(Author's Note: Strap yourselves in, everyone. Consider this a TRIGGER WARNING for scenes of intense emotional trauma, and prepare yourselves accordingly.

Also: please be sure to check out Mirror Shards, a new Shattered Skies recursive fanfiction by Storyteller222, which follows his Precure OC Kyoko as she experiences the aftermath of Dead End's war on reality. Mirror Shards isn't strictly necessary to enjoy Shattered Skies, of course, but it's a different perspective on the story... one which has my full approval, and which I'm glad to collaborate on. You can find it here on or on his DA page at deviantart.com-slash-ArtIdiotGuy222.

Also also: no, you're NOT hallucinating, I have indeed changed the story's title. Keep reading, there is an explanation.

Also also also: Remember, comments are an author's food pellets! Share the love, and consider helping me make more stuff by donating to paypal.me/bhsdesk or to my Patreon at patreon.com/tasakeru. For the latter, you now can get your name into my YouTube videos for as little as a $2 pledge [/plugplugplug]

And with that lengthy author's note out of the way, here is the sixteenth and final chapter of Shattered Skies: The Morning Lights Act II...)

Chapter 37: Fallout

At the end of the day you're another day older

And that's all you can say for the life of the poor

It's a struggle, it's a war

And there's nothing that anyone's giving

One more day standing about

What is it for?

One day less to be living!

Crossroads

The Lighthouse

Ten minutes after the Time Crash

There was silence all around.

What was there to say? How could anyone possibly react? The magnitude of the destruction Fantine described was beyond comprehension. One timeline's planet Earth was home to roughly eight billion people, already a figure impossible to visualize. Multiply that by at least ten, and again by the untold possible futures for each Facet... There were no numbers high enough. Billions times billions times billions of lives, erased in a matter of minutes. Men, women, children, animals. Entire worlds, and all the worlds connected to those worlds. It was extinction on a scale that could not be conceived by human minds.

There was silence all around. What was there to say? How could anyone possibly react?

None of them knew how much time passed before someone made a sound. "It's—" The voice was so choked with grief that it took them all a moment to realize that it came from Nagisa Misumi, Cure Black. She shook where she stood, looking like a lost child, small and alone. "I-It's gotta be a mistake," she said. "It can't... it can't be real. It can't be."

"I'm so sorry," said Fantine again, well aware of how impotent those words were.

Black's legs buckled beneath her. They simply refused to support her weight any longer. The look in her eyes—the hollow, broken stare of someone trying and failing to make sense of an unimaginable tragedy—would linger in the minds of everyone who saw it. It was as if she could see beyond the Crossroads, beyond the Lighthouse, beyond reality itself... as if she could see each and every one of the countless victims of Joker's cruelty.

No one seemed to know what to do for her. Everyone stood motionless, each trying to come to grips in their own way... but none of them cried. With the weight of Joker's crime, tears seemed insulting, if not obscene.

"Mom and Dad," said Black, hoarse with raw agony. "Ryota. Rina. Shiho. Grandma Yukishiro. Chuutaro. Akane-san. Fujipi. All our families. All our classmates. All our friends from the Garden of Light... Everyone..."

Usagi Tsukino threw her arms around Black, who did not move. Perhaps more than anyone else present, she understood what it was like to lose everything, the mind-shattering horror of feeling absolutely alone. Her mind flashed back to when she stood on the precipice overlooking the Galaxy Cauldron, near catatonic from the knowledge that the population of the galaxy at that moment consisted only of herself and Chaos. Everyone else, gone... dead or melted out of existence...

"Wait. Wait. You..." Tsubomi Hanasaki wrenched her eyes away from Black and turned to the blue-winged spark, searching it for some kind of meaning, some tiny scrap of hope. "Y-you said you saved our first ten Facets..."

The avatar's wings sagged, and its light grew dim. "I didn't save them. I stopped the entity before it could consume them completely... that was all I could do. The... the remaining ten... they've imploded and collapsed together into a single one, a gestalt Facet made of pieces of the remains, trapped in a quantum liminal state..."

Nanoha Takamachi sucked in a sharp breath and clenched her fists so tight that pain raced through the reddened, tender skin on her palms and fingertips. Of the nine survivors in the room, only she had an inkling of what that meant. She knew the terminology from her time with the TSAB... or, more precisely, from the Midchildan history books, for the multiverse had not known space-time catastrophes of a scale like this since the Warring Ages millennia ago. Those were the times of the Belkan Saint King Olivie Sägebrecht, of Claus Ignvalt of Shutra, of the first appearances of the Book of Darkness, and of other living gods and legendary figures... of savage weapons of mass destruction that tore apart entire dimensions, weapons which left scars that still lingered thousands of years later. Most of the Bureau now considered power levels of the Saint King's caliber to be unattainable by modern mages, which meant that the destruction that marred those ages was no longer supposed to be possible. An entire Vertex reduced to a quantum liminal state... events like that were listed in the highest-level TSAB theoretical emergency protocols, but the odds of one actually happening were considered so astronomically improbable that not even the Three Admirals at the peak of the organization had the training to properly handle them.

Sakura Kinomoto heard the breath and looked in her direction. The fact that Nanoha was tensing like that told her all she needed to know. "N... Nanoha-chan? What does that mean?"

Nanoha couldn't answer.

"They're... between," said Fantine. "Not alive, not dead. Not destroyed, not intact. Not anywhere and not nowhere, just... between. In perpetual transition. All the Facets, all their timelines, all their possibilities have... have been scrambled together."

"Then un-scramble them." That was Black again, trembling in Usagi's embrace, her eyes in shadow beneath her bangs. Each word dripped with pain and rage. "You're the one who stopped that entity thing, you're the one who brought us all here. For God's sake, do something..."

"I can't. I told you, I used all but a fraction of my power—"

Black seethed, a bomb about to explode. "Then what about Akemi?! Didn't we just hear that she's some super-powerful Devil or something?!" KNOW THAT THE DEVIL WALKS AMONG YOU, screamed the now-familiar words scorched inside Black's mind, and the minds of everyone present. "Get her to fix it!"

Madoka Kaname drew backward as if slapped, her face white as a sheet. Homura, she thought. Oh God, Homura. How am I ever going to—

"Miss Akemi can't help us anymore either. Even at her full strength, the scope of the destruction... it's just too much for any one being to repair."

"Then FUCK EVERYTHING!" Usagi stumbled backward as Black ripped herself from her arms and stood at her full height, her face burning scarlet, the whites of her eyes visible as perfect circles. "What's even the point of all this fighting?! What is it for?! What was the point of saving us, of bringing us here, if they can just... just..." Her outburst ended as quickly as it began... as her energy dwindled and the weight of despair descended upon her, it looked to everyone else as if she aged a decade in the blink of an eye.

Yayoi Kise and Yui Nanase clung to each other in appalled shock.

"N-Nagisa...?" Kirara Amanogawa reached for Black, a desperate attempt to provide some comfort where none could be given.

"Fuck everything," said Black again, this time in a quiet, hollow voice. A dead voice. "Fuck everything..." A lightning turn on her heel, and she charged for one of the five doorways leading out of the Crossroads, uncaring as to which one it was...

"Sempai, wait...!" It was Tsubomi who first moved to stop her. "Nagisa-sempai!"

"Don't," said Fantine, flat and listless. "Let her go. There's nothing we can do for her right now."

"But—" Tsubomi sniffled and clutched at the arms of her glasses. "But she—" How to put it into words? She and Black were the only Precure leaders left. They were the ones the others counted on... but who did the leaders count on? Everything was falling apart...

Silently, Nanoha raised an Immaterial holoprojector from the Crossroads' floor. Strange, she was the youngest of them, and yet she seemed stronger, more mature than anyone... "Fantine-san," she said. "Can you show us Vertex Three? Can you show us exactly what's happened to it?"

A long, long pause. "I can," said Fantine finally. "But I'm warning you all... you'll probably regret seeing it. If anyone else wants to leave, it's best to do it now."

Silence. There was an uncomfortable shuffling of feet as the eight of them looked from one to another, each waiting for someone else to leave first.

No one did.

"Please, show us," said Nanoha. She clasped her fingers around the spherical pendant that was Raising Heart's resting form. With Fate absent, her faithful Device was her only support.

The projector flickered to life.

"Oh my God," Usagi whispered. All the horrors she had seen, and she had never imagined anything like this.

The images from the projector were impossible to forget. Its cool blue light displayed the remaining worlds of Vertex Three, torn to shreds and rearranged like a deranged patchwork quilt...

There was a bustling market street, one that could be in any Japanese city, in the process of being blasted to dust by an enormous black shockwave. At first, it appeared to be a still picture of the moment of destruction... until they made out the pale, insubstantial specters of civilian shoppers pacing back and forth in an eternal loop, going about a mockery of their business, heedless to the frozen death barreling down on them. A few of the phantoms crossed the threshold of the shockwave and kept going, opening doors and browsing shelves that were no longer there before snapping back to the same location they had been seconds before, rewound and replayed like images on film.

An immense, withered tree perched on a shattered outcropping of stone and soil, the largest and most intact of millions of suspended fragments like it. The tree's branches were all ablaze, but the flames did not dance and flicker; each tongue stood motionless, as if made of glass. Ocean waves lapped at the bare, twisted roots poking out from the rock that the tree stood on, but when the tide drew back, they simply vanished before reappearing seconds later, without a source. There were holes in the water's surface, great gaping pits like those left in the earth by an oil derrick. The water should have flowed and spilled into those holes, but where the holes were, the water... wasn't. It made no sense to look at.

Another, smaller tree, one Tsubomi recognized as the Great Heart Tree from her world, was in the process of cleaving in two as if struck by a gigantic axe, caught forever in the instant before the island that supported it fell completely apart. A raging sandstorm twenty meters wide connected the severed halves... it drew splinters, twigs, leaves, and petals from one side of the tree, ground them to tiny particles, and restored them whole on the other side before repeating the process.

Yayoi saw part of the blasted ruin of her world as it had been when Pierrot regained his full power. Miles of barren, broken rock sat under an oppressively low sky of bruised purple clouds. In perfectly circular patches dotted at random throughout the landscape, there were swaths of houses, streets, parks and buildings buried under sheets of ice and snow... pieces of the endless blizzard that struck her home just before and her teammates faced Joker's DD Girls. The frozen blocks of Nanairogaoka were confined only to those round patches, sliced cleanly out of the city as if by a giant cookie cutter; the flurries of snowflakes blowing through them did not melt, they ceased to exist the moment they broke the perimeters of the circles.

Yui and Kirara made out scraps of Noble Academy and the surrounding town of Yumegahama, merged together with choking tangles of thorned vines the size of tree trunks that burst from every surface... the telltale signs of Dyspear and her minions loosed on the world. Phantoms of the Academy students and teachers drifted through the grounds, shifting from human to Zetsuborg and back, over and over...

All of these familiar but twisted scenes they saw, and more... not as separate places, as they should have been, but as one nightmare conglomeration of all of their cities, their homes, their worlds. Each area melted into the next so fluidly and seamlessly that it was impossible to tell where one place began and another ended. There was only one consistent feature, standing out like unhammered nails somewhere in every one of the merged locations... towers. Towers where grassland, sky, ocean, desert, city, and ruin alike swirled, braided, and twisted together and stretched upward, as if the material of their worlds were made of clay and shaped by the hand of a god... monuments to the madness that had befallen their universe. They reached kilometers high, scraping the heavens above them... heavens cracked and opened to the void like immense broken snowglobes. Mingled with the towers' primary structures were fragments from every era of history: mud huts with thatched straw roofs melded with gleaming steel and plastic skyscrapers and crags of ancient black volcanic rock. Crude stone tools emerging from within computer monitors too small to hold them, from screens stretched and distended past the boundaries of their frames like the stomachs of starving children. Horrible, misshapen things that were mixtures of century-old steam engines, sleek modern cars, and living, breathing carriage horses that screamed in agony with no one to hear...

Usagi stood motionless, mouth open, stunned beyond words.

Sakura turned from the horrific sight, her face in her hands.

Tsubomi appeared to deflate as she sank to her knees, unable to look away. In the glow of the holo, the glare from the round lenses of her glasses resembled a pair of headlights.

Yayoi and Yui hugged each other so tight that it was impossible to tell who was trying to keep who upright.

Kirara compulsively twirled a lock of hair from one of her pigtails around her index finger, winding and unwinding the rich brown strands with no apparent knowledge that she was doing so.

Nanoha's lips kept moving without sound as she wracked her brain for something, anything from her TSAB training that could begin to help with this catastrophe, but her mind was a total blank.

And Madoka fidgeted with the skirt of her school uniform, her eyes drifting back and forth from the holo to the Vertex Five doorway.

Like a falling snowflake, Fantine's avatar drifted down to the projector and switched it off. "The only thing I can suggest right now," she said, after what felt like an eternity of silence, "is to go to your friends and loved ones. Be with them. Tell them what happened, if you can. If you can't, then don't... just do whatever will bring you some comfort.

"I don't know how we can move forward from here, or how we're all supposed to cope with it. But if you still want to fight Dead End... I won't stop you anymore. All I ask is this: however you choose to make Joker pay for what he's done, please... don't do anything today. Take one day more to grieve. Take one day more to live just a little while longer. When tomorrow comes... then you can start again."

*****

USAGI

Vertex Point One

Usagi's Room

There was no other choice. Usagi Tsukino faced a decision that she dreaded to the depths of her soul, but there was no other choice.

In the hours since the Time Crash (or what passed for hours, if the concept of "hours" even meant anything here), news of more and more disasters had spread through the sanctuary. So many in the Lighthouse were suffering, atop the uncountable numbers suffering outside of it. There were five universes worth of innocent victims who needed protection, and the number of people capable of protecting them seemed to dwindle by the minute.

Michiru and Rei confessed everything, of course. Usagi now knew that Ami was alive after all... but she was in Joker's hands, forced to use her prodigious intellect in his service. Poor Haruka was still under his control, somewhere out among the worlds.

As for the other Sol Senshi and their allies? Setsuna was still missing. Mamoru and Makoto were left behind on their Earth, the latter most likely still trapped in her monstrous form. Minako was mute, and Rei's fusion with her alternate self left her unstable. Hotaru was still ready, able, and willing to fight, but the risk of her being forcibly transformed back into Mistress 9 was far too great to allow her to go into battle.

And Chibi-Usa? Oh, Usagi had been ready to tear into Chibi-Usa, to yell at her for being so stupid and reckless as to go along with Alph and Michiru's plan. They both knew that Joker could not and must not get his claws on the future Silver Crystal or Black Lady, or all would be doomed. The only thing that stopped her from an epic tirade at her future daughter was the bone-deep exhaustion that was evident on Chibi-Usa's face from the moment she materialized in the Arthra's cargo hold.

If only exhaustion were the extent of their problems. Once she got the crying, hugging, and shouting out of her system, she and Chibi-Usa made a horrifying discovery: the future Silver Crystal's light was fading. Chibi-Usa could still transform and summon her Pink Moon Stick, but that was all. Perhaps two Healing Escalations in short succession was too much even for its formidable power, or perhaps the indeterminate status of Usagi's own Crystal had a delayed ripple effect on its future counterpart; they didn't know. What it meant, for now, was that the two Escalations Chibi-Usa somehow pulled off were the last ones she would perform. That left them minus an incredible healing power, at the moment when such a power was desperately needed.

The Legendary Silver Crystal. The heirloom of the Silver Millennium, the source of thousands of years of conflict, the relic of Usagi's past life, the cornerstone of her past, present, and future... and the only way she could ever conceivably return to full strength. If they were going to save all of existence, they needed her Silver Crystal to even begin to have a shot at it.

Going out and fighting again was the last thing in the worlds Usagi wanted... the thought was still as terrifying as it had been all those years ago, that night at the Osa-P jewelry store when she fought her first Youma to save Naru's life. It never got any easier, and this time the stakes were higher than ever.

However... as much as she longed to live a normal, happy life with Mamoru and her dear friends, as much as she hated fighting, and as much as she had lost already in this war... her personal suffering was nothing compared to what would happen if she didn't put a stop to Dead End. The horror that befell Vertex Three was proof of that.

She was Usagi Tsukino. Twenty-one years old, former schoolgirl, current house fiancée, and that was about it.

But she was also known by a name that struck mortal fear in the forces of darkness, a name whispered in hushed tones throughout the galaxy. The soldier of love, the champion of justice, the Princess of the Silver Millennium, future monarch of Earth (maybe)... and evil's worst nightmare.

Sailor Moon.

Usagi wiped away a few leftover tears, curled her fingers around her brooch, nodded to herself, and stood up. There was no other choice... it was time to remind evil of how she earned that last title.

*****

SAKURA

Vertex Point Two

Kinomoto Residence

"I have to fight." That was all Sakura Kinomoto said when she returned to the facsimile of her home. A thousand other words swirled around in her mind on her way back: ways to phrase it gently, to argue when Toya, Yukito, Meilin, and Kero inevitably tried to stop her, to plead with them to let her do what she had to.

In the end, she simply walked through the door, faced the four of them, took a breath, and said "I have to fight."

She expected arguments. Cautions. Reasons why she couldn't and shouldn't go back out there, after only barely escaping. Shouting, from Kero in particular.

Instead, Toya looked her right in the eyes, nodded, and said "Yeah." That was all her brother said... and all that needed to be said.

Next to him on the couch, Yukito Tsukishiro pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and nodded. His other hand clutched Toya's tight. "We know, Sakura-chan. The word has been going around about what happened. Toya and I have talked it over, and we don't have any right to stand in your way... if Yue were here, I'm sure he would agree, too."

Kero floated before her, as somber as she had ever seen him. When he spoke, it wasn't in his usual loud, exuberant voice. He was a calm, measured, almost a whisper. That alone spoke volumes. Sakura almost didn't recognize him. "You gotta do what you gotta do. Give 'em hell, Sakura."

"Thank you... onii-chan, Yukito-san, Kero-chan." Next she turned to Meilin Li, who was red-faced and sniffling, trying desperately to hold back tears. Her arms were at her sides as if glued there, her hands balled into fists. "Meilin-chan," she said, reaching for her. "I'll need your help. I still don't really know how to fight, but if you can help teach me..."

It all came out in a rush; Meilin flung her arms around Sakura's neck and began to weep. "I can't, I can't... I'm sorry, I can't, I'm so sorry..."

"M-Meilin-chan...?"

Her words came out in fragments between sobs. "Th-the witch... the one who s-sent me here... Sh-she said if I r-really wanted to huh-help you, I had to g-give her the most precious thing I h-had..." A pause while she gasped for breath. "I gave her... I gave her my talent... It's all gone, all of it! I'm useless to you, Sakura, I'm so sorry... I'm so sorry!"

The world tilted out from under Sakura...

Kero stared at Meilin, his jaw open in disbelief. "Yer... yer kiddin'. Koumusume, you really did that?!"

Toya sighed and rubbed his temples. One didn't need magical perception to notice that Meilin hadn't bragged about her prized martial arts skills even once she since arrived at the Lighthouse. Sakura wouldn't have noticed, of course, because Sakura was Sakura... noticing when things were wrong was his job, as it was his job to keep quiet about those things unless they presented a direct danger to his family. Reluctantly letting go of Yukito's hand, he stood up from the couch and placed a hand on the girl's shoulder. Meilin was never his favorite of Sakura's circle of friends... but he understood. He had made sacrifices of his own, after all.

Emerging from the fog of shock, Sakura patted Meilin's back and let her cry it out. The two things Meilin treasured above all else were her martial arts skills and Shaoran, and now she had lost both. Since she lacked her bloodline's magical ability, Meilin threw herself into becoming the best fighter she possibly could. To give all that hard work and all that training up, just for a chance to support her... Sakura couldn't begin to imagine how hard it must have been. No wonder she hadn't said anything.

"It's okay," she said, pulling Meilin close. "Everything will be okay, somehow. It's you who's my precious friend, Meilin-chan. You're the one I need, not your talent. You're here, that's all I need to know. That's all that matters."

*****

MADOKA

Vertex Point Five

Madoka and Homura's Room

Beyond the door was either relief or despair. Madoka Kaname had raised it out of Immaterial some time ago... minutes ago? Hours? ... but she couldn't force herself to step through it... because beyond the door was either relief or despair. There were no other possible outcomes.

Everyone knew. Or at least, everyone thought they knew. The people she passed in the Lighthouse corridors, friends and strangers alike, all gave her pained looks as she walked by. Some hugged her. She didn't have the strength to hug them back. The horrible images and words that Joker's entity forced into all of their minds... by now, it was clear that they were not simply random. No, everyone knew exactly what they meant, knew the context of those visions: who she was, who Homura was, and what had happened to them both.

Mami and Kyoko spoke to her in soft, low tones, as of she might break and fall apart like a fine porcelain doll if they spoke to her louder than a whisper. With great sorrow in their eyes, they told her that what Madoka saw in that nightmarish vision was indeed the truth, as far as they knew.

Madoka left the Arthra's infirmary in a daze, in response to Fantine's summons. The horror of the attack on Vertex Three briefly distracted her from her own turmoil; how could it not, when so many others were suffering worse than she? Once she was alone, however, the visions resurfaced in her mind, selfishly playing out over and over.

If she didn't talk to Homura, she thought, she would go insane. The only thing worse than not talking to Homura would be talking to Homura and having her confirm what it chilled Madoka to her very soul to even think about.

For it was ultimately only Homura who could give her the absolute truth, one way or the other. Madoka trusted Mami and Kyoko, trusted the beliefs of Usagi and Sakura and Nanoha and all the others... but Homura's word would decide it. Homura, her best friend, her confidant, her guardian angel.

Her enemy?

Only Homura could decide that. And the only way she would ever decide would be if Madoka walked through the door that stood in front of her, waiting silently, impassively.

Beyond that door lay either relief or despair. No other possible outcomes.

Her fingers tugged at the hem of her uniform's skirt. The plaid pattern was still stained with Homura's blood. Homura bled for her, Homura risked her life for her. The idea that her Homura would ever betray her was supposed to be ridiculous, laughable.

But the only way to tell for sure was to walk through the door.

Madoka bit her lip and pushed it open...

... and found herself staring down the enormous barrel of a silver semi-automatic handgun, a barrel that smelled of fresh oil and chordite. Its hammer clicked, a sound that rang in her ears like the tolling of a church bell.

To her credit, Madoka didn't scream. The events of the last few hours left her too numb to scream. But out of instinct alone, she called a mental summons to her Soul Gem... it leapt off her middle finger and took on its true shape in her palm as she prepared to transform...

"Madoka..." She barely recognized the voice behind the gun. "Madoka, I'm so sorry, I thought you were one of the others coming to— I'm so sorry... Did I scare you? Are you hurt?"

"H-Homura-chan..." As if handling a bomb, Madoka gingerly pushed the gun aside to meet her best friend's eyes.

One look confirmed that Homura was not at all well. Madoka was used to seeing her appearance as flawless in every respect: her face a healthy if pale color, her violet eyes sharp, cool, and determined, her long raven hair silky smooth without even a hint of a tangle. Even her clothes were always impeccable: never wrinkled, never creased the wrong way, never mismatched.

The Homura before her looked like someone had dragged her through a ditch. She was a miserable, wretched figure of a girl, her hair flyaway and disheveled, her eyes bleary, bloodshot, and red-rimmed with tears, her face gone from pale to chalk-white tinged with pallid yellow. The tattered Mitakihara school uniform she wore had a gash in the chest, caked brown around its edges with dried blood. Most horrifying of all, her face and forearms bore angry red welts, the kind of wounds that fingernails left in flesh, some of which had clearly stopped bleeding only minutes before. There was no sign of the flawless Immaterial recreation of Homura's apartment; all that was behind her was an endless, flat, smooth sea of the prismatic substance, stretching as far as the eye could see.

Madoka's immediate instinct was to cry out, to embrace her, to find whoever or whatever had put Homura in this sorry state and make them pay. But— "Ho-Homura-chan..." She swallowed and spoke as calmly as she could. "Homura-chan, what happened to you?"

Only now did Homura let the gun fall to her side, her finger easing off the trigger. "Fantine. Fantine took my power and stored it away... she's punishing me for saving the rescue team, she thinks I could have exposed us." Words tumbled out of her in a haphazard stream. "I-if I still had my power, I could have stopped the attack, prevented it from happening, but she—"

My power. Anyone else might have overlooked that specific wording... hours ago, Madoka would have herself. Now, she looked Homura right in the eyes, steeled herself, and spoke, putting all her will behind her words. "Homura-chan, is it true?"

It was as if her question tore Homura's belly open with a trench knife. She lurched back a few steps, letting the gun drop to the floor with a clatter. Her words moved without sound. Her expression was so broken, so unbearable in its misery, that Madoka thought her heart would stop from grief.

But she held firm. "Is it true?"

Homura couldn't speak.

More words. Madoka forced them past the lump building in her throat. "Everyone saw it, but I had to come here to be sure, because if... if you say it's not true, I'll believe you, Homura-chan. If you tell me it's not true, th-that it's just a trick, s-something Joker did to try to drive us apart... I'll believe you, and that will be the end of it. Everything can go back to how it was before.

"I want to believe you, Homura-chan. I want to believe you with all my heart... but I need to hear you say it. Right here, right now."

Homura reached for her across inches that were like miles, a drowning girl about to slip beneath the waves of a turbulent sea. "I—"

"Tell me it's not true, Homura-chan." She felt wetness in the corners of her eyes, but she held it back. "Please, I'm begging you... look at me and tell me it's not true."

If only time would stop. If only she could stop the world once more, stop this nightmare before it could descend on her and smash her to pieces. If only she could escape into the greyscale, frozen between one moment and the next. If only she could turn over her old clockwork shield buckler once more, reset it all, slink away to the past in defeat to try again as she had countless times before.

She couldn't. She couldn't. Not only because doing so would make everything worse... she knew that for a fact now, after hundreds of failures. Not only because of that, but because doing so would prove Madoka right. Maybe she would disappear into ether with the rest of this wretched timeline as it was aborted and cast to the darkness, but in her last moments, she knew, Madoka would know that she was right, that it was true.

The only way out, the only possible escape left, was to look her beloved right in the eyes and lie to her. Just tell her everything was fine, that it was another of Joker's cruel deceptions and that none of it was real. One more little lie, atop the tower of of lies she sat upon. And Madoka would believe it, too, because Madoka was pure and sweet and kind, kinder than this hell of a universe deserved. It would be easy.

Homura opened her mouth, the words on her lips: It's not true. Three tiny little words, that was all it would take. It's not true. It would be easy. She and Madoka would be soulmates again, they could hide out here in the Lighthouse forever, away from the rest of the worlds, needing nothing, needing no one else. If she could just say those three words, It's not true, it would all be over. It would be easy.

"It's—" she stumbled. "It's..."

Madoka stared at her, patient. Expectant. She would not move, she would not speak until she had her answer.

"I-it's..." Infinite darkness welled in Homura Akemi's soul... in any other place or time, it would have burst her Soul Gem in that moment, smashing it open like an egg. The first real tears she had cried in heaven knew how many years rolled down her pallid cheeks, stinging in the welts left by her own nails as she whispered, "It's true."

A pall of deathly silence fell between them. Though they stood only inches apart, the divide between Madoka and Homura seemed to stretch, yawning open like the mouth of a great serpent until they stood on opposite sides of a canyon, a vast cleft in the earth.

Numbness. Numbness, sorrow, and a desire to simply forget what she had just heard, to forget it all... but she couldn't, Not even if she tried. The truth was out in the open, and what was there between them was gone. Madoka sniffled and pulled at her skirt, closing her eyes. She knew what she had to say. "I understand, Homura-chan." And she meant it, though she knew Homura wouldn't believe her... but the words she had yet to say ripped at her insides like starving wolves.

Homura sank to her knees, weeping, words spilling out between sobs that wrenched themselves from some bottomless well of misery inside her. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, Madoka. I had no other choice. I did it to save you... I did it because..." There was nothing left, no reason for her to go on... so this final secret came out of her freely, without pause. "Because I love you, Madoka. I love you, I've always loved you. Please, please, understand. I love you..."

A warm hand like the sun on her shoulder, a soft touch like that of an angel, of a goddess. Through the rain of tears, she saw Madoka smile, softly, fondly. "I know. I think... I think, somehow, I've always known. And... and I love you too, Homura-chan."

Homura's eyes snapped open. She froze. "No," she whispered. "No, th-that's not true. Don't say that. You should hate me. You should hate me for what I've done..."

"I love you," said Madoka again, stronger this time. "Of course I love you. I could never, ever hate you, Homura-chan..." And then, with a sorrow that matched Homura's own: "I love you, and I forgive you... but I can't trust you."

Homura felt herself falling, falling into depths she never knew were possible...

Withdrawing her hand, Madoka wiped her eyes and took a step back. "I'm sorry. I know this is... this is bigger than both of us. I... I remember everything, but I still... I still just can't. N-not right now. I'm sorry, Homura-chan, but... for now, I can't stay here. I'm... I'm going to stay with Mami-san and Kyoko-chan. Just for a while. Maybe... maybe someday we can start over, but for now..."

"No." Every word she said was another dagger in her. Again Homura reached for her across the great divide, stretching out her fingers, pleading, begging, reaching only to fall... "No! Please don't leave me! Not again, not like this...! Madoka...!"

Madoka turned away, leaving half of her heart there with her beloved. Merciless pain consumed her from within, if she didn't leave now she would collapse... "I love you, Homura-chan. Please remember that. I do love you, and I do forgive you, but... b-but you've hurt me. You've hurt me so badly that I can't even describe it... I have to go. I don't want to, but I have to go."

"No, don't...!" A wild shout, a desperate scream...

"Goodbye, Homura-chan." Madoka walked through the door, hearing it click softly shut behind her.

*****

Somehow, it was worse.

All the times she had pictured this happening, all the eventualities she was prepared for, they all ended with Madoka hating her and fleeing in tears. That would be unbearable, she thought, but it would be brief... for when she was secure in the knowledge that Madoka hated her, when she was sure there was nothing left, then she would kill herself, and her suffering would at last be over. No more pain. No more heartbreak.

But somehow, it was worse. Madoka loved her, or thought she did, but she left anyway. Worse still, she told Homura she was forgiven. As if she could redeem herself after all the lies, all the blood and death and despair and betrayal, all of which was her fault, hers alone.

Forgiveness. The idea would be funny, if it wasn't so unspeakably cruel.

Homura lay on her back amidst the ruins of her existence, dull-eyed, broken, with nothing left. Nothing, not even the safety of Madoka's hate. The stars were black and cold. The universe, sadistic as ever, denied her the finality of losing her forever... denied her the one thing that would make it okay to stop. To die, at last. No heaven above, no hell below, just sweet, cold oblivion. Peace.

She gazed at the dark clouds swirling in the amethyst gemstone set into its silver ring, the resting state of her Soul Gem. They had painted it almost pitch-black, yet here she was. Not a Witch, as she deserved to be. Not a Devil, as she had made herself. And not dead, which she should have been all along. She died a long time ago, when the Incubator ripped out her soul... yet she was still here. A walking corpse, a pathetic facsimile of a human, drained of everything she had. Empty. Worthless.

"I want to die," she said, to no one in particular. She had thought it before, but never said it aloud. "I want to die." And again, twice more: "I want to die. I want to die..."

She was not entirely surprised to hear Fantine's voice answer... "surprise" implied that one could still feel. "I'm sorry, Miss Akemi... Homura," said the Lighthouse Keeper. "I truly am."

"It's you, isn't it?" Homura closed her eyes. Fantine wasn't even worth hating anymore. "You're the reason my Soul Gem won't break. This is part of my punishment... you won't let me die because you're determined to keep torturing me."

"That's not true, and you know it."

"Then tell me, why hasn't my Soul Gem transformed into a Grief Seed? What would happen if I simply shattered this wretched thing right now? Would you even try to stop me?"

"I would stop you," said Fantine, "because losing you would cause that girl even more pain than she's been through already. She doesn't deserve that, and for that matter, neither do you. Despite what you might think of me, I'm not trying to be your enemy... you and I actually have much more in common than you know." A long pause. "And it's not me keeping you here... or if it is, I'm not consciously aware of doing it. I think it's the Lighthouse... for some reason, Soul Gems don't break here, they just... don't. Maybe this place is made of hope, of dreams, of memories... all the things that keep a Soul Gem shining in the first place."

"Ridiculous."

Another pause. When Fantine spoke again, it was in a softer, warmer tone of voice than Homura had ever heard before. "There's a book, my favorite book, about a man who grew to hate the world... for good reason, really. He was thrown in prison for stealing a single loaf of bread to feed his family. He was treated as a slave for nineteen years, chained, branded, abused, and tortured... and when he finally went free, he was still treated as a criminal by everyone, shunned everywhere he went for something that wasn't his fault. Finally, he stole from a bishop, the one person who fed him and gave him shelter for the night, the one person who showed him an act of kindness..."

Homura said nothing.

"But the bishop..." said Fantine. "Even though there was no reason to, the bishop forgave him and let him go, when with a single word, he could have sent him back to prison, back to hell. It was more than just simple forgiveness... he gave him a second chance, and the last bits of silver he left behind... something to carry the light.

"The bishop's act of mercy changed something inside him... the man rose up from the darkness and started again, dedicating his life to atoning for his sins. And though he still bled and suffered and lost, though he still had every reason to despise life for all it did to him... against all odds, he became a good man, and stayed a good man for the rest of his life."

Still Homura said nothing... but she was listening.

"I know it hurts, Homura," said Fantine. "It hurts more than you think you can survive. You think your life is over, that you're beyond all redemption. But maybe you could see in this some higher plan. Maybe... maybe you've just been given your silver candlesticks..."

*****

NAGISA

Vertex Point Three

Nagisa's Room

"I don't know what else to do, Honoka." Nagisa Misumi, Cure Black, sat with her back against a blank Immaterial wall, head on her knees, adrift in her own sorrow. Just like back then, on that awful day when the Dark Seeds separated them... "I keep messing up."

Honoka Yukishiro sighed and sat down next to her, patting her shoulder. "Oh, Nagisa..."

"I keep messing up," Black repeated without looking up at her. "I'm supposed to be this... this legendary leader, one of the first Precure, but... but who am I? I couldn't save you. I couldn't save Hikari, Hikaru, Pollun, or Lulun. I couldn't save Iona. I couldn't save any of Joker's prisoners. And now our whole damn world is gone... what am I supposed to do...?"

Honoka's fingers tightened on her. "You already know the answer, Nagisa. I know you do. We've been through this before, more than once."

"But this is—" Black sputtered. "This is... all those other times were different, Honoka! All those other times, I had you fighting alongside me! You're the one who keeps me on track, who figures stuff out and makes plans..."

Honoka's eyes twinkled with soft amusement. "And how often do you follow my plans?"

That gave Black pause. "... Not too often," she said, running her hand through her hair in embarrassment.

"Exactly," said Honoka. "Even when I'm right there next to you, you always go your own way and do your own thing. And you know what? Most of the time, it works. And when it doesn't work... you either make it work, or you try something else."

"But do I even..." Black frowned, searching for the right words. "Do I even have the right to be a leader after all the mistakes I've made? I mean... if it hadn't been for Akemi..." THE DEVIL WALKS AMONG YOU... Her features crinkled together. A brief surge of wrath lit inside her like a match and died down just as quickly... as furious as she was with Akemi, at the knowledge that she was hiding all that power all along, that she could have done something with it and stopped all this madness... she couldn't afford to be distracted by it right now. "Or if they had taken me instead of poor Iona..."

"But they didn't," said Honoka. "You're still here. You're still alive, and you can still fight."

"That's not much..."

"But maybe it's enough. Listen, Nagisa: I might be better than you are at thinking, but you're better than I am at doing. When everything is on the line, when everything seems hopeless... you don't think. You do... and there's nothing and no one that can stop you. That's why you're the leader of the Precure. That's why you're my best friend. I know you, Nagisa, and I know you don't quit when things get hard. You're too stubborn for that."

Black smiled for the first time in what felt like years. It was a faint, weak, bittersweet smile... but it was there. "You really think I can pull this off on my own?"

Grasping her by the shoulders, Honoka looked her right in the eyes. "I don't just think you can, I know you can. You'll figure something out, Nagisa. You always do."

"Honoka..." Black leaned forward to embrace her. "Thank you. You're the best."

"Don't forget," said Honoka, whispering in her ear, "I may not really be here, but a part of me is always with you, no matter what. I've always got your back, partner..."

"I know." Black's eyelids stung, her vision blurred. "I know." When she blinked her eyes to clear them, Honoka's image was gone, melted back into the Immaterial from whence she came. Of course it wasn't the real Honoka... but the duplicate was authentic enough where it counted.

A tired sigh floated up from the pouch at her hip. "Feeling... better... ~mepo?" said Mepple. The burst of vigor he received from coming close to Mipple back at the Merry-Go-Round was fleeting, dwindling away now that they were separated again... but there were things he needed to do before he fell back to sleep. After all, Black couldn't function without him.

Black rapped the pouch with her knuckles, but lightly. "You stinker," she said. "I can't believe you spent all that energy making an Immaterial Honoka, just to give me a pep-talk..."

"Well..." Mepple wheezed, with just a little of his usual snark, "it worked... didn't it...?"

"Yeah." Black nodded and stood up, wiping her eyes on the back of her gauntlet. "Yeah, it worked. Thanks, Mepple."

"So stop... lying around... feeling sorry for yourself," said Mepple, making one final effort. "Get off your lazy butt... and do what the real Honoka... would tell you to do. Figure... something out... ~mepo..."

"I think I already have an idea."

*****

TSUBOMI

TSAB L-Class Inspection Cruiser Arthra

Dr. Atenza's Temporary Office

"It was a foreign contaminant." Dark circles flourished beneath Doctor Mariel Atenza's eyes, and no amount of personal hygiene regimens could remove them. Days like this put years on a person.

Tsubomi stared at her without comprehension. "A... what...?"

Mariel rubbed the bridge of her nose. The pads on the bridge of her glasses were beginning to give her a headache. "Forgive me, Tsubomi. The last few hours have been a nightmare. Like I told you, I'm not a medical doctor... I'm an engineer; my degrees are in cybernetics and Device construction and maintenance. The only reason I'm here with the medical staff is because they need all the extra help they can get. I know the basics of how to explain what happened to Erika, but Chief Nurse Yugo is the one with expertise. Most of the other options for healing her are off the table: Fantine and Miss Akemi..." Mariel and Tsubomi both cringed as the words howled out again: KNOW THAT THE DEVIL... "Sorry. They've both lost most of their power, Tsukino's Silver Crystal is gone, Chibi-Usa's Crystal is fading, Omori's in no condition to heal anyone, and Shamal..." She trailed off. "As of this moment, Chief Yugo is the best we have. Frankly, I wish he were here, but Admiral Lindy's ordered him to get some sleep in his quarters. He needs it."

"I thought Yugo-san was a provisional nurse...?"

"He was. Emergency promotion. Tsubomi..." Mariel leaned forward across her desk. "If it were just a shattered knee, we wouldn't be having this conversation. However... from what we've been able to piece together from the rest of the rescue team, Erika's knee was shattered while she was in contact with some kind of gelatinous magitech fluid. The shock of her injury broke her transformation, and at least eight minutes passed between when she was wounded and when she was teleported to the cargo hold. In that time... the gel seeped into her marrow."

"Wh... what does that mean?" Tsubomi's skin began to crawl. "Is Erika all right?"

"She's alive, and she's stable for now. But..." Mariel sighed and rose from her desk. It was a flimsy, plastic, mass-produced one, hastily fabricated from the ship's replicator. Not like her favorite desk at Headquarters, which was now so much dust in the void. "I'm sorry," she said again. "Come with me. You should see this for yourself."

Tsubomi saw nothing of the ship as they walked to the recovery ward... her mind was miles away. She had seen enough medical dramas to know that something terrible had happened, but not enough to grasp what Doctor Atenza was trying to tell her. Inwardly she cursed herself for not paying closer attention... how was she supposed to help Erika cope with whatever happened if she didn't understand it herself? Erika needed a friend whom she could count on for anything, and if Erika couldn't count on her, her best friend...

The doors swished open.

"E... Erika...?"

It appeared that there was little wrong with her. Erika Kurumi lay in a futuristic hospital bed, asleep or unconscious, it was difficult to tell which. An IV snaked from one wrist to a drip bag at the bed's side, suspended by a spell circle. She was deathly pale, but her breathing was strong, slow, and even... she was even snoring a little. Sweet, warm relief flooded Tsubomi... maybe she really was just asleep, and everything would be fine when she woke up...

Except the outline of Erika's body beneath the pristine linen sheets was wrong. It was uneven, lopsided. The rolling hills of white fabric draped over her right leg were about a third of a meter longer than—

It clicked. Tsubomi's hands clapped over her mouth.

*****

YAYOI

Vertex Point Three

Yayoi and Yui's Room

They sat together in the dark, their hands entwined. Neither Yayoi Kise nor Yui Nanase had spoken for a long time. As things were, they hardly needed to speak. The two had achieved that special kind of closeness, where one partner could tell what the other was thinking... a kind of magic that put Precure powers to shame.

"Yui-chan," said Yayoi finally. She took a deep breath to steady herself. "Kaioh-san told me. My... my friends, they're..." An uncontrollable shudder wracked her body. "Joker's doing horrible things to them. A-and... and th-there's another me. Another me from another world, a me that he's... that he's made into something evil and twisted like he is..." A deeper shudder. What Kirara told her about her other self was almost too awful to bear: an innocent version of herself that had nothing to do with Precure, the Bad End Kingdom, or Dead End, an other self that was snatched from her home, tortured, brainwashed into becoming living weapon. Yayoi wanted to hide from it all, she wanted to stay here with Yui, she wanted to leave the fighting to others and live here in the Lighthouse in quiet bliss. But if she did that, if she hid away after knowing what she knew now... she would have no right to be with Yui, none at all. Because that other Yayoi, Kanna, had lost her family, her innocense, all the things she treasured... including her chance of finding someone like Yui. "If... if I—" she began.

"Yes." Yui nodded, though she knew her partner couldn't see.

A soft giggle, despite herself. "You don't even know what I was about to ask."

"I made a guess."

"But if... if I said I had to go out and fight along with the others... even if it meant I might... m-might not come b-back... would you still—"

"I told you already," said Yui, softly bumping her forehead against Yayoi's. "Yes."

Sweet, blessed relief warmed her heart. "Yui-chan..." She knew she would say that, of course, but it was another thing altogether to hear it said.

"You're forgetting. I may not have Cure powers of my own, but I know how this stuff works. If you decide you have to fight, there's no way I'll stop you."

"Thank you, Yui-chan."

"Before you go off to fight for love and justice, though..." Yui moved closer. "There's something you need first."

"Hmm?"

"Two things, actually. Here's the first one."

"Mmm..."

"Mmm."

After coming up for air, Yui moved for the light. "And second... you need some paper. Real paper, not Immaterial."

"Paper?" Yayoi blinked. "What for?"

"What else? To make a symbol. We need a sign, to rally people..."

*****

KIRARA

TSAB L-Class Inspection Cruiser Arthra

Second Recovery Ward

It would all be fine once Yuko woke up.

It would all be fine.

Kirara Amanogawa kept telling herself that, reciting it in her mind as a litany. They lost their chance to rescue the other prisoners, they lost Iona, and they lost their entire worlds... but at least, by some miracle, they brought Yuko back. Yuko's healing power as Cure Honey was unmatched by any other Precure Kirara could remember. One little tap with her baton, and injuries just disappeared. Once she woke up, Yuko could turn Towa back to normal, free Iona and give her her body back, heal Erika's leg, fix whatever was wrong with Alph... heck, she could probably even heal herself of the damage the Merry-Go-Round did to her.

The Arthra's nurses didn't mince words: what was done to Yuko was barbaric. During the debriefing after they emerged from the intensive care ward, they threw around a lot of medical terms that were too technical for Kirara to understand, but when they turned on the holographic diagrams for visual aid... she vomited, she couldn't help it. The nurses determined that removing Yuko from Joker's monstrosity cost her the top five outer layers of skin from her arms and legs, and that the nerve fibers within her dermal tissue had been directly connected to Merry-Go-Round's structure through unknown means. Had Yuko not been in Cure form when she was captured, or had the nurses been just a few minutes slower in rushing her to the ICU, the trauma and shock would have killed her by themselves. No hospital on Earth would have been able to save her; the Arthra's medical personnel and facilities were severely limited, but thankfully, their available magitech was advanced enough that Yuko would eventually make a full recovery... eventually. So they claimed.

Truth be told, Kirara didn't care one whit about what Vertex Four magitech could or couldn't do. Precure magic, she knew, was something different altogether, not bound by science or math or whatever rules the nurses' stuff followed. She had seen it before: as Cure Honey, Yuko could heal people in seconds. Why wouldn't she be able to heal herself? It only made sense.

So once the procedures were over and Yuko's condition stabilized, she asked the nurses if it was safe to move Yuko to a bed beside Towa's in the recovery ward. She fed them a few choice lines about how Yuko should be able to see familiar faces as soon as she woke up, and how Towa could probably use the extra company. The nurses gave in. It was some of her finest work, an acting job her father would have been proud of. Both of those were perfectly legitimate reasons to want Yuko close by, of course, but she didn't dare tell them the real reason... She wanted to be there the moment Yuko woke up so that Yuko—compassionate, optimistic, cheerful-to-a-fault Yuko—could tell her herself that everything would be fine. Only then would Kirara believe it. Only then would her insides untangle themselves from the dense knot they had been in ever since their mission fell apart around their ears.

Now she sat along with Towa, keeping vigil at the bedside, watching Yuko as she lay entangled in miles of tubes and cables attached to beeping readouts, her limbs buried under layers and layers of protective wrappings inches thick... gauze, Kirara supposed, or whatever they used instead of gauze on other planets.

Next to her, Towa Akagi waited, her silver-striped hair bundled up in a thick shawl. Every few minutes, she would pat Kirara's back or rub the kinks out of her shoulders. The chairs in the infirmary were murder on Kirara's posture; she had complained about them more than once in private, because of course a model had to keep perfect posture to stay in the business. Losing her home and her world wasn't going to stop Kirara from pursuing her dreams. It was one of the things Towa loved about her.

Forgiving her wasn't easy. When Towa thought back on the icy terror that flooded her veins when the MIRROR-Kirara vanished before her eyes... the sting of betrayal was like thorny vines constricting around her heart. But she understood; it was done out of love. It was done because Kirara couldn't bear to see her suffer, and she couldn't bear the thought of what she saw as sitting around doing nothing. That was Kirara: always active, never able to sit still when there was work to be done... Towa loved that about her. They loved each other, and forgiveness was part of love.

It was with great joy that Kirara saw Yuko's soft, kind eyes, golden brown as her Cure form's namesake, crack open. She restrained herself, barely, from seizing Yuko's hand, swathed in white... instead she grabbed hold of Towa next to her, prompting a short, surprised cry from the elfin princess.

"Ki-Kirara...!"

"See?!" Kirara thought she might start bawling any second now, but she didn't care. Just this once, to hell with her image. "See, Towa-chi? She's waking up... oh, thank God...! Everybody's gonna be fine, you'll see..."

Yuko peered up at the ceiling through half-closed lids, licked her dry, cracked lips, and coughed. She was still horrendously pale, gaunt and sickly, but she was awake and moving. "Ki..." she said, her voice like the creaking of an old, rusty door. "... Ki...rara...chan...?"

"I'm here, YuuYuu." Kirara sniffled. "You r-really had us scared for a while..."

Towa being Towa, she bowed and dispensed a formality. "Omori-sempai, welcome back."

"I—" Yuko coughed again. Her throat felt like sandpaper.

"Oh geez, sorry! Here." With trembling hands, Kirara filled a glass with water, ripped open a straw, and gently put the tip to Yuko's mouth.

"Thank... you..." said Yuko after drinking deeply. She shifted on her linens, gazing curiously at her swaddled limbs as if wondering how they got there. Her fingers sizzled as she tried moving them a bit within their casings, and a startled moan tore itself from within her body.

"Don't try to move too much." Kirara bit her lip. "You've been through a lot, and you still need to heal up."

That was good advice. Yuko settled back into her pillow and relaxed. Her head felt swimmy... probably from painkillers and sedatives, but it wasn't exactly an unpleasant feeling. She tried to smile. "I'm..." Speaking at more than a whisper was too much for her poor throat, so she lowered her voice. "I'm s-sure... Hime-chan... and Iona-chan... are worried sick... wh-where...?"

After all they had been through, Kirara didn't have the heart to lie. Cringing, she looked away. "They... I'm so sorry, YuuYuu. Hime got captured back on Earth, and... and Iona... they turned her into a monster..."

Yuko's face fell. "I... I was hoping... we could all eat rice together... when I woke up..."

"You still can," said Kirara. Her free hand balled into a white-knuckled fist, and she smiled bright... but, Towa noted, it was her runway smile. The smile she wore when she had to step out before the crowd or the cameras, no matter how tired she was, or how much else she had to do, no matter what else was happening. "You can, because when you transform, you can heal yourself right away, and th-then we can fix all the others... we can fix everything. Right, YuuYuu?"

"O-of course," said Yuko. "I'll... I'll try."

"That's your cue, Towa-chi." Kirara beamed and squeezed Towa's hand in hers.

With great reverence, Towa drew Yuko's PreChan Mirror out of the shoulder bag that hung at her side. The proper cards were already loaded and ready. Working carefully so as not to hurt her, she placed the compact in Yuko's bandaged hand and curled her stiff fingers around it, making certain it was firm in her grip before she pulled away. "Whenever you're ready, Yuko-sempai."

Yuko gave a tired little nod and closed her eyes. The invocation came out as little more than a hoarse whisper: "Precure... Kururin Mirror Change..."

Nothing happened. No flash of light, no sparkles, nothing. The compact stayed still in Yuko's hand.

"Precure... Kururin Mirror Change!" said Yuko, a little bit stronger.

It was as if the compact was asleep. Or dead.

"Kururin... Mirror... Change..."

Still nothing.

"That..." Kirara sputtered, clawing for control. "Th-there's gotta be some reason it's not working. T-Towa-chi, you put the right cards in, right?"

"I... I am quite sure I did..."

"Then maybe it's this room, they've got some of those a-anti magic field thingies Miss Fluffy told us about in here, you know, so the patients don't get hurt..."

"But would that not limit the doctors' magic as well?"

"Oh geez, you're right. Well then, maybe you just need a couple bowls of rice, eh, YuuYuu? Get some food in you, and you'll be back to normal, right...?"

Yuko looked up at her in that kind, understanding, motherly Yuko way and smiled sadly. "Kirara-chan... it's all right."

"Y-yeah," said Kirara, almost frantic by now. She had a death grip on Towa's hand. "Everything's gonna be fine, you just need some more time, right? Everything's gonna be... just fine..."

"Kirara-chan," said Yuko, more firmly. "Please. Don't force yourself... to be happy..."

That did it. There was only so long that the façade could hold up, there was only so much that it could take before it cracked. Kirara sank into one of the infirmary chairs she hated so much, covered her face in her hands, and wept loud, ugly sobs... the kind that no amount of make-up could hide, the kind that would show on her face for a day or more no matter what she did. The kind she had been holding back ever since Towa first woke up in this blasted room...

"Oh, Kirara..." Towa embraced her and held her close, letting her cry it out.

"See...?" said Yuko with a small sigh. "It's not good to... fake being okay. It's... supposed to hurt, and you have to... be honest... about how bad it feels... so that you can move on." Slowly, stiffly, so as not to cause herself any more harm than necessary, Yuko relaxed her grip on her PreChan Mirror, then shifted her arm and fingers in their wrappings and moved her hand onto Kirara's leg. "I know things look bad... but... it'll be... fine," she said before she drifted back to sleep, smiling.

*****

NANOHA

TSAB L-Class Inspection Cruiser Arthra

Hayate's Quarters

Hayate Yagami woke up feeling like she needed another few weeks of sleep. She hurt... she hurt in ways she didn't think possible, in places she didn't have names for. Back when her body was crippled by the Book of Darkness, she grew used to pain... it was part of her everyday life, so much so that once she recovered in the aftermath, she thought pain would never bother her again. After all, hadn't she been through worse?

Oh, how wrong she was.

"Hayate-chan!" Only one person that could be... Two hands squeezed hers as she blinked her eyes and winced from glare of the overhead lights.

"H-hey..." she said to Nanoha Takamachi, making a heroic effort to smile. "Sorry to... trouble you..."

"Not at all. I'm just glad you're back."

"Yeah."

"How do you feel?"

"Awful." Hayate groaned and sank back into her pillow. "My everything hurts... an' I feel like I've used up ten years of my mana..."

"You've been through a lot," said Nanoha, in the understatement of the century, "but you're safe now, so just lie still."

"Don't think I got much of a choice, but thanks anyway..."

"How much do you remember?"

Hayate paused, sorting through the tangle of her memories. As far as she knew, no one had ever stayed in Unison as long as she had... there were probably whole books waiting to be written on the side effects. Books... Bitter cold filled the pit of her stomach, and a spear of guilt pierced through the haze of her exhaustion. "Reinforce," she whispered, turning her head to look Nanoha in the eyes. "I saw her, at the end. Not the Will, not Rein, Reinforce. The real one. She came back..."

Nanoha cringed. "Hayate-chan, I—"

"An'... an' then I lost her again. Everything was fallin' apart, an' she saved me... but she..." Hayate's eyes blurred with tears. "I'm so sorry, Nanoha-chan. I... I remember almost everything, up to when we Unisoned with that thing and everything went... weird... We did so many awful things, hurt so many people... We slaughtered the Navy's whole fleet. It was my fault, I couldn't stop us... they put a Relic in me, an' I couldn't—"

"It's not your fault." Nanoha gripped her hand tighter. Her fingertips felt odd. "None of it is your fault."

"An'..." Iron bands squeezed her heart. "The Wolkenritter. They got... they got bound to the Book again, like they were before. We shut them all down, an' now the Book's gone, the Wolkenritter are gone, Rein's gone, my mana's gone... Nanoha-chan, what are we gonna do...?"

Against all odds, Nanoha kept up a strong face for her friend. Inside, however, she churned with turmoil. If the Knights were gone... more urgently, if Shamal was gone, then that meant... "Hayate-chan," she said, swallowing hard. "We'll figure it out, I promise, but th-there's... there's something you need to know before you see Fate-chan. It's... it's about Alph..."

*****

FATE

TSAB L-Class Inspection Cruiser Arthra

Intensive Care Unit

The three of them sat together outside the ICU, hand in hand in hand. Waiting. Waiting, and dreading what they would hear when the nurses returned...

Fate Testarossa Harlaown had her family's hands in iron grips, Lindy on one side, Chrono on the other. She had not let go of either of them for hours. Everything after they rushed Alph to the ICU was one long blur of gnawing anxiety and guilt. Alph, her oldest friend and constant companion, was suffering horribly, and she could do nothing. How she wished she had strength like Lindy and Chrono. Both of them were her pillars, supporting her and keeping her from total collapse. How she wished Nanoha was here... but Nanoha was tending to Hayate as she awoke, and would not be here for another hour at least. Silently, Fate prayed that the two of them would arrive before... before the nurses came back. With her two partners and her foster mother and brother, maybe she could make it through this.

The door swished open, and Provisional Nurse Balzac Yugo emerged, haggard and drawn. "Admiral," he said, inclining his head to Lindy, then to Fate and Chrono. "Cadet, Commander."

Still linked by their hands, the three Harlaowns sat up in their chairs...

"You're..." said Yugo, raising his hand to stop them. "You're going to want to sit back down."

*****

"It's advanced neural degradation." Nurse Yugo turned away from them. Damn it all, this wasn't fair. Proper doctors had to remain professional, had to keep control of their emotions in even the worst situations... but he was only a nurse, he had nowhere near enough training for this. Seeing poor Fate lost and helpless after already having suffered so much... it wasn't fair. "We've done all we can do, but... but that... that woman's pseudo-virus was designed specifically for Alph, by someone that knew every aspect of her physiology and how to take advantage of it. She... she accounted for everything, everything we would try to do to cure her or reverse the damage. It's getting more and more difficult to even keep her sedated."

Fate stood silent, ashen-faced and staring at nothing.

Lindy fixed him with a steel glare. "Nurse Yugo, that's not acceptable. You must be able to do something."

"There are only two workable options, given our current resources," said Yugo. "The pseudo-virus is... is decaying Alph from inside. It's similar to the disease she had when Cadet Harlaown first contracted her, but its effects have been duplicated and amplified. Cadet, if you were to extract her soul again, and construct a new body for her, like you did before—"

Fate bit her lip and nodded. "I'll do it."

"Please, listen. Given the damage that's already been done, performing another soul extraction and transfer would... would effectively reset her," said Yugo. "She would look the same, but she would be... a clone. Not the same Alph she was before, with none of her memories of you or of anything else. And given the length of time it's been since the original extraction... I estimate that there would only be a five percent chance of success, at best."

"I— but—"

"There's more." Yugo shut his eyes tight. "This pseudo-virus is advanced beyond anything we've ever seen, anything we could have anticipated. It's the product of a genius-level intellect finding the precise scientific methods to make Alph suffer as much as possible. There's a very real possibility that that... woman... could have predicted that you would try another extraction, and programmed the virus's behavior accordingly in case of such an event. Even if the extraction was successful... for all we know, Alph's new body could relapse at almost any time."

Only the hands gripping hers kept Fate upright. "You... you said there were two options. What... what's the second one...?"

Nurse Yugo said nothing.

"Nurse Yugo...?"

"The second option..." he said after a long, dark pall of silence, "... is to release her from her contract."

An icy fog settled on Fate's shoulders and permeated her skin, sinking into her heart, her very being.

Yugo's voice was soft and careful. "Contracting her saved her life all those years ago, Cadet. Even though you left the terms of that contract open, it bound her life to yours. Her body is a creation of your mana, and she can't exist without you. If you release her from it..." There was no need to finish the sentence. "... I promise, if she can still feel anything, it would be quick and painless. Like going to sleep."

"No." The word forced itself from Fate's suddenly tightened throat. "No. No, there has to be another way. There has to be... I can't..."
"I'm so sorry," said Yugo. He couldn't bear to meet her eye. "Without Shamal, without any other proper doctors or healers... there's nothing else we can do."

"Call Cadet Yagami." Now Chrono spoke up, his voice trembling with anger. "She recreated a copy of the Book once before, she must be able to recreate Shamal from a shell program, or an archive, or something—"

"Chrono's right," said Lindy. "That should be well within Hayate's abilities, shouldn't it?"

Yugo shook his head. "Cadet Yagami's mana is critically drained from her Unison, it will take weeks at minimum to replenish. Even if she were capable of making a new Book and new Wolkenritter right at this moment... they wouldn't have the millennia of knowledge and expertise of the ones that were lost, they'd be starting fresh. Alph simply doesn't have time... at the rate the pseudo-virus is progressing..."

Fate could feel herself floating away, lighter than air, disconnected from herself. It seemed to be a stranger's lips that asked the question. "H-how long?"

"Hours," said Yugo. "A day, at most."

And again, as if she were possessed: "Let me see her."

*****

Quarantine

The room was dark, isolated from the rest of the ward. Every unnecessary light was switched off, even the bulkhead running lights from the corridor outside. The first thing Fate made out was a thick, transparent plasteel wall stretching from floor to ceiling, cordoning off one half of the room from the other... even in the near-darkness, she could see the reflection when the door slid open. A shape lay on the other side of the wall, unmoving. She took a hesitant few steps foward, feeling like her feet were made of densest lead, her footfalls clanging in her ears as she approached the plasteel wall...

"I'm... I'm going to turn on the lights slowly, and only to twenty-five percent," said Yugo's voice behind her. "She... hasn't been reacting well to full power."

"D-do it."

Yugo's hand moved over a holocontrol. Little by little, the room lit itself...

"A-Alph...?"

She was in wolf form, curled on the floor. As she roused herself from sleep, tufts of orange and red fur fell away from her... Fate saw a veritable carpet of it littered around her where she lay, and great bare patches of skin in her coat that exposed long gashes sealed with dried blood. Panting softly, Alph climbed to her feet and shook herself... more fur fell in fiery rain from her sides and flanks.

"Alph..." Fate whispered, taking another step toward the wall as the lights rose bit by bit. "Alph, it's me... It's Fate..." Her single ruby eye met Alph's deep blue ones, there was a flicker between them...

And Alph flung herself at the plasteel wall, bristling with hackles raised, and erupted in a string of frenzied barks and growls. The wall shuddered with the impact, but did not break. Infuriated, she clawed at it with her front paws, baying at the girl on the other side, her jaws lined with froth that left streaks on the clear, clean surface...

Fate's heart plunged to somewhere deep in her stomach. "No." Once again, that freezing fog, seeping through her skin. "Alph, please... Please..."

Her voice only aggravated Alph further. Her barking took on high-pitched whining tones...

"Alph," said Fate, sagging to the floor. She put her hands up against the wall, as if she could embrace Alph through it. If only she could hold Alph in her arms, she could make everything right again...

Alph yelped and fled to the back wall as she came close, shrieking louder than ever in panic. The sound was agonizing, it haunted Fate to her core...

"Nurse Yugo, that's enough!" Lindy's command was barely audible over the din. "This is too cruel for them both... Turn out the lights, we need to leave—"

"No!" Fate did not move. "No, don't..."

"Fate..." Chrono took a cautious step toward his sister. "Fate, she's not—"

"I... I know." From the doorway, they could see her shoulders shaking. "I know."

Silently, Lindy put her hand on her son's shoulder and shook her head.

"Alph..." said Fate, resting her forehead against the wall, coming as close to her old friend as it allowed. She would not look away, she promised herself she would not look away. "A-Alph, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I love you. I love you so much..."

Alph screamed, scrabbling uselessly at the back wall. Unable to find purchase, she began tearing at herself with her teeth and foreclaws in crazed frustration.

"Alph..." Fate intoned. Her second and final Order. All the words she thought to say at this moment seemed to mean less than nothing... if there was anything of her faithful familiar left in there, she already everything Fate could have said. She had to know. They had shared blood, suffered together, been through so much pain... "Alph..." And this, she realized, was the only thing that she could do to release Alph from a kind of pain she couldn't imagine. The words stuck in her throat; she swallowed, wiped her eye with the back of her glove to give her one last clear look, and spoke the words of her Order as strong as she could: "A-Alph, your contract... is fulfilled."

The change that came over her was immediate. Her barking stopped, her clawing stopped, and slowly, softly, Alph lay down on the floor, resting her head upon her paws just like she always did in front of a cozy fire back home. The maddened light in her eyes faded; they were deep and peaceful blue once more as she closed them for the last time. Fate could have sworn she saw her smile a happy, sleepy dog smile, one that promised pleasant dreams, and even better things to come once she woke...

Without a sound, Alph's body faded away into particles of golden light.

"Fate..."

"Fate!"

It was Chrono—stoic, no-nonsense Chrono—, who reached her first, throwing his arms around her, his eyes already spilling over with earnest tears. Lindy was next, cradling her daughter to her chest as she wailed the unspeakable grief of one who has lost something that can never be replaced.

At the doorway, Nurse Yugo closed his own teary eyes and rested his head against the frame. He was so tired...

"It's all right," said Lindy, stroking Fate's hair as they both cried. "It's all right, Fate. You did the right thing... you saved her. You're so brave, and I'm so proud of you."

"F-Fate!" Chrono wept into her shoulder. He had not shed tears like this since... he couldn't remember the last time. "It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay..."

"C-C-Chrono..." Fate gasped between heaving sobs. "L-Lindy-san..." And then, as if reconsidering: "Mother."

All Lindy could say was, "I'm here."

"Mother. Mother..."

*****

TSAB L-Class Inspection Cruiser Arthra

Auxiliary Crew Quarters, Stern

Hours Later

A sense of gloom pervaded every corridor of the Arthra. There were so few of them left that the news did not take long to spread, even to the auxiliary crew quarters at the stern of the ship, just twenty meters from where the resurrected Will burst open the hull, a lifetime ago.

Three of these normally empty quarters were now occupied. The occupants could see one through the sealed doors, and speak to each other well enough... but two of them did not know what to say, and they didn't feel much like talking, anyway. The third was an exception, but as ever, no one was listening.

Once again, Gurio Umino sighed and ran a hand through his hair. At least it wasn't a prison cell... but it might as well be, he still couldn't leave. Admiral Lindy had ordered him here for lack of any other place to put him. As he wasn't formally part of the crew, she couldn't technically throw him in the brig for his part in helping to organize Operation Batman... but she could confine him to quarters far away from Naru, which was barely any better. Yuuno Scrya was in the quarters on the opposite side and two doors down, for the same reason. And two doors down from him, placed under an Output Limiter and monitored at all times, was the tiny defector from Dead End, Sailor Iron Mouse.

That one was a strange case. As far as Umino was concerned, she belonged in a cell in the brig, at least until she could prove without doubts that she was indeed on their side. But, Admiral Lindy explained, keeping the stasis fields and restraint systems in the brig up at all times cost power, power that could otherwise be diverted to keep the Arthra's critical systems running despite all the damage she had sustained. So sticking a Limiter Device on Iron Mouse's back, locking her in an empty quarters, and magnetically sealing the door on her was just as effective as a cell, but more economical.

"... and they wouldn't have escaped at all if it weren't for me, anyway!" Iron Mouse was saying. "I helped save them from the Bad End Cures, you know! And I told them what the Merry-Go-Round does! But this is how they thank me?! How is that fair?!"

Umino groaned and turned over on his bunk, folding his pillow over his ears. This was far from the first time he had to listen to this particular complaint Iron Mouse had about her lot in life. Perhaps this was part of his punishment. "Yuuno-kun," he called to the other neighboring cell, "are you finished with that book yet?"

"Almost," said Yuuno. Under usual circumstances, he would have blazed through it in hours, but... he kept getting distracted, his focus drifting back to poor Alph. Poor Alph, and poor Fate...

"Well, what do you think?" Umino asked.

"... I mean, sure, I was part of Shadow Galactica and Dead End," Iron Mouse continued. Everyone ignored her. "Yeah, I helped enslave a planet or two, and destroy a couple more, but compared to Joker, is that so bad...?"

"It's really something," said Yuuno. "The mechanics of the wizardry are fascinating. You say this series was written thirty years ago?"

"Something like that, yeah. Got a favorite character?"

"... And all the stupid crewmembers will give me to eat is cheese! Do you know how much I hate cheese?! It's basically curdled, moldy cow fat, it's disgusting...! But nooo, they all think it's so hilarious to give cheese to the mouse girl... as if no one's ever thought of that before..."

"Fred, the white hole, definitely."

Umino cringed. "Um."

Footsteps down the corridor, audible over Iron Mouse's continued griping and moaning. Umino sat up, confused. "Who is that? It's not mealtime yet, is it?"

Yuuno checked a holo-readout. "No, it's still 0950 hours."

The officer came down the corridor with his hands behind his back, nodding respectfully to Yuuno. For reasons Umino couldn't understand, the crew seemed spooked by him, even behind bars. "Scrya, sir," he said. Stopping in front of Umino's corridor, his fingers flew over the maglock controls. "Mr. Umino? Come with me, please."

Dread swirled in Umino's belly. "M-me...?" After all this time, they weren't going to execute him for treason, were they? "You're... you're not... wh-where are you taking me?"

"... and they could at least give me a decent pillow, too, but noooo. Why was I ever revived? My life stinks..."

The officer rolled his eyes and tried his best to block out the sound of their prisoner. To Umino, he said, "You're needed down in the infirmary, stat."

"The..." Now the dread escalated into raw panic. "But... but I'm not even a doctor! I'm a code jockey...!"

"It's not you, sir. It's your wife..."

*****

TSAB L-Class Inspection Cruiser Arthra

Main Infirmary

"Naru-chan!" Usagi Tsukino flew through the doors at great speed, skidding to a stop and ruining one of her heels. The rest of the Big Five were already there, in varying states of worry: Sakura Kinomoto on the left, wedged into one of the tiny, uncomfortable plasteel chairs, swinging her Sealing Key on its necklace from one finger. Nanoha Takamachi next to her, her eyes tired and worn, her hands clasped together. Across from her, an uncharacteristically troubled and gloomy Madoka Kaname, lost in thought. And on her feet, pacing back and forth and nearly wearing a path in the floor, was Nagisa Misumi, Cure Black.

Black was the first to greet her. "Oi, Usagi-san. Did you just now hear?" She sounded... energized, more so than she had been since escaping from Dead End.

"I heard they needed me because of Naru-chan, and I..." Usagi stopped to wheeze for breath. She had run something like half a kilometer through the Lighthouse before remembering that she could simply summon an Immaterial door for herself. "Hoo... hah... I kinda missed the rest. Is... is she...?"

A prolonged, pained scream filtered through the wall. She recognized the voice immediately: Naru.

Fingers of fear gripped Usagi's heart. "No. No. Don't tell me she's—"

Sakura struggled to speak. "Usagi-san, Naru-san is... it's her..."

The rest went unheard, muffled by a new sound as Naru's scream died down: a smack, followed by the first, prolonged cry of a newborn infant.

Emotions flashed across Usagi's face in a dizzying display: fear, shock, confusion, back to fear... but the one she settled on was joy. Pure, sunshine-warm joy. "Oh God. I can't believe I forgot! Her baby...!"

Black grinned like a fool. "Sounds like a healthy set of lungs to me."

"Her baby!" Usagi repeated, bouncing up and down like her namesake. "Naru-chan's a mommy! I'm an aunt!"

"Um, Usagi-san, I don't think that's exactly how that works..."

Usagi wasn't listening, rambling to herself: "Oh God, it's junior high health class all over again! I'm gonna need to learn how to change diapers, and make formula, and..." Unprompted, she burst into a happy cry of her own, an ear-splitting bawl that further incensed the cranky newborn in the delivery room...

Sakura and Nanoha plugged their ears and stared at each other, shrugging and smiling sheepishly.

*****

So tiny. Tiny and wrinkly and blotchy and about the size and shape of a lumpy, wriggly loaf of bread, but... but she was the most gorgeous thing Usagi thought she had ever seen. "Naru-chan, she's beautiful," she said at barely more than a whisper... as Naru's attending nurse insisted.

"Thank you." From her bed, Naru smiled with tired, radiantly happy eyes. Her hand clutched that of Gurio, her beloved husband. She hadn't let go in more than an hour. "I know it's been a stressful day, I hate to make things even more busy, but... I guess she just couldn't wait any longer."

Sakura carefully took the baby from Usagi's arms, marveling at her little button nose, her thin whisps of curly red hair like her mother's, her teeny fingers... "Hi there," she said, rocking her back and forth. "I'm Sakura..."

Black shot a thumbs-up at the proud father, who was cleaning his glasses of tear marks for the fifth time. "Way to go, Umino-san." She understood that a hearty clap on the back was the usual way of congratulating a new dad... but she was still transformed, after all, and Umino was just a regular human. She would have probably broken a few ribs. Still, she shone with cheer... the baby wasn't the only good news she had for the others, but her news could wait. This was the Uminos' moment.

Next the baby went to Nanoha, who squealed with delight through her own tears. Of course, this didn't make the hurt of the last few hours go away, not entirely... but with this little one in her arms, breathing softly and fast asleep, the loss seemed... muffled, somehow.

And finally to Madoka, who made no sound as the new arrival passed to her. Her insides were a swirl of worry and conflict, but... but when the baby nuzzled her in her slumber, pressing her soft, warm cheek against her breast, she had the strangest feeling, like it wasn't all bad after all...

Usagi sniffled. "So Naru-chan... what's her name? I mean, we can't just call her 'the baby', right?"

"Of course not." Naru chuckled weakly. "I already have a name picked out... but I'm waiting for someone else to get here first before I tell."

"Someone else?" Usagi blinked. "I mean, I'm sure Rei-chan and Minako-chan want to see her... oh, and Luna and Artemis and Diana too!"

"Usagi," said Gurio. "Maybe we should wait a week or two before we introduce her to the cats..."

"But they're not cat cats! They're Mau cats, that's different!"

"Same old odango-head." Gurio sighed and leaned down to his wife, planting a kiss on her sweaty forehead. "Come on, you could at least tell me... Whisper it to me, or something."

"Not yet. Just be patient."

Five minutes later, the guest Naru was waiting for stepped through the door... and it was a good thing that the baby had passed back to her mother by then. Anyone else would have likely dropped her in shock.

Homura Akemi stood there in stony silence. She was far removed from the wreck she had been when Madoka last saw her, having healed her scratches and fixed her hair and clothes with magic, but anyone with eyes could tell she was barely holding together.

In the corner of the room, Madoka sat bolt upright. Any words she could think to say died a swift death long before they reached her mouth.

Homura glowered at them all, save for Madoka. She even glowered at the baby, unimpressed, uncaring. "... I was told to come here," she said, her voice flat. "What is it?"

The reply came from the redheaded woman Homura didn't know, cradling her child to her chest. "There you are," she said. "Homura... I'd like you to meet Akemi. Akemi Umino."

Homura stared.

Pandemonium threatened to erupt... only furious glares and warnings from the nurse suppressed the shouts of disbelief and protest. As it was, they were delivered in a series of loud whispers:

"You can't be serious, Naru-chan!"

"Her?!"

"I... I think you might want to reconsider..."

"How... how could you..."

Even Gurio gaped at Naru, wondering if she had perhaps lost her mind during a difficult labor.

One of the voices raised in opposition was Homura herself, who was still in the room only so she could tell this stranger exactly how absurd the notion was. "You're insane," she said to Naru without looking at the others.

"Mmm-mm." Naru shook her head in the negative. "Nope. I thought it over."

"Do you really hate your child that much?" said Homura.

"Not at all."

"Then why on earth would you—"

"Come here."

"No," said Homura, smelling a trap.

But Naru wouldn't give; she fixed Homura with a fearsome gaze, one that might even cow a Witch. "Homura. Come here."

Homura did, brushing past a speechless Madoka without a second glance. Looking at her was too painful to bear. She hoped that this nonsense would be over once the woman proved whatever ludicrous point she was trying to make...

And then the baby was pushed into her arms, and... and something about the tiny bundle of warmth touched even Homura's cold, black, broken heart... It was something she was utterly unprepared for, a surge of primal emotion that cut through her endless sorrow and self-loathing like the blade of a knife. Seconds ago, she had no more feeling for this child than for a random rock or stone or piece of dirt; the one person she cared about in all the worlds had rejected her, and all was lost. Now... for reasons she could not understand for the life of her, she could not bring herself to let the baby go, no matter how she tried. "I—" she started to say. "But... you... I can't..."

"It's a lovely name, 'Akemi,'" Naru said softly. "It means 'bright beauty', doesn't it?"

Homura's thoughts swam with confusion. This wasn't right. "But... you know. Everyone knows... what I did... how could you..."

"Of course I know." Naru nodded. "But the way I see it... no matter what else you did before... it's because of you that she's here now, that we're all still here. No matter what your reasons were, you saved all of us. The past is in the past, and now it's a new morning, a new day... our Akemi's living proof."

"You're insane," said Homura again, quieter this time, almost pleading. "I'm a monster. I'm the Devil, the lowest of the low. What I've done is unforgivable. I don't deserve this, and neither does the child!"

"There's some old American book I read in school," said Naru, gazing at her baby's face, "that says that the Devil actually needs sympathy and forgiveness more than anyone. You say you're a monster..." A wry smirk. "But if you're so bad and evil and rotten to the core... why are you still holding her like that?"

Homura had no answer.

One by one, the girls of the five Vertices, Gurio, and the nurse stared at each other, all sharing the same thought: Naru's logic, baffling as it seemed at first, was beginning to make a strange kind of sense.

"Akemi," said Gurio, testing it out. "Akemi Umino. Akemi. I... I kind of like it."

Homura looked down at the child, still helpless with confusion, but warm and touched for reasons she could in no way explain. Of their own accord, her arms cradled the baby closer to her chest, and she cooed softly. A thought floated through her mind, disconnected from anything else: Silver candlesticks.

Across the room, Madoka watched, trying to process the strangest sight she had ever seen: Homura Akemi, the most important person in her life, the center of a maelstrom of baffling, complex, contradictory feelings, holding baby Akemi Umino so gently, too stunned to speak. Something inside Madoka cherished that sight... Bizarre as it was, some part of her thought that Homura had never looked more beautiful.

*****

Crossroads

The Lighthouse

One Week After the Time Crash

It was Black who called them all there. No one knew exactly for what purpose, but Usagi, Sakura, Nanoha, and Madoka all arrived at the nexus of the Lighthouse to find the Precure leader still as inexplicably chipper as she had been for most of the last seven days... The Cure Black who stormed out of the same room a week ago seemed like an entirely different person.

Even stranger was the presence of Yayoi Kise and Yui Nanase next to her, both nervous but clearly excited. Yayoi clutched a rolled-up piece of replicated paper to her chest, breathing hard, holding tight to Yui's hand.

"Usagi-san," said Black, nodding in her direction. "Sakura-chan, Nanoha-chan, Madoka-chan. Glad you could all make it."

Weird as it was, Nanoha felt good to see someone happy after the past week of helping Fate and her family to try to cope. "What's this all about?"

"Hang on." Black held up a hand. "Fantine-san? You here too?"

The holographic spark flared to life and flapped its wings. "Always... though I'm wondering what this is about."

"What else? It's about how I think we've all been having the same thoughts," said Black, leaning over the Immaterial table that rose out of the floor to meet her. "'What do we do?' 'Where do we go from here?' 'How do we fight back?'"

Usagi nodded. "You've got that right."

So did Sakura. "Mmm-hmm."

And Madoka: "Well, yes, but—"

"We messed up," said Black. Her face darkened. "All of us on the rescue team messed up, and Iona and Alph-san both paid the price for it..."

Everyone cringed.

"... but," Black continued, "I figured out our problem. Our problem was, we tried to take them on with just nine of us, and do it as a secret. Not this time..." Her eyes sparkled. "This time, we need a plan. We need to get organized. And we need all of us. It's a new day, it's time to start over."

"I agree." Sakura found herself speaking up, to her surprise. "If we're going to fight back and save everyone, it's time to join together."

"So for one thing," said Black, "we need to make sure we can all fight, whether we have our full powers or training or not. I've been talking with Doctor Atenza... Mary-san... and I think she's found a way that I can help you guys, even though White's not here. We're still hashing out the details, but if this works... we can start hitting Joker where it hurts."

"Those of us who can't fight have been doing our part, too," said Yui, proudly pushing up her glasses. "Yayoi-chan and I thought, if we're going to get organized, we need a name and we need a symbol... Yayoi-chan?"

Blushing fiercely, Yayoi unrolled the paper she carried, spreading it open across the table. "Th-this is what Yui-chan and I drew together. I-I know it's not much, but..."

"Oh wow..." said Madoka, her eyes widening. "You both made this...?"

It was a simple design, but an effective one: a black silhouette of a crystalline lighthouse seen from somewhere at its base, standing out stark on the white field of paper and shining its beacon out at them all. Behind it rose a blazing madder red rising sun design, with five beams of light extending proud from its surface.

Yayoi fidgeted in place. "Y-you see? It's our Lighthouse, and a rising sun, because, you know, we're all from Japan. The sun has five rays, one for each of our Vertices. And it's rising to represent the new day about to dawn... h-how we're gonna beat back the darkness."

"And it's red and black, the colors of rebellion," Yui added.

"I know, it's m-maybe a little corny, but..." Yayoi's eyes shone with the need for approval. "What do you think?"

Usagi drank in each line and curve of the design, committing it to memory. Finally she smiled and put a hand on Yayoi's shoulder. "You really are amazing, Yayoi-chan."

Yayoi turned almost as red as her symbol's sun and emitted a nervous, happy giggle.

While they were all enraptured by the design, Yui gave her girlfriend a well-earned V-symbol and a wink, mouthing: That's two!

"As for our name..." Black continued. "I've been thinking a lot about Akemi-chan... I think seeing her and holding her for the first time was... was a chance for all of us to start over. Think about it: we were all going through hell last week, but that one little baby... she changed something in all of us, even in Homura." She looked at Madoka for emphasis.

"... Yeah." Madoka nodded assent. "I noticed it too. It was like... she let us start over. All the terrible things still happened to us, but... but it's..."

"A new day," said Nanoha. "A new morning."

"So," said Black, "I think we should call ourselves... the Morning Lights."

Silence all around.

Black eyed the spark, which had been floating silently over her shoulder all this time. "What do you think, Fantine-san?"

To their surprise, the spark began to sing... quietly, in the same beautiful voice that first brought them all to the Crossroads. It was a tune that sounded vaguely familiar. "'Even the darkest night will end, and the sun will rise...'" Fantine's avatar bobbed up and down, an approximation of a nod. "I think it's perfect."

"So we're all agreed, then." Black extended a hand over the table, looking at each of the others in turn. "We are the Morning Lights."

Usagi placed her hand on Black's. "The Morning Lights."

Sakura was next. "The Morning Lights."

Nanoha followed afterward. "The Morning Lights."

Madoka added her hand to the formation. "The Morning Lights!"

And at urging from the others, Yayoi and Yui both joined in and chorused: "The Morning Lights..."

There was no fanfare, no triumphant sting of brass to mark the moment... but they all felt something, something they couldn't put words to. All seven exchanged sheepish glances and hesitant smiles...

It was Sakura who spoke first. "You know," she said, "I've been thinking. Joker's taken so many people and things from us... our homes. Our loved ones. Our friends. Our worlds." She blinked and sniffled before continuing. "He's... he's stolen so much... but as much as we've been hurt, as much as we've all lost... and we've all lost something... we have something that Joker will never have, something he can never steal and never understand. It's small, and it may not seem like much, but it's something scarier than any villain or monster he has, and more powerful than any weapon he can throw at us. As long as we have it and he doesn't..." A lone tear rolled down her cheek. "... I think everything will be all right, somehow."

Fantine laughed. It was a soft, musical sound. "I think you're on to something."

Sakura looked at Madoka, who nodded in understanding. "Hope."

*****

At the end of the day there's another day dawning

And the sun in the morning is waiting to rise

Like the waves crash on the sand

Like a storm that'll break any second

There's a hunger in the land

There's a reckoning still to be reckoned

And there's gonna be hell to pay...

At the end of the day!

- Claude-Michael Schönberg and Herbert Kretzmer

"A people, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul."

- Victor Hugo

END OF ACT II: UNFAILING

NEXT...

SHATTERED SKIES:

THE MORNING LIGHTS

ACT III - UNBREAKING