akemi muttered. "Probably strong ones."
Tomoe chewed her lip and shifted uncertainly. "What do you think about drawing off some of those Familiars? So the magical girls closer to the Witch can actually focus on it?"
Kisuke raised a brow at her and considered. "That could work." And be a minimal risk to their group while they observed how the Witch countered the magical girls. Kisuke had no intention of letting any of his group die today. The city and its occupants would be restored after the reset; they were collateral damage this time. Kisuke just had to make it so Tomoe didn't think they were callously leaving the humans and other girls to their deaths. If the other magical girls survived somehow, that would just be a bonus— their group could get priceless information by being the girls' saviors.
Tessai narrowed his eyes and assessed the battle. "The city's residents got pulled into the labyrinth."
Indeed, there were still people unconscious in the streets or stumbling out of buildings and cars in confusion. It looked like there had been multiple car accidents caused by drivers falling unconscious.
"Are these the buildings from the city or copies of them?" Tomoe asked, frowning in thought.
"Who knows?" Hitsugaya said. "It's probably best to assume they're real. The Witch is moving due south. Straight for the shop."
"But we're in a labyrinth. Does it heading for the shop matter in here?"
"We do not know if the Witch is moving outside," Akemi said. "It is probably best to assume it matters."
Hitsugaya hummed. "Let's swing northeast and come in from behind it to pull the Familiars back along the path of what's already destroyed. Just in case damage is reflected in the city once the labyrinth collapses— and to stall it from the shop."
"When we get close enough, fire ranged attacks at the Witch itself," Akemi said. "That will probably draw the most Familiars toward us in defense."
They took off again, swinging toward the coast— well, where the coast had been— and looping toward the Witch's rear. They cut inland at an angle to approach the Witch and got close enough to see that the Familiars were solid black figures shaped like magical girls.
Similar to Akemi's description of Walpurgisnacht's purple-and-starshine Familiars. What the hell was this?
Their group scaled tall buildings, tersely chattered about how to attack so they didn't hit the Asunaro magical girls, and settled on having Tomoe being the sole attacker so she could dissolve her projectiles with a thought if a magical girl strayed into their paths. So they stopped on a skyscraper and stood ready to defend Tomoe, who conjured cannons along the building's ledge as though it was a battlement. She stood in the middle of the line, threw her arms out to her sides, and fired the cannons in sequence from the center. Tomoe's cannons dissolved and were replaced before the brilliant golden projectiles reached their target.
Kisuke wondered why she didn't get multiple shots out of each firearm she used. Hm. Something to ponder.
Tomoe's third volley had just fired when a flock of Familiars turned and shot toward them.
"Well over half," Hitsugaya said with grim satisfaction. "Let's move."
Tomoe held a floral kaleidoscope shield behind them and fired random limited-distance pot shots at the Familiars as they took off once more, angling for the path of destruction and merging into it heading north. Kisuke pointed to an observation platform atop a building with only jagged shards of glass in its windows. The five of them alighted on it and stood in a circle, backs facing the center and shielded from above by one of Tomoe's kaleidoscopes, prepared to fight.
The Familiars weren't far behind them. They swooped around their position, girlish laughter ringing out from every angle. Another similarity to Walpurgisnacht. The eerie similarities worried him deeply; he contemplated the problem in the back of his mind as he joined the others in lashing out at Familiars.
It was an excellent way to vent his frustration at yet more variables.
§ x § x §
Kazumi almost gave herself whiplash jerking her head up and around at the burst of new magic, red eyes wide as volley after volley of glowing gold cannonballs peppered the side of Dawn of Hyades.
She knew that magic.
Umika fell back from fighting to stand by Kazumi and pointed. "There. Who is that?"
"It's Mami," Kazumi said in disbelief.
"Who?" Umika asked sharply as a large squadron of Familiars rocketed toward the distant magic, which immediately turned and fled north with several other magical signatures.
"The one who saved Michiru," Kazumi said, mystified. Had Mami rallied a team of magical girls to help them?
Kaoru alighted beside them, also watching the others' retreat in dumbfounded shock. "Waaahhhhhh, they drew off tons of Familiars!"
Kazumi shook herself and looked around at much emptier skies. Hope welled in her heart and she smiled. "Teamwork!" she cheered. She set her sights on Dawn of Hyades once more, determined. "Let's do this and invite them to dinner after!"
Kaoru and Umika laughed with her, then the three of them rejoined the battle.
§ x § x §
Akon was extremely conscious of being observed by multiple captains as he worked, could feel their stares as an itch between his shoulders as they watched and expected scientific miracles to fall from his fingers. His tension mounted with every captain that filed into the control room. Then the Captain Commander himself graced them with his presence. The frantic technicians flinched as one at the feel of his very unhappy reiatsu, but kept working. If anything, they worked even harder. Rin's fingers flew across the keyboard at the terminal he had claimed beside Hiyosu, joining the effort to figure out what the hell was happening in Asunaro. Akon looked around and found that his subordinates were doing their jobs excellently... leaving him nothing to do but observe and wait. And answer questions.
"Report," rumbled Captain-Commander Yamamoto.
Akon looked around. "Captain Kurotsuchi—?"
Without even glancing at him, Nemu murmured, "Our captain is engaged in a delicate experiment upon one of the Grief Seeds in our custody." She fell silent, obviously handing the responsibility of reporting to Akon. The Captain-Commander expectantly raised his brows at Akon, who took a deep breath and recounted what he knew as everyone watched the physical disaster on the large monitor.
"Still nothin' on where it went, huh?" Captain Hirako asked grimly.
"No," Akon said with a growl of frustration.
After another minute, the Captain-Commander turned his eyes back to Akon. "Were you able to contact our assets in Mitakihara?"
"No, sir," Akon answered grimly. "Isshin Kurosaki, yes, but not Urahara, Tsukabishi, and Hitsugaya."
Yamamoto grunted. "Keep trying."
Obviously. Akon would not roll his eyes at the Captain Commander. "Yes, sir."
"Um," Rin said nervously.
"What?" Akon asked.
"Out of curiosity, I tapped into the city's CCTV streams. Traffic cameras and stuff." Rin turned to look at Akon, distressed and confused. "There's no one there?"
"What do you mean?" Akon asked, brow knit.
"No one is there," Rin repeated. "The city is empty of people." A few keystrokes brought video up onto the main monitor.
No one in crosswalks. No one on sidewalks. Traffic lights changing at intersections with no cars. The only cars in the videos were unoccupied and not running. Sidewalks coated in shattered glass and blood and dead bodies, but no people milling about in shock as humans tended to do in major emergencies.
"The fuck?" Captain Zaraki said.
"Looks like Fake Karakura," Captain Hirako muttered.
Akon stared from him to the screens. It did. It really did.
"You said the spike was Vasto Lorde class, right?" Captain Ukitake asked thoughtfully.
"Yes, sir," Akon replied.
Captain Ukitake crossed his arms and frowned at the screen. "Could it be a labyrinth?"
Silence. Everyone stared at the cycling camera shots of the empty city. That would... make a lot of sense, actually.
"Can they get so big that they pull in a city's entire population?" Lieutenant Ise asked.
Akon didn't like the looks traded between Captain Ukitake and the Captain Commander. They knew something or guessed something. They didn't share. Akon did not like that.
"Urahara's sensors have only been able to detect labyrinths at extremely close range," Akon said slowly. "The few remote sensors we snuck into Asunaro are fried useless."
"Still no contact with him?" Captain Ukitake worried.
"No, sir."
Captain Ukitake looked to the Captain Commander again. "Sir. Do you want us to deploy?"
Captain-Commander Yamamoto scowled. After a tense moment of thought, he said, "No. We will hold for now. I do not want to reveal our involvement if not absolutely necessary." The old man's eyes shifted to Nemu. "Normal protocol for a high Hollow power spike and disappearance thereof?"
Nemu coolly said, "Remote monitoring for signs of Garganta and property damage. Remote scans of Hueco Mundo for a similar being. Deployment of memory modifiers in cases of Hollows attacking the living, if possible. For an incident of this scale, no direct interference with the living as identifying direct witnesses is difficult and they would be dismissed as misunderstanding what they saw in shock. Deployment of a small team to perform Soul Burials on the mass casualties."
The Captain Commander grunted an acknowledgment. "We will do that in a while. Let the Incubator think we are slow to respond."
Minutes dragged into what felt like hours as they waited.
§ x § x §
Three battle-weary magical girls stood in a circle on top of a building, held hands, and looked up at the monstrous Witch. They knew what they had to do to save the city. Someone else would have to succeed at their project. The many innocent lives running around in confusion below were more important.
"I really wanted to eat strawberry risotto with you two again," Kazumi said wistfully.
"In another life, perhaps," Umika said softly.
Kaoru just stared up with silent tears rolling down her cheeks, beyond words.
Magic whirled around them more and more brightly. The three looked straight up in determination, squeezed each other's hands so tightly their knuckles went white, and spoke as one.
"METEORA FINALE!"
§ x § x §
Tōshirō and the others could not help but whip their heads toward the spike of reiatsu to their south. The three Asunaro magical girls rocketed upward in a tricolor column of light, impacted the gigantic Witch, and burst into a massive triple explosion. Akemi reacted with a deep, rough gasp as though she had witnessed an atrocity. Not taking their eyes off the Witch disintegrating into light, Tōshirō, Urahara, and Tsukabishi all bit out, "What?"
Akemi's voice was distant in horror. "They... they detonated their Soul Gems. All three of them."
They stared in silence as the sky and buildings wobbled with the collapse of the labyrinth. Their view was soon obscured by the smoke of the real world.
"Detonated?" Tomoe squeaked.
"So—" Akemi's voice cracked. She cleared her throat and said, "Soul Gems contain a massive amount of condensed magical energy." She drew a deep breath, settling herself. "It is... possible to... self-destruct them like a bomb in... dire situations," she explained quietly.
"A suicide attack," Tōshirō summarized softly.
"Yes," she whispered.
"Why didn't that happen when— the other girls destroyed their Soul Gems to commit suicide?" Urahara demanded.
"Intent, I think," Akemi replied dully. "Or perhaps they did it without turning their own magic on themselves. Like the... nutcracker."
Urahara's eyes went unfocused. Tōshirō heard him muttering something about implosions and explosions as their Soul Phones rang. Great. Twelfth Division registered that. Fantastic. Urahara kept staring toward the initial explosion site as he whipped his phone out and up to his ear.
"Threat neutralized. All allied combatants alive and accounted for," the man declared in lieu of a greeting.
Tomoe stepped closer to Tōshirō and whispered, "Who is he talking to?"
Tōshirō sighed. What a mess. "All of this was probably big enough for our allies to detect."
"No, no. No need to come," Urahara said distractedly as he paced off to one side with his head tilted to see around something. "It's quite the disaster but the spiritual aspect seems resolved. Lay low. I'll contact you after I investigate. Text me the coordinates of the original power spike, though, please."
Their quintet stood in silence for a couple minutes as Urahara thought. Sirens wailed in the streets below and smoke drifted up to them. Another explosion went off to their west.
"We need to stop this before more people are killed," Tomoe said with challenge.
Urahara heaved a sigh and scrubbed his face with both hands. "There isn't much we can do," he said heavily. "We can't tell where gas lines are damaged or how extensively. City management should be shutting of the gas soon, if they haven't already. They'll know more about what to do. They have emergency plans for disasters."
"What about the fires?" Tomoe asked defiantly.
Tōshirō bit his cheek. "Technically, I could probably ice the worst ones," he hedged. "But the question then becomes how suspicious it would be to do so."
Tomoe's gaze darted around at the rest of theirs. "You mean— you mean to leave them to suffer?! To die?!"
Tōshirō looked at Akemi sideways and wondered if she'd mention the reset.
Akemi frowned and said, "What if Hitsugaya condensed water vapor and made rain to extinguish the flames?"
Tōshirō grimaced. For such a large area, he'd probably have to lift his first limiter at the very least. Most likely, more than that. Maybe even leave the gigai.
"Absolutely not," Urahara said curtly. "Water will make it worse unless specifically directed to only collect on combustible solids with minimal runoff until fuel supply is cut and burned off. Even a fog could slow dissipation of fumes. Rain would risk water infiltration into broken natural gas lines and possibly precipitate further explosions. If the gas has infiltrated the sewer system— which it probably has, given the blast patterns of the explosions as they chained down city streets— rain runoff could make the situation more dangerous. With water taking up space, the same volume of gas could travel farther than in a wide, open pipe. Especially if water is flowing away from the leak site; associated air currents could spread it faster."
Tōshirō blinked his surprise with the girls. Well. That was... actually fascinating.
We will have to study that, Hyōrinmaru commented in his head, interest piqued.
"The safest method to stop spread is to cut off the gas flow and let the released gas rise and burn off, which utility workers would know how to do far more efficiently than us," Urahara continued, still staring around the city. He pulled back to glance at them and scratched his chin thoughtfully. "If clouds should start to build and raise humidity from the coast, it may help stall ignition of secondary fires on the edges of the hot zone. Light rain might be helpful after the gas is burned off. Too much could destabilize trenches and make sinkholes— make it dangerous for rescuers or drown trapped victims."
"How long til the gas burns off?" Tomoe asked worriedly.
Urahara shrugged and looked at the destroyed cityscape. "Hard to say without knowing how many lines carrying what mixtures of gas were blown." He looked at Tōshirō. "Do you think you could initiate something like that in a bit?"
Tōshirō squinted around for any Incubator terminals and spoke softly, barely moving his lips. "Coastal fog, yes. More than that... not without revealing more of my abilities than we want the Incubator to be aware of."
Urahara frowned at a new explosion. "What if you had help?" he asked slowly.
"From who?" Tōshirō asked with a skeptical glance at the man.
"Your father's... assistant," he replied. "She is still honing her... finesse with her matured power, but if she supplied the cold you could focus on the moisture."
Ukitake's lieutenant, Rukia Kuchiki, whose zanpakutō was also an ice-type. Reasonable. But—
"Will she be able to use the ability with seals like mine?" Tōshirō asked. He knew she was capable of kidō while in a gigai, but she had always left her gigai to fight with her zanpakutō when they were undercover in Karakura. Then again, she had not yet achieved bankai back then. Hm.
"Oh, yes," Urahara said. "We'd just have to get her to come in on a train or something instead of bringing her in through the basement so the Incubator doesn't wonder about her popping up unexplained." He turned to Akemi and raised his brows at her. "Your thoughts, Miss Akemi?"
Akemi frowned and chewed her cheek, staring out at Asunaro and calculating options. "Will Kuchiki be able to keep cover?" she asked.
"She's done it twice before," Tōshirō answered. "For the... organization. To counter two other threats."
"Ah. She was on the high school guard duty squad you told me about," Akemi murmured. "All right."
Tomoe looked baffled by their exchange, but didn't interrupt until they seemed to have settled on an option. "What if we... blew the gas away?" she asked. "With wind, I mean."
Urahara looked at her with interest. "You can do that?"
Tomoe rolled her head and shoulders. "To a degree, with my ribbons. In small areas. I can whirl them and make a kind of... reverse funnel."
Urahara thoughtfully stared into space for a moment, then shook his head. "I'd worry wind would cause more static electricity that could touch off more explosions. That risk is why you are supposed to tap your car to dispel static on your person before handling a gas pump. Different gas, same mechanism."
Tomoe sighed and looked defeated.
Tōshirō brushed his hand on her shoulder and said, "I know you want to help. This is one of those times where doing nothing is the most helpful choice, as much as we hate it."
"I understand," she said miserably. Right before another explosive fireball. Tomoe flinched at the flash and boom.
He sighed and crossed his arms. "Kuchiki and I will need someone to watch our backs later."
Tomoe understood it for the gesture of cold comfort it was. "All right, I'm in," she said tiredly. "What now, though?"
"Miss Akemi, please stop," Urahara said. When Akemi obliged, he said, "Now we investigate the source of this before normal humans can find anything... odd." He turned to Tomoe and said, "The closer we get, the more gruesome it is likely to be. You don't have to come if you don't want to."
Tomoe swallowed hard and straightened her spine. "I'll come with."
"What about fumes?" Tōshirō asked.
"We'll stay close to the ground and I'll maintain a barrier around us," Urahara said. "We should be able to at least scout a bit. If it's too dangerous for us, it'll be too dangerous for those without powers. We'll pull back and wait for gas to burn off."
They took to the streets and picked their way through devastation to reach the coordinates Urahara had received. The city was now on par with some of the worst warzones Tōshirō had deployed to for missions to cleanse Hollowfied war dead. Streets had become wide trenches, slabs of asphalt and concrete thrown up against buildings along with cars and shattered segments of pipe. Sidewalks had been buried in debris. Cars, intact and in pieces, were strewn on rooftops and sticking out of walls and windows. Water gushed out of broken mains, which made them all grimace. Worse still, the farther they went the more they encountered broken pipes and fire hydrants spewing fire with water; they passed storm drains and a subway station venting flame.
Urahara sighed tiredly. "It's in the water, sewer, and subway lines. This is a disaster."
Gravely injured people were frozen crawling, staring into space, crying. Bleeding survivors swarmed around various pieces of wreckage, cooperating to lift and rescue buried survivors. There were also bodies strewn about, dozens of people whose lives had ended in a snap. They tried not to look at those, but couldn't avoid them.
Tōshirō did notice a distinct lack of newly disembodied souls. Something about that put him on edge. There were usually confused dead wandering so soon after these kinds of disasters.
Tomoe held up for awhile, but eventually began to choke on sobs as they proceeded into worse areas and encountered more incomplete bodies than whole ones. Tōshirō and Akemi each took one of her hands and followed Urahara in silence, with Tsukabishi equally silent behind them.
Finally, Urahara glanced at his phone, said, "Around this corner," and they crested a small mountain of debris to find a massive crater. Everyone stared.
Most of an entire city block was blasted away, reduced to bedrock hosting a rubble pit deep enough for a five-story building's roof to be at ground level. Pipes and wires and rebar jutted out of the rough sides; several of the broken pipes vented the blue-to-orange flames they had seen on their trek.
"This wasn't caused by gas," Tsukabishi muttered.
"It wasn't?" Tomoe asked, surprised.
"Not enough scorching," Urahara observed. "And gas lines aren't that deep. Even larger lines near the surface shouldn't make a crater that deep in bedrock."
Akemi released Tomoe's hand and stepped forward to peer down the slope of debris, look up at surrounding buildings, frown at the empty air where there had once been ground. "I think you were right earlier. About the Witch starting on the ground. Except I would guess it actually burst from underground. That would break the pipes and cause sparks to ignite the gas."
Urahara hummed thoughtfully. "Whatever would a magical girl have been doing so deep underground before turning into a Witch?"
Tōshirō sighed. "I guess that's what we have to figure out."
"Could she have been in a subway station?" Tomoe wondered.
Tsukabishi stepped up and pointed. "There's the side of a subway tunnel. On the edge. No sign that the subway crossed here."
"It would probably be wisest to start at the epicenter," Akemi said. Shading her eyes, she leaned forward and doubtfully added, "It looks submerged, though."
No one objected, so they picked their way down the treacherous scree and into the crater proper. They stopped at the rim of a crater-within-a-crater, this one long and vaguely rectangular. A series of columns of marble and glass lay askew at the edges, mostly submerged as Akemi had said. The water was murky and fed by streams trickling down from broken pipes. The area was thick with residual Hollow-like reiatsu.
Urahara pointed to several outcroppings of debris. "The remains of arches. I think this was an underground chamber." He walked up to the top of a glass column and squinted down into the water. "The liquid in this is still clear," he said thoughtfully. Urahara rapped on the glass with his knuckle, then pressed his face against it and tried to look inside. He gave up and withdrew with a huff. "Tōshirō, pull out the water."
Tōshirō raised a brow. "And do what with it?"
"I don't care, just get it out of the way. We'll put it back after."
We, he says, Tōshirō drily thought to Hyōrinmaru as he approached the water. His dragon snorted in his head as Tōshirō knelt, stuck his hand in the disgusting water, stood, and pulled the moisture along into the timestop. He shuffled off to one side and siphoned water off and froze it into a growing ice column. They all watched in silence as the water level dropped and revealed walls and columns coated in grime. Tōshirō siphoned more carefully, eyeing the integrity of the pillars and willing ice to form to secure some. About fifteen timestopped minutes later, their party descended into the pit.
Urahara scuffed his foot in a wide arc to slop away mud. They all caught brief glimpses of tiled floor.
"What are those?" Tomoe asked, pointing at a series of raised octagons down the center of the chamber.
Tōshirō slogged closer to get a look, took another step and— nothing to hold him up—!
"Tōshirō!"
Tomoe's ribbon yanked him up by his wrist before he could sink past his knees. Tōshirō swallowed his embarrassment and thanked her as she set him on solid ground.
"Hidden ledges! Fun!" Urahara declared with zero humor. "Mind the gap!"
They all hesitantly shuffled around after that, making sure they were stepping onto solid floor before shifting their weight. The ruins had a cathedral-like atmosphere— if the top had been blown off a cathedral, anyway. They muttered questions and observations to each other as they explored. Urahara shoved broken masonry and rebar aside and approached one of the glass columns. He wiped his sleeve against the slime and cleared some glass, peered inside, went very still, and pulled back slowly.
"Boss?" asked Tsukabishi. Uneasy.
"Tōshirō, wash this glass now," Urahara ordered.
Tōshirō bit his tongue on his irritation and stepped up beside the man. He lay his hands on the sludge, partially froze it into slush and scraped some aside. Urahara must have thought he was too slow because he threw his arm up against the column and swept his sleeve down its face.
Gasps all around as the body of a teenage girl was revealed floating in the glass tank, pajamas drifting around her pale form.
Urahara turned and hurried away. "Tōshirō. This one. Check this one."
Tōshirō sloshed after him. They repeated themselves against another glass pillar— tank. It held another teenage girl, this one in a school uniform.
"Do— do they all have— bodies?!" Tomoe shrilled.
They checked.
The answer was yes.
Dozens of bodies of teenage girls had been stashed deep underground in some kind of preservation tanks.
Akemi looked mystified. That was definitely not good.
Tomoe yelped as she tripped on something; Tōshirō yanked her ribbon and returned the favor of keeping her from going down altogether. She also caught herself with one hand on the ground. Except her arm didn't go as deep as her legs— her hand must have hit whatever she tripped on. Tomoe shoved mud aside to see what she had stumbled upon and recoiled with a scream.
Tōshirō sloshed over, saw an irregular shape already recovered by slime, partially froze the goo, and commanded the slush away. Everyone stared for a long minute. Akemi choked and made a small strangled sound.
Tomoe had tripped on the bodies of two teenage girls, one tall, one small. The small one was missing her head and neck. The curve of the wound between shoulders was evenly jagged in the way Tōshirō had found the remains of subordinates who had been chomped on by Hollows with serrated teeth. Large teeth.
"What the hell happened here?!" Tōshirō growled.
§ x § x §
§ x § x §
§ x § x §
A/N: Ah, Asunaro. Such cheerful and totally not confusing material.
This chapter was replaced with an edited version on November 1, 2019. Reviews with timestamps before that date refer to a slightly different version of the chapter.