CHAPTER 10: Fall and Rise

-VERTEX THREE: 8.333882^1-

Wakabadai

Simultaneously

Downtown Wakabadai was a warzone. Some minutes ago, the fight between Cure Black and White and the Souju twins spilled out of the old pine forest, despite the Precure's efforts to contain it. Of the few civilians left who had not evacuated the area, many were crouched inside buildings, heads down, too terrified to move... and many were simply unable to flee at all. The Soujus attacked indiscriminately; anyone or anything that got in their way was a target. Many streets were now lined with businessmen, shoppers, mothers and children, all manner of people, trapped and helpless inside bitter cold sheets of ice... perhaps alive, perhaps not. With others, the far less fortunate ones, there was no question: bodies charred black, or lying in pools of blood with holes through them, or in some cases, both... The buildings shuddered around them with the exchange of superpowered blows and bursts of magic. A broken fire hydrant spouted a geyser of water three meters high onto nothing at all, its random spray doing nothing to quench the random flames that licked over storefronts and sidewalks. Deep fissures ran the length of the street, and there were places where the asphalt was torn up enough to see bare, scarred earth underneath.

By this point, it was clear that unlike their battles against Dusk Zone, the Soujus didn't bother creating some strange "otherspace" to fight in without interference. Whether that was because they couldn't, because they simply didn't care, or some combination of both, was anyone's guess.

To Cure Black, it looked increasingly like the second of those options; the concept of a fair fight didn't seem to occur to either Souju. The one in white laughed like mad, flinging fireballs left and right with no regard to where they landed or what damage they did, and from what little she saw of the red one out of the corner of her eye, she was quieter but no less willing to take any cheap advantage she could find.

Black was used to her punches landing like lightning bolts, to the strength of her Cure form overwhelming any enemy so long as she fought long enough and hard enough. Now, though she whaled on Ayase every time she was in reach, it seemed she never hurt, never tired, barely even slowed down.

I don't believe this! thought Black as she skidded backward, a burning volley streaking over her where her head had been mere seconds before. What are these guys?! They're taking everything we throw at them, it's like they don't even care- Interrupting that thought, a shiny red compact car came hurtling through space like a missile, right at her head. "Crap!" Black held out her hands and somehow managed to catch the front bumper. Digging her heels into the smashed concrete, she somehow managed to stop the car's inertia and hold the car aloft above the ground. Her fingers gouged dents the silver chrome... it was too heavy to hold onto for more than a few seconds. Hope this thing's owner has a really, really good insurance policy! Sorry, whoever you are... It was dark humor, but it was all that kept Black from losing herself to blind rage. This time, civilians weren't just in danger, they were being killed... People were being murdered in cold blood by these lunatics for no reason at all, and there was nothing either she or Cure White could do, except try to stop them, try to keep them from hurting anyone else. They had to finish this, and fast...

"Catch~!" called Ayase from a block away. With a shriek of demented laughter, she tossed off another fireball at a low angle.

Doesn't make sense, what's she aiming at? That won't hit anything but- It was then that Black noticed the smell. That heavy, oily, smoky smell... She spared a brief glance around the edge of the fender, and saw a trickle of amber liquid leaking from the car's undercarriage, spreading in a pool beneath it. Oh crap oh crap oh crap!

There was no saving the car. She dropped it as if she had already been burned, felt the reverberations of two tons of metal, rubber, and plastic as they hit the wrecked sidewalk, went into a frantic diving roll to her right...

An instant later, she would have been dead, transformed or not. The resulting fireball reddened the skin on the back of her neck and charred her hair even in Cure form, and the shockwave grasped her like the hand of a god and hurled her into the side of a building clear across the street. A hailstorm of shrapnel riddled her back, pinging off her armor and her hardened skin, and she was once again deafened by the thunderclap of the car's destruction.

"Black...!" Cure White's battle with Luca had taken to the rooftops, but that explosion could have been heard from blocks away. Much as it hurt, there was no time to go down there and come to her aid... all her focus was on the Souju twin slashing away at her with her freezing cutlass.

"Where are you looking?" The curving, razor-sharp edge of Luca's weapon bit relentlessly at White's forearms, held up in an X-shape to protect her face. "Aren't you supposed to be a legendary warrior? Focus on me, on our fight, not theirs!"

"Nnngh...!" This was bad, this was very bad. Thank heaven that her transformation made both her uniform and her skin stronger than steel... White couldn't believe anyone could fight so savagely, with such cruelty. Even the Dusk Zone commanders, even the Dark King himself never acted like this.

Dodging and weaving left and right, White knew that Luca was driving her backward, that the egress structure directly behind them had a high-walled corner, and that if she got cornered there, she was done for. It was so hard to think... images of Hikari and Hikaru, and all those people the Soujus had hurt or killed kept intruding into her mind, disrupting her attempts to focus...

An opening. Luca raised her cutlass high and brought it thundering down, attempting a brutal overhead strike. Inches before it struck her skull, White moved, bringing both hands together to clap against both sides of the blade, stopping it dead. She let out a pained cry; a burning sensation spread from her fingertips down to her palms as ice crystals crawled over them, but she held on, took a wide stance, shifted her weight, and sharply tilted both hands at once.

A furious curse from Luca and a sharp, ringing snap that echoed off the walls of the egress accompanied the breaking of the blade. She let go of the hilt and stepped backward.

That was all White needed. The ice made a musical sound and shattered as she flexed and tossed the shorn end aside. An acrobatic forward flip brought her into a handspring, and she twisted off it into her signature hurricane kick. Crack, crack! Her heels struck Luca in the face, one after the other with a sound that even White, gentle as she normally was, had to admit was a little satisfying.

"You bitch!" Luca staggered backward, spitting out blood and tiny fragments of teeth. Now, visibly angered, with her eyes ablaze with pain and snarling like an animal, she even more resembled her twin. Her ruined cutlass lay abandoned at her feet. Snatching it up, she took another few steps back. "I'll get you for tha-"

One too many steps. White had barely righted herself when she saw Luca tip back and vanish over the edge of the roof with a scream...

No! She acted without thought, without logic. Totally unlike her. Sprinting forward as fast as her feet could take her, she leaned over the ledge and extended her hand, snatching for the other girl.

Another hand grasped hers tight, and there was a wrenching sensation on her arm. "H-hang on... g-grab on with your other hand...!" White groaned, bracing herself against the ledge wall to-

That was when she heard the chuckle.

Luca's weight shifted, there was a brief flash of light, and White heard her speak a single word: "POWER."

Before she knew what was happening, White's feet left the ground. With sudden, monstrous strength, Luca hauled her over the edge one-armed, and sent her sailing off the roof into empty space.

-VERTEX THREE: 8.333882^8-

Oogai

Simultaneously

Dark energy coursed through the blade, less than an inch from Makoto Kenzaki's chest. Her fingertips sizzled from that energy, as if the glowing metal were coated in acid. She had a tight grip on it now, but it was slipping through her fingers, pushing down toward the heart-shaped brooch she wore on her Cure Sword uniform, inch by a fraction of an inch...

The wielder of the blade was someone who could not, should not exist. Yet exist she did... one moment, she, Mana, Rikka, and Regina were leaving school, running to meet little Aguri at the gate, and then-

Then the world twisted out of place around them. When reality snapped back into place, Regina and Aguri were both gone, vanished into thin air. In their place was a ghost from the past, a young woman with a long cascade of wavy pink hair, resplendent in a blue and white gown... a woman who looked, sounded, and even smelled like Card Kingdom's beloved, departed Princess Marie Ange...

Makoto had stopped dead in her tracks, torn between helpless confusion and joy, joy at seeing her dear princess once again, months after giving up, after moving on, after mourning her memory and putting her to rest... Impossible joy filled her heart to see that face again.

That joy lasted until Marie Ange summoned the Miracle Dragon Glaive to her hand, brandished it... and sank its blade into Mana's chest. Mana had no time to speak, to transform, to do anything. As Makoto and Rikka watched, stupefied, the end of the glave emerged bloodlessly from Mana's back as if she were made from ether, with something painfully bright like a miniature sun balanced on its tip. They had no time to look at it before Marie snatched the bright thing up, retracted her glaive, and let Mana's motionless body fall to the pavement in a heap.

The battle began then, a brutal, vicious clash against a foe that neither of them were prepared to face. Marie Ange was the one who taught Makoto all she knew about fighting; every one of her strikes was blocked or parried, and every magic attack was either deflected harmlessly or simply sliced in half by the glaive's blade. This was the woman who singlehandedly took on an army of Jikochuu during the invasion of her kingdom, and should have won...

As the battle spilled out into the street bordering Oogai Middle School, Alice Yotsuba arrived in a limo driven by her faithful butler, Sebastian... Without even asking what was happening, the young heiress sprung out of its door, drew her Commune, and transformed into Cure Rosetta, casting a shield over them as she always did. Taking charge of the team, she demanded to know who their attacker was, and what she had done to poor Mana...

"You will know soon enough," was all Marie said. Rosetta held on as long as she could, but the glaive was too much for even her shield... She was its next victim, it took one of those bright things from her just as it had Mana. Now she lay blank-eyed and staring up at the evening sky, a broken doll.

Rikka had snapped then. The sight of two of her best friends vanishing before her eyes and two more being... if not killed, then something close to it... pushed her into a frenzy unlike anything Makoto had ever seen. As Cure Diamond, she normally fought with grace and elegance, always composed, always thinking. Against Marie, she fought in a berserker rage of grief and agony... one that made her easy prey, the next to fall.

And now, it was only Makoto and Marie, the Card Kingdom princess and Cure Sword, her sworn protector. The teacher pinned her former student with contemptuous ease, and now closed in for the kill.

"You disappoint me, Sword," said Marie, her lips curling into a smile. She pushed down on the glaive, and it dropped another millimeter. "Remember? We used to spar all the time in the old days, and you never held back."

"P-Princess..." Sword gasped. Her fingers burned... she would have to let go soon, but she couldn't let go... Mana, Rikka, Alice, Aguri, and Regina depended on her. The people of Oogai, those whom she had come to love, depended on her. This land, this country, her adopted homeworld, all depended on her. She couldn't let herself be defeated. She couldn't fail. Not again... "Please, stop!"

"If you had only been faster," whispered Marie, leaning on the blunt end of the weapon, slowly putting more of her weight onto it. "If you had only been strong enough to save me, to save the kingdom... all this would never have happened."

"You..." The word escaped Sword in a pained moan. "You c-can't be- You're not the princess! The real princess, the princess I loved... would never s-say things like that! S-she would never-"

"Perhaps you never knew me as well as you thought, Sword," said Marie coolly.

Cure Sword's heart broke... almost in the same instant that the glaive pierced her brooch and touched bare skin underneath. Something was wrenched out of her, she felt it tear loose, but there was no pain, only sorrow and numbness, as everything went black...

-VERTEX THREE: 8.333882^1-

Wakabadai

Simultaneously

"C'mon, wake up."

Black groaned and blinked as the world slid back into focus. The mocking words somehow broke through that blasted ringing in her ears. There was someone pulling on her hair, hard enough to bring tears to her eyes... She made a weak attempt to swat whoever it was away, but they grasped her by the wrist and twisted her arm behind her back in a submission hold with monstrous strength.

"Nuh-uh, stay right there~! We're not done playing yet."

Something thudded against the broken asphalt a few feet ahead of them. It looked like a black and white blur...

Everything rushed back, a tide of information flooding her brain. "White! HONOKA!"

Her partner lay motionless, her long black hair spread over her like a blanket.

"How dare you-" Black gritted her teeth and strained, flailing with her free arm, stretching it out toward her fallen partner. The second she was free, she would pound these two monsters into the ground-

"Caso Freddo." Luca spoke those words, and Black lost all feeling in her arm, save for a burning, prickling sensation... then numbness. The sensation grew from her shoulder across her chest, down the other arm as Ayase released it, over her belly and raced to her thighs, her legs... She was frozen from the neck down, locked in a kneeling position and covered in ice far too cold to be normal. All the warmth seeped from her body, and the horrid, unnatural chill sunk into her bones. "N-no, s-stop it! H-H-H-Honoka...! W-wake up, please..." Black strained, flexing her muscles and calling on all the strength her tired, beaten body could give, but the ice seemed to sap her strength as well as her warmth. Immobilized, she tossed her head back and forth in denial. This couldn't be happening. If she could just get to Honoka's side and see her open her eyes, everything would be all right...

But it's not, said something in the back of her mind, a voice that didn't sound like hers.

It's not, it said. It's all gone wrong...

"So what do you think?" Ayase said to her twin, coming around to stand at her side. She put a finger to her lips in a childish manner... the sight turned Black's stomach. "First one, then the other, or both at once?"

Luca's voice was cold as the steel of her ruined cutlass as she rubbed her injured cheek. "The white one first. That spin kick hurt..."

"Silly, you know you can fix it with a simple spell."

"The pain isn't the point. The point is that she hit me at all. I even had to use one of those stupid cards to beat her. I owe her for spoiling our fun."

"You mean your fun. I had fun with mine..."

"Stay away from her!" Black bellowed. Her mind raced at a million miles a second. There had to be some way out of this. There always was. Something she hadn't tried, some new attack she hadn't discovered. Maybe if she tried hard enough, she could melt the damned ice with heat vision or something. If she believed in herself, if she tried hard enough-

White stirred. Thank God, she was still alive. Her movements sluggish, she turned herself over and peered at Black through half-lidded eyes. A smile played at her lips as she reached for Black's frozen, outstretched hand. "Na... gisa..."

A surge of hope ignited a flame in Black's chest, so hot that it should have melted the ice that held her in an instant. "Honoka! It's gonna be okay, I'll be right there-"

The Souju twins paid little attention... they were just staring at each other, not even speaking. They thought they had already beaten the Precure, but they didn't know. They didn't know. By some miracle, they didn't know that all it would take to turn the tide was the two of them holding hands.

Their eyes met, and White smiled... she knew exactly what Black had in mind, as she always did. Closer and closer, their fingertips were inches from each other.

Luca frowned.

And with a sigh that sounded almost bored, Ayase turned and sank her fist deep into White's back.

A soft gasp was the only sound Cure White made as her pupils shrank to pinpricks.

In contrast, Black's scream echoed long and loud off the walls of Wakabadai's empty buildings...

"It's what Master Joker wants," Ayase griped, digging around in search of her target. She was oblivious to both Black's cry of despair and the agonized writhing of the body underneath her. "You know he'll be pissed if we don't bring them back..."

"I'll bring this one back," said Luca, stomping forward. "I want to put her on the Merry-Go-Round myself after that stunt of hers. Here, let me do it." She shoved her twin aside, plunged her hand into White's body, and after a moment pulled something out... something so bright it was painful to look at, like a miniature sun...

The moment it left her body, the light faded from White's eyes, and she went limp.

Black went silent, her face turning ashen as tears rolled down her cheeks, hardening into beads like diamonds as they touched her frozen bonds. They killed Honoka.

They... they killed Honoka...

They killed... my best friend...

Luca tossed White's body over her shoulder like a sack of flour, turned around... and with one hand she tore a hole in the air as if it was made of paper. Within that tear, there was nothing but inky darkness. "Don't be long," she said to her twin without looking back. "The others are waiting."

"Be right theeeere~," said Ayase in singsong, waving her goodbye.

"No," said Black, her voice hoarse with grief, shivering from a cold that far deeper than that of the ice. "N-no... b-bring Honoka back... Don't-"

Luca walked through the tear with her prize, and the hole sealed itself shut behind her as if it were never there.

"And now it's just you and me, Nagisa-chan!" Ayase purred, drawing close. In a sick mockery of tenderness, she traced a fingertip down Black's jawline and under her chin. "Luca's no fun, is she? All gloomy, all business. She didn't even take time to play with Honoka-chan before she took her Cosmos Seed." Her face fell into an exaggerated pout, a poor imitation her twin. "I'm Luca, and I'm a great big stick in the mud," she said in a lower tone. "Sometimes having a partner is more trouble than it's worth, am I right?"

The ice cracked, then exploded from Black's body in a hail of freezing shards, propelled by the force of an immense, seething battle aura. Trembling with rage, her eyes shadowed by her bangs, she clenched both fists and whispered a word that dripped with purest hatred. "You..."

"Oh, goody!" said Ayase, leaping backward and clapping her hands. "You wanna play some more after all! How about if we erk-"

A hand closed around her neck and squeezed, cutting her off. "I'm... gonna... make... you... pay..."

Bizarrely, Ayase giggled. Her voice was strained, and very small. "... didn't think... you still had fight in you... Nagisa-cha-"

She was hurled like a fastball from a champion pitcher, sending her face-first into a brick wall with a sickening crunch. It crumbled and collapsed under her weight, pieces of loose brick raining down on her.

Black didn't bother waiting for her to get back up. She charged for the ruined wall, roaring at the top of her lungs...

-VERTEX THREE: 8.333882^4-

Yotsuba

Simultaneously

Cure Peach couldn't bear it.

Not the countless cables extended from the strange wheel-shaped machines, wrapped around herself and her teammates, constricting tighter every second. Not the constant flow of electricity coursing from those cables through her body. Not the strange energy that the wheel machines projected, which made their strongest attacks glance off of them like gentle breezes. And not the knowledge that Berry and Pine, bound alongside her, had already passed out from pain and exhaustion, leaving her alone...

Above all, what she couldn't bear was that the one directing these things, the one that had attacked them... was once her teammate, Setsuna Higashi, Cure Passion. More than just a teammate, Setsuna was Peach's adopted sister... After all the time they had spent apart, all the work she had done to rebuild Labyrinth, her homeworld... to meet again like this...

"S-S-Secchan..." moaned Peach, fighting to hold onto consciousness. The current raged through her, leaving every muscle numb... "P-p-p-please... s-stop..."

The young woman once known as Setsuna Higashi glared at her coldly. Only she wasn't Setsuna, not anymore... she was dressed all in black and red, her hair silver, her crimson eyes empty of feeling. "That is not my name," she said. "I am Eas, denizen of Labyrinth."

"... n-n-not t-true...!" Peach strained, and the cables crushed her chest, driving air from her lungs. "Y-y-you're a P-P-Precure... o-o-one of us...! Y-you f-fought with us! S-S-Secchan... you c-can't-"

"You're wrong." Eas turned away from her. "My mission, my purpose, has always been to make Labyrinth strong. In order for that to happen, you and all the others like you..."

-VERTEX THREE: 8.333882^6-

Kanon Town

Simultaneously

"... must be eliminated."

Hibiki Hojo, Cure Melody, couldn't hear her. All she heard was the deafening drone of the Melody of Sorrow, pumped constantly into her skull by the little black stone shells attached over each ear. That sound assaulted her every nerve, bored into her brain and tried to corrupt her from the inside out... but she couldn't give in, not yet... because her friend was-

Yellow eyes glared down at her with no trace of pity. She was once Ellen Kurokawa, Cure Beat... but the silver charm around her neck signified her return to her old form, the shapeshifter called Siren... the form that was supposed to be gone forever.

Melody screamed, and couldn't hear herself. Darkness swirled inside her, creeping in from the edges of her vision in tiny branching tendrils. How, why had this happened...? It was all supposed to be over, Ellen was their friend now, this couldn't be true...

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw little Cure Muse drop to one knee, and fall forward onto the pavement, her long, fiery hair spreading over her like a quilt. Ako! Yet again, she tore at the shells, if she could just take them off long enough to take Rhythm's hand and focus, they could set everything right again... couldn't they?

As that thought struggled through the cacophony, on her other side Rhythm's green eyes went blank. The Melody of Sorrow had claimed her too... she sagged like a puppet with cut strings, all the life and color draining from her face.

Melody was alone... alone and helpless at the feet of someone she had considered a trusted friend and comrade. Why, she mouthed to Siren, clinging to her leg, beseeching her to remember her humanity.

If Siren gave her an answer, she couldn't hear it; all she could hear was that awful noise... the noise that finally breached her last defenses and darkened her heart. She was unconscious before she hit the ground.

-VERTEX THREE: 8.333882^2-

Yuunagi

Simultaneously

Towering flames reflected in Cure Bloom's eyes, wide with disbelief. "No," she whispered. "No..."

The Sky Tree, the great and ancient tree atop the mountain, the one that connected the human world to the Land of Fountains, was burning. Its vast branches, under which she and her best friends shared food, played games, and slept on hot summer days... they withered and blackened consumed by the flames, and the sight tore at Bloom's heart. She could almost hear the tree screaming.

Half an hour ago, she was awakened by the sound of sirens, and the rumbling roar of every fire engine in Yuunagi screaming past her window on their way up the mountain. An inexplicable tightness gripped her stomach as she kicked off her covers, ran to the window, and threw her curtains open...

"Saki-onee-chan," said her little sister Minori, stumbling out of her own bed and scrubbing sleep from her eyes, "what's the matter? What's all the noise abo-"

She saw, just as Saki did: the Sky Tree set ablaze like an enormous torch, giving off great black clouds of smoke that blotted out Yuunagi's clear night sky.

Saki didn't remember what she said to Minori and her parents, what excuse she gave them... it didn't matter. She roused Flappy from sleep, stuffed her fairy partner into the breast pocket of her pajamas, and ran to meet the others.

And of course, on the way up the mountain she ran into Mai Mishou, her partner. They were nearly always in sync, in battle and in civilian life... she had seen the fire as well from her family's observatory, and the first thought that penetrated her terror was a simple one: Get Saki.

They transformed into Cure Bloom and Cure Egret and took to the air... and that was the point when the world went insane. Two heels slammed into the Cures' backs with devastating force, and they crashed like meteors into the mountainside, hundreds of feet below.

One of those heels dug into Bloom's spine now, as its owner leaned close to her ear and spoke words that sent a fresh shiver of ice-cold fear up and down her back:

"There's nothing you can do," said Michiru Kiryuu, once her enemy, once Cure Bright, and now her enemy again, heaven only knew why.

A few feet away, still struggling to pull herself out of her impact crater, Cure Egret pleaded with the tall, severe girl pressing her foot against her neck, tears spilling freely from her violet eyes. "K-Kaoru-san, please!" she gasped, coughing as she inhaled smoke. "Please, wake up... we h-have to save the S-Sky Tree..."

"You won't," said Kaoru Kiryuu calmly. The former Cure Windy's eyes were empty of light... "FIREY's power can't be quenched by the likes of you."

Her sister gripped Bloom by her hair and savagely ground her cheek into the upturned soil. "We know the secret now," she said. "If we destroy the tree, the Fountain of the Sun will lose its power... and this world and all worlds will belong to Dead End."

"M-Michiru..." Straining, Bloom reached for her partner's hand, though her shoulder and biceps screamed in protest. If they could only fight back long enough to snap the Kiryuus out of it, they could stop this madness-

Something cracked, and Bloom howled as Michiru's other heel came down and crushed her outstretched hand. "There's no use trying to fight it, Saki Hyuuga. This is the end."

"Goodbye, Mai Mishou," said Kaoru.

The sisters joined hands, power swelled within them, and the Sky Tree burned on...

-VERTEX THREE: 8.333882^1-

Wakabadai

Simultaneously

Ayase wouldn't stop laughing. Damn her, she wouldn't stop laughing... Cure Black hammered her again and again, her blows falling like rain, her fists painted red, but the girl wouldn't stop laughing...

It was a labored, wheezing laugh, a laugh that bubbled at her lips, now a mess of blood, torn flesh, and fragments of teeth. Her face was a wreck, almost unrecognizable, but she didn't seem to feel pain and she still laughed... "... Heh. Heh... You're... p-pretty angry there, N-Nagisa-chan... heh... heh..."

"Shut up!" Black roared, smashing one palm across her swollen cheek and leaving a vicious two-inch gash. "You monster... you murdering BITCH! You killed Honoka... I'll KILL you!"

"K-K-Killed her...?" Ayase blinked, slowly and with difficulty. "Heh... heh... s-shows what you know... heh..."

Black's hand froze. "She..."

"Heh... heh..."

Now Black's hand closed around her neck and lifted her off the cracked pavement. "Talk! Where is she?! Where did the other one take her?!"

"Heh... hehehh... y-you can ge-get her back... heheheheh..."

"Don't screw with me!" said Black, hissing through clenched teeth. Once again her fist raised and pulled back...

The words were choked and feeble. "... j-just... have to j-join our side... hehehe... hah hah... Dead End, hahaha..."

"You stinking...!" Black's fist flew forward...

Somehow, Ayase mustered the strength to move her hand, batting Black's arm aside. The punch went wild, and struck the strange red jewel she wore near her underarm. Something broke...

... and Ayase's eyes turned blank and cold halfway through her last laugh. Her body sagged in Black's grip.

"What..." Someone had just thrown a bucket of ice water on the raging flame inside Black's heart. "What the hell... H-Hey, you! Wake up! Answer me! What's Dead End, where's Honoka?!"

Ayase didn't answer. She stared vacantly at Black, her head lolling to one side, still wearing that horrible bloody grin.

"I-" Black dropped the body, which fell with a grim thud to the street. "No, I... I couldn't have... how...? She... she was taking e-everything I hit her with, h-how could that have-" She felt herself falling, her knees scraping asphalt, bile rising in her stomach.

Next to her, Ayase stared unblinking up at the evening sky...

"No," whispered Black, running her stained fingers through her hair. "God, no. I... I didn't mean to-" Run, she had to run... but her hands, her clothes, all red. She couldn't... she had to drop her-

"N-Nagisa...!" A frail, squeaky voice came from her hip satchel. "Don't do it, ~mepo! Don't change back!"

"M-Mepple?" His voice stung her, churning her insides. She didn't think it was even possible to feel worse than she already did, but hearing him- "Mepple, wh-what..."

"I can still feel Mipple, she's still sharing her power with Honoka!" said Mipple. It was a strain for him to speak, but he had to let Black know. "They're gone, but they're still transformed and they're not dead! But if you change back now-!"

Black almost threw up in her mouth. They were almost always together when they transformed back, they had never done it separately before. She had no idea what would happen, or if it was even possible. But if she did change back, and if for some reason White did too, if their powers were as linked as Black suspected they were...

They had to transform together. So if there was the slightest chance that White was still alive... she couldn't risk leaving her powerless and alone...

Black unhooked her satchel, flipped open the top with shaking fingers, and withdrew her fairy's resting form. "Mepple... where are they? Where did that girl take them?"

Mepple's voice faltered. "I... I don't know. I can barely feel them... but I know they're not-"

Tears cut through the drying blood on Black's cheeks. "Dammit... dammit, I can't-! That girl knew, and I-!"

"Nagisa, you... it's not your fault, you didn't have a choice-"

"She's dead!" Black's insides stormed as she spoke the word. "She was a human! She's dead, and I killed her...! And without her, Honoka-"

"Nagisa...?" said Mepple slowly.

There was someone behind her. Someone small, who wrapped her arms around Black's waist, embracing her...

"Gah!" Her skin crawling, Black struggled out of the hug and scrambled backward. "Who-"

For one wild moment, she thought it was Hikari, miraculously returned. But no, this girl was different, younger... Her long, blonde hair was a few shades darker than Hikari's, and her eyes were clear, a beautiful shade of red, like rubies... She wore a simple turquoise sundress inappropriate for the spring weather, and she smiled at Black with unquestionable sympathy as she held out her hand.

"Who the hell are you?!" sputtered Black. If this was a trap set by the Soujus, so help her-

The little stranger nudged Black with her hand. There was something resting on her palm, a crystalline spire of some kind.

"I don't want it," said Black, pushing it aside. The bile inside her was gone, now she only felt hollow... as empty as Ayase's battered corpse, still lying where it had fallen. "Go away."

The little girl's brows crinkled together, those lovely eyes wounded. She took Black's hand and pressed the crystal into it-

For the second time that day, Black heard a voice in her thoughts, a voice that wasn't hers... Nagisa Misumi, Cure Black. I understand your pain, and you have my deepest sympathy... but you must go with this little one, and follow where she leads you. You're in grave danger. The voice was soft, but at the same time firm and uncompromising, sounding oddly like steel.

"I- What?!" Black said aloud to the little girl. Though it hardly sounded like the voice of someone her age, the voice had to be coming from her... didn't it? "Who are you?! What's going on here?! Why should I-"

"Nagisa, who are you talking to, ~mepo?!"

"Mepple, quiet! It's her, but it's not her, just let me hear-"

You must come to the Lighthouse, you'll be safe there, said the steely voice. Hurry, there isn't much time.

"But-" Black spared a glance at Ayase's body, as if truly seeing it for the first time... then shut her eyes in disgust, regretting the action. "Th-that girl- I can't just-"

Your world's police will be here soon. If you don't get moving, they'll find you, and we won't be able to help you.

The little girl stared as the voice spoke. Her lips weren't moving at all.

"Now hold on one damn second!" said Black, climbing to her feet. She glared at the little girl, for lack of anyone else to glare at. "I can't just go waltzing off to God knows where just because some voice in my head says I should! Who are you?! Where's she taking me?!"

To safety. Please, reinforcements from Dead End will be here for you soon.

That got Black's attention. More people like the Soujus... so many had already been hurt or killed today, and that was just by two of them. She wouldn't, couldn't let this happen to Wakabadai again, not because of her-

A thought set her stomach churning again. Mom. Dad. Ryouta... "I can't go," said Black. "Not yet. If... If I'm gonna trust you and go with you, and I'm not saying I will... th-there's something I gotta do first."

END OF CHAPTER 10