Chapter 56: Look Down

-VERTEX ONE: 15.556984-

Professor Tomoe's Lab

Three Kilometers Underground

Azabu-Juuban, Minato Ward, Tokyo

The whirlwind of emotions shifting through Professor Souichi Tomoe's visible eye evaporated like morning dew. Now, what feelings lay beneath his stony stare, if there were any at all, were a mystery. His expression was now cold... not in the way that ice is cold, but in the way that a wall is cold, everyone and everything in sight subjected to the same impersonal apathy. It suited the lab's pristine surfaces, its fluorescent lights that glared harsh and white but provided no warmth, and its sterile, antiseptic, too-clean smell, which reminded Hotaru Tomoe, Sailor Saturn, of the many hospital rooms she had spent time in."You've grown," Professor Tomoe said to his daughter, scanning her up and down. "And you seem in optimal health. If this is what the life of a Sailor Senshi has done for you, I can't say I'm not pleased in that regard, at least."

"Papa..." Saturn fought back a sob. Here before her, alive again, was the father she had not seen in over five years. Returning like this, though, imprisoning her and Chibi-Moon in order to do heaven knew what to them, was far worse than never seeing him again at all. Her own emotions were a war of opposites, not helped in the least by the memories of two conflicting timelines with two very different versions of him. One Souichi Tomoe was a decent man and an innocent victim of the Daimon, but the other... wasn't. "I-I'm sorry, but..." She loathed the question, but couldn't stand to leave it unasked. "Which... which Papa am I talking to right now?" She honestly couldn't tell, and that admission sickened her.

Tomoe remained silent.

"Yeah," said Chibi-Usa Tsukino, Sailor Chibi-Moon, with pitch-black sarcasm. Her own feelings toward the professor were clear as day. "For that matter, is it Professor Tomoe, or do you prefer to be called Germatoid?"

For an instant, something very much like hatred flashed across Tomoe's face. "Germatoid is dead," he said, and then it was gone, buried beneath the mask of neutrality. "I am no more or less than Souichi Tomoe. My body possesses no cybernetics. No implanted Daimon eggs, pods, or tissue. No Dead End technology or augmentation of any kind. I am purely human, as I always should have been. As for which Souichi Tomoe I am: the answer is both. And neither."

"I-I don't understand," said Saturn. Her mind spun like a dervish. Him being controlled or possessed again, that she could handle. Not this. "Please, don't tell me that you—"

"Joined Dead End of my own volition? Yes," said Tomoe, placid as the surface of a lake. "No one is controlling me. No one is manipulating me. I was given free will and free rein to operate here as I pleased. I asked only for one thing: when and if you appeared, Hotaru, I asked that you be brought to me safe and unharmed. Regretfully, Tellu chose to ignore my orders." He pressed against the bridge of his glasses with one finger. As before, like a tide flowing in, venom washed over his tone as he spoke. For reasons Saturn couldn't fathom, he turned his bitter glare to the wall on their left, which was nothing but blank, flat bedrock. "Had the Time Reaper not interfered, I would have made her pay dearly for that. I can only assume that Joker summoned it on my behalf, without bothering to consult me first." The tide receded. By the time he faced them again, he was emotionless once more. "But Joker doesn't matter. What matters is that you're here. That's all that matters."

"I—" Words kept getting lost on the way to Saturn's lips. How could this be? How could she begin to process that the person willingly helping Dead End wasn't the monster that wore her father's face, not the one that stole his body, but the genuine Souichi Tomoe? The Souichi Tomoe from before the tragedy, before the nightmares, before the death, the kind father whom she loved from memories long ago, the father whom she thought lost forever? "But why... why would Joker revive you as yourself and not as Germatoid?"

"Revive me?" A moment of confusion, then understanding, and then there was anguish: deep and raw, sharp as broken glass, the pain of an old wound torn open and bleeding anew. The words seemed to crush him as a tangible force, one that bent him double until he could only stand by hanging onto the edge of a lab bench. "They let you think I was dead," he said, agonized. His hands gripped the bench so tight that his knuckles turned bone white. "Of course they did. The Sailor Senshi... let you think I was dead..."

*****

Subway Tunnels, Underground

The events of the past half-hour had given Madoka Kaname much to think about. Traversing the empty, deadened subway tunnels in the dark with only the glow of her Soul Gem to guide her, there wasn't much to do but think, think and plod forward... alongside her. Homura Akemi.

Between herself and Homura there was silence, and had been since they entered the northbound tunnel back at the station. Not the awkward, crawling horror silence of the last few weeks, thank goodness, but a sort of lull, a gentle and comfortable absence of distracting noise. Willingly or not, both of them bared their true feelings back there. It was perhaps the first time they had done so in— Madoka's senses keened with vertigo trying to comprehend it, as conflicting memories of so many variants of the same year fought for dominance in her mind. Did time even have a meaning when it came to how long Homura kept her imprisoned? She didn't know. So maybe their fight was the first time they had been honest with each other since her ascension... which now felt distant and alien, like memories taken from someone else's life.

Being the Law of Cycles. She felt like she should remember what it was like with crystal clarity. One didn't just forget the outcome of the most important decision she had ever made, or would ever make. It was maddening, because there were disconnected bits and pieces she did recall: a sense of connection, despite being apart from everyone and everything she had ever known. She was there in every place, every moment, and every possibility, from beginning to end. Experiencing it all at once was never terrifying or overwhelming, somehow. It felt as natural to her as breathing, and she went about her duties with joy in her heart. Joy, tinged with poignant sadness for the human life that came before...

Yes, she remembered missing her family and friends while she was the Law of Cycles. Sometimes she wept for that life. Despite that loss, though, she firmly believed she had made the right choice, the only choice, when making her wish. Homura didn't seem to think that was the case, or at least the Incubators apparently made her think so... That led to disaster, to her betrayal. The Homura of a few months ago would have believed she was the one who made the right choice. The Homura of a few months ago would never apologize for her actions, and would never offer to die to atone for the suffering she caused.

Somehow, she was different now, and it wasn't just their fight that did it. Homura's misery and desperation seemed at last under control, and she was more open with her feelings than Madoka ever remembered her being. Was it the time they spent away from each other that made the difference? Or were her makeshift therapy sessions—or, dare she say it, was her friendship—with Hotaru the primary reason for that? She wasn't sure. Homura was being more emotionally honest, and that was wonderful. However, there was something more that Madoka suspected was going on here, something more she wouldn't say. Just a puzzle piece or two was missing, and everything would make sense once they were in place.

"Madoka."

"Eep! S-sorry!" So caught up in her thoughts was she that she completely failed to notice that Homura had come to a stop, and she was now ten steps ahead of her. Madoka doubled back. "What is it, Homura-chan?"

"Do you hear something?"

Madoka closed her eyes and listened. Now that she mentioned it... "I... think so. A sort of high-pitched humming sound, or a whine? Like how you can hear the lights on in a room when it's quiet enough..."

"That's it," said Homura. "I think it's coming closer. We're probably in for another fight. Are you ready?"

Madoka held out her hand and summoned her bow. Its sparkling pink flame cast dancing shadows over the tunnel walls. "As I'll ever be, I guess."

Homura's hand found hers, she grasped it tight. The whine was just this side of inaudible, but it was definitely there, not just her imagination. Just a single, even tone, but it made her stomach tighten.

Another sound grew steadily louder: THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD. Regular footsteps, too heavy to be made by anything natural. Even the biggest elephants at the zoo didn't shake the ground like that when they walked. THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD. It approached them, the heartbeat of Hell, rattling their bones with each fall. Madoka's nerves sang a song of tension. A circle of light approached from the nearest branch off to the right. Around them, the air grew stale and dry like just before a storm. There was a strange, mellow scent carried on it, like potpourri, and an ominous crackling sound... She braced herself for anything...

It was Mimete, holding her staff raised high like a proud soldier carrying a flag. The black star at its peak gave off just enough light to illuminate herself and keep her transport mostly hidden in shadow. She was some two-and-a-half meters off the floor, one leg planted forward of the other in a pose that Madoka associated with illustrations of pirates, standing atop a huge... something. "Well, well, just looky here!" she crowed with strident glee. "So-called weak, pathetic little Mimete turns out to be the last one standing~. I guess that makes me the strongest of the Witches 5 by default... not to mention the smartest and most beautiful!"

Madoka stared. For a moment, she swore that the Death Buster was riding a tank as her transport came slowly, ponderously around the corner of a tunnel barely big enough for it. Tanks didn't walk, though... at least, not any tanks she knew. So what on earth was it?

"You should have run away when you had the chance," said Homura next to her. From behind her shield she drew... eep. Madoka didn't know what kind of gun it was exactly, but it was huge and long and black, a vicious thing with belt-fed ammunition that looked like it could wipe out a whole battalion by itself. Her finger curled into firing position. "This time, you die."

"Ah ah ah!" Mimete wagged a finger at her as if disciplining a naughty child. It shouldn't be possible to make a face like that, Madoka thought. "Grinning" or "leering" were too weak to describe what she was doing with her mouth. The only appropriate word—which probably wasn't even a real word—was "smugging". She smugged from her perch and increased the glow from her staff as she raised it high. "I know you're supposed to be the edgy anti-hero and all, but don't flex that itchy trigger finger just yet. Surely even you wouldn't want to hurt a valuable ally... or don't you recognize her?"

What was revealed by the black star's glow brought a frankly absurd thought to Madoka's mind at first: a dinosaur, Dead End's forces had tamed a dinosaur. Given some of the things she had seen, she expected that of Joker's army. The beast certainly had the size and build of one. Its main body was a hulk around five meters long and at least three wide, covered in bottle-green scales. Slung low to the ground, it stood on eight thick legs like tree stumps. However, as she took in more details, its resemblance to a more modern animal became apparent: it had a grotesquely elongated snout measuring two-thirds its body length... a mouth big enough to swallow both her and Homura whole at once if they were laid end to end, lined on either side with dozens of crooked yellowed fangs like railroad spikes. What she initially took for dual rows of bony ridges along its back were something far stranger... alternating boulder-sized strawberries and blade-thin slices of shortcake, jutting at angles out of its armored flesh. The way the dim light gleamed off of them confirmed that despite their appearance, they were as sharp and hard as its teeth. A great battle-scarred tail loomed out of the darkness, impaled through in dozens of places by what appeared to be barren tree branches. As she watched, the branches spat off great fat sparks and tiny forks of electricity like broken wires, and by their light she saw that some unknown entity had seemingly cut off the end of the organic tail and grafted the rear portion of an airplane to it, securing it in place with crude and uneven stitching.

Madoka's mind raced. The mishmash of elements that composed the crocodilian beast made it almost like a Witch, but not quite. Its form was more coherent by comparison... solid and physical, and all the more grotesque for how natural it seemed. True Witches were wrong on a primal level, aberrations of reality that didn't belong anywhere. This thing, it was like someone made it.

That ruled out it being a normal Witch. Plus that, it was active outside of a Labyrinth, and Mimete seemed to think they would recognize it and stay their— "Oh no," she whispered as it clicked. She made a grab for Homura's arm and squeezed tight. "Homura-chan, it's Jupiter! That's Sailor Jupiter!"

Homura stared at her, then back at the beast. One could almost see the gears turning in her violet eyes, and Madoka didn't need telepathy to know what she was thinking: No matter who she is, if she's become a Witch, then there's nothing we can do for her but to end her suffering.

Mimete's cackle rebounded off the walls of the tunnel's confined space, as if there were dozens more Mimetes laughing along with her. "Ding ding ding! You guessed it! Indeed this is—or was—the illustrious Sailor Jupiter. I won't pretend to know everything about Pseudo-Witches and Evil Nuts and how all that works in your world..." All traces of her faux-cutesy manner vanished, replaced by a grin far too similar to Joker's. "But I don't need to know everything, do I? All I have to do is seize the advantage." A long, snakelike ribbon of mauve energy sprung from the palm of her free hand. "Go on, Pseudo-Jupiter! Show them your talent!" She raised the whip and snapped her wrist in a violent motion. It struck the poor creature's hide with a deafening crack.

All along the length of its—her—snout, irregular clusters of eyes snapped open, a dozen or more that ranged from grape- to baseball-sized and all the same shade of milky white-pink. Triangular pupils dilated wide, no two pointed in the same direction. Her titanic mouth tilted open at a near ninety-degree angle, revealing an additional three rows of horrible teeth set into each jaw. Her tongue, her tongue was lined with the same teeth, and her upper palate was a gnarled mess of scar tissue and badly healed puncture wounds as a result. Her mighty chest swelled, and Madoka braced herself for a roar, a growl, even a hiss. Instead, the sound that emerged was unmistakably human. Its pitch was scaled down to the bottom of the vocal register, but the sound was a human voice, an agonized scream loud enough to shake the tunnel to its foundations...

Madoka, dodge!

Homura's telepathic warning came just this side of too late. Madoka hurled herself at the tunnel wall, and Pseudo-Jupiter charged past, her jaws slamming open and closed like bear traps, bellowing that awful too-human scream. The tail swiped in her direction soon after like an immense spiked club, shedding a hail of sparks. Madoka went down, belly to the floor. One of the tail's rear fins missed her by a few hairs and slammed into the tunnel wall. Again the foundations trembled, dust rained from above. The impact left a crater fifty centimeters deep into the solid concrete wall. A few more blows like that, and the whole tunnel would come down around their ears.

Homura-chan! she sent, sickened by the sight. Ideas?

She couldn't see where Homura was, nor could she have heard her over Pseudo-Jupiter's howling, but the reply came nonetheless, calm and cold as ever: She's a Witch, or near enough. You know what has to be done.

No, I won't accept that! Madoka shook her head, though there was no one to see it. Mimete said she's a Pseudo-Witch, the usual rules might not apply! If there's any chance we can reach her and change her back to normal, we have to take that chance...

A mental sigh. I was afraid you would say something like that. Whatever your plan is, I'm sure I'll hate it.

Well, um. And Madoka told her.

Homura's prediction was spot on.

*****

Professor Tomoe's Lab

"No." Saturn's denial was plaintive, soft as a baby's breath. She shook her head, chilled to the bone. "No, that's not true. Th-there was no other choice, the Senshi had to take me... You were dead, Papa, you were!"

"In one timeline, yes." Tomoe stood up straight, rearranging his slim body back into some semblance of order. "In the other, I was very much alive when that woman found us. Setsuna Meioh, Sailor Pluto... the one who stole you from me." Even his icy mask couldn't hide the anger that seethed in Pluto's name, bubbling under the surface like magma. "You had been reborn as an infant, and we were together again. I had lost my work, my career, four years of my life... but whenever I held you, whenever I felt your warmth, your tiny heartbeat..." Here his voice trembled like a plucked string. "It didn't matter what state I was in. I had you, so I was happy. I was content. We had a chance to begin again.

"And then that woman came." Now the magma threatened to boil up from below. "She took you from me with hardly a word, and for over five years I saw nothing, heard nothing of you. The Sailor Senshi, you see, they took pains to hide all records of your existence from me, from everyone. The authorities were useless. After enough times begging them for help, they became convinced that I was 'delusional' from the grief of losing you in the destruction of the Omega Area, that you were never reborn at all. Why would they believe the ravings of a disgraced scientist, a known madman? Near the end, I almost doubted it myself.

"Only Joker told me the truth. Only from him did I learn that you were even still alive. My existence was an inconvenience to the Sailor Senshi and to their plans for you, so they hid you from your father, your only family—"

"That's not true!" cried Saturn, aghast. "Papa, you can't trust Joker, he'd do anything to get you on his side! Please, listen to yourself! You can't seriously believe that what he says is the truth!"

"I can, I do, and it is." That calm, that terrible calm. "I am a scientist, I don't make claims based on unsubstantiated evidence. Tennoh, Kaioh, and Meioh have all been lying to you, Hotaru. Whether by omission or not, it's an undisputed fact."

Hot tears rolled down Saturn's cheeks. She desperately cast around for an anchor, for something to hold on to in this insanity. Her gaze fell on Chibi-Moon next to her, almost swallowed up by the cylindrical restraints. "Ch-Chibi-Moon," she said, quaking in her own bonds. "I-it's not true, r-right? I don't remember, I was too little... but it can't be!"

Chibi-Moon's features shook with fury. She pulled hard at the restraints, and one of them actually groaned. "Of course it's not true! Puu and the others have made mistakes before, sure, but they'd never keep something like that from you! They love you, Saturn, you know that!" She shifted her invective to the professor. "I won't let you fill her head with this bullshit, you monster! You don't know how much she's missed you, how much she's mourned for you..."

"And you do?" said Tomoe.

That stopped her dead in her tracks. "I—"

Saturn's mouth fell open in shock.

Tomoe pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and approached Chibi-Moon, slowly, as if he had all the time in the world. The harsh fluorescent lights made his lenses glow like searchlights. "You," he said, once more cold and hard as stainless steel. "It was you who drove the wedge between us in the first place, you who was the catalyst. Long before Meioh, you appeared and stole Hotaru's heart. And here you are years later, with the sheer audacity to claim you know my daughter, my flesh and blood, better than I do? How dare you."

Chibi-Moon sagged like a deflated balloon, too stunned to speak.

"But it doesn't matter anymore. I forgive you," said Tomoe.

That sentence fell upon the lab like a thunderclap. Saturn and Chibi-Moon stared at each other, stupefied. Had they heard correctly?

"I may still be angry, but I forgive you," Tomoe repeated. "You were a child. You didn't know any better, and you were instrumental in saving her from my mistakes. My grievances against some of your number are what they are, but I must acknowledge you for that."

"Papa," said Saturn. She blinked away fresh tears and sucked in a breath. "Chibi-Usa didn't take anything from me, or from you. It's just the opposite. She saved me, she's my best friend..." Smiling hurt, but she did it anyway. "... and she's my partner. We're in love."

Tomoe closed his visible eye, and there was no longer any question: her father, her real father, was there in that moment. There was no war, there was no Joker, there were no Sailor Senshi or Daimon or universes in peril. He was simply a father, grieving that his beloved daughter had grown up without him. Regret pooled in every line and detail of his face, and Saturn thought her heart might tear in two at the sight.

When he spoke next, it was to Chibi-Moon. "I truly apologize for this," he said softly. "I knew you were close friends, but I had no idea that there was more. In better circumstances, it would have been my pleasure to get to know you. If Hotaru loves you, then you must be someone truly extraordinary."

Lost and floundering, Chibi-Moon stammered, "Th-thanks, I guess... but if that's how you really feel, then you know what you need to do, right? You need to let us go. We can help you, we can take you with us and keep you safe!"

"It's too late for me." Tomoe hung his head, his voice was low and hollow as a dirge. "Too late for any of us. The forces I've helped set in motion are beyond anyone's control."

Chibi-Moon leaned forward as much as she was able. "Look, you know us, we've done the impossible before! Right now, there's about two dozen of us from all five universes fighting Dead End, and we keep saving more. I know it's a long shot, but all of us have lost someone or something, and all of us have fought to get back up again! You can do it too!"

A long, pregnant pause. "I admit, I am tempted. But I'm already damned for what I've done... Wherever you are, there's no place for me there." His hand clenched into a fist. "However, I can still control the ending of our story, Hotaru. I promised myself that much."

"Papa..." Saturn wanted to scream, she wanted to cry, she wanted to rush into Tomoe's arms and feel his embrace again, she wanted Chibi-Moon to tell her everything would be all right. All these conflicting wants, a hurricane of desires ripping apart her in a hundred different ways at once. She wanted, she wanted, she didn't know what she wanted, other than not this. Anything but this.

"We don't have much time left," said Tomoe. "So I'll ask this of you now, Hotaru, once and only once." He pivoted to face Saturn again directly, took off his glasses, and set them on the nearest lab bench. Then, to her astonishment, the proudest and most dignified man she had ever known went down on his knees before her and clasped his hands together, as if in prayer. "Come back to me. Leave all of this behind. We can be a family again, without the Sailor Senshi or any of this madness. I'll even allow Chibi-Usa to come with us, if you'll only say yes. Please, I beg of you." Tears gathered at the corners of his eyes.

Something inside of Saturn died with those words, she felt it wither away like a fallen cherry blossom. Saying no should have been so easy, it was the right thing to do. It was the only choice. But she couldn't bring herself to say no... nor could she say yes. All this terrible power at her fingertips, and she was helpless to give a simple answer.

"Saturn..." said Chibi-Moon next to her. It wasn't an admonition or a push to say one thing or the other. That one word was a show of support, of pure faith in whatever decision she made. Chibi-Moon, as always, trusted her to make up her own mind. Her father was right, she truly was someone extraordinary.

A few sobs leaked from her. She drew in breaths to stop the rest, raised her head, and looked her father in the eyes. Words came to her, familiar as breathing: "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold..." she said. "I... I'm sorry, Papa... I can't. I want to, but I can't. What we're fighting for is too important. If you've worked with Dead End, you've seen the kind of destruction they're wreaking, not just in our world but in all of them, everywhere. I have a duty to the multiverse that I can't refuse. Heaven help me, I wish I could, but until that duty is done... I can't."

There was no cry of despair, no expression of crushing disappointment. Saturn didn't think she could handle either of those things. Instead, Tomoe rose and retrieved his glasses, his expression like a wall once more. "Yeats," he said. "You always did love Yeats. I gave you your first collection, do you remember that?" He averted his eyes from them, unreadable. "The gyre is indeed widening, Hotaru, and your duty as Sailor Saturn is absolute. Even if I took you as far away as I could, destiny would find you. I should have suspected."

Against all odds, a faint spark of hope lit inside her. "Then... then you'll let us go, won't you?"

"Come on, Professor," said Chibi-Moon. It was clear that she was swallowing her pride for one last attempt. "It's still not too late. You're the genius... can't you do the smart thing?"

In lieu of answering her, Tomoe pressed a spot behind his ear with one finger. "Disengage discretion barrier."

To the left of them, what Saturn thought was a blank, solid bedrock wall rippled like a mirage and disappeared, revealing another section of the lab, blocked off by a transparent partition. Behind it, two figures stood side-by-side at a bank of computer consoles. One was all too familiar, the other she only knew by description.

The one she knew was the Time Reaper, patient and deathly silent as ever. Hooded and cloaked, the Reaper hovered in place, inert without direct orders to act upon...

Several paces to its right, the other was a pale-skinned young woman with shoulder-length silver hair and crimson eyes, wearing a sleeveless black longcoat with red trimmings. Eas was her name, Saturn remembered, but Cure Black and the other Precures told her that she used to have two other names: Setsuna Higashi was one, and Cure Passion was the other. Saturn's mind raced through what she remembered of the woman's history. She was born into Labyrinth, a people ruled by an artificial intelligence called Moebius. Eas fought one group of Precure as a loyal servant of her homeland. That loyalty nearly killed her when she failed to be of use to her superiors and they terminated her lifespan, but the kindness and empathy of Cure Peach and her friends saved her and gave her new life... she was reborn as a human, becoming the fourth member of Peach's team. Now, presumably due to Joker and the Reaper's meddling, it was as if she never met them at all...

"Eas," said Tomoe, interrupting her thoughts. "We're finished."

Eas didn't answer. She was occupied staring at a projected hologram display, apparently lost in thought. Looking at the projection from the wrong side and from a distance made it hard to distinguish details, but it appeared to be one of those horrible Merry-Go-Round pods, an occupied one. Its unfortunate victim was barely visible through its filmy, translucent skin, but she caught glimpses of a pink dress, bits of blonde hair...

"Commander Eas?" said Tomoe, a bit louder. "I said we're finished. Did you hear me?"

Startled, Eas waved a hand at the holo, dismissing it. Was it a trick of the light, or was there color on those pale cheeks? "Y-yes, Professor. Sorry. Did it work?"

"Regretfully, no," said Tomoe. "Please summon Lethe and Mnemosyne for the next phase."

"They—" said Chibi-Moon, but words seemed to fail her before she could finish her thought.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Professor. I'll call them right away." Eas bowed and left her console a bit too quickly, leaving the Reaper to keep its unblinking vigil over them all.

Tomoe pressed the spot behind his ear again. He crossed the floor until he stood beside the large tank at the back wall, the only one of the many such tanks around the lab which was active and occupied. He stroked its transparent surface, watched the bubbles flowing through the thick cyan liquid that filled it... there was a humanoid shape inside.

Some internal alarm blared its warning inside Saturn's head. Her insides contracted into a tiny, dense knot for reasons she couldn't explain.

"Forgive me, Hotaru, but I can't let you go," said Tomoe, full of remorse, real remorse, for a few fleeting moments. Then the wall was back, the icy mask settled across his features. "I didn't want to resort to this. I never wanted to cause you pain. Part of me believed you would accept my offer... but part of me knew I should prepare this, should you refuse." With a hiss of steam, the tank decoupled from the clamps and cables holding it to the lab's wall. It floated obediently behind him and followed in his wake as he came close once more. His fingers brushed over a holo-panel on its side, the liquid thinned, and the shape inside became clear:

In rising horror, Saturn stared at an exact duplicate of her own face.

Next to her, Chibi-Moon made a strangled, choking sound.

The Hotaru inside the tank breathed evenly, peaceful in sleep. It—she—wore a simple, modest white dress, her hands were folded over her chest. She was flawless in every detail. Every millimeter of her face, every black hair, the precise curl of her lips, even the smallest moles on her skin were reproduced. And it was that very perfection that rattled Saturn the most, that sent skitters of primal revulsion up and down her spine. The uncanny valley effect, or something similar to it... the likeness was so accurate that it inspired not awe or familiarity, but fear. There was profound sadness, too, for the other Hotaru was empty, she could feel it in her heart. All the powers that being Sailor Saturn afforded her told her that her duplicate was only alive in a biological sense; there was no self within her, no personhood, no being...

"If your destiny will not allow us to be a family," said Tomoe in that awful, flat, dead voice, "then I shall take it upon myself to remove the yoke of that destiny from you. The Seed of your soul, your deepest essence... I will transplant it into this new body, and leave the powers of Saturn behind in your current one. You'll be normal and fully human, free from scars, free from sickness, free from everything. You don't have to bear the burden anymore, Hotaru. We will live somewhere far from here, as nothing more than a human father and daughter. All your memories of your suffering, of the Daimon, and of your life as a Senshi... Every memory that troubles you will be gone, discarded along with your old form as things of the past. At last, you and I will be happy."

*****

Subway Tunnels, Underground

"Come on, you big, stupid lump! Turn! Turn around! They're back that way! Hurry up and help me catch them so I can get out of here already!" Crack, crack, crack, went the sound of Mimete's whip, followed by that feral, pained howl...

Madoka crouched in the darkness, waiting for her chance. Pseudo-Jupiter's huge body was a poor fit for the subway tunnels, too large to maneuver effectively in cramped quarters. If she charged in a straight line, she could easily crush or trample anything in her way without trying. However, after one of those charges, it was a strenuous effort for her to reverse course for a second attempt, especially with Mimete forcing her. Like some poor circus animal, being whipped only made her movements more erratic and less effective. Madoka didn't want to think about what damage she might be able to do on her own, without Mimete's "help".

That "help", if Madoka's hunch was correct, was actually the key to victory. The Witches we know don't follow orders, she had said to Homura via telepathy, but Jupiter was going along with her even before the whip came out. I think that humming noise we heard before we saw them might be some kind of mind-control, a magic sound that only Jupiter can hear. Like a dog whistle!

From there, the plan took shape. No, Homura didn't like it, not one bit, but she grudgingly accepted that reversing the roles wasn't an option. Boy, was it ever not. The weapon Homura planned to use for her part of it gave Madoka the creeps. She couldn't use something like that in a million years.

From the adjoining tunnel, Pseudo-Jupiter's pounding footsteps came closer; obviously, Mimete had succeeded in turning her around. Closer and closer. It felt like her teeth would vibrate loose with every one of the awful tremors passing through her with each footfall.

First Pseudo-Jupiter's fanged snout came around the bend, then the rest of her a second or two later. Trembling, Madoka ducked back into her filthy little nook, back pressed to the wall like she was glued to it. Not yet, not yet. She had to wait for the perfect moment... if she messed this up, there was no way arrows would save her; it was doubtful if even a tank's shell could pierce through Pseudo-Jupiter's scaly hide. Not that that was an option even if one could. Foregoing her bow altogether, she now carried only a long length of cord looped around one hand and a pair of black goggles in the other, both provided by Homura.

THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD. Slower footsteps now. The edge of the glow cast by Mimete's scepter was in sight. Close, but not close enough. The Pseudo-Witch's fetid breath cast billows of dust through the ionized air. Madoka desperately hoped she wouldn't sneeze...

"Come on ouuuuuuuuuuut~..." Mimete's voice chanted in singsong. "What's the matter? You two were both so confident before, what happened? You're supposed to be God and the Devil, so start acting like them! Otherwise, aren't you doing heresy against yourselves?" She cackled at her own... well, Madoka supposed it was an attempt at humor, but she didn't find it the least bit funny.

Beads of sweat rolled down the back of her neck, her heartbeat sounded even louder to her than the beast's footsteps. She was too aware of how parched the air was in Pseudo-Jupiter's presence, she thought she might suffocate long before Mimete or her unwitting steed had a chance to kill her. Instinct made her quiet her breathing just to be safe, but how good was Pseudo-Jupiter's hearing? What if she could hear her anyway? Would it be better to hold her breath?

"Well," Mimete drawled, "if you won't come out by yourselves... maybe we'll just coax you out."

Pseudo-Jupiter groaned, and the tunnel floor shuddered. Madoka couldn't see from her hiding spot, what were they doing?

A moment later, when an inexplicable hand snatched her by the ankle and squeezed tight, she wondered if Puellae Magi could have heart attacks. Only by biting the inside of her lip until she drew blood did she suppress the urge to scream and give herself away. Distraught, she glanced down...

The gnarled, skeletal hand clamped around her belonged to an equally skeletal arm, which jutted out of the concrete she stood on as if a body was sealed inside. There was no hole, it hadn't dug its way out, it was just there, having apparently moved through the floor like a ghost. Goosebumps raised on every square centimeter of her skin, the need to scream became even more desperate. But she couldn't move, she couldn't make a sound, not until Mimete and Pseudo-Jupiter were in the perfect position! She gripped the cord and goggles tighter, sweating like mad. They didn't know they had her yet... if they knew she was caught, why would Mimete be so quiet?

No sound from the main tunnel, save for a series of dry cracking sounds and the snarls of electrical discharges. Pseudo-Jupiter's groaning grew louder, drowning out her ponderous footsteps. Madoka's nostrils flooded with the coppery tang of blood, overpowering the inexplicable potpourri smell that preceded the Pseudo-Witch wherever she went. What was Mimete doing to her? Again the tunnel floor shook. A dozen more arms thrust up from it in random places and aimlessly groped the air. More snapping, more sounds of pain, more footsteps... and then she saw it. The very tip of the Pseudo-Witch's snout at the edge of her field of vision. Close, much too close. She reeked of blood, Madoka didn't think she would ever smell anything else. Another shudder, or was this one just her nerves in overdrive?

"Gah, this is taking forever," Mimete whined. "Let's just turn up the juice and get this over with." Crack went the sound of her whip...

A tingling sensation traveled from the skeletal arm's fingertips and raced up Madoka's pinned leg. There was a faint, flickering glow... and her shields rippled around her, fighting to compensate as the effect spread up into her torso and grew steadily more powerful. Electricity. Current. By its sparks, she saw that the hand and arm weren't made of bones at all, they were carved from diseased-looking wood. Her body spasmed, her vision swam, she had to cry out, she couldn't stand it any longer... The time to act was now. With one trembling hand, she slipped the goggles over her eyes, plunging the already dark tunnel into pure blackness. With the other, she held onto the cord for dear life and whispered to her AMP, praying that the current hadn't shorted out its ability to hear her command: "S-S-S-S-Solace... s-s-s-soundproof...!" With that, she yanked the cord as hard as she could...

Madoka counted herself lucky that she couldn't hear the following tortured screams from Pseudo-Jupiter or Mimete. The light was bad enough; a searing flash that lit up the tunnel like dawn, bearable only because of the goggles' protective filter. As Homura explained when they devised the plan together, the Pseudo-Witch's body was organic and corporeal. It was logical to assume that a creature with as many eyes as Pseudo-Jupiter had, one that had apparently spent most of her wretched existence underground, would be vulnerable to bright light. And so Homura lined the tunnel walls on both sides with a dozen flashbangs apiece, wired their pins together, and attached the wires to the length of cord that she gave to Madoka.

No time to dawdle. A quick burst of healing magic restored her limbs to working order. She stomped on the arm that held her with her free foot. It snapped easily enough under her sole, but she was repulsed to see the broken "bones" bleed. Clambering to her feet, she removed her goggles, tossed them aside, and darted from her hiding spot.

What she saw in the main tunnel made her recoil in horror. Pseudo-Jupiter stood in a puddle of her own blood, stemming from the dozens of sparking, shorn-off branches protruding from beneath her scales and embedded in the floor. Madoka didn't have to hear to understand the nature of her piteous groaning now; deploying those branches essentially meant shoving spikes through her skin from inside. It had to be tantamount to torture, and it looked as if every time she had to grow a new set of branches to extend more arms through the floor, the old set needed to be broken off first. And to do that so many times...

Madoka felt something close to pure loathing toward Mimete then, or as near as she could manage. Her determination to save Jupiter from the Death Buster's control and from her own wretched state only hardened. With that resolved, she waited while the Pseudo-Witch thrashed in blind agony and Mimete screamed, having wrapped herself around one of the strawberry back spines to prevent from being thrown off. The timing had to be perfect; if she misjudged it by even a second or two, she would fall straight into Pseudo-Jupiter's open mouth. Oh, and it was open now, every one of the hundreds of teeth on display, the spiked tongue lashing back and forth like a beheaded snake. Madoka waited, and waited, until she saw the slightest downward movement of the beast's upper jaw... good enough.

She crouched down, said a prayer, and took a flying leap. A good four or five meters off the ground at the apex of her jump, perfect. She angled her body, threw her limbs out spread-eagled as if performing a belly flop, and fell... directly atop Pseudo-Jupiter's huge snout as the upper jaw closed. Her hands found rough purchase on the giant scales, but that wasn't nearly enough to anchor her in place. Now for part two: "Solace!" she shouted. "Gravity, now!"

Every AMP Device was built with certain basic systems in mind, and one of those systems was an adaptive artificial-gravity compensator. Not all planets were Earth-like, and of course in open space there was barely any gravity at all. To that end, the compensator adjusted the AMP user's weight so that every location felt like their own native gravity, allowing for comfortable movement. In higher-gravity locales, the user was made lighter, and vice-versa. But no one said this function couldn't be used on Earth as well...

It was a random factoid she remembered from a field trip to the zoo with Sayaka and Hitomi... Hitomi in particular was fascinated by it, for some reason. According to the exhibit, crocodilians had the most powerful bite strength of any living creature, with muscles that closed their jaws with enough force to snap bones like twigs. The muscles that opened them, however, were so weak that an adult human could hold them shut by pressing down on the top side of the snout with one hand. Still a dangerous prospect, of course, but it could protect a person from the teeth.

Of course, this was no ordinary crocodile; it was a Pseudo-Witch that was built like one, and Madoka wasn't anywhere strong enough to hold the beast's mouth shut by herself. That would take at least one Precure, at minimum. However, if for example she jumped up atop its snout, held on tight, and increased her personal gravity to four times her normal weight...

The increase pancaked her against the scales. Pseudo-Jupiter's cries were muffled... she heaved and roiled beneath Madoka, a frenzied bull trying to buck a rodeo rider, but she seemed unable to open her mouth or move from the spot. Madoka tightened her grip, knowing that if she had miscalculated, it would mean certain death. When she explained this plan, she used Homura's same logic in utilizing the flashbangs: Pseudo-Jupiter was a corporeal being with an organic body. If her anatomy still functioned the same way it did to regular crocodiles, a significant weight atop its snout would pin its mouth shut... that weight being her own body, magnified to roughly 180 kilograms, by her reckoning.

A purple bolt pinged off Pseudo-Jupiter's armor, millimeters from scoring her left cheek. Madoka craned one eye upward as far as it would go and saw a watery-eyed Mimete leering at her from behind the strawberry on the beast's back, her staff aimed. Her lips moved without sound. Madoka didn't much care to hear anything she had to say, but if it would keep her talking long enough... "Solace, soundproofing off," she muttered.

"—thought you could pull one over on the gorgeous and brilliant Mimete!" the Death Buster was saying. Her smugging was back in force. "I didn't expect that you'd deliver yourself right to me, though! I'm almost touched. Now, what are you up to?"

"Not much at the moment," said Madoka. It was the truth, she was a sitting duck.

"Don't think I don't appreciate it," said Mimete in a nauseating coo. "But this can't be your whole plan, can it? You actually do have a brain in between those cotton candy pigtails of yours, I know. This is a trap, which means the other one should be sneaking up behind me, right about now!" Pivoting on her heel, Mimete turned and fired a bolt behind herself... which sent a purple wash of light down the tunnel walls, but otherwise did nothing but sail through empty, dusty air.

Beneath her, Pseudo-Jupiter spasmed and moaned, a mourning sound this time. "It's okay," whispered Madoka. "Just hold on a little longer."

"Huh," said Mimete as she turned back around. "Well then, maybe you're somewhere around here!" She charred the concrete walls to either side of herself black with two more shots. "Nothing? Hmm. She wouldn't just run off and leave you..." There was that Joker-like smile again. "Wait. I know the best way to get her to come out~. All I have to do is blast you... and the poor, lovesick ex-Devil will come running to protect her precious ex-Goddess."

Madoka huddled as close to Pseudo-Jupiter's scales as she could.

Cackling, Mimete raised her staff high. An angry orb of dark power formed at its peak and slowly swelled to enormous size, casting everything below it in an eerie glow. "This time I'll make you pay for shooting my shoulder, brat!" she said. "You're gonna regret crossing the mighty Mime—"

The entire top quarter of Mimete's staff ceased to be, and the orb dissipated harmlessly. She didn't even see a hole... one moment the staff was intact, the next a flicker, and the next, tiny pieces of it were trailing past Mimete's startled face like dry ice. There was no gunshot; Madoka assumed that it was fired within time-stop, canceling out the sound. There was a hissing CRACK that might as well have been one; that was the sound of a 7.6 caliber bullet breaking the sound barrier, fired from two-hundred meters south of them... where Homura lay on a catwalk with an M24 sniper rifle. As usual, her aim was perfect. All she needed was the opportunity to line up the shot while Mimete was distracted. Finally, the subtle, high-pitched whine died out...

The noises from within Pseudo-Jupiter went from a rumble to an enraged growl, and escalated to a roar. Madoka felt that roar... "Solace, AGC off!" It was time to go; as soon as the weight lifted, she sprung off the beast's snout. Part of her was grimly pleased to see a baffled Mimete staring bewildered at her broken staff, oblivious to the enormous airplane tail rushing up behind her. By the time she noticed the breeze, it was too late. It slammed into her like a truck, and Madoka couldn't determine which was louder: the roil of unleashed electricity, or the howl of the tail's victim as it coursed through her body, lighting her up like a Christmas tree.

That howl didn't last long. The force propelled Mimete clear off the beast's back and into the left side wall, where she suffered what looked like an exceedingly painful rebound off the concrete, then fell in a crumpled, smoking heap somewhere around one of Pseudo-Jupiter's back feet.

Pseudo-Jupiter shook herself, bellowed, and began the laborious process of turning herself, desperate for another shot at her tormentor...

"No, wait!" Madoka wasn't even sure if she could hear her, let alone understand her. It didn't matter much, anyway, for Mimete was gone from where she fell. In an eyeblink, she was tossed like a blackened and bloodied sack of meat before Madoka, where she let out a pitiful whine.

Her relocation was courtesy of Homura, who appeared to be disgusted with herself for not allowing Pseudo-Jupiter to finish the job. "Madoka," she said as she drew one of her favorite handguns from behind her shield, "do what you have to." She worked the slide and waited.

Needing no further prompting, Madoka ran to Pseudo-Jupiter's great snout... and put her arms around it, laying her head against the scales once more. "Shhh, shhh," she said, gentle as a lullaby. Solace's ribbons extended, glowing white, and sank into her. "Connect, Solace. It's all right now. We won't let her hurt you anymore. It's gonna be okay." The beast flinched and quivered at her touch, but she held on, murmuring words of comfort.

Homura had no such words for the miserable thing in her sights. Hauling her around by the shoulder to face forward, she pressed the barrel right between Mimete's eyes and spoke in her lowest, most dangerous tone. "You know me," she said. "Madoka might have offered you mercy. I won't. Lie to me, and I'll feed you to her." There was no need to indicate whom she meant... or so Madoka hoped.

Mimete stifled a wail. Almost cross-eyed from trying to stare at the gun, she made a choked noise that was probably an affirmative.

Homura rested her finger on the trigger. "How do we save Jupiter?"

"I, uh..." Mimete stammered and shook like a leaf. "F-f-f-from what I know, E-Evil Nuts are s-sort of like our D-Daimon eggs... she's t-t-transformed because there's one in... inside her. T-take it out, and she'll b-be good as new! Honest!"

"Okay," said Madoka. Pseudo-Jupiter's trembling had subsided a bit. "I think I can do that much, at least."

"Second," said Homura. "This lab that you mentioned. Saturn and Chibi-Moon are there, aren't they? Tell me exactly where it is."

"O-of course, Homura-sama!" Mimete's lips forced themselves into a broken, ingratiating smile. "We dug out an offshoot tunnel five hundred meters northeast of here, it's behind a perception filter! Once you find it, it's around s-seven hundred meters long, and it leads to an elevator that goes three kilometers down. You can't miss it. We even have three Merry-Go-Round pods hidden along the way, they're at—" A string of numbers followed.

"Musain," said Homura into her AMP. She repeated the coordinates. Her eyes never left Mimete for a second. "Did you copy that?"

"Copy," said Meilin Li's voice after a moment. "We'll send some people down there while the fireworks go off."

"Send the rodent with them," said Homura. "Jean out. Now, third..." Back to Mimete, she stared directly into her eyes with her most fearsome, chilling expression. "What traps are there along the way to the lab?"

"I-I-I-I-I..." The Death Buster sounded like a warped vinyl record. She swallowed audibly and raised both hands. "I don't know of any, honest! We put the perception filter there to keep people out, I thought that was all we needed! I'm telling the truth, I swear!"

Now it was Madoka's turn to flinch, as Homura walloped Mimete across the face with the butt of the handgun. Quaking with terror, Mimete shrank back... then knelt, placed her palms down, and touched her forehead to the filthy floor in the pose of ultimate supplication. "P-please don't kill me, Homura-sama! Please, forgive me, I beg you! You can do whatever you want with me, just please don't kill me! I don't wanna die!"

Suspicion darkened Madoka's thoughts. This looked all too familiar. Homura-chan, she sent, don't—

I know what I'm doing, was the only reply. Aloud, Homura said, "Run. And consider this a warning: if I ever see your sniveling face again... even Hell won't save you from me."

"Eep! Th-thank you, Homura-sama! And you too, Madoka-sama!" Mimete made a series of rapid bows, then clambered to her feet.

Homura-chan! Madoka sent again. Pseudo-Jupiter growled as she darted past them, but with Solace activated, there was no leaving her side...

Mimete's ungainly, limping flight took her to the nearest juncture, where she stopped, turned around... and brayed with laughter. "Idiots! You didn't really buy that load of crap about being sorry, did you?! I can't believe it's so easy to fool you people!" To Madoka's astonishment, she pulled down one eyelid with her fingertip and waggled her tongue... she had never seen anyone over the age of twelve actually do that. "Bleeeeeh! Just you wait! I'll bring an entire army with me next time, losers! Then you'll be sorry... you'll all be sorry!"

Now, Madoka felt, was the time to speak aloud. "Homura-chan, do something!"

Homura glowered and took a few steps forward, cocking the gun's hammer.

Again Mimete laughed that strident laugh. "Yeah, Homura-chan, do something! I'd like to see you try, no-boobs! Yeah, you heard me, cutting board!"

That stopped Homura in mid-step. She didn't even look offended, just confused. "'Cutting board...?'"

"And you too, you little pink-haired sap!" Apparently, it was Madoka's turn to receive the invective. "You and flat chest and all your dorky little friends are gonna rue the day you crossed Mimete! When I get back to Master Joker and tell him what you've done, you're gonna pay! Oh, you're gonna pay!" With that, she took off into the juncture, the echoes of her laughter lingering for several seconds afterward.

"Homura-chan, she's getting away!" said Madoka, distraught.

And Homura smiled with grim satisfaction. "No she's not."

*****

Okay, so she lost her staff, and with it all but a trickle of her magic. Okay, so she was injured and hopelessly lost in this hellhole of a tunnel system. Okay, so the rest of her team was dead. Mimete was still alive, and that was what mattered, right? As long as you survived, you could claw your way back up and get revenge. Ah, revenge... the thought of it spurred her on a couple more steps. Not many, thanks to the damned Pseudo-Witch, but a couple.

Her energy petered out quickly. Mimete staggered close to the wall and wheezed for breath. When she took stock of herself, she wanted to cry... just look at this, her outfit was in shambles and there were electrical burns everywhere she could see. Her hair was a frizzled, hopeless mess. The butt of the ex-Devil's gun knocked two back teeth loose, she discovered that by probing with her tongue. Pistol-whipping? What kind of barbaric thing was that for a magical girl to do?! Without her magic, it would take at least a week for the wound it left on her cheek to heal, her precious cheek! How could she even think of performing with her lovely face in this state?! Oh, that flat-chested twerp would live to regret this, she swore...!

Burns on her skin, too. She sniffled as she poked herself, testing which parts were tender. Pretty much everywhere, it turned out. As her fingers quested up her spine, she felt something there that didn't belong... a lump. Right between her shoulder blades, in that one spot she could never reach. Not under her skin, thank the stars, it was something unnatural stuck to her back. Kind of soft, but with a hard thing that felt like plastic in the center.

"Huh?" Mimete turned in a few awkward circles. Obviously she couldn't see her own back, but maybe if she stretched just far enough, she could grab the whatever-it-was and examine it for herself. Her fingers almost had it... just what was that smell, anyway? It was both oily and sweet. One finger prodded the soft part. It almost felt like putty, but what would a lump of putty be doing on—

*****

"Madoka," said Homura, pivoting away from the juncture. "What's the situation?"

Madoka was a little perplexed by her blasé attitude, but Mimete's escape wasn't important right now. She closed her eyes and felt through Solace, and with a few moments concentration she found that there was still a noble heart beneath the monstrous form and all its rage and agony. Strong and proud, but also warm and sweet and comforting, with a core of vulnerability that she kept well hidden... She smiled, for Jupiter's heart reminded her of her mother's embrace. "She's still in there," she said, and patted Pseudo-Jupiter's snout. "She's been lost and scared for a long time, but she's there, and she doesn't want to hurt anyone else. If I dive, I think I can save her."

Homura nodded and began walking back toward them. "You'll have to do it on your own. I'm going af—" A brief, high-pitched screech and a muffled explosion sounded from the direction Mimete had run, and from the juncture, a gust of displaced air ruffled Homura's hair. She didn't blink, break her stride, or miss a syllable. "—ter Saturn and Chibi-Moon."

Madoka cringed, and that was the full extent of her sympathy. The Witches of hers and Homura's world didn't become monsters by choice, and couldn't help hurting people. The Witches 5 caused suffering intentionally, knowingly, and willfully, for their own pleasure. Madoka thought about the pain of the miserable creature before her, and about Homura being blasted point blank with a cowardly sneak attack, and about that poor stray cat in the alley... and she concluded that it was okay not to feel sorry for Mimete. Admitting that to herself felt a bit bad, but she pushed that feeling down. There were other things to worry about. "By yourself? Homura-chan, you can't!"

"I have to," said Homura. "I can't wait for backup, and you know I can move faster on my own. They would only slow me down."

"But Homura-chan—"

"Please," said Homura, putting her hands on Madoka's shoulders. There was something in her eyes, a faint glimmer... desperation? But why? "I trust in your strength. I know you'll be safe, and I know you'll save Jupiter. Do what only you can do." Her fingers squeezed. "And let me do what only I can do."

The only sound was Pseudo-Jupiter's labored breathing. All else was silence, and in that silence, Madoka became absolutely sure that there was something more going on here, something that Homura wasn't telling her. Whatever that was, she had no idea... but if they were ever going to regain what they once had, they needed to start trusting each other. She knew Homura, and she knew that it took a huge amount of inner strength for her to put her faith in another person's abilities, rather than her own. It was only fair for Madoka to do the same, to trust that Homura had her reasons. "Okay." She nodded, wishing she could free her arms for a hug. "Good luck, Homura-chan."

Homura's arms slid around her waist, her cheek nuzzled into her shoulder. The lilac scent of her hair almost felt like an old friend in and of itself, sweet and familiar... "I love you," she murmured. "Remember that, no matter what happens." Then she was gone.

Madoka swallowed and forced all of her attention onto the Pseudo-Witch. For now, all other thoughts had to be swept aside. The true power of her AMP Device was not just the ability to heal, but the ability to see into the hearts of those she connected with. At the moment, she had barely more than a surface level connection to Jupiter. In order to find the foul thing that warped her body and mind, to reawaken her true self, she would need to use Solace to its fullest extent. That meant that Jupiter's heart, mind, and soul would be completely open to her... but she in turn would be completely open to Jupiter, with all the wonders and dangers that entailed. Using Solace like this would also leave herself vulnerable in the physical realm, for trying to do anything else while engaged in such a delicate operation would be a disaster. Madoka took a deep breath and erected half a dozen magical barriers around herself. Solace's shields would just have to do for the rest. Gazing into one of Pseudo-Jupiter's many eyes, into the quivering black triangle of its pupil, she smiled. "Hang on just a little longer. I know this might feel weird, but I promise I'm not going to hurt you. Soon you'll be yourself again, you'll be able to see Usagi-san and all your friends..."

The eye misted over and shed a few slow, thick tears, like droplets of honey.

"Solace," she said to her AMP. "Full dive."

And the real world fell away, replaced at once by something both more beautiful and more terrible than any Witch's Labyrinth...

*****

Five hundred meters away, halfway to Akabanebashi Station, Homura supposed she had to look very foolish to an outside observer. She kept walking by the same meter-long patch of featureless tunnel wall over and over again, doubling back each time she passed it. Through force of will, she kept her gaze not on the wall, but on the expanse of tunnel before her. Trying to keep the wall in the forefront of her mind but not look at it directly was something like that old story about white elephants. If she gave into the urge to peek and see if she was correct in her hunch, it would never work.

Only when something wavered at the very corner of her eye did she turn around... and she found a huge half-circular hollow bored through the concrete, where before there had been nothing but a featureless wall. To conceal the entrance to their offshoot, they had used a nearly identical spell to the one she devised to keep the Incubators hidden from sight in her world. By her own logic, making a thing invisible wasn't nearly as effective as harnessing the human mind's remarkable ability to ignore what it doesn't understand or want to see. Now the results of that realization had been stolen and used against her. Bastards. She'd make them pay.

Into the offshoot she went. Metal and concrete gave way to a tunnel lined floor and ceiling by smooth, nearly flawless crystal, such a dark shade of midnight indigo that it was almost black. There were intermittent bridge-like arches set around three meters off the floor, but otherwise the offshoot was featureless and empty. Barring a few shallow dips and winding curves, it was primarily a straight line as far ahead as far as she could see. Not much in the way of cover. It didn't matter; she would need to be that much more careful, is all.

A hundred meters. Two. The hairs on the back of Homura's neck prickled. It hadn't escaped her notice that the deeper they went into the tunnels, the fewer Dead End soldiers they saw. At first, she attributed that to the presence of Pseudo-Jupiter... until she saw that under her own power, the wretched thing was only hostile to those that threatened her, she was more afraid of them than they were of her. This was far from Pseudo-Jupiter's hiding spot, though, and it was a passage to a highly secure laboratory. So why weren't there any monsters, or guards, or anything, for that matter?

She rounded a bend... and found that she wasn't alone anymore. Five meters ahead, a lone figure stood with their back turned to her, their shoulders slumped...

Homura skidded to a stop and put a cautious hand behind her shield. They were human, as far as she could tell. Probably female, tall, by sight around the same age as she was, if not a little older. Her jade hair was a curious combination of a bushy, neck-length bob and two thin, wavy ponytails. She wore a threadbare, ruffled dress with trailing double tails, a high, flared collar, bike shorts, and ankle boots with heels, on the verge of falling apart. Most of these were various shades of green, with a fair amount of white. However, all the greens looked sickly, and all the whites were off and tinged with yellow as if they had been bleached in the sun.

A Precure, most likely. There were too many extraneous frills for her to be a Sailor Senshi, not enough armor to be someone from the TSAB, and all the Puellae Magi she knew were already accounted for. Nevertheless, she approached with caution. "You," she said by way of greeting. "Who are you? How did you get in here?"

No response.

Homura tried again. "I'm with the Morning Lights," she said. "Are you hurt? Do you need help?"

The Precure shuddered and turned her head at a deathly slow pace...

Homura's heart leaped into her throat. The Precure didn't have a face. She had the structure of a skull—eye sockets, cheekbones, a hole where a nose would be—but all the features were missing. Her skin was a curdled, rotten mix of dull blue and grey. As she rotated, Homura saw that from the front, the details of her uniform were sloppy, askew and asymmetrical, as if it was put together by someone who had only a vague idea of what the uniform was supposed to look like. Even as she faced Homura, she remained in that slumped, listless pose... A muffled, tremulous sound rose from within her chest. Her facial muscles spasmed, and the blank space where her mouth should have been ripped open, revealing a ragged red smear of a mouth crisscrossed by frayed ribbons of flesh connecting the upper and lower halves. The muffled sound burst forth at full volume, and set Homura's skin crawling like mad: "Uhiuhiuhiuhiuhiuhiuhiiii..."

Homura drew her Desert Eagle from her shield, took aim at the thing's forehead, and squeezed off five rounds in quick succession. A Mockery, it was a Mockery. Different from the one she saw in footage of the battle in Uminari, but unmistakably the product of the same demented design.

It lurched toward her, and as it raised its hands, its bony fingers creaked and popped, stretching to grotesque lengths. All of Homura's shots hit their marks, she saw rusty blood pouring in sluggish streams down its forehead from the entrance wounds, but didn't fall or even stagger. For a fleeting instant, she saw the offshoot's crystalline arches through the finger-sized holes... there wasn't enough resistance in its head to create an exit wound. Like its skull was made of clay, her shots punctured right through it...

She had battled bulletproof enemies before, but even creatures capable of absorbing normal fire should have at least been floored by the Desert Eagle's phenomenal stopping power, whether or not the actual projectile caused them harm. That was just basic ballistic physics. This thing took five .44 magnum bullets directly through its skull and was still coming, warbling that ceaseless, deranged birdsong laugh...

A leap backward took her well out of range of its questing fingers. No more giving it chances; she eyeballed her targets and fired four more rounds into both of the Mockery's elbows, then both its knees. The Desert Eagle's recoil jangled every nerve in both her arms, but if it worked...

"Uhiuhiuhiuhiuhiuhiuhiuhiii...!" It didn't; the Mockery wasn't slowed in the slightest, though she knew she heard splintering from its limbs. With a symphony of all the horrific noises bodies could make combined together, it contorted itself, its proportions becoming less and less human. Its upper torso bent forward almost double, its neck craned up at a ninety-degree angle to keep its featureless face locked onto hers. New arms erupted from both its sides, the left arm a good thirty centimeters lower than the right. And from its knees—Homura swallowed a wave of nausea—from its knees, two more stunted pairs of legs began to sprout. They resembled ancient, shriveled vegetables, they were far too deformed and vestigial to be of any possible use to it...

She had no choice. If her most powerful handgun did nothing to it, it was doubtful any other firearms would either. Too many of her explosives were already used up, and there wasn't time to experiment with what might or might not kill this thing. Her mission... Homura rolled up her left sleeve to expose her AMP. "P—"

Shing. With that sound, she lost all feeling in her left arm from the elbow down. Astonished, Homura looked and saw that her entire forearm was enclosed in a grimy green bubble of a barrier field; it swallowed her shield, her AMP... and her Soul Gem. Cold sweat broke upon her brow as she attempted to flex her fingers and rotate her wrist... nothing. Like her limb had gone dead. As if somehow, the Mockery wasn't just a mindless abomination, as if it knew exactly how to disable her. No... that's not—

"UHIUHIUHIUHIUHIIIIII!" It lunged and tackled her to the tunnel floor. Shing. Shing. Shing. More barriers sprung to life around her free arm and both ankles. Creeping numbness spread through her body, insidious and strange. Its constant cackle rattled the insides of her brain, she smelled like damp earth left to rot. Two hands grasped her sides, while the overlong fingers of the other two encircled her face in a soft but inescapable grip. Still cackling, the Mockery slowly leaned down over her as if to give her a goodnight kiss, its nightmare of a not-face centimeters from hers. "Uhiuhiuhiuhiuhi..."

Homura fought to struggle and only managed to twitch. She would not scream. She refused to scream.

CRACK. The noise came from the Mockery's jaw, audible even over its laughter. It stretched, open and open and open, unhinged like that of a monstrous snake. Inside, it was all raw red meat with no visible teeth, but she had seen the footage of the one that mauled the throat out of Kyoko's holo-clone with its jaws. The fingers pressed down on her skin as it carefully positioned its mouth, now just wide enough to swallow her face whole... not her entire head, but just her face... "Uhiiiiiiiiiiiiiii...!"

An engine's roar reverberated through the confined space. The Mockery's head snapped up at the sound, and its laughter changed pitch, as if in confusion. Whether it could actually see or not, it was doubtless unprepared for the front tire of a jet-black motorcycle to shove itself into its gaping mouth. What the Magnum bullets couldn't do, the motorcycle somehow did... it hurled the Mockery off of Homura and kept going for a good twenty meters.

The barriers fizzled out, and Homura regained the use of her limbs while nestled in the arms of the motorcycle's rider, who— She blinked, just once. "Oh," she said. "It's you."

Mamoru Chiba, Tuxedo Mask, whom Homura knew from Saturn's description, raised an eyebrow and grinned. "Usually the girls I rescue have a little more to say than that. Cat got your tongue?"

"Hm." That was the extent of Homura's reaction as she extricated herself from the masked man's grip, as quickly and efficiently as possible. "Excuse me. I have work to do." Using her AMP could wait, she decided. This thing needed to suffer. For that, she drew the M249 from her shield's pocketspace, the massive belt-fed machine gun she had planned to use on Pseudo-Jupiter earlier. If she couldn't overwhelm it with stopping power, she would do so with sheer volume of fire.

Tuxedo Mask's tone was one of shock, and maybe a little awe mixed in. "That's... that's quite a magic trick you have there, Miss. Where did you even get a gun like—"

"Quiet," said Homura without looking at him.

Twenty meters away, the Mockery struggled to right itself, its laugh muffled and strained. The motorcycle's tire was still lodged in its gullet, but it was already adjusting the deformations of its body to compensate. Homura wasted no more time; she opened fire. The M249's deafening burr drowned out all other sound as she blanketed the Mockery with a full belt's worth of ammunition.

The bullets tore pieces from its body faster than it could regenerate and blew away what few humanoid features it had left. Still it laughed, though the sound was strangled... but when Homura took aim at the motorcycle's fuel tank, the resulting fiery explosion silenced it at last. Very little was left of either the vehicle or the Mockery when the flames subsided.

"Remind me to never get on your bad side," said Tuxedo Mask over the dying echoes of the blast. He rubbed the back of his head, sounding a bit lost for words. "That... that was one of my favorite bikes."

"Sorry. It died well," said Homura, stowing the smoking machine gun back into her shield. "Why are you here?"

"It died honorably," said Tuxedo Mask. "I'm not sure it died 'well'. I've been following Chibi-Moon and Saturn's trail. I assume that—"

"Yes," said Homura. "We gathered information that pinpointed a lab at the end of this passage. I'm taking care of it."

"Wait, hold on." Tuxedo Mask grasped her shoulder and spun her around to face him. His brows furrowed. "That's my daughter and her partner down there. There's no way I'm letting you go alone, I'm coming with you."

Homura brushed past him without a thought. "Your help will not be necessary. In fact, you'll only be a hindrance. If you must contribute somehow, one of my teammates is in the process of healing Sailor Jupiter. Both of them are approximately half a kilometer southwest of the offshoot tunnel's entrance. Is that all?"

"I—" Only now did Tuxedo Mask's tone turn hard. "What's the matter with you? Why are you so obsessed with doing things on your own?"

Homura drew her faithful Beretta, slid in a fresh magazine, and worked the slide. "Because this is something only I can do. Go, help Madoka and Jupiter. I promise, I'll bring both Saturn and your daughter back." She ran, leaving the baffled man behind. Within a few steps, he was out of her mind entirely. All that mattered was her mission.

*****

Finally, the elevator was in sight. It wasn't too late. If it took every last bit of breath in her body, she would make sure it wasn't too late. Homura sprinted for the doors, and—

A straight-bladed cutlass fell before her like an arrow from the heavens, sticking itself in the crystal floor in her path. Homura recognized it at once; she turned her eyes upward, knowing who she would find there...

Sayaka Miki stood on one of the overhanging crystal arches, her white satin cape billowing around her, another cutlass already in hand and held at point. Her eyes gleamed blue and frigid, her expression was set as a statue's. And she spoke only this, a single name that bore the weight of countless years spent dreaming of this moment: "Akemi."

END OF CHAPTER 56

NEXT:

AT LAST, WE SEE EACH OTHER PLAIN

[Author's note:

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