[Author's Note:

I am dreadfully sorry this took this long... there was a ton I needed to get through for this chapter, and adopting a new and very rambunctious five-month-old yellow lab at the end of April ate up pretty much all my writing time for two months. Up until a few hours ago [Note: This was written on Wednesday], I had been telling myself that if I couldn't get this done by tonight, I would cut the chapter in half and shunt the rest into Chapter 62. I didn't want to do that, since my gut feeling tells me that as lengthy as it is, it flows better as all one chapter... but over the past three days I made one final push and got all of it out, just in time for when I go out of state for a convention tomorrow [Note: Which is now yesterday. This post was delayed due to travel stuff.]

As with Chapter 60, there's stuff in this one that I've been working toward for years now. Please be kind in your critiques, enjoy the conclusion of Act III... and remember, comments and detailed feedback are an author's food pellets, so leave plenty! - BHS]

Chapter 61: As Lucifer Fell

-VERTEX FOUR: 8.36679-

Pipirima Star System

Mu² Scorpii a-134

A Little While Ago

The Dead End outpost and research facility on Mu² Scorpii a-134 was a cramped affair... understandable, as the facility was squeezed onto a moon so tiny that it barely had enough gravity to hold itself together. Concealed beneath the moon's barren, rocky surface and cloaked from sensors by a variety of dampening fields, the facility was almost impossible to find unless one was specifically looking for it.

The researchers inside—all humans, surprisingly—had to live within the closed confines. It was obvious they didn't enjoy the accommodations, and nothing short of complete brainwashing could force them to. Two of them sat slumped over opposite sides of a humming console, its holoscreens' glow throwing their faces into eerie cyan relief. There wasn't enough room to stand with one's arms stretched above their head, and one had to be careful when walking around lest they collide with an overhanging pipe or conduit, so the hunches in their backs likely verged on being permanent. That is, if they weren't already.

"I don't get it," said one researcher to the other, breaking the silence. He was a man roughly in his thirties, with spiky red hair and bags the color of bruises beneath his eyes. "Look at this combat footage. Those girls from Vertices One and Three... why do they need to twirl around and wave their weapons and do all that elaborate preparation before they use their spells? It doesn't make sense. It shows up all the time in their movies and television, too: a minute, maybe a minute and a half of choreography before they launch the attack. You'd think their opponents would just shoot them while that nonsense is going on."

"There's a simple explanation," said the other, a heavyset fellow. He was faintly wrinkled and entirely bald save for a bristly forest-green patch on his chin. Without looking up, he pointed a stylus at his coworker for emphasis. "Their opponents are idiots. Most of them stand there staring the whole time."

"Meanwhile in our universe, Takamachi doesn't bother," the first said. "She just blasts you into next year... and that's if you're someone she likes. You know she used the first Starlight Breaker on her girlfriend, right?"

The older one shuddered, then crinkled his brows. "Wait, were she and Testarossa together at the time? I was never sure if they were official or not."

"Does it matter?"

"Eh," he shrugged. "Personally, I always thought she, Takamachi, and Yagami were all... you know."

"You're kidding."

"Look, you've seen the movies, those biopics about their early days. I know you have. You can't honestly tell me they don't suggest that the three of them aren't interested in each other. Or more than that."

"Takamachi and Testarossa, sure, but Yagami too? How would that even work?"

"Damned if I know."

"Besides, that's probably all just the writers exaggerating for the sake of a good story. Artistic license, if not Bureau propaganda. Like how we all know that Takamachi couldn't really level a whole city with her first Starlight Breaker at nine years old. She's good, but she can't be that good."

"Check the data we pulled from the TSAB encrypted logs and say that again. If anything, it wasn't destructive enough in the movie."

"All right, fine, I will!" The redheaded researcher cracked his knuckles. "Bet you rations it wasn't."

"Bet you a week of rations it was."

"Deal."

"Deal."

The bald researcher's lips curled into a knowing smirk. He leaned back in his tiny chair and rested his eyes.

"Awp," said his companion after a few seconds. Then, "Ghag...!" The last exclamation was an odd gurgling sound.

One eye cracked open. "What was that? Accepting defeat already?" But the younger man was gone, his empty chair spun in two lazy circles before it slowed to a halt. The researcher scanned the claustrophobic little workspace, barely lit save for the glow of the holos. No sign of him, or anyone else. Sweat broke out on his bald pate. He leaned forward to press the alarm button...

Someone seized his wrist with terrifying strength and yanked it behind his back as far as it would go. The man groaned as his arm was nearly wrenched from its socket, the bones of his forearm scraped against each other in the attacker's grip. Another arm wrapped around his neck, crushing his windpipe in the crook of its elbow.

"Sorry," said Honoka Yukishiro, Cure White, from behind him. Her tone was calm and polite but unwilling to suffer any disobedience, the tone of a strict mother disciplining an unruly child. "I'm afraid I can't let you do that."

White's life over the past three weeks—or was it longer? She had no idea, but three weeks sounded right—had been fraught with peril. She was more weary than she had ever been, coated in grime from hiding in countless cramped storage units and crawlspaces, and running on far too little food and far too little sleep. By now, she had snuck into and out of so many Dead End bases that it had become a perverse routine. Sometimes, more often than she would have expected, she could be there and gone like a ghost, her presence undetected. Then there were other times, times when just one overly suspicious guard or security system unaccounted for brought her careful plans crashing down around her ears and left her no choice but to run and seek shelter. She knew about the time Black fought alone through an entire army of Zakenna to rescue her and Mipple from Dusk Zone's Seeds of Darkness... now, after doing the same thing multiple times through an endless series of bases which all blurred together in her mind, she understood what that ordeal was like for her partner.

With each infiltrated base came the challenge of finding and using one of its transport portals, all so she could find the next base and the next portal and do it all over again. By now, her eyes had seen the light of millions of new stars. Her knowledge of astronomy was only useful from the perspective of standing on Earth, so the starscapes she glimpsed as she traveled across planets and moons and through space stations, breathtaking though they were, were only intermittently familiar to her. At present, she had no idea where in the universe she was, if she was even still in her universe, or if she was traveling through time as well as space. She was never afforded the chance to spend time figuring out how to program specific coordinates; if she could get a portal working, she took it, and that was it. Dangerous? Of course, but desperation brought with it the willingness to take risks than she wouldn't have otherwise.

If she didn't have Mipple by her side, offering what words of comfort she could when she had the energy for it, she would have lost her mind long before now. Maybe she was halfway there already. One single thought kept her going through every enemy she crossed paths with, every second spent in hiding and afraid for her life, every godawful place she trudged through. Afloat in a turbulent sea of madness and violence like a sailor thrown overboard by a vicious storm, that thought was the rope she clung to to keep from going under: I need to find Nagisa. She refused to die or go insane until she saw the face of Nagisa Misumi—Cure Black, her partner—again. I need to find Nagisa. I need to find Nagisa. I need to find Nagisa. Thinking it was a litany against the dark.

The bald researcher wheezed and thrashed, only succeeding in expending more of his air. Even half-dead from exhaustion, White was stronger than a hundred ordinary humans; there was no chance of him escaping, but still. There had been more than enough close calls. She let up the pressure on his throat a bit. "I don't suppose you would consider setting your console's language to 21st century CE Japanese? English from the same era would do, if you must. They're Earth languages," she added, having learned from experience that she needed to specify. "It'd make things easier for both of us."

"No... l-leggo..." the researcher gasped.

Whether that was a refusal or a plea for mercy, White didn't know. She sighed and assumed the former. At least he understood her, and she him. How did that work? Another question for another time. "I can't let you go if you're going to sound the alarm. However, if you surrender and wait quietly, I'll only knock you out for a while once I'm done."

More groaning, more wheezing. His free arm flapped about like a landed fish. Fish, how dearly she missed fish, and that brought to mind summer sunlight glinting off the coppery scales of koi in the ponds back in Wakabadai, water gently lapping at the shores of the river she and Nagisa always walked by on the way from school, Chuutaro's frenzy of overjoyed barking every time she came within fifty meters of her house's front gate... The subsequent wave of mournful homesickness threatened to drive her to her knees, but with a mighty effort she wrestled it back down. There would be time to pine for home once she reunited with Nagisa. If she could find just a single portal with controls that she could read, that would be all she needed.

"G-go..." said the researcher, forcing words out.

"'Go?'" White dared to hope. Perhaps this one would listen to reason.

"G-go... f-f-fuu—"

Then again, perhaps not. A tsk of intense disappointment and contempt slipped from Honoka's lips. With a push, she sent the researcher tumbling out of his chair, then she jabbed a pressure point at the base of his brainstem—carefully, sort of—as he made one last attempt to right himself and scramble for the alarm. He went limp, and his bald head thunked against the metal floor in a way that would leave a nasty bruise, or maybe a concussion.

"Wh-White," said a soft, high-pitched voice from her hip pouch in the silence that followed, "did you... find the controls yet...? I wanna... go home, ~mipo..."

White let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding and patted the pouch with one hand. Poor thing, Mipple had never kept her transformed for so long, no wonder she was so weak. "I know, Mipple. I do too. We just have to keep hoping that this will be the right one to take us there." She nudged the unconscious researcher aside, took a seat at his station, and glanced over the screens he was working on.

This stuff again, just like in the last ten bases. Or was it twenty? White was too tired to register annoyance. To her, the console interface's language looked like some unspeakably cruel person had blended all the worst parts of both the English and the Greek alphabets, then thrown in a bunch of formless squiggles. She was familiar enough with the former language, and the letters of the latter came up often enough in science that she knew them by sight, if not how to pronounce them in words. This, though? It was a mess of lines and joined-together curlicues that refused to—

A split-second bolt of searing pain spiked from her eye sockets to the center of her brain. White squealed and reflexively clapped her hands over her eyes, but it was gone, almost before her nerves registered it.

"Wh... White...?" said Mipple's voice. "What... what was that...?"

Their bodies were linked together when transformed; she remembered one time when Mepple got sick and Nagisa ran a fever when she transformed into Cure Black. Naturally, Mipple felt it too. "I'm not sure," White admitted. "Whatever it is, it's gone now, thank goodness." As the spots cleared from her vision, she glanced at the console again... "Huh?"

There was the maddening English-Greek-Whatever script, the same as a few seconds ago, the same writing she had struggled with in more bases than she bothered to count... but now it made perfect sense to her, as if she had been reading it all her life. "OUTPOST 931 (V4) - WEEKLY PROGRESS REPORT AND DATA UPLOAD", read the title bar at the top of the largest window. And beneath that, in smaller script: "Developments of Project Codename BLACK LOTUS are as follows:"

She sucked in a long, slow breath. People didn't instantly learn languages. Even though her magical fairy companion was transformed into a clamshell card reader and tucked away in her pouch while she sustained her transformation as a superheroine, even though she was standing in a research station on another world in what was possibly another universe and possibly another time, even though she had seen magic and technology do things beyond her wildest imaginings, she couldn't make herself believe that learning an alien language within the space of a second was possible. It was far more likely that she was going mad, or that she had just suffered a stroke and her poor, overtaxed brain only thought it was comprehending the script. White swallowed. However, on the off chance that a miracle had occurred and she was indeed understanding the interface correctly... Her heartbeat quickened. This was their chance. At last, they could go home.

"White? What... is it, ~mipo?"

"I can read it," said White. Whatever it was, she'd take it. "I don't know how, and part of me doesn't want to find out, but I can read it. Give me a few minutes."

A long pause. "Okay. T-take your time, ~mipo..."

White scanned the progress report, and her eyes widened as they darted back and forth. For all her scientific knowledge, she could only tell that they were deep into research of... something. As to what that something was, she hadn't the faintest clue. More or less understandable terms like "perforation" and "angular momentum" were side-by-side with things like "orthonomal", "eigenvalue", and "quantum decoherence", which were a mystery. And the math, there was lots of math. That should have made sense, for math was math in any universe, it was only logical... but the things they were doing with their numbers were things that she found only the tiniest bit familiar, and only because of her brief glimpses at graduate school-level textbooks in the Wakabadai library. She was so used to nigh-instantly comprehending and decoding all kinds of technical-speak, no matter what any given person might be talking about. Most of the time, she didn't need to expend the slightest effort on it, it happened automatically. Here, she couldn't even begin to grasp what field of study the researchers' work was in, and that disturbed her far more than she would admit.

This isn't what I need, she thought. I need to find Nagisa. With a hand that trembled slightly until she shot it a glare of disapproval, she reached out to the floating progress report window. There was resistance against her fingertips when she pressed them against it. It was better to be sure the interface was solid first, not every base had this kind of technology. Holograms, enclosed in force fields to provide haptic feedback, she theorized. A closer look at the window showed no obvious way to dismiss it and look at another screen, no little "X" icons. She would just have to experiment, like any good scientist. Praying that doing so wouldn't trigger an alarm, she pushed her fingers to the screen and swiped to the left...

Perfect. The progress report slid away and winked out, and now a number of icons were visible. There was a holographic keyboard propped up on the flat surface of the desk. Using her newfound language skills, she got to work...

A labeled icon reading "Inter-Vertexal TS Transport Network" was the first promising result she was able to find. "'Inter-Vertexal?'" she muttered aloud. "What could that mean?"

"Doesn't... doesn't 'inter-' mean 'inside'? A-and 'vertexal'..." said Mipple. "Is that like... going up and down, ~mipo?"

"Mmm, 'inter-' is more like 'between'. And you're thinking of 'vertical', that has a different root word. A vertex is the tallest point of something, or..." A light began to dawn. "Or the point where two angles meet. Let's see..." Acting on a hunch, she searched for other usages of the term "vertex". More icons appeared:

-VERTEX ONE: 15.556984-

-VERTEX TWO: 15.721699-

-VERTEX THREE: 8.333882-

-VERTEX FOUR: 8.36679-

-VERTEX FIVE: 10.194412-

"It's some kind of categorization system," said White. "But for what? And these numbers..." Well, the best place to start was at the top of the list, she reasoned. She pressed the icon labeled "VERTEX ONE".

-VILUY'S DATABASE [INCOMPLETE: FILES MISSING OR CORRUPTED]-

-GESTALT TIMELINE INITIATIVE [COMPLETE]

-INFERNUM OVIS [ABANDONED]-

-LAST LAUGH PROTOCOL [ON STANDBY]-

-KOOKABURRA [ON STANDBY]-

-VIABLE ASSETS-

-SURVEILLANCE-

Mystified, she selected "SURVEILLANCE"... and her jaw fell open in abject shock.

Sailor Moon was there on the screen. Not drawn in a manga, not animated, not played by an actor in a costume... the genuine article, a real, flesh-and-blood being. There she was, engaged in battle along with her teammates, the other heroic Sailor Senshi she remembered from when she watched the series on television long ago, as a little kid... She never watched enough to call herself a fan, but in the male-dominated world of superhero stories, she remembered just how good it felt back then to see a team made entirely of girls, saving the day on their own.

This, though? She remembered enough that she recognized that the scenes she was looking at were from no kind of fictional media she had ever seen. They weren't fan reenactments or tokusatsu adaptations; the battles being waged in miniature form in the thumbnails had too much detail for even the biggest of big-budget Hollywood movies. That was clearly a feminine spider monster—a Youma, she recalled after a minute—spitting yellow silk from her mouth at a terrified Sailor Moon, who silently bawled and made a fruitless struggle to escape before Sailor Mars burned her sticky wrappings away. But there were no cuts, no shots from different angles, none of the telltale language of film, none of those little "you're watching a show" indicators that were baked into the artform. It was akin to a live news report, or more accurately, security camera footage.

"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" Sherlock Holmes said that. Keeping those great words in mind, there was only one logical conclusion. "Sailor Moon is real," White said aloud, amazed with herself for entertaining the notion at all.

Mipple twitched in her pouch. "Sailor... what? White, are you okay?"

Ah, right. She met Mipple long after Sailor Moon had gone off the air. "She's a legendary warrior, sort of like us," said White. "I thought she was a fictional character, she was popular on TV and in manga when I was small. These video files, though... they're of a real person, really fighting evil! All the details I remember are here, Mipple! She's real, but what does that mean...?"

It meant, in the short-term, that almost all the things she thought she knew about the nature of existence were now in question. The underpinnings of her reality, the bedrock of science and logic that her very being rested on, both flew undone. If she was this wrong about what was fictional and what wasn't, what else was she wrong about? How could she trust in anything at all...?

White shook her head and backpedaled mentally. In her current state, that line of thinking was a treacherous downward slope. One wrong step and she would tumble into irreversible madness. "One," she said aloud in desperation as she pressed her palms to her temples and curled her fingers in her hair. She needed to focus on something, anything else. "Two. Three. Five. Seven. Eleven. Thirteen. Seventeen. Nineteen. Twenty-three. Twenty-nine..." It was a technique that had saved her from the abyss many times already. By the time she got to four hundred fifty-seven, she felt better. Order was restored. A sigh of relief, and she felt ready to look again.

Maybe it would be a better idea to examine the files for these other vertices, she thought. Existential crises are the last things I need right now. I need to find Nagisa. She dismissed the Vertex One files and tapped the icon for Vertex Two. The first surveillance footage for this one was of a young girl riding on a winged wand in the manner of a witch's broomstick, soaring through the sky and happy as could be. Apart from a few supernatural incidents, the rest of what she saw was rather mundane. An uncharacteristic surge of envy spiked within her; this girl's exploits looked positively tranquil compared to her own life, especially at the moment. No endless conflicts with the forces of evil, no gigantic monsters, just contests of wit and will against a variety of magical creatures.

Vertex Three was next, and—

"Nagisa," said White in a longing whisper, reaching out to press her hands against the screen. There she was. There they were, side by side in miniature form within the frames of a dozen holographic videos: Nagisa and herself going to school together; eating takoyaki in the park with Hikari, Hikaru, and the fairies; protecting the city from Dusk Zone and their Zakenna. Home. Family. Friends. Security. All the things she ached for over the nightmarish stretch of time since she awakened in the pod, all of them were there... Tears welled in her eyes as she stroked the image of her partner's face. "M-Mipple, it's Nagisa! And Mepple, and Hikari, and Pollun and Lulun, and everyone!" There was no way to suppress the trembling in her voice. "Vertex Three, it's... it's home, this is it! Vertex Three is home! And these numbers, eight point three three three eight eight two mark one..." Like a finely-tuned machine roaring back to life after a long period of disuse, her scientific mind went into overdrive. "They must be coordinates! This portal network they have, if I can find some place to enter the right numbers..." Her fingers shook as they pressed the keys. She scarcely dared to breathe or blink, for fear that her discovery might turn out to be a dream or a delusion.

-INTER-VERTEXAL TEMPORO-SPATIAL TRANSPORT FUNCTION-

-ENTER DESTINATION COORDINATES-

White bit her lip and tapped in the coordinates character by character.

-ERROR 7780s: INVALID COORDINATES-

"No," White whispered. "No, please..." She tried again, and took care to enter each character correctly.

-ERROR 7780s: INVALID COORDINATES-

Again.

-ERROR 7780s: INVALID COORDINATES-

Again.

-ERROR 7780s: INVALID COORDINATES-

"No!" White did something she had never done before, never contemplated doing: she raised both hands as fists to slam them down on the console and pound the blasted thing into dust. Only sheer force of will stopped her. If she wrecked the console, it would most likely set off an alarm. Worse, she wouldn't be able to find out what she was doing wrong.

"Wh-White?" Mipple's voice quivered from her pouch. "I've... I've never felt you get that mad before. A-are you sure you're okay, ~mipo?"

One, White thought, sucking in a deep breath. Then another. Two. Three. Five. Seven. Eleven. Thirteen... "I'm... I'm sorry, Mipple," she said aloud. "I-I'll be okay, I promise."

Not like this. She had come too far to let this be the thing that stopped her. White adjusted herself in the small, cramped chair and went back to work. Surely even Dead End computers had some manner of help system. True, on Earth such systems were often unreliable if not useless, but they were better than nothing. She ran a search for the error code...

-ERROR 7780s: User's selected coordinates are for destination(s) outside standard temporo-spatial-dimensional axis, as defined by TSAB guidelines.-

Outside of the axis? And TSAB? What could that acronym mean? More searching...

-The Time-Space Administrative Bureau of Vertex Four is an interdimensional military and security force, dedicated to the patrol and peacekeeping of its Vertex and providing disaster relief to worlds affected by magical and temporo-spatial-dimensional phenomena.-

Disaster relief. On a hunch, White browsed for the most recent events considered to be "disasters" by the Bureau. A string of entries scrolled by, and one caught her eye—

-NC 0069.60518: Trans-Multidimensional Entity Incursion Event (Class SSSS) | Full-Scale Omnidimensional Collapse (Class SSSS) | Omnidimensional QLS Anomaly (Class SSSS)-

With every word of that file heading, her heart shriveled up a little more. But... but... she had to know. She had to know, because... because if Nagisa was still there...

I need to find Nagisa.

She opened the file.

-... an incalculably dangerous multi-transdimensional entity, its origin and purpose still a total mystery...-

-... received a classification heretofore unprecedented...-

-... its mere presence had cataclysmic effects on...-

-... entire universal cluster was torn from the known temporo-spatial-dimensional axis...-

-... left everything within trapped in a quantum liminal state, the inhabitants' existence in constant flux...-

-... TSAB Ground Forces disaster response teams estimated that as little as five minutes inside the anomaly would annihilate even SS-ranked mages with full barriers...-

-...all efforts to assist the cluster's inhabitants officially stated by the Bureau to be "a total loss", and...-

-... affected universal cluster has been declared "no man's land", with any and all transport to it prohibited without exception. Violation is punishable by...-

White sagged in the researcher's chair as if melting into it. Her eyes wouldn't leave the screen. Shock, she was going into shock. Part of her brain knew that and screamed warning to her, even as the rest ground to a halt. Her family, her friends, her home, everything she had ever known...

"White?" Mipple's voice was distant and faded. "White, wh-what happened? White...?"

She didn't know how long she sat there. Most likely, she would have done so forever if one thought hadn't sparked inside her: I need to find Nagisa.

"Sorry, Mipple," she said thickly. "I'll try to explain later, I promise." An unimaginable tragedy had occurred, but there was no more time to lose herself to grief... if she let it, it would swallow her whole.

One, she thought. Two. Three. Five. Seven... When she felt more stable, she cast her mind backward. The last thing she remembered before waking up in the pod was... was him. The colorful harlequin with the scarred mask. At the very end of that memory, there was a faint inkling of seeing something indescribably horrible, but her mind refused to recall it... it was a blind spot in her memory. Instead, she focused on the events just before it, that hideous grin. Joker. The name was like a branding iron pressing against her brain...

Currently, she was inside a Dead End base. Joker was in charge of Dead End. If she searched for him, maybe, just maybe, she could find out where he was. That would be the first step toward getting some answers.

On autopilot, she resumed her search. Patience brought success; diving into the database revealed that Dead End's primary headquarters was apparently called La Fin de Toute, a palace that orbited the event horizon of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. She called up any and all data relating to that palace, eventually stumbling across surveillance footage dated—as far as she could tell—to just before the entity ravaged their universe.

There on the screen, a small, eclectic group of eight girls stepped out of a streamlined shuttle, which stood on the edge of the rocky asteroid that housed the palace. A short one dressed in shades of blue zoomed from the hatch at a run, with the others tagging behind. Among the latter group she spotted a familiar, unruly swoosh of ginger hair, one that stood out against the blackness of space like a flare in the night...

"Nagisa," she whispered. Hope bloomed in her heart, for if Nagisa was somewhere in space and not back home when the calamity struck, then she could still be alive. No, she was alive, and she was waiting to be found.

White's fingers flew over the keyboard. It's reasonable to assume that she would try to head back to Earth if she could. I've confirmed that Earth exists in Vertices One and Two, and our Earth existed in Three. It's reasonable to assume that it exists in Four and Five as well. Searching everywhere would take lifetimes, but just to narrow it down, let's start looking with... Vertex One, Milky Way Galaxy. Orion-Cygnus Arm, Local Bubble, Local Interstellar Cloud, Sol System...

*****

-VERTEX ONE: 15.556984-

Ananke, in Orbit of Jupiter

Approximately 722 Million Kilometers from Earth

Shortly Before Walpurgisnacht's Manifestation in Azabu-Juuban

Something was happening on Earth, she felt it.

She felt him.

He was there, now. Drawn out into the open. And she felt another presence too, a familiar one.

She stood up from the moon's rocky surface and grinned as she brushed the frozen methane snow from her scar-riddled skin.

When she arrived, she would cause quite a stir.

Good. That was as it should be.

*****

Azabu-Juuban, Minato Ward, Tokyo

Now

"aahAhaHahAHaahAhAhAHahAhAHAHAHahaaHAHAHAhAHAah"

This was the first time in a long time that she was afraid of it.

Homura Akemi stood in the driving rain and wind atop the massive twenty-five-story Axia Azabu apartment complex, the tallest building in the Juuban district. Even from eighty meters up, the blare of emergency tones and prerecorded alert messages over Azabu-Juuban's public address systems were faintly audible from the streets below. The rain fell in hard, stinging droplets, and her long black tresses never stayed in one place for more than a second or two, thrashed about by the howling gale. Yet she remained stock still as she gazed up at the churning ceiling of storm clouds and pondered the strange nature of her relationship with the being that waited beyond them.

The first half-dozen times or so, it terrified her beyond any rational thought, it was the worst thing she could imagine. Over time, as she lived through the same seven weeks again and again, more than fearing it she grew to loathe it. It became her nemesis, the cursed thing that would always steal Madoka Kaname away from her through one means or another.

Her vitriol shifted over time, as she learned that that being was not the root cause of her misery. The Incubators were the true enemy. Witches, even the worst of them all, were a mere byproduct of their soulless exploitation of humankind, just another link in the chain. It made the being no less dangerous, for it still waited for her at the end of every cycle no matter what she did. It was the boulder at the top of Sisyphus's hill that would inevitably roll back down to the base again, dragging her along with it.

And as those seven weeks repeated and her failures mounted, she found couldn't even hate it anymore. Instead she was exhausted by it, by its domination of her thoughts, by its refusal to just die and be gone from her life. Preparing for it, fighting it, failing, and trying again became her entire existence; it hollowed her out of everything else, even the grief of losing Madoka so many times.

After Madoka ascended as the Law of Cycles, for a while it seemed she was finally free. Whatever sorrows and nightmares still plagued her, it was gone forever, it couldn't hurt either of them anymore. At least it was gone...

Now it was back from the dead, and echoes of terror scratched at Homura's insides with icy claws. Fighting it alone again would be so much easier. There was so much more to lose this time... and this time, there was no going back and trying again. Nor was there a simple solution to rid herself of it. She should have known better than to hope for one...

*****

Twenty Minutes Before

"hAAaAHahaHAhahhhaaAahahahHhaaAhhahAHaAHAhAhaHaHHhAA"

Down on street level, Homura marched over to Yuuno Scrya, spun him around, and grasped him by the shoulders. "You, ferret," she said, ignoring the boy's twinge of panic and discomfort as she stared at him. "Transport Walpurgisnacht into the Arthra's firing range, now. Do exactly what you planned to do to Joker."

Yuuno sputtered and wriggled in her grip. "I'm not a—! Look, even for me, that's not possible!"

"I read the Bureau's files relating to the Book of Darkness Incident," she countered. "You personally sent NachtWal's core out of Earth's atmosphere. Other mages of your universe routinely transport yourselves and others between dimensions without need of a ship."

"This is different!" said Yuuno as he freed himself from her grasp. "We had to reduce NachtWal down to its core before we could transport it, and even then we barely managed it. Back then we had Alph, the Wolkenritter, and all three Aces at full strength! That was one little core, from something the size of a skyscraper, maybe two." His brows knit together as he did mental calculations, and raindrops gathered in the furrow. "That thing up there has to be half the size of Azabu-Juuban!"

No, that made no sense. How could it possibly be that big? Because it's a Witch, the left side of her brain answered. Nothing about it makes sense. Suppressing the urge to shiver, she sought for another course of action. "If you can't transport it, place a barrier around it and seal it away. You managed that for the entire district."

"Only because the district didn't fight back!"

"Tch." That sound, a short and disdainful click of her tongue, expressed the sum total of her irritation toward him. She flipped back her hair and turned on her heel. "Jean to Musain," she said into the silver shackle on her wrist. "Fantine, open a door and send Walpurgisnacht through. The location doesn't matter, so long as it's empty."

The voice that answered from Chandeliers d'Argent was feeble and strained with effort. "Wh-what do you think... I've been trying to do... since it manifested?! You know as well as anyone... Walpurgisnacht's mere presence distorts what should be... m-makes reality its Labyrinth. My doors are gateways to infinite possibilities. Even if I managed to open and sustain one that size... I couldn't afford the slightest mistake. If even the smallest part of it ends up in the wrong reality..."

Useless. Homura looked around and took stock of the assembled Morning Lights and allies: three Sailor Senshi and Tuxedo Mask. One badly-injured and exhausted Cardcaptor, plus her two guardian beasts. Three Precure. Four combat-capable TSAB mages and one more running support, and six Puellae Magi including herself. One Sailor Animamate who probably wouldn't fight, one rescued civilian, and one sapient time anomaly. Twenty-one altogether, not counting the latter three, and almost all of them were battling some degree of mental or physical exhaustion. To kill Walpurgisnacht took godlike power, and no less than an army of magical girls at peak strength would have a prayer of surviving against it. The ones here were powerful, but they were no army, not yet.

The conclusion was obvious. "Then we should retreat," she said. "Our civilians and noncombatants first, then the rest of us. There's no reason to throw our lives away in a pointless battle."

Aghast, Usagi Tsukino, Sailor Moon, stamped her foot and just missed a rapidly spreading puddle. "We can't just run away! This city is my home, it's home to all of our friends and families! There's tens of thousands of innocent people here, we're not leaving them all to die!"

"Yeah, no." Chibi-Usa Tsukino, Sailor Chibi-Moon cast a deadly glare in her direction. "Usagi's right. Maybe that's how you do things where you come from, but this is our world. Sailor Senshi don't just up and quit."

"We've faced bigger threats and come out alive." Mamoru Chiba, Tuxedo Mask, put his arms around both of them. The blue-grey eyes behind his mask were hard and severe. "We're staying, and we'll fight with all we have."

"From what Madoka-chan told me, you've got half the JSDF's arsenal in that shield of yours," chimed in Makoto Kino, Sailor Jupiter. She pounded a fist into her palm. "That's got to even the odds at least a little. I say we fight... I built my cake shop from nothing with my own two hands, and I am not letting it get wiped off the map by some Witch, no matter how big it is!"

"As for us, we fight big monsters all the time." Nagisa Misumi, Cure Black, pounded a gloved fist into her palm. For some reason, she seemed a bit excited by the prospect. Ignorance, maybe. "Giant robots, kaiju, gods, black holes... you name it, Precure have kicked its ass. I don't see why we can't do the same for this one." Her expression grew serious as she met Homura's eyes. "I'll be honest: I've still got problems with you. But if something's got you worried, it's bad news. So I'll help, because that's what Precure do."

"Black-senpai is right!" Ayumi Sakagami, Cure Echo, stepped up from behind her. "I may be different from other Precure, but if there's one thing I know, it's that Precure never give up!"

"To leave this city to be destroyed would be a dereliction of our duty as Bureau officers," said Chrono Harlaown, who crossed his arms and stared her down as if she was a child caught misbehaving.

"I—" Homura began. "You all don't understand—"

"So make us understand," said Hayate Yagami. Amid all the colorful costumes and Barrier Jackets, she stood out like a sore thumb in her plain t-shirt, shorts, and sneakers. "We've got all these strong people here! We've got Nanoha-chan, who's a genius at tactics even if she's not at full power. Fate-chan hits hard and moves fast as lightnin'. Yuuno-kun's defensive magic is some of the best there is, an' Chrono-kun's so sneaky in battle that he can almost always come out ahead. As for me, I can't fight right now... but I have got more mana than I know what to do with, and you bet your butt I'll share as much as I can. An' don't forget, we've got you, who knows more about this thing than anyone. Shouldn't we at least try?"

"I did try." That statement came out harsher than she intended, and a flood of words followed before she could stop herself. "Over and over again, more than a hundred times, by myself and with others. Every time it got worse. Every time I lost someone precious to me or something even worse took its place. The last time I fought it, I threw my entire arsenal at it and didn't even slow it down." Obviously, Hotaru's lessons in allowing herself to express emotions had an unintended side effect on her ability to stay cool-headed. Damn it. A few tears prickled in her eyes and mixed in with the rain. d'Argent grew heavy and weighed down her arm. "It's hopeless—"

A hand in a dainty white glove closed around hers. "No," said Madoka. "Even when things are at their worst, they're not hopeless. You should know that by now, Homura-chan."

Old nightmares thundered through her skull. By all accounts, Madoka was the one person in existence capable of defeating Walpurgisnacht singlehanded. She was here. The cost of victory, though...

"I know." Of course Madoka could tell what she was thinking, the fear had to be plain in her eyes. "But this time, I'm not going anywhere, and we don't have to fight it by ourselves. Don't you see? All these people want to help us."

"They—"

"I'll be here with you." That smile, that smile she cherished. "We'll all be here. You're not alone."

Homura's heart pounded harder in her chest. Oh, to be able to hope like she always did, to stand unbowed to despair. When Madoka spoke like that, she wanted nothing more than to believe her...

"All right, stop looking at me like that! I get it! I'm going!" Chibi-Moon's voice groaned from behind them, presumably speaking to her parents... or whatever they were. Homura actually started, for the next thing she felt was the pink Senshi's hand on her shoulder. "Look," she said as she drew close. "I'm not gonna pretend we have a great relationship... or a relationship at all, really. I love her and I trust her, but I still think Hotaru's idea for the four of us is insane.

"But if she were here, I know she'd help you however she could. That's just what she does. And since she's not here, I'm gonna do what she'd do." She swallowed audibly, then pushed through obvious discomfort and found conviction beneath it: "No matter what happens tonight, I'll fight by your side. If Hotaru believes in you, I can believe in you too. You can do this. We can do this."

Against all odds, it was those words that bored a tiny hole through all the insulating layers of pessimism and unfeeling that Homura built up around herself over time. Remarkable, for the words didn't even come from Madoka... but she thought she understood why they affected her just the same. Much as she loved her, she heard Madoka things like that so many times that they lost most of their impact with repetition. Chibi-Moon's words came from someone who didn't know her, hadn't cared to know her, didn't even like her. Yet still she was willing to speak them and stand by them, however reluctantly, based on nothing more than absolute faith in her partner.

It was then that Homura had a very strange thought. In all her life, she only had romantic feelings for two people: first Madoka, and now Hotaru. There was never even an inkling toward anyone else. That Hotaru inspired feelings in her was unbelievable enough. But as she stared at Chibi-Moon, stunned to silence, that strange thought rippled through her brain: just for an instant, she understood a little of why Hotaru loved her. "Ts-Tsukino," she said, stumbling over her name.

Chibi-Moon pinched the bridge of her nose with her free hand. "Call me 'Chibi-Usa'," she sighed. "You might as well, everyone else does."

"Chibi... Usa..." said Homura, slowly. Sounding it out.

"Oh, ew." Her features scrunched together. "Coming from you it just sounds weird. But I guess that's better than asking you to call me 'Small Lady', so 'Chibi-Usa' it is. Now c'mon... Hotaru says you're an expert at strategy, so get strategizing while I round up the others."

Homura's next words went unheard even to herself, drowned out by an escalating wail... only because of its close proximity was it audible over the clamor of the gathering storm. Fifty meters to the east, a squad car skidded around the corner of Amishiro Street, lights strobing and siren blaring. As it ground to a halt, its overstressed rear tires missed going over the lip of the crater that marked the former location of the southeast crystal spire by only a few centimeters. That was close enough, apparently. The officer inside kicked the door open, sprinted the length of the patio, and came to a halt with his revolver drawn.

Chibi-Moon gaped in disbelief. So did Madoka.

*****

By some bizarre twist of fate, it was the same stocky, balding officer who held the Tigers up in the Metropolitan Central Library earlier that night, a lifetime ago. "Hands in the air, all of you!" he bellowed. "Stop what you're doing, in the name of the law!"

"Um...!" Sailor Moon reached for him—by instinct, Chibi-Moon supposed—but withdrew her hand in a hurry when the revolver's barrel pointed in her direction. It would take more than ordinary bullets to hurt a Sailor Senshi, but a gun pointed at you was a gun pointed at you, transformed or not.

"Magic." Inspector Jounichi Nakamura spat the word as a curse. Veins bulged in his neck and on his forehead, his jowls quivered with fury. "I should have known from the start that you were behind it! All these incidents—the invasions, the giant girl, the explosions, the collapsing buildings, even this storm—it's all because of magic! The supernatural! Because of people like you...!"

In a move with an uncanny resemblance to Sailor Moon's from moments before, Chibi-Moon stamped her foot. Heat reddened her face and spread to the tips of her ears. Of all the people, of all the times! "Listen, you ass—"

"Hold it, Chibi-Moon. Let me handle this." That was Jupiter, who pushed forward to the front of the group. "Inspector... Nakamura, right? It's been a long time." Her arms spread wide, and she approached the officer with a gentle smile. Not that the officer could see it, due to the disguise field. How did the other magical girls get by without that magic? Were the other Vertices just not as concerned with keeping secret identities secret?

"Wait." It was as if he'd seen a ghost, or heard one. The revolver trembled in Nakamura's grip as memories washed over him, his face went slack. "I-I know that voice. It's you... You're the one who saved my life years ago. Sailor Jupiter..."

"Yeah." Jupiter nodded and took a few steps closer. "And all these people are my friends. I know this is all scary and confusing. It is for us, too. It's natural that you'd look at us and think we're to blame... but I hope you'll believe me when I say that all of what we're doing tonight is to protect this city and people like you. We're the good guys, Inspector. There may be incidents and property damage when we fight, but we're on your side. We always have been, and always will be. Azabu-Juuban is our home, too."

"Your home? You mean..." Realization dawned, Nakamura's face went slack. "You're not angels. Or demons, or aliens, or anything like that. You're human..."

"Most of us are, anyway." Jupiter chuckled.

"But—" Nakamura looked from her to the other Lights, and his expression fell a little more with every undisguised face he took in. Akemi, Chibi-Moon noted, took the opportunity to subtly move out of his line of sight, so that his gaze never landed directly on her. Shyness? Anti-social tendencies? Or— Right, she thought. I almost forgot. The 'Devil walks among you' thing's mostly worn off for all of us because we see her all the time. For him, though—

"But this can't be right!" Nakamura exclaimed, distraught. "You're children! Some of you are less than ten!" he added with a sorrowful glance at Nagisa Momoe, and at the Stranger in her Chibi-Chibi form next to her. "You're just children. Children shouldn't be burdened with protecting the peace of the city, or of the world. That's supposed to be an adult's responsibility. How... how can all of you do this? How can you put your lives at risk?"

"Same way you do, I guess," said Jupiter with a small shrug, "only we started doing it younger. It's never easy and a lot of the time it sucks, but it has to be done. One way or another, all of us here made a choice to fight. You were right, this storm isn't natural, but that means that we have a chance of stopping it. It'll still do a lot of damage, but with your help, we can save as many lives as possible. That's what it's all about, right? Saving people and being heroes."

"I—" At last, Nakamura lowered the gun and holstered it. "But I can't be of any help to you." His eyes cast downward, ashamed, and his whole body sagged. "I'm sorry. I'm just an ordinary man, I don't have any magic or any power."

"But you're part of the system!" Jupiter put her hands on Nakamura's shoulders and knelt before him, putting them roughly at eye level. "All the wards in Tokyo have evacuation and shelter procedures in place for typhoons and natural disasters, but it's the system's job to start them up when they're needed. Now's the time for them, and that's where you come in, Inspector! It's something we can't do, but you can! We can't go through official channels, but if you talk to the mayor and city council..."

"They won't listen to someone like me—"

"Then make them listen! Tell them anything they need to hear, so long as it keeps people safe. The fewer civilians there are in danger, the easier it'll be for us to put a stop to all of this. Fighting monsters, vanquishing evil, and saving the planet? That's our job. Now how about it, Inspector? Are you gonna do yours?"

Seconds passed before Inspector Jounichi Nakamura drew himself up to his full height and stared Jupiter in the eyes. The smile that bloomed across his face was one of pride, of love for his city... and of humble gratitude. She rose, and he doffed his cap and bowed deeply. Raindrops made tracks from his crown to the slope of his balding forehead, and down from there. "Sailor Jupiter, I owe you and all of your comrades the sincerest of apologies," he said. "Please forgive my ignorance and my unspeakable rudeness. On my honor as an officer of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, I swear shall do everything in my power to ensure that this city and the nation of Japan stand with you. And Jupiter-san, please allow me to do what I should have done long ago. On behalf of myself, my wife, and my sons... thank you. Thank you for saving the life of this miserable, stubborn, short-sighted old fool. I owe you a debt that can never be repaid."

"Don't worry about debts," said Jupiter, blinking away a few tears. "Go, Inspector. We'll handle this. It's what we do."

Nakamura replaced his cap, straightened it in place, and made his way back to his patrol car. Faintly they heard him call in on his car's radio: "Dispatch, this is Car 601, Inspector Nakamura speaking. Requesting immediate contact with Minato City Hall..." After a brief back-and-forth, he nodded at them all and slid into the driver's seat. The car lit up, minus the sirens this time, and trundled back the way it came.

"You're so cool," said Yayoi Kise, Cure Peace, once more. She stood at Jupiter's side and gazed up—and up, and up—at her, completely starstruck, while her arms flapped up and down like the wings of a young bird trying to take off for the first time. And damn, Chibi-Moon thought, she really was adorable. "Moe" wasn't a concept she was all that familiar with beyond the general definition of the word. If she understood it right, though, then she was pretty sure Peace was the embodiment of moe, walking around on two little legs. "I can't believe you talked him down like that, senpai! That was amazing!"

"Thanks, kiddo." Pleased, Jupiter reached down and ruffled her sunny yellow hair. "Figured it was the polite thing to do. I'm really glad that worked, my only other idea was knocking him out. Mercury's the smart one who comes up with the plans, not me."

"Guys!" said Hayate, who had taken Sakura Kinomoto in her healing barrier to shelter beneath what remained of the Jewelry Osa-P's awning. "I got Daidouji-san an' Iron Mouse to go back to the Arthra with the Stranger, but—"

*****

"aHaaaahAHHhAAhAhAAHaaAAHaHAHAAHAhaa"

"I'm... staying," said Sakura, sitting up with some difficulty. Her bandaged hands gripped the barrier's sides for support. "I just got my Cards back, I can help—"

"Kinomoto-san, you can barely stand." It was Sayaka Miki of all people who advocated caution, unlikely as that was. To see her here among the Morning Lights and offering aid as if nothing had happened... the strangeness, the wrongness of that sight had yet to fade. It wouldn't for some time, if ever. Whether it was subconscious or not, it didn't escape Homura's notice how the other Lights grew tense when she came close or flinched when she spoke.

Of course, that uneasiness was probably preferable to the treatment she got from Mami Tomoe, Nagisa Momoe, and particularly Kyoko Sakura. The former two pointedly stood on the opposite side of the street from Sayaka and avoided looking at her. As for the latter, she was off by herself, slumped against a broken vending machine and eating her way through most of it. Kyoko stewed under a personal storm cloud even more violent than those brewing above as she took huge bites from packages of doubtlessly unhealthy snack food... Homura couldn't make out what kind it was. Food was supposed to be sacred to Kyoko, she took her time with it. Now, though, her jaws worked in a ceaseless, singleminded fury that was evident even from meters away. She wasn't so much eating her meal as she was attacking it.

"Go back to your Lighthouse and rest," Sayaka continued. "You've done more than enough."

"E-even so!" Sakura nodded to herself, then swayed. Her two Guardian Beasts, Kerberos (or "Kero") and Yue, rushed to both her sides to steady her. "Th-there has to be at least one Card that can help stop that thing. If there isn't, then at least... at least let me try to protect the city."

"STORM and RAIN would all be capable of calming the weather to some degree," said Yue.

"That's not all, I could use SHIELD to cover as much of the city as I can, and keep that thing from getting too close—"

A gloved hand grasped her shoulder. "Don't strain yourself too much, Kinomoto-san," said Yuuno. "You handle the weather, leave shields to me."

"O-okay, Scrya-kun. Thank you."

"But you can't use any Cards for long if you're runnin' on empty!" Kero flapped his wings in agitation. "I hate to say it, but that girl might be right, Sakura. Just healin' you isn't the real problem, the real problem is energy. You're all but out of juice!"

Brilliant green eyes scanned over the Star Wand lying in her lap, then came to rest on the golden star in its crown. "Maybe not. Do you remember what we had to do for the last of Eriol-kun's trials?"

"Master, you cannot be serious."

"We don't have much of a choice, Yue-san. It doesn't have to be for forever, or even for that long... Once the city's safe, I promise I'll go back to the Lighthouse and rest for as long as it takes. I have all this power, I have to do something!"

"Aw, shoot," said Kero, who settled himself on Sakura's shoulder and crossed his tiny arms. Homura noted that it was both the same pose and the same shoulder he perched on when he did so to her, back at the Crossroads. A creature of habit, it seemed. "You know we can't say no to you. All right, I'll do it... but the second it gets to be too much, Yue and I are gettin' you out of here. No arguments, got it?"

"Thank you, Kero-chan." Sakura smiled and stroked him between his ears with one fingertip. "Don't worry. Everything will be all right, somehow."

Yue nodded assent. "I will offer my aid as well."

"If you're sure." Sayaka turned to Homura, and the corners of her mouth turned up in what was technically a smile. "That's a couple more balls in your court, Devil. What's your plan now?"

When Sayaka Miki looked her in the eye, it was difficult to suppress the urge to draw a gun on her. Homura was convinced that all that Sayaka said was true; her actions over the past hour—and Joker's response to those actions—ruled out almost all possibility that her turn to the Lights' side was some manner of elaborate ruse. The LIBRA Card did the rest. Homura had never spoken to the Cardcaptor or interacted with her directly, but her power was inarguable. Anyone with the slightest sensitivity to magic signatures could tell that Dead End was right to fear her. What she had done tonight, taking on Joker alone in combat with only a fraction of her power, executing the plan to perfection under his nose, and emerging victorious... Sakura Kinomoto earned Homura's respect.

Now that her LIBRA Card had banished the last remaining doubts, Homura accepted the truth: Sayaka was on their side. Did this mean that their indelible mutual grudge was put to rest at last? Absolutely not, not ever. Sayaka Miki was an infuriating, insufferable pain in her backside no matter whose side she was on, it was a universal constant. Pigheaded, foolhardy, meddlesome, wildly unfit to be a Puella Magi Sayaka Miki. Sayaka who plunged herself into Hell, alone, for Madoka's sake. Sayaka who slipped on a mask that managed to fool everyone, including Joker... and Homura herself, to her private and everlasting shame. Sayaka who put herself at insane risk to carry out her mission, who was just as liable to have saved reality as she was to have put it in incalculable danger.

Homura couldn't stand her. More than once when she was the Devil, she pondered removing Sayaka from existence with a thought. For some reason, she never did. As easy as it should have been to hate her with every fiber of her being... some small, weak ember of her small, weak former self could never do it.

Those feelings weren't important now, Homura thought as she gave herself a mental shake of the shoulders. Focus. "There is no plan, Miki," she answered at last. "I didn't know I would be facing Walpurgisnacht tonight. Had I known, I would have prepared well in advance. My arsenal is depleted, thanks in part to the idiot who destroyed two of my best handguns and made me waste my ammunition..."

"Sorry," Sayaka lied. She didn't even bother to hide her smirk. Damn her.

Abruptly, Madoka was between them, her eyebrows lowered in a dangerous way that suggested she was approaching one of her rare bad moods. "Homura-chan, Sayaka-chan, knock it off. You don't have to like each other, but at least be civil."

"For us, this is civil. It's almost polite."

"She has a point. But you're forgetting: my arsenal doesn't even work on Walpurgisnacht. So unless some of that information you stole from Dead End includes how to harm it with conventional weapons..."

"It doesn't." Sayaka grimaced and shook her head. "Their databases are a mess of secrets, codenames on top of codenames. They kept me in the loop enough to show me how to understand most of it, but the rest I couldn't make heads or tails of. It's possible I read about Walpurgisnacht and didn't even realize what I was reading, that was how dense it was. I didn't know Joker could summon it, I swear. Otherwise I would have found a way to warn you all."

"Hmph." A curt dismissal, but inwardly, Homura understood. Psychopathy and paranoia went hand-in-hand. Given the number of psychopaths Dead End employed, she understood. Not that Sayaka needed to know that. "Then I suppose I'll just have to be useless for this fight."

"No you won't, Homura-chan." Once again, Madoka grasped her hand. "Even if you can't fight directly, you still know more about Walpurgisnacht than anyone. You can still lead us, show us what to do!"

"I have to admit that much," said Sayaka. "You're the expert, the only one of us original five who survived it every time. Maybe it was magic, maybe it was dumb luck, but you lived when the rest of us didn't. Show us what to do, and maybe we stand a chance."

"I'm no leader," Homura protested. Why didn't they get it? "You'd be putting not just your lives but the fate of all reality in the hands of a failure—"

"Uh, guys?" said Hayate from across the square. The mass-produced Storage Device she had taken to using in place of her lost Devices was in her hand, displaying a communications window. "Incoming signal from the Arthra, we're about to have company!"

Fists clenched and weapons drew at those words. The same terrible thought was on every face: If Dead End attacks in full force right now...

"Wait!" said Hayate hurriedly, catching their expressions. "It's—"

Then came spell circles, six of them, evenly spread across the square and softly glowing white. The first two shapes to materialize from them did so at a run, with joyous shouts:

"Mako-chan!"

"[Mako-chan, it's really you!]"

Rei Hino, Sailor Mars, and Minako Aino, Sailor Venus, all but tackled their much larger friend to the ground in their rush to embrace her. Through Comeback Tour's speaker, the sounds of Venus trying and failing to suppress her tears took on pleasant whistling tones.

"Hey, Mars, Venus." Jupiter's voice was husky from holding back her own. "Sorry it took me so long to find you guys again. I promise, this time I'm not going anywhere."

"[We've missed you so much!]"

"Aww, I've missed you too. So that's your AMP thingy, huh? The kids told me about it, seems to me like it works pretty well. You sound great!"

"[Sorta like portable Autotune. Might keep it for my shows. But Mako, you won't believe it, Rei-chan confessed to me!]"

"Minako! We're in public, don't go blabbering to the whole street!"

"Seriously, after all this time? Hot damn, Rei-chan, you kept her waiting..."

"You knew?!"

"Of course I knew! You thought you were hiding it? I didn't know you thought it was a secret!"

The second pair were already in animated conversation as they materialized. Tsubomi Hanasaki, Cure Blossom, talked in reverent tones to Michiru Kaioh, Sailor Neptune: "—played the cello, you see, so once this is all over, I'd love you to meet my grandmother and play for her! Of course I know that the violin is very different from the cello, but still— Oh, we're here! That was faster than I thought!"

"So we are," said Neptune. She wore the same faintly mischievous smile she wore all through the poker game at the Crossroads... it gave her an unnerving resemblance to an Incubator. "Of course, Tsubomi-chan, I'd be delighted to meet her. She sounds like a wonderful woman." Teal eyes glanced upward at Homura, and the smile went from mischievous to devious. "Ah, Akemi-san. Now, don't you feel much better now that you've confessed?"

"You...!" Homura's cheeks flared with such heat that she felt she might burn to ashes on the spot. Who the hell was this woman? How did she know what happened in the lab? Hotaru wouldn't discuss something like that without asking first. For that matter, how did she find out about her feelings in the first place?

"Oh, I like her!" said Sayaka, not quite under her breath. "The lady knows what's what."

And the third pair... Homura registered a mild surprise. The third pair were Kirara Amanogawa, Cure Twinkle, and Towa Akagi, Cure Scarlet. While nominally one of the Morning Lights, the latter had never participated in battle since her arrival at the Lighthouse. By Homura's limited understanding, the elfin princess had been mostly bedridden; there was a fragment of demonic power stuck inside her, which threatened to corrupt her into a dark and twisted version of herself. Yet here she was, hand in hand with her partner and ready to do battle despite the unnatural silver streaks in her long bubblegum pink curls, a visual reminder of her ongoing struggle.

"Remember our promise," said Twinkle to her, grave and somber. She laid their clasped hands together over Scarlet's heart. "No playing brave, no matter what. If you get so much as a case of the sniffles, we pull you out and send you back to sickbay."

Scarlet seemed none too worried. "It will be fine," she said as she squeezed her partner's hand. "Rei-san and I have been training diligently, and I have far more control of myself than I did before. In fact..." Catching sight of the other couple, Scarlet waved the weapon in her free hand, which Homura initially mistook for a baton or wand of some kind. No, it was actually a violin bow. Strange, but Nagisa Momoe fought with a trumpet, so. "There she is now! Rei-san! Sailor Mars! Good day to you!"

Venus glanced back and forth and smirked while Mars returned the wave. "[Wow,]" she said. "[Look, Rei-chan. A yellow and red magical girl couple. The cute one's got stars and the cool one's got fire. Think we should sue somebody? Did they rip us off? I mean, we came first.]"

"Minako, hush."

"[Okay, fine. Technically we haven't yet. That's for after the battle~.]"

Jupiter let slip one brief chuckle. "Nice."

"Minako!" The red streaks in Mars's hair burst into flames as she gaped at her partner in appalled dismay, and her body wavered for a second or two. "There are kids here!"

"[Goddess of Love, hot stuff. Can't tell me not to be who I am, not now that we're an item.]"

And over by the broken vending machine, Kyoko actually rose from the center of the growing mountain of junk food wrappers that surrounded her. Mami and Nagisa were engaged in a lopsided conversation with her, speaking in words Homura couldn't hear over the rest of the voices in the square. Kyoko herself didn't contribute much at all, and her scowl looked to have taken up permanent residence on her face. But whatever the two of them said did the trick... Kyoko nodded and summoned her spear, then mumbled something that made Mami smile gently. Curiosity prickled inside Homura. How did Mami convince her?

All these people were here, the warriors and survivors of five universes. All but a handful of the Morning Lights, gathered in one place. Homura knew she should protest more. The argument was on her lips: bringing so many of their forces together in one location was foolish at best. But when they finished their greetings and introductions and reunions, when the two dozen-plus of them fell silent and looked to her, waiting on her words with expectant faces... it finally hit her. Even with everything she had done, even with her sins bare to all reality, they wished to follow her. They would follow her, whether she wanted them to or not. They were not only willing to fight her old nemesis by her side, but they were willing to trust her word on it. After all those years she spent desperate for someone, anyone to believe in what she had to say... the knowledge that others trusted her woke emotions in her heart that she didn't think she could ever define or describe, not even if she was given another thousand lifetimes.

At the same time, she found she now had an inkling of the enormous burden that Mami lived under, the burden that broke her in so many timelines. So many relied on her as an ideal, as an expert, and she couldn't afford to let the mask slip, not for anyone. The people who depended on her could never glimpse the lonely, terrified child behind that mask, or it would all fall apart. Such a fragile façade, the deadliest balancing act in all the worlds. Did Sailor Moon feel like this? Did the Precure leaders? Did Nanoha Takamachi? How did they manage it?

Perhaps, Homura thought, they simply had to fake it. Perhaps they had to push down their insecurities and project confidence, whether or not they believed in it themselves. For the sake of the mission, and for the world... Such was the life of a magical girl.

Words came to her and were spoken before her brain could fully process them. "I dislike telling lies, so I won't give you false hope," she said. "Despite our numbers, there is a very real chance that we may die. Except for the six of us from our world, no one here has any idea what that thing is capable of, what it's like to fight it. It's not like Joker, it won't keep us alive to watch us suffer more. If we give it the chance, it will kill us all and raze Tokyo to the ground. It will do so without pause and without thought, because it has no mind, no awareness of anything but its own suffering. It doesn't need to want to destroy everything... it simply does, by its presence alone.

"As we speak, a supercell is forming around it, with Walpurgisnacht in the center of its mesocyclone. The storm front will be comparable to a severe typhoon at least, and will affect everything within a rough five-kilometer radius of our position."

Luna P projected a holographic map from its eyes as Chibi-Moon did calculations. "Th-that's... all of Minato is in that radius," said, her eyes wide enough for the map to visibly reflect in them. "My God, and it's enough to reach Shibuya, Chiyoda, Meguro, and Chuo! Five entire wards...!"

"Exactly," Homura continued. "Walpurgisnacht is a disaster, and it's too late to avert it. Our only hope is to mitigate some of it. People will die, there can be no saving them all... but we must either accept that here and now or resign ourselves to lay down and die with them. Our only prayer of saving anyone is to kill it, whatever it takes. This is not the time for restraint. Hold nothing back and show it no mercy, because it will neither understand nor care. For every moment it exists, it will enact its purpose like clockwork because that is what it does."

Faces fell during her speech, one after another. Not good, she was losing them. Positive thinking, positive thinking... "It may be enormous and powerful, but it's not invincible. I've seen it die before." d'Argent's weight lessened on her arm. "Magical attacks can damage it, and with enough force, we may be able to kill it—"

"No," said someone from behind the rest of the crowd, a voice that made Homura's entire body seize up. "We will kill it," said Hotaru Tomoe, Sailor Saturn, who stepped from the light of another transport circle. The rest of the Lights parted like waters before her as she approached. "One way or another, I promise that it will never plague you or anyone else ever again, Homura."

"Hotaru-chan!" "Saturn, you shouldn't—" Both Chibi-Moon and Madoka rushed to meet her, their words overlapping: "—should be back at the Lighthouse with your dad, what are you doing here—" "—can't possibly be suggesting—"

Saturn chuckled and passed the Silence Glaive to her left hand in order to wrap an arm around Chibi-Moon. "I know, I know, I'm not supposed to be here. But once I heard what was happening, I had to come." Clouds gathered on her brow. "Papa didn't like it at all, but I explained to him that this is exactly the kind of emergency Messiah was designed for. If Walpurgisnacht doesn't qualify, nothing does."

"Saturn, please, listen to yourself!" Though they were some distance apart, Homura could still make out the horrified waver in Chibi-Moon's eyes. "I know this thing deserves it, but you can't use the Morendo twice in one night...!"

A murmur of gasping and whispering spread through the assembled Lights; it was apparent some of them didn't yet know that one of Messiah's limited charges was already spent. Several cringed, the air chilled and drew taut with tension.

Homura was one of the ones unaware. A spike of dread thrust into her belly, but with skill borne of long practice, she kept her expression neutral. d'Argent's weight became like lead.

It was Fate Testarossa Harlaown who spoke next, in trembling tones. "But from what I understand, your AMP Device guarantees its permanent death, is that right? If you can kill it now, before it damages the city..."

Saturn shook her head, still an island of calm amid all the frayed nerves. "Using it for an instant kill would almost assuredly kill me as well, or cripple me so badly that I'd be useless going forward. The power of destruction always comes with a price, a balancing of the scales. Messiah mitigates that price as much as possible and makes it something feasible, but the more power I use, the heavier the toll."

"Equivalent exchange," murmured Peace. She clutched her hands at her chest and shivered.

"The Morendo inflicts slow death," Saturn continued. "Endless, debilitating pain for as long as it takes for the target's body to devour itself, if something else doesn't finish it off first. A creature as enormous as Walpurgisnacht would have time to level all of Tokyo and the surrounding areas before it died if we left it alone. And from what Homura told me about it, that thing is made of pain, the suffering of countless Puellae Magi. If it can endure its own existence, the effects of the Morendo won't stop it... but they will destabilize it, weaken it enough to level the playing field for the rest of you."

"Then why use it at all?!" Chibi-Moon was near hysterical. "Saturn, please, I just got you back, I can't risk losing you again!"

Saturn pulled Chibi-Moon into an embrace and rested her chin on her partner's shoulder. "It'll be okay," she said. Her words were soft, but with an odd power that carried them through the square, with perfect clarity even over the sounds of the storm. "You know how it works: anyone or anything hit with the Morendo is gone forever once it's dead. Nothing in this universe or any other will bring it back, not even the Silver Crystal. If I need to give another year to protect our home and put an end to Homura's nightmare? I'll do it gladly. She saved my life, I owe her at least that much. And it's only a year... there are far more important things."

The spike in Homura's belly expanded into a confused tangle of thorns. This was wrong, her instincts screamed. Fighting to save the city was well and good, commendable even, but no one else should have to sacrifice on her behalf... least of all Saturn, who had already been through so much. The practical thing to do would be to march over to her and tell her to listen to reason, make her go back to the Lighthouse and stand by until the battle was over.

And yet. Saturn understood her history with Walpurgisnacht better than anyone except Madoka. Saturn understood the pain, the despair, the devastation the Witch wrought in every timeline. She understood, and she offered to finish it for good this time. Not just for the sake of the city and the world, but for her. The cost would never be worth it.

Yet Saturn would anyway, because they were... not just friends, not anymore. Right now they were somewhere above friends but below partners or lovers, a harrowing liminal state fraught with uncertainty. Homura knew she loved her, and knew that Saturn wanted to return her feelings, but all else was strange, uncharted territory.

Once, long ago, someone else she loved gave everything to save her from despair. Though the sacrifice was for the good of all, Homura could never fully accept it in her heart of hearts. That unacceptance drove her mad over time, pushed her into betraying Madoka for the sake of her desire. Once again, time proved itself to be cyclical; the exact circumstances differed, but the fundamentals were the same. "I have changed," she said to Sayaka during their fight in the underground. At the time, it wasn't a lie, or so she believed.

Was the universe testing her, daring her to prove it? Or was it fate?

Over the years she spent lost in time, Homura had grown accustomed to defying fate, just as she defied anyone or anything between herself and her goals. So whether the universe or fate was to blame for this turn of events, or if it was something else entirely, or even if it was just random chance, a blip in a universe of meaningless chaos...

Homura clenched her fist. Whatever it was, she would defy it just the same. Prove it wrong.

She flipped back her hair, and a light shower of raindrops fell from the black strands. Striding up to where Chibi-Moon, Madoka, and Saturn stood, she took hold of Saturn's hand with her own and met her eyes. So like her own, but with so much more feeling. "I don't like it," Homura said. "But if you're sure you want to do this..." Her voice trembled, but only a little. "Then I'll accept your help. Thank you."

Saturn's pale cheeks flushed, her lips curled into a soft and understanding smile... and for Homura, the chill of the falling rain dispelled, replaced by tender warmth. No need for words. d'Argent's weight was barely tangible.

Next to them and yet somewhere far away, Madoka and Chibi-Moon exchanged glances, shocked but not displeased. "Homura-chan, you actually—" Madoka began.

"Yeah," said Chibi-Moon, a little sheepish. "Maybe there's something to this idea after all. Wild."

Just like that, the moment passed, for Saturn's gaze traveled over Homura's shoulder to rest on someone behind her. It was as if someone closed a window and shut her warm emotions back inside. "Sorry, please excuse me." She took back her hand, squared her shoulders, and brushed past Homura. "Michiru-mama," she said, cool and civil.

Homura pivoted to see Neptune close by. The Incubator-like smile was fixed in place and her arms were folded in a relaxed position, but her body language did nothing to mask the astriction between herself and Saturn, it was like a spring coiled tight. "Hotaru," Neptune said.

She couldn't see Saturn's expression from her angle, but some part of Homura was glad for it. "When this is over, you and I are going to have a talk about Papa." That was all, no overt shows of anger, no accusations, no tears, no raising of her voice. Those things would have been gratuitous; by itself, Saturn's tone made it crystal clear what her feelings were on the matter.

"Indeed." Neptune nodded. For a few seconds, her smile faltered. "I'll speak for all of us: me, Haruka, and Setsuna."

Chibi-Moon cringed as if she had been slapped.

If Neptune noticed, she made no comment. "I promise I'll do my best to explain everything. Once that's done... we'll just have to move forward from there."

"I suppose we will."

Homura silently excused herself. Maybe it was more evidence of personal growth, maybe it was just reading the atmosphere, but in either case she no longer felt the need to stand by Saturn's side. There was little that she could understand or hope to contribute when it came to Saturn's relationship with her parents, biological and foster both. Her own parents were nonentities to her. Yet even she, orphaned for as long as she could remember, knew enough to step back and give the two of them their privacy.

That still left almost two dozen Lights waiting on more strategy, however. Time to be professional again. "As for the rest of you," said Homura, turning her attention back to them, "we need to engage the enemy on multiple fronts if we hope to survive. Some of our forces must stay on the ground to battle Familiars and shield the city and its inhabitants from harm while others are on the rooftops and in the air, taking the fight to Walpurgisnacht itself."

Grave but determined, Nanoha stepped forward. Both her hands clutched Raising Heart with white-knuckled intensity. "Let me and Fate-chan help with the division of teams, Akemi-san. We can coordinate aerial tactics, too." A small but amused smile. "From one Devil to another, it's the least I can do to help you."

"Fine." Homura's response was a little too severe, but at least she knew it was intended as a compliment. Something else needed to be said to them all, but she was flummoxed as to exactly what it was. "This will not be easy," she started. "You must be prepared for the worst, and it's unlikely all of you will survive—"

"All right, all right, that's enough." Sayaka butted in and pushed her aside, showing the same disregard for Homura's personal space and her own safety that was so infuriating in past timelines. "God, you suck at giving motivational speeches. With all these other magical girls here, you'd think you'd pick up some pointers. Let me give it a shot.

"Listen up, Morning Lights!" Her voice was louder and more strident than Homura could ever manage, even at her angriest. For emphasis, she summoned a cutlass and clanged its point against the asphalt at her feet. "I know most of you aren't fans of me right now, and that's fair." Her eyes flicked over to Kyoko's dour expression for an instant. "But I hope you'll hear me out anyway. It's okay to be scared. We're facing a Witch like no other, something that's killed countless people... but we have some of the greatest heroes in the multiverse here on our side to fight it, and we have an expert to tell us how to do it.

"And you know what else? You people scare Dead End. Hell, you scare Joker! Why else would he bring Walpurgisnacht here?! It's because you beat him! You had him in checkmate, and he knew it! I've spent months figuring out how that bastard thinks, so trust me: he'd never resort to overkill like that unless he was out of options and didn't know what else might be able to take you out. Guys, if you can scare the worst people in the multiverse that much, you can do anything."

Credit where it was due, Homura saw stirrings of confidence in the sea of faces. Perhaps Sayaka was smart in her own ways. And then, as if to punish her for having such an optimistic thought, Sayaka grasped her by the wrist and hauled her back before the crowd against her will. All eyes swiveled to her as she briefly considered shooting Sayaka with the rock salt again, damn the people watching.

"Look!" said the girl who was now back in a solid third place on the list of banes of her existence. "She and I have more reason to hate each other than almost anybody here. But one thing we both agree on is that Walpurgisnacht is bigger than the two of us. Right, Devil?"

"That's... right," Homura hissed.

"Right, so just for now, we're putting our beef with each other aside and fighting together until we kick this thing's ass!" Sayaka continued and raised the volume. "And if we can do it, it should be no problem for the rest of you! So who's with me?!" Her free hand balled into a fist and pumped the air. "If you want to see tomorrow, let me hear your battle cry! Shout it loud!"

It was plain from Sayaka's expression that the reaction wasn't what she hoped. Rather than a stirring show of solidarity, the other Lights looked at each other with confused glances and quiet muttering.

"You're kidding me." Now it was Sayaka whose face fell. "Don't tell me you don't have one! What kind of hero team doesn't have a cool battle cry?!"

Silence, save for the wind and rain and cackling laughter from far above.

"C'est pour demain." Homura would never know why the phrase came to mind at that moment, or why she spoke it out loud. Of course she knew where it came from, it was a lyric dear to the hearts of both Hotaru and herself, but it wasn't at all like her to offer suggestions. Combat was a serious, life-and-death affair, and battle cries were for people who had little idea what they were doing, like Sayaka. The only explanation she could think of was that it felt... right, like a picture coming into focus, a puzzle piece sliding into place. And oddly, she could have sworn she felt the touch of a feather-light embrace as she tought of it. "'For tomorrow,'" she answered in response to Sayaka's blank stare. "Or 'Tomorrow comes.'"

And as the phrase passed from person to person, Homura felt another strange sensation: a sense of connection bloomed in the square, a magnetic force that wasn't there seconds ago. From one soul to another, the wills of people from the entire span of time, space, and five separate universes solidified... humans, humanoids, and magical creatures alike, young and old, those words found a place in every heart.

"C'est pour demain." Tuxedo Mask nodded and drew Sailor Moon close. "I don't know about you, Usako, but I like it."

"C'est..." And Sailor Moon stumbled over the pronunciation a few times, but eventually she got it, and beamed with pride. "C'est pour demain!"

Peace giggled to herself. "It sounds sort of like a superhero name to me, but that just makes it cooler! Seipuuduman! I like it too!"

"Gotta hand it to you, Akemi," said Black, who grinned and flashed a thumbs-up. "I think you nailed it."

"I—" said Homura, and nothing more, because both Madoka and Saturn chose that moment to hug her from opposite sides, which short-circuited her brain and rendered her quite incapable of speech.

And in another lifetime, or many lifetimes ago, the expression on Sayaka's face might have made her laugh: part grimace of defeat, part lip-pursing envy, part begruding respect. That wasn't a combination of emotions that meshed together well—or at all—and though her features made a noble attempt to register all of them at once, the result was something one might see in a slapstick cartoon. "Okay, fine," she groaned. "I'll admit it, I'll never come up with anything better than that. Dammit." And back to the crowd: "You heard the Ex-Queen Bitch of All Bitches here! Everyone with me this time, on three, and don't you dare hold back! One... two... three...!"

Two dozen voices shouted proud: "C'EST POUR DEMAIN...!"

*****

Now

Axia Azabu

Homura stood atop the Axia and waited. The air tasted of that particular ominous dryness that preceded the worst typhoons, and the wind grew ever more violent as the atmospheric pressure dropped, a change she felt in her bones. The teams were in position, the strategies were made. Everything she and the other Puellae Magi could remember about fighting it had been shared freely. In mere moments, it would break through the cloud cover, and the nightmare would return...

A white-gloved hand grasped hers, and as their fingers entwined, the fear gnawing at her insides subsided a bit. "It might be an inappropriate time to say it," said Saturn, "but I think I've failed you as your sort-of therapist. I'm going to have to retire."

Homura tore her gaze from the swirling clouds long enough to raise an eyebrow.

"I'm developing an attraction to my patient." Her pale cheeks flushed. "We can't have that, therapists are supposed to be impartial. It's grossly unethical, I'd lose my license if I had one."

"Pretty sure becoming the Devil and rewriting the universe has got you beat in terms of 'grossly unethical', Saturn," said a voice out of the rooftop emergency egress behind them. In a futile effort, Chibi-Moon covered herself with one arm to shield herself from the storm as she stepped from the doorway. Immediately, the wind seized her cotton-candy pigtails and whipped them around in mad, drunken spirals behind her. "Ugh, the weather's even worse up here! Is it always like this when this thing shows up?!"

Madoka ducked out of the way of her flailing hair and nodded sadly as she stepped out from behind her. "Always. But it wouldn't be any less scary to fight it on a sunny day, trust me."

"I'm sorry that I can't do much to fight it with you," Homura said to the three of them, "but d'Argent couldn't scratch something of that size, and—"

"Yeah," said Chibi-Moon. "You don't have any other magic weapons and your guns and stuff won't work, I get it." A sympathetic smile. "Believe it or not, I kinda know the feeling."

To Homura's genuine surprise, a fifth voice joined the quartet: "I can do something about that, if you'll allow me to be of assistance," said Fantine from d'Argent's speaker. A hologram of her winged blue spark avatar appeared, projected from within the AMP's frame.

"Fantine-san...?" Chibi-Moon's eyes went wide. "Aren't you—"

"I've been useless, and I'm sorry," said the spark, cutting her off. Its wings drooped, its light dimmed. "I could have stopped all of this if I wasn't such a coward... if I had intervened when I had the chance." Fantine paused. "It's a paradox: as it turns out, when you see everything that happens, you tend to lose perspective on which things truly matter. My mistakes have caused you all so much pain, and I truly regret that. Nothing I do will make up for those mistakes, and I knew I was beyond redemption long before I met you all. So I won't ask for your pity, or for forgiveness... but I will do this for you."

A brief flash of light, like that of a camera, produced a tiny ebony feather above their heads. The way that it floated gently down, as if caught in a gentle breeze and not the gale-force winds lashing the district, was proof enough that it came from nothing natural. Instinct bid Homura to cup her hands, and the feather fell neatly into her palms. Warm and soft, it pulsed from within with power, a familiar power, as it sank into her skin. Homura extended her right arm by instinct, stunned... and the bow appeared. Her bow. Tall, black, its limbs elegantly curved, it was embedded with violet diamonds above and below the grip... diamonds of the same cut and color as the Soul Gem on the back of her left hand.

"I'm afraid this is all I can safely give you back," said Fantine. "In my state, I doubt I could release the power inside the quantum siphon without annihilating everything. It's not much, but I hope you'll take it... along with my sincerest apologies, Miss Akemi. You have changed, for the better. I don't know if it's enough yet, but some things you have to take on faith."

"You..." Homura stared at the spark, her emotions awhirl with conflict.

"Let's just say that I understand what it's like to be brought down, made alone and powerless. I should have remembered that feeling before I forced it on you."

A great many possible responses to that admission floated through her brain. Most of them were vicious and cutting; so much of this was Fantine's fault, and if Homura had her way, she would never be forgiven even if she asked. One could argue that some kind of karma was at work: her former unwillingness to act was now an inability to act.

And yet... behind that winged avatar was someone who once thought herself in complete control, someone who was now humbled and trying her best to make amends and be a better person than before. Homura knew firsthand just how grueling that process could be. Loath as she was to consider herself similar to Fantine in any way... both of them were trying. If her time with Hotaru taught her anything, it taught her that just the attempt was worth acknowledging. Therefore, she let all her snide remarks go and simply said, "Thank you, Fantine."

The spark bobbed up and down, as if nodding. "I'll be watching. If I can provide any other help... I promise, you'll have my aid."

"Rooftop Team Alpha, this is Round Table with the Ground Team!" Hayate's Kansai twang sounded from the speaker of Chibi-moon's AMP. "We're all set, sound off if you guys are too!"

"Jean, ready," said Homura.

Madoka, Saturn, and Chibi-Moon followed suit:

"Swan, ready!"

"Cassini, standing by."

"Faraway here, let's get this show on the road!"

"Roger that, Faraway. Rooftop Teams Bravo an' Charlie are go for support, an' the Aerial Team is holding position. That's your cue, Sakura-san! Start us off!"

The Cards Sakura released were too tiny to make out at a distance, but their effects were felt immediately...

The rain stopped.

The wind stopped.

Even the cackling laughter stopped for a moment, and the silence that fell was as if all the world drew breath with dread.

And...

"AAaHaHHAhahhAaahaHhAhahaHAHaaHahhahA"

... and a shape shredded through the cloud cover like it was made of so much cotton. Solid, rectangular, a slab of dull and weathered metal at least fifty meters tall. Evenly spaced from it, another slab followed as the first rotated out of sight. Then there was another evenly spaced from that, and another. Teeth... The shapes were merely the first four teeth of an immense iron gear, each tooth over half as tall as the skyscraper they stood on. Always in motion, a lost piece of clockwork that went on turning though there was nothing for it to turn.

Next was a ball gown, a frilly, midnight blue thing that spread out to the edges of the gear. It defied both sense and gravity by keeping its bell shape though the figure it attached to was upside-down. That figure was a ghoulish dressmaker's mannequin of titanic size... no legs and no waist, just an upper torso attached to the largest gear by a copper axle thicker around than the trunks of a dozen trees together. Its cavernous, empty sleeves spread straight out to either side as it spun, round and round in aimless circles. Its face rotated into view, and despite everything she did to prepare herself, Homura's insides shriveled. White and smooth as porcelain, a toothless, vacant smile on its painted red lips, and between them a pitch-black hollow for a mouth. Half its skull was cut off above—or below—the bridge of its nose, with nothing but more clockwork visible inside... and that laugh, that laugh, which returned in full force and swept over them as a gale of its own...

"AHAhHaHHHAHhAHAhaaAAahhAhaHaAHhhAAhAaaHAaHa"

Though it was almost inaudible over the Witch's cackle, Homura heard Chibi-Moon speak in a strained voice: "What... the fuck...?" For once, even she couldn't make a witty observation or quip. From long ago, the memory of Homura's first time seeing it surfaced, and oh, she understood that feeling well. The moment of brain-freezing terror, of seeing something not just gargantuan but wrong, so at odds with everything that made sense that the mind threatened to crumple like paper rather than accept that what was before it was truly happening.

"I don't remember it ever being this big!" Madoka cried.

"It never was before," said Homura. "Perhaps since it manifested in a world with Witches but no Puellae Magi to fight them—"

Any other words died in her throat. Walpurgisnacht had no memories, no ability to recognize faces or anything else. It was concentrated misery given form, it laid waste to everything indiscriminately. Homura knew all these things as facts, but as the "gaze" of its eyeless half-face passed directly over the platform where they stood, she had to remind herself of them. It was ludicrous to imagine that it was capable of remembering, or holding a grudge, or even acknowledging the existence of the one tiny, insignificant being who survived it over and over again in so many timelines. Impossible, absurd. And yet... and yet, at the moment that it faced her directly, its two largest gears clanged together on the axle with a knell the whole city could hear, a mandala of ghostly light flared behind it, and the very air burst into hundreds of tongues of kaleidoscopic flames, like a multitude of lit candles. As if it knew.

"AHAAaaHAAaHaHaHhAhaaahahAHaHAhAhAHAaaa"

It had begun.

"All units!" Homura barked into her comm. "Commence Phase One, now!" Automatically, part of her expected silence from the others. Automatically, part of her expected that she was a fool for trusting anyone, that in the end the only person she could count on was herself.

Two dozen synchronized voices proved her wrong: "Yes, ma'am!"

Four colored lights flitted around Walpurgisnacht like so many fireflies, weaving elaborate paths around the tongues of flame. Nanoha Takamachi's voice rang out from the comm: "Lyrical, reporting in! Aerial Team, engage!"

A ring of hundreds of formless shadows appeared, circling Walpurgisnacht's central gear. They wouldn't stay formless for long; its Familiars took the silhouettes of fallen Puellae Magi, desecrating the dead even after their bodies were long gone. Once solidified, the Shadow-Familiars giggled and threw themselves at Nanoha's team, heedless of their own safety, making suicidal charges though the mages' bright streams of mana cut them to pieces. No need for self-preservation; there were always more Shadows to replace them, there were as many as there were Puellae Magi lost...

Invocations shouted over the comms, one after the other:

"Restrict Lock!"

"Lighning Bind!"

"Arrester Chain!"

"Struggle Bind!"

It happened gradually, for there was so, so much of its body to cover. Razor-thin lines of solidified mana formed over the Witch as if someone was in the process of drawing over it with luminescent ink: sparkling pink, electric yellow, emerald, and cyan. Each line extended until it met up with itself as a circle, a loop, and all of them pulled tight at once. Walpurgisnacht's endless spinning slowed, just a little...

"Tocca Spirale!" Flurries of sunny yellow ribbons joined in the binding, they stemmed from the roof of the Apartments Tower several blocks away. Multiplying as they went, the ribbons raced over it as a swarm until half its bulk was crisscrossed in their grip.

"[Venus Love-Me Chain!]" From the Castalia building on the district's northwest side, Venus's chains latched onto it. Tiny, human-sized chains, invisible at a distance save for their faint golden aura, but however it was that they held, they held.

"FREEZE! WOOD!" And from the square in front of the Osa-P came a geyser of frigid water, which struck the Witch from below and spread glittering ice crystals over its bulk. Mighty oak branches followed the geyser and climbed high into the sky to ensnare the beast in a wooden cage. Its clockwork creaked and whined in protest as it slowed. With the Ground, Rooftop, and Aerial Teams all working in concert, their combined efforts did the near-impossible: for a scant few moments, they brought Walpurgisnacht to a grinding halt.

The Shadow-Familiars pivoted in unison toward the Axia's roof. They couldn't understand that the biggest threat to their master was there, but perhaps they had an inkling that something significant was about to happen. No sooner had Homura thought that then the bombardment began... a company of Shadows set upon them, fouling the air with mad laughter. Shapeless hands morphed into spears, hammers, swords, wands, firearms, more types of weapons than even Homura had names for. More than half of the Shadows stayed put and let loose a deluge of magical power: long, linear rays, crackling orbs, jagged bolts, missiles, all produced in every color of the spectrum, all tracking their location. The rest descended sharply like a wing of fighter planes, swinging their weapons with abandon...

Chibi-Moon pushed to the front and shouted a command to her balloons. "Change, Luna-P! Diana-P! Shields at maximum!" A shimmering pink bubble enclosed the Axia's roof with barely a second to spare; the first wave of ranged attacks slammed into its surface with enough force that Chibi-Moon recoiled from the backlash... there was nothing physical to strike the bubble yet, but still the impacts made inexplicable sounds like hailstones on sheet metal. "Saturn, if you're gonna do it, do it fast! They can't hold for long!"

Then came the rest. One after another, Shadow-Familiars plunged headfirst directly into the shield and tittered as they dissipated into ether. Blades and blunt weapons of all sizes crashed against its surface with no technique, no finesse at all, they hacked away at it with pure brute force. The Shadows at range were lost in a blinding glare as they prepared their second round of fire...

"Homura-chan, with me! Cover them!"

Homura needed no further prompting. She and Madoka took position to either side of Saturn, notched arrows, and took aim. The bows' upper limbs burst into twin flames. They drew, they released... Two fiery shafts, one pink and one violet, took silent flight and curved gracefully over the multitude of shadows, then burst into a rain that tore a quarter of them to shreds.

Saturn knelt and drew the bunny head charm from her collar on its silver thread. "Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, Morieris." The thread snapped, and she brought it close to her lips to whisper the invocation: "By heaven's decree, in the name of my star, Saturn, I hereby open the second forbidden seal. Awaken, Messiah. The end has come."

Homura knew what Messiah was and what it did to its targets. Still she staggered on the spot, her knees wobbled beneath her. The phenomenal energy that spilled out of Saturn's AMP was of a potency she hadn't felt since Fantine drained her of her stolen powers. Armageddon's light shone from within it like the flare of a supernova, and there was an almost sinister gleam of life to the charm's simple black eyes. An invisible hand etched flaming lines into its forehead: VI. Messiah made a great and terrible sound, the sound of a church bell tolling four times, as Saturn stood and raised the Silence Glaive high...

"AAaHhahhAHHaaAHAhHAaAHHaAHAhaa"

The prison of oak and ice emitted a tortured groan, dischordant with the resurgent sound of laughter. As the grotesque figure inside began to turn again at a snail's pace, an enormous gout of iridescent fire spewed from the area of its mouth. Sweltering heat washed over the four of them, like the opening of a blast furnace. The ice evaporated into a localized downpour, the branches swiftly burst into flame and withered away. Only the mages' binding spells, Venus's chains, and Mami's network of ribbons held it now.

Homura could barely think, could only draw and loose as many arrows as her magic would allow. Beads of cold sweat cut trails down her forehead. This was the first time she and Madoka ever fought together as archers, and she was hardly even cognizant of it. In minutes, maybe less, Walpurgisnacht would be loose from its cage. In seconds, another year of Saturn's life would be gone. There was still one chance to protest: she could turn over her shield and freeze the world, touch Saturn's shoulder, and beg her to reconsider: Hotaru, there's another way. You don't need to do this for me. Save your strength, save your energy, I'm not worth it. I know it's selfish, but I don't want this!

I don't want this! A simple plea, only a few syllables. She could speak it aloud with no effort at all. Her shield was ready, the sentence was on her lips. Only Saturn would ever hear it, no one else would ever know.

No, she thought. Freezing time would interrupt the ritual to unleash the Morendo, and the consequences would most likely be disastrous. There was another option, but not one she relished trying. Unless it was absolutely necessary, telepathy wasn't a process she used outside of short, simple statements or communicating during battle when speech wasn't an option. The idea of conveying complex emotions mind-to-mind was almost unthinkable; she kept her mind a sealed vault, shut and locked tight. No one else needed to glimpse what twisted depths lay in there; it was hard enough to tell Madoka the truth in the last timeline, right before she ascended. Saturn opened the vault door by just a few centimeters, and there was mutual trust between them... but still the idea disturbed her. Was it fear holding her back? Shame? Both, or something else?

It made no difference. She didn't think she had the strength to voice her plea aloud. Not in front of the others, not right now. Homura opened the channel...

She couldn't finish the thought, couldn't even begin it. Instinct and muscle memory were the only things that kept her firing, for her conscious mind was overwhelmed. She couldn't see, her vision veiled over with tears.

Instead of words, what Saturn sent back were feelings, two emotions of unbearable beauty and awesome strength. First was conviction, steadfast as steel. There was no fear in her, no second thoughts, not a glimmer of regret, only laser focus on the task at hand. Saturn knew what she was doing, what she was meant to do, and what the consequences would be... and she knew all this with such perfect certainty and clarity that it stole Homura's breath away. Not only did she know, she found comfort and meaning in the knowledge that her sacrifice would ensure the happiness and safety of others. For Homura, beset by doubt and self-loathing for as long as she could remember, just a glimpse of that kind of confidence was akin to a vision of paradise.

And the second emotion, the one which enabled such focus and conviction? It was love... warm, pure, and genuine love. Saturn didn't know exactly what kind of love she had for Homura yet, or how best to express it, for the emotion was still in its infancy. It would take a while to define itself one way or another, but it was real and it had potential to grow. Neither of them could deny it.

Waves of unthinkable power washed over Homura as the great winged shape emerged into normal space, but what that creature was, what form it took, she couldn't tell. The cacophony of battle, the voices of the other Nights, and even Walpurgisnacht's laughter, all those sounds were dimmed, as if played by a speaker on its lowest volume. All she could see was Saturn, as radiantly beautiful as she was frightening in the moment she brought the Silence Glaive down to seal Walpurgisnacht's fate. All she could hear was her voice, which made the invocation a joyous shout: "Saturn Amethyst Morendo!"

Only then did Saturn speak back through the link: It's okay, she said, soft and gentle. No matter what you've done in the past, no matter what anyone tells you or you tell yourself, you are worth saving. Whether I loved you or not, I'd still believe that. You are worth it.

After that, she saw only Saturn's fall to her knees as if in slow motion, and the flaming lines on Messiah's forehead briefly reading V before they faded. Likewise, the great winged shape's takeoff was a blip on the edge of her vision. Walpurgisnacht's Familiars fled before it, thrown into disarray by apparent terror of it... This was something she would have thought impossible, but it hardly registered to her. When the shape burst into a swarm of countless miniature copies of itself, copies which dove into the Witch's gargantuan body en masse and riddled its structure with tiny holes... that gave her cause to take her eyes off Saturn, just for a second or two. Wild, desperate hope surged up inside her: Please let it die. Let it die now, before anyone else gets hurt. I don't care if that's not how it's supposed to work. Just this once!

"aahahAAhHHAAAhHAHAHaHAaahaAHaHahahAhAHA"

The universe wasn't that merciful. Out of defiance, or perhaps obliviousness, it continued to exist. One by one its bonds broke or fell away, and it cackled and cackled as it resumed its pointless spinning unobstructed.

That was all. The Morendo was cast upon it, its final death was a matter of time. Its backlash meant that Saturn wouldn't be able to fight at full strength for at least a few minutes... so now it was on Homura to protect her. Hotaru, she thought to herself, and to herself alone. More arrows ignited at her fingertips. I know I'm not worthy of you. I was the Devil, the lowest of the low. I'm a traitor, a coward, a liar, and a murderer. You knew all of that, and you still came to find me. When I had lost everything, you reached out your hand to me over and over again, no matter what I said to you and no matter how many times I pushed you away. I didn't deserve your time or your friendship, but still you helped me... If I've become a better person, it's thanks to you.

I still don't know if I can ever truly love myself. But you... you make me think that one day that might change. I can never repay you for that. So I swear, I'll fight with everything I have to keep changing, keep improving... not just for you or for Madoka, but for myself. On her left wrist, d'Argent felt light as a feather...

"Phase One complete!" Madoka shouted into her comm as she loosed another volley. "Cassini did it! I repeat, Phase One complete! Team Alpha standing by—"

That was all the reprieve they would get. With the winged shape gone, the Shadow-Familiars mounted a simultaneous counterattack. Magical attacks pounded the bubble from all directions, and with a crackle and a fat electric spark, Chibi-Moon's Diana-P dropped from the air like a stone and reverted to its bracelet form, glowing red hot. The bubble's surface thinned...

"Luna-P can't take another hit like that by itself!" Pale and sweaty, Chibi-Moon stooped to grab the AMP back, and cried out briefly as its surface scorched her gloves' fingers black. "We gotta-"

Whatever they had to do, they couldn't hear. The rest of Chibi-Moon's sentence was inaudible over a wrenching, metallic scream mixed with a deep bass groan. The Axia quaked beneath their feet, the rooftop platform they stood on began to tilt at an angle, and Homura and Madoka exchanged desperate, knowing looks. That sound was unmistakable to the few people who had ever been unfortunate enough to hear it: it was the sound a skyscraper made when something ripped it clear off of its foundations.

*****

Apartments Tower

Rooftop Team Bravo

Minutes before the Morendo

Whether it was because they were easy targets or because their opponents somehow sensed that they were Puellae Magi, the Shadow-Familiars swarmed Team Bravo with numbers so thick they nearly blotted out the stormy sky. For now, it was fine, Mami thought. All three of them were experienced with taking on enemies in large numbers. She herself could summon three muskets for every single Familiar, and the other two?

"Bubbly Bang-Bang!" Nagisa's attack cry was followed by a high A-note. Flurries of bubbles erupted from the bell of her trumpet and scattered to the four winds. Not something the Lights from the other Vertices might consider threatening, but though they resembled ordinary if oversized soap bubbles, on contact with Familiars each one burst with a sound like a firecracker and the explosive force of one of Homura's C4 charges.

As for Sayaka, cutlasses, even by the hundreds, could only do so much against aerial targets. So just as before when they fought Homura's Witch, she stood back with baton in hand and conducted a small army of her own Familiars to take on the Shadows as they came... little mustached cotton puffs, ghostly musicians, dancing dolls, and many other bizarre shapes, all armed with swords and shields and all willing to defend the team with everything they had. If Sayaka was playing music to motivate them, Mami couldn't hear it over all the other noise.

For that matter, she could barely hear the chimes of Eleganza's comm, but she did feel its vibration. "This is Peach Pie, here with..." Mami paused.

"'Wallace!'" shouted Nagisa from the northwest corner of the roof.

"'Wallace...?'"

"'Wensleydale! Cracking toast, Gromit!'"

Though she loved her adopted sister dearly, sometimes Mami couldn't understand a word she said. "Here with Wallace," she said, resigned, "and..."

"Seafoam," said Sayaka. "It's as good a callsign as any."

A surly voice intruded into their channel, though Sayaka lacked a comm and couldn't hear the response. Fortunately. "What, was 'Cunt' taken or something?"

Oh, Kyoko. Mami grimaced. "Here with Wallace and Seafoam. Language, Sakura-san," she said, but the admonition lacked its usual power. Of course Kyoko was angry; so was she. The difference was intensity: Mami didn't think she could be as livid as Kyoko was right now if she had a hundred years for her anger to fester.

She was the nominal leader of the Holy Quintet—"Holy Chorus" or "Holy Quintet Plus One" in full, because the word "Sextet" couldn't be spoken aloud around Nagisa without her collapsing into a fit of hysterical laughter—so it was her job to keep her juniors in line. But if the two of them didn't come to some kind of reconciliation, there wouldn't be a Holy Chorus anymore. The gulf between Sayaka and Kyoko seemed insurmountable, how could she—

Waves of power and hellish light from atop the Axia Azabu in the distance derailed that train of thought. Shortly after that...

"AAaHhahhAHHaaAHAhHAaAHHaAHAhaa"

... Mami recoiled, for the enormous blast of flame that destroyed the outermost layers of Walpurgisnacht's cage burnt a quarter of her ribbons to ash. As constructs of her magic, her ribbons were far less susceptible to fire than simple cloth, but just as they were no ordinary ribbons, nor was that ordinary fire. She pulled hard on the remaining ones and drew the network tighter...

"Peach Pie, Cassini's about to let loose!" said Hayate's voice through the comm. "You an' the rest of Teams Bravo and Charlie, be ready to commence Phase Two on Jean's mark!"

"Affirmitive!" said Mami. Focus was crucial, and she could only hope the others would approach the battle with clear heads. They had a mission to complete. As for after that, if they survived, whatever would be would be.

No sooner had she thought that than a glowing, winged shape lifted off from the Axia's roof...

*****

Street Level

Ground Team

In the center of the square, Sakura stood with her magic circle shining beneath her and her wand raised high. This was no Sealing Wand, nor was it the recently-restored Star Wand. Its main shaft was more like a telephone pole, three meters high and connected to the head with an ornamental sun and crescent moon. Mounted above those, its golden star now had a second, four-pointed star mounted behind it, and a full set of wings spread from either side.

Upon closer examination, she was not so much standing as bracing herself with the wand. Sweat rolled down from her brow and temples in rivers, her teeth clenched tight with effort. If not for Hayate at her side offering additional support, Sakura would have long since collapsed. Her part of the operation was to cancel out the devastating storms that Walpurgisnacht always brought with it for as long as she could. In her state, managing the STORM and RAIN Cards in addition to the ones she used to bind the Witch would take far more magic and stamina than she had left... which was why her two Guardian Beasts merged themselves with the Star Wand, adding their power to hers as a massive boost.

Boost or not, though, she was in no condition to fight or defend herself. Before he left to join the Aerial Team, Yuuno erected a dome-shaped barrier of emerald mana around her and Hayate both. It was the Ground Team's duty to protect that dome at all costs as they cleared the streets of all the Familiars they could: Blossom, Echo, and Kyoko guarded Zoshiki Street from the north and south, while Twinkle and Scarlet held Daikokuzaka from the east and west.

God, Sakura was brave, Twinkle thought while she hurled a luminous star through a half-dozen Shadow-Familiars like a shuriken, dissolving the lot. "Brave" was an understatement, really; fighting Joker one-on-one for as long as she did was heroic. In a lot of ways, she was much like Haruka, Cure Flora. They were both eternal optimists, both sweet and gentle, both cute as a button yet perfectly capable of throwing down when it counted. The similarities made her ache to consider, for both Flora and Mermaid still suffered in the clutches of Dead End. Even should the two of them be rescued, they had no Noble Academy to go back to, no hometowns, no Earth, not even a universe. Twinkle's sole remaining links to the people and places she loved were Yui Nanase... and Scarlet, her beloved. And at any moment—

Stop it, Twinkle admonished herself. The Shadow nearest her opened its blank face, having spawned itself a mouth and a set of horribly human teeth, then spread its jaws wide and lunged at her forearm. All too happy to teach it the error of its ways, Twinkle punched those new teeth straight down what would have been its throat, and it died giggling. Towa-chi's gotten better. Just look at her, Kirara! Look at her! For the first time since this awful war started, they fought together, side by side. When she watched Scarlet go to work, carving through Shadows with her violin bow when she wasn't roasting them with flames or beating them into the ground... those things lifted Twinkle's spirits like little else could at the moment. She could almost pretend things were as they should be.

Whenever light caught the silver bands in Scarlet's hair, though... no amount of pretending could bury the icy sting that pierced Twinkle's heart. Each time she saw those bands gleam, the sting came back, always just as sharp as the first time and never dulling with exposure. Scarlet was better, so much better than before, but still not out of danger. Still not back to normal. And the medics knew so little about what was actually happening to her that there was no way to tell if or when or why it would get worse. For all they knew, one wrong step and she would—

Stop it, Twinkle thought again, sharper this time. A dozen or more Shadows dropped from above and formed a tight ring around her, bristling with weapons. She's going to be fine. We're going to be fine. A quick twirl of her Crystal Princess Rod and some creative thinking cast a Full Moon Humming shield around herself as a dome of light, rather like the one that protected Sakura and Hayate. While the creepy little things wasted time and energy pounding away at its surface, she gathered more power at her leisure and visualized what she wanted. We'll fix all of this, rescue Haruharu and Minamin, and then the four of us and Yuiyui will go back to Noble Academy. Back home. One graceful swing of the rod, and the dome expanded outward from her position and swept the Shadows up with it. Its walls crushed about half of them against the buildings on either side of the street, the rest were bowled over like ninepins, easy prey for a few precise shots. We'll find Puff and Aroma and Miss Siamour and all of our friends and family waiting there for us. We'll all go back to school and I'll go back to work, and in a couple months, it'll be like this whole stupid war never happened. We'll be fine. We'll be fine. As she thought this, she didn't shed so much as a single tear. She was a professional model, after all. Any half-decent model knew how to put on and wear a happy, confident face, no matter what problems they might have.

It was a good thing the Shadow-Familiars weren't that smart. Vicious, relentless, and numerous, but not smart. If they had any concept of strategy beyond wildly attacking in droves, Twinkle couldn't see it. With her AMP's shields and her Cure form's innate toughness, most of their attacks didn't even hurt that much, but there were just so many of them and they never let up, ever. Not like it would be any better fighting the—

"AAaHhahhAHHaaAHAhHAaAHHaAHAhaa"

From high above, a blast of rainbow flame large enough to set several city blocks ablaze erupted from inside Walpurgisnacht's cage, casting the streets beneath it in a multicolored glow like sunlight through stained glass. Even from more than a hundred meters away, the fire's heat was so intense that Twinkle broke into a sweat. In seconds, the Witch's prison of ice was so much vapor and the tangle of oak branches went up like dry kindling.

For a moment, Twinkle couldn't help but stop and gaze up at it in mute, slack-jawed horror. All the effort Sakura expended to help keep it still, and it broke through the best restraints she could manage with a single breath. The din of battle, her teammates' chatter over the comms, even Walpurgisnacht's incessant laughter, all faded. She stood beneath a utility pole, mounted with a PA speaker broadcasting the same message over and over: "-ding ding ding DING- Weather warning: a typhoon is incoming. Please follow all emergency measures and calmly proceed to the nearest evacuation shelter. -DING ding ding ding- -ding ding ding DING- Weather warning: a typhoon is incoming—" Alerts like that terrified her when she was a little kid, even when they were only testing the system. Now it was a buzz of meaningless noise, just like the rest of it.

She knew it was gigantic. So what, Precure fought huge monsters all the time, just like Black said. Its size was evident to anyone with eyes as soon as it appeared. She knew it was dangerous, that much was obvious from the haunted expression on Akemi's face when she talked about it. But only in that moment, as she stood paralyzed beneath the blaring speaker, as a sheen of sweat cooled on her skin, as she heard everything but couldn't listen to anything, did she comprehend what kind of monstrosity Walpurgisnacht was. Dear God, it let off a blast like that when we had it pinned. What can it do when it's allowed to roam loose? What kind of damage would it do if Sakkun wasn't holding it back?

Snippets of comm chatter penetrated her haze:

"—about to let loose—"

"—making a left onto Shikimenzaka—"

"—keep the Binaries off Teams Bravo and Charlie—"

"—Arthra says reinforcements are on the—"

"Gucci! Dammit, Gucci, wake up!"

So rattled was she that it took a precious few seconds for her to recognize her own callsign. Who was that on the other end, anyway? The voice was too high-pitched to be Yui, Rikka, or Meilin... Twinkle fumbled for her AMP, a six-pointed crystal star pendant dangling from her choker. "S-sorry! This is Gucci, wh—"

Though it was quiet as a whisper and buried beneath all the other noise, she heard the giggle clear as day. Something frigid scraped her back, right between her shoulder blades in that spot she could never reach. Its insidious chill seeped through her shields, but her nerves only registered coldness for a split-second before—

Before it was replaced by heat. Her body stiffened and stopped dead, and every centimeter of her skin was like holding her hand in a candle flame. What she could see of the street before her was now clouded, as if viewed through frosted glass. She was rooted to the spot, unable to lift so much as a finger. Ice. It froze me in ice! Why didn't my shields— No, her shields had to be up, or else she would be suffocating. The Shadow-Familiar encased her shields and all when it flash-froze her. Therefore, while her AMP would attempt to regulate her temperature, lessen the pain, and provide oxygen for as long as it still functioned...

I'm stuck. I can't do anything. Guys! Twinkle thought into the ether. When did she last open a telepathic channel? Was there one still active? Gucci to anyone, can you hear me? I need help! Crosse? Apples? Scarlet...! Twinkle's thoughts descended into panic. She had never been claustrophobic, never had a problem with crowded elevators or tiny hotel rooms, and both of those were common enough in her job. But a tiny hotel room was one thing, this...!

It couldn't be ordinary ice, had to be enhanced with magic. Ordinary ice shattered like fine china in the face of a Precure's strength, but this stuff sapped that strength away with its sheer cold. Maybe she could blast her way out? She directed the flow of her energy down through her right arm, and out of the corner of one eye she saw a few faint sparkles gather at her fingertip, then nothing more.

Just at the other end of the square, Scarlet held her position within a ring of roaring flames, a vision resplendent in reds and golds and pinks, her back to her. Absorbed in battle, her first in months, she took on Shadows left and right. Her every motion was a work of art... she moved like a sylph and struck like an assassin, beautiful beyond Twinkle's ability to describe. So close, but impossibly out of reach...

Come on, Scarlet, turn around! I'm right here behind you!

Giggling figures blocked Scarlet from her view and circled around her frozen prison. Shadow after Shadow passed by before her, a twisted carousel. They gamboled and cartwheeled and swayed back and forth, but not one of them took aim, not one of them attempted to strike a blow. Why? Did they not want to risk freeing her by accident? Were they saving up their energy for a final blow, aware that she couldn't fight back? Or... or was this all they wanted, to dance and revel in her helplessness?

Towa-chi, please...

One of the shadows broke from the circle, floated close, and tilted forward at the waist. It was nothing but a silhouette of swirling black, the "face" that peered at her was smooth and featureless as the surface of an egg. Twinkle made out the shapes of long, corkscrewing pigtails, what appeared to be a fur-lined winter overcoat of some kind, and a wand topped with a giant ornamental snowflake in its hand. Twinkle never got a look at the Shadow that froze her, so she couldn't be sure, but... but the evidence and her gut feeling said that it was this one. What was it doing?

Centimeter by centimeter, the Shadow-Familiar edged closer while its brethren capered madly behind it. Its giggle was particularly shrill, the sound scraped up and down Twinkle's spine like a file. The smooth blank that was its "face" bulged from within, as if something underneath was pushing to get out, and...

And she found herself staring at a perfect duplicate of her own face. Just her face, superimposed on a field of churning darkness. Twinke's blood ran cold, her stomach twisted into knots...

Her features stared back at her with a blank expression, at first. Then the creature's eyes gaped wide, its irises shrunk until the pupils were like pinpricks, its lips curled up and spread open into a ghastly, Joker-like smile, and its giggle was in her own voice...

"Scarlet Flame!"

Fiery spirals melted the apparition away. Here Scarlet came, charging across the square and bowing up a storm on her violin. The Shadows could barely touch her; how she danced... In a matter of seconds, she felled all of Twinkle's tormentors. A dozen more pounced from the edges of Twinkle's vision, they all piled onto Scarlet's body and buried her from themselves. Bad move; a sphere of fire swept outward from her body and incinerated the lot. With no others in sight, Scarlet ran...

Time slowed to a crawl. For Twinkle, it took a thousand years for Scarlet to take a single step. The face she loved was caught in the middle of shouting her name. And the shadow that silently materialized behind her, the one with a huge back ribbon and a pair of floating tails... Twinkle swore she could count every tiny particle of the Shadow's wickedly pronged trident as it materialized in (or from) its owner's hand. After another thousand years, Scarlet's foot lifted off the asphalt, and the Shadow behind her hefted its weapon and took aim at her back.

In her mind's eye, she saw, heard, lived the outcome playing out over and over again: while she stood there frozen, unable to give warning, the Shadow-Familiar hurled its trident with terrible force. Its prongs pierced through Scarlet's back and emerged from her chest. She went rigid with shock, her only reaction a small, polite "Oh..." Her transformation dissolved around her as she fell in slow motion, her simple white dress marred with a spreading crimson stain. By the time she hit the ground, all the light had faded from her eyes.

It didn't make sense. Twinkle knew Scarlet's shields were up, and that her Cure form could endure what her shields couldn't. It didn't make sense, but still Twinkle saw it happen a dozen times, a hundred times, a thousand, a million. No matter what she tried, she couldn't force her brain to stop playing the images. Raw panic such as she had never known surged through her body, her thoughts were a primal scream: Towa-chi turn around please turn around it's right behind you you have to look please don't leave me don't leave me don't leave me don't—

"C'EST POUR DEMAAAIN!" To the accompaniment of their newly-minted battle cry, a fuzzy white puffball dropped onto the trident-wielding Shadow from a transport circle above. Scarlet's rush to her icy prison continued uninterrupted as the white figure struggled against it, raining blows on it with a pair of tiny fists until it finally dissolved.

Twinkle couldn't believe what she was seeing. It had to be another hallucination.

"Dammit!" Sailor Iron Mouse wiped her brow and fixed them both with a teary glare. "Don't they teach you people anything in Precure school or whatever?! If you're in a fight against a lot of enemies at once, you need to cover your damned flanks! Get your sparkly butts in gear so people like me don't have to come back out and save them!"

"It will be all right, Twinkle," said Scarlet, paying the little false Senshi no mind for the moment. "I will have you out of there in just a moment." She wrapped her arms around the shell of ice and closed her eyes. Purifying flames washed over them both, warm and soothing...

The moment she was able, Twinkle hugged Scarlet as tight as she could and banished all those horrible images back to the dark corners of her mind. They were only a product of her frazzled and overstressed brain. Both of them would be fine. It would all be fine. Nothing to worry about. Everything was fine. "S-S-Scarlet," she stammered, teeth achatter. "D-d-d-dummy, duh-don't suh-scare me like—"

"You would have done the same for me."

"G-geez!" One hug wasn't enough; Twinkle gave her another and soaked in as much blessed heat as she could. "Muh-Mouse," she said, lifting her eyes. "Th-thought you went buh-back to the Lighthouse...!"

"I did," squealed Iron Mouse, "because I'm not a crazy person who stays to fight hopeless battles!"

"Buh-but you c-came back. You suh-saved her." Twinkle attempted to smile, and wasn't actually sure if she pulled it off or not. Numb lips. "Suh-saved us b-both. Y-you're... a hero..."

Iron Mouse's tail stood up like a flagpole for a second, then almost knotted itself in fury. "I am not! I'm not here because I want to be!" She screeched and flailed her arms so rapidly that they made a breeze. "This whole thing is stupid, and you're stupid for letting yourselves get caught off guard, and I'm stupid for risking my neck for you! We're all stupid! Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit! Galactica Crunch!" she added, firing a golden orb from her bracelets to her right side, which disintegrated a Shadow-Familiar that had barely finished popping into existence across the street. Iron Mouse clutched the round ears atop her head, pulled as if trying to draw the strings of a hood, and moaned: "My life is a nightmare! Somebody help me!"

Ever graceful even in the face of Iron Mouse's histrionics, Scarlet dropped into a curtsy. "Please allow me to express the humblest of gratitude, on behalf of us both. We are in your debt, Sailor Iron Mouse."

"S-same," Twinkle added, with a slightly unsteady curtsy of her own. "She said it prettier than I could, b-but we owe you one, Chuu-chan. Thank you."

Movement on the fringes. More Shadows, a much larger number of them, phasing into being and surrounding them...

"Iron Mouse," said Scarlet. "If we might impose upon you for just a moment more..."

Twinkle arched an eyebrow and grinned. She didn't even need to say it, but. "Up for it?"

"Oh, yes, indeed! It has been such a long time!"

"Fine, whatever, I don't care!" Iron Mouse clenched her teeth and let loose a barrage that pushed the incoming line of Shadows back. "Just add another one to the list, I'm keeping track!"

With a quick vivace melody on her violin, Scarlet raised another ring of flames around them. Not a lot of space to move, and it wouldn't stop the Shadows for long, but it would do. She extended her hand... "May I have this dance?"

... and Twinkle took it, more grateful for her touch than Scarlet would ever know. "The honor is mine, your Highness."

As usual, Twinkle led and Scarlet followed. Variety was nice, but there was no sense switching it up when they were under pressure. Hand in hand, the two circled each other in classic ballroom style, building up power... they needed no music when it was all in their hearts. Twinkle raised Scarlet's hand high, spun her in a pirouette, then wrapped her opposite arm around the small of her back and dipped her low, Crystal Rod in hand. Likewise, Scarlet's hand, holding the violin by its neck, raised up to hover near Twinkle's shoulder. Their respective Dress Up Keys appeared at their fingertips, in a rain of sparkles for Twinkle's and a tongue of flame for Scarlet's. With practiced ease, they exchanged the two keys without looking and clicked them into place in their partner's weapon...

"Ready?" said Twinkle.

"Always," Scarlet answered.

Rising, they took position back to back and shouted in chorus: "Precure Meteor Burning!"

Their combination attack's name was about as straightforward as they came: the rain of meteors that followed burned bright with flames and left plumes of stardust in the air as they tore the Shadow-Familiars to shreds. Most of them went up in puffs of glittering smoke within the first few seconds... those few that attempted to mount a counterattack were sniped by Iron Mouse from her huddled position beneath the bench of a nearby bus stop, where she presumably hoped to avoid any of the meteors falling on her.

Twinkle and Scarlet closed their eyes and sank into curtsies—in perfect sync, of course—as the last particles of dust settled to the street. And to bring the dance to a close, they spoke together: "Good day to you."

*****

"Criminy, those two!" said Hayate, who had briefly torn her eyes from her holoscreens to gape and shake her head at the spectacle. "I'd tell them off for showboatin', but I'm too impressed by their style." Into her comm, she said: "Gucci, Concerto! If you guys are finished, you an' Mouse shore up the hill, they're mostly comin' from the west! An' don't let any more of them sneak up on you!"

Both of the Cures replied "Understood!", and in the background Iron Mouse whined something that Hayate chose to believe was an affirmative. Like Twinkle, she too was flabbergasted that Iron Mouse returned to the battlefield at all. Tonight's events proved once and for all that there was a backbone in that petite frame, and Hayate hoped it would be enough to get her through the rest of the fight intact. She deserved some kind of reward. Maybe higher quality meals from now on, or quarters of her own.

Focus, Hayate-chan! "Sakura-san, you still okay?" she said aloud as she looked back over her shoulder.

Sakura's lips spread into a trembling line that wasn't quite a smile. One of her knees wobbled a bit, then straightened before Hayate could so much as furrow her brow. "C-compared to fighting Joker, this is nothing... ha ha..."

Hayate knew that expression and tone of voice; how many times had she told the Wolkenritter lies like that so that they wouldn't worry about her, so that she wouldn't be a burden to them? The proper response would be to order her back to base on the double. She could do it, too. One of the Three or not, Hayate outranked her, for as much as rank meant anything anymore. The only thing that stopped her from giving that order was the fact that they needed Sakura for as long as she could possibly help. They were stretched to the limit fighting this battle in calm weather... fighting in typhoon conditions, it would be a miracle if no one was killed.

At least the reinforcements were finally here. Hayate's spirits lifted as six more transport circles spun to life around the two of them, and six members of the Arthra's crew stepped out with Devices drawn. These six were all Admiral Lindy could spare, but every able body was a blessing. Hayate went back to her holoscreen plotting boards, giving out orders as she added a half-dozen new icons to the ones already there...

*****

Kyoko saw the dance too, and she hated it. To be fair, there wasn't much she didn't hate at the moment, but near the top of her list was flashy displays of public affection, which only served to remind her of her and what she had done.

North of her, Zoshiki Street was blocked off with layers of her diamond chainlink barriers. Hordes of Shadow-Familiars clawed and flailed at them, forcing their arms through the links and clambering all over each other. Sickening, almost like one of those zombie movies...

Those zombie movies she used to watch with her. Dammit.

No. She refused to think about her for any length of time. That girl didn't deserve any more thought than was absolutely necessary. One of the only thoughts that gave her comfort was that when this mess with Walpurgisnacht was over and they all went back to the Lighthouse, the two of them would be done, forever. The Lighthouse had an infinite amount of room and doors that could take you from place to place in an instant without covering the space between, so they never needed to see each other again.

"Um, Sankeien to Apples!" Echo's voice shouted over her AMP's comm and interrupted her thoughts. "Are you still holding up on your end?"

"Fine," said Kyoko. The chains held strong, and Psalm 23's three holo-clones were still active, at the moment they had a group of five Shadow-Familiars caged in a separate barrier and were taking potshots at them through the chainlink. "You?"

"I'm doing okay!" she said, a bit more cheerful than Kyoko expected. "I honestly thought—Hiyah! —it would be harder than this, without an AMP..." Echo didn't have one of her own yet, there was no time to build her one. After she split from the Stranger, she had made do with the first thing she could grab from the Arthra, an Emergency Survival Device. "But one or two solid hits and these things just sort of melt! The only problems—oh, shoot—are trying not to get hit, because there's so many..."

That was new. "Wait, what?"

"Um, Frontier here!" That was Blossom, covering them from above. Being the only Cure they had who could fly under more or less her own power, her assigned task was to take out any aerial Shadows trying to target the rest of the Ground Team. She called her fairy partner down from the Arthra for this, and when the fluffy little creature poofed herself into a long, luminous pink scarf, Kyoko tried her best not to stare. It wasn't the weirdest thing she'd seen since the war started, but it was up there. "It's the same with me, I think! Our powers seem to... excuse me a moment. Blossom Impact!" Something dark streaked over Kyoko's head high above, it trailed sakura petals as it flew. "Beg your pardon. Our powers seem to work really well on the Familiars! I can see Black—I mean, Crosse—a few blocks away from here. She's coming around for another lap and they can barely touch her..."

Kyoko wrinkled her nose. How was that fair? Not only did the Cures lack Puellae Magi's weaknesses and drawbacks, but they had an easier time of it fighting Witches, too? Bullshit.

"Sankeien," Blossom was saying, "how's your energy?"

"Charged and ready to go on your signal, senpai, just say the word!"

Right, they mentioned that when they were strategizing. Echo had a powerful, wide-ranging signature attack that could clear entire blocks at once at peak strength... but she had only one attack, it took a lot of time to charge, and it couldn't be performed more than a few times per transformation. Ergo, the brains decided that Echo would exclusively fight hand-to-hand for the time being, saving her energy for when it was really needed.

But never mind that. The Cures could handle themselves. Keep fighting. Keep holding. Keep taking bites of the taiyaki clutched so tight in her fist that the red bean paste oozed out of it from both ends. Anything to stop herself from dwelling on her.

"Apples, Sankeien, Frontier! Do you read me?"

"Yeah, yeah," said Kyoko, and her teammates followed suit in a slightly more polite fashion.

"I'm sendin' two mages your way to take the pressure off, they'll be there any second!" said Hayate's voice. "Coordinate your strategies with them if you can!"

Kyoko clenched her teeth. "I don't need—"

But here came one of them anyway, brandishing one of those fancy magitech wands in an underslung grip, like a minigun. Orange-ish hair, bright blue eyes, probably around the age of the main five Sailor Senshi. There wasn't so much as a "hello" before he mowed down the Shadow Kyoko was about to finish off in a flurry of orange bolts. He looked vaguely familiar, but Kyoko couldn't make herself care. What the hell did he think he was doing?!

"Oi!" she barked at him. "Back the fuck off, hotshot, I've been fighting these things longer than you. I don't need a goddamn babysitter."

"Hotshot" did the unexpected: he laughed, and hard. "Sorry, sorry! I know you're perfectly capable, you proved that much when you threatened me before..."

Kyoko paused long enough to decapitate another Shadow with the blade of her spear. "Before?"

Oblivious to how unwelcome he was, the mage took position at her side. "I tried to scan you and Tomoe-san when you first came aboard the Arthra. I believe you said, 'Get that thing out of my face before I bury it in yours.'"

It was fuzzy, but the description did spark something. "The replicators," Kyoko said. "You told me about the replicators."

"That's right!" he said. An orange magic circle spread out at their feet and disgorged a bunch of little fireballs that zoomed around them on lines of light. "I had a feeling you'd put them through their paces."

"Look," said Kyoko, already sick of his company, "cut the buddy-buddy crap. If you're trying to get in my pants, first of all, gross. Go find someone your own age. Second of all, I don't swing that way. And right now, I'm not swinging with anyone."

To her further annoyance, he laughed again, even harder. "Oh, hell no! Absolutely not! Sorry, it's just that you sort of remind me of my little sister back on Midchilda. She's a firecracker, just like you."

"Call me that again and I'll send you back to her in a matchbox, Hotshot."

"It's Lanster," he said, with an infuriating smile. "Corporal Tiida Lanster, not 'Hotshot'. And duly noted, Kyoko-san."

Her distraction was all it took; two dozen Shadow-Familiars rushed the barriers and broke through, scattering broken links across the street. In tight formation, they marched through the hole. Every single Shadow in this new mob wore its hair in a short bob and a cape on its shoulders. Every single one carried a cutlass with a trigger built into the grip. And every single one pointed its cutlass at her and charged...

Kyoko couldn't help grinning like a loon. "Oh, perfect. This'll be fun. Stay back, Lanster," she said. "These fuckers are mine." With that, she tore off a huge piece of taiyaki with her teeth and slammed the butt of her spear against the asphalt. All her holo-clones deactivated at once. Nobody, not even her own holo-clones, was going to get in her way for this... she had never been more elated to shout the name of her attack, Mami-style: "Heretic Inquisition!"

An entire forest of spears erupted from beneath the street, angled in all directions. The infantry of Shadows ran right into them, as Kyoko knew they would... Of those on the front line, some were impaled, others were cut in half, still others were torn to pieces. Those that were left mounted a desperate charge and threw themselves at her. Wild slices gouged her shields, three of them managed to penetrate them and carve lines in her cheek and forearms. No problem, Kyoko barely felt a thing. Since they were nice enough to get up close, she took obscene delight in using only the most grisly counterattacks that she could imagine. The first to reach her, she gutted like a fish. After extending her spear into chain form, she sent the weighted end hurling through the head of the second. The third she wrapped in as many chains as she could and squeezed it to a pulp. And there were still so many more, probably hundreds. That wasn't exactly a happy thought, but it wasn't a despairing one either, so her Soul Gem would be fine.

So what if Lanster or anyone else was watching? Fuck 'em all.

The flight of the giant moth over her head went unnoticed...

*****

Castalia Building

Rooftop Team Charlie

"Moon Healing Escalation!"

"Fire Soul!"

"Supreme Thunder!"

"[Crescent Beam Shower!]"

"Deep Submerge!"

Just standing amid the Sailor Senshi—iconic figures just as important to her as Superman and Batman, the X-Men, the Kamen Riders and Super Sentai, and Taiyoman—was to Peace a privilege enough. Add to that the surreal experience of not only being accepted by them, not just treated as a comrade and an equal, but that she was the only Precure chosen to fight directly alongside them, getting to see all their legendary attacks with her own eyes... It was as if all the neurons in her brain were constantly going off like Tanabata fireworks. Maybe it was a little petty, but part of her wished that all those other kids who bullied her in school and called her "crybaby" and "otaku" could see her now: not just a timid little girl, but a legendary warrior who was going to save the world alongside her heroes. Her friends.

"Precure Peace Thunder!" Golden lightning burst from her spread fingertips and disintegrated a group of Shadow-Familiars that had gathered over Mars's head, preparing to strike from her blind spot. As cool as Mars was normally, in Peace's opinion the fiery wings and glowing streaks in her hair made her even cooler. Of course, the reason she had them was awful, but...!

"Nice shot!" Jupiter hopped backward to her side and flashed a thumbs-up. "Are you still doing okay?" It wasn't her imagination; Jupiter seemed especially protective of her in particular, and Peace didn't know whether to be embarrassed or flattered.

Fear grasped her innards in an icy grip and twisted them. "Senpai, your arm!" she said, dismayed. Jupiter's right biceps sported four bloody lines, as if she had been clawed by an enormous cat. "D-don't worry about me, worry about you!"

"Oh, this? It's nothing, I let one of them get too close." Jupiter laughed. "I don't have the shields the rest of you guys have yet, and these Familiar things are vicious little bas... er, jerks." Then, seeing her expression, her features softened. "Peace, you practically know more about me than I do. What's Sailor Jupiter like?"

"She's really kind and gentle, like a mom, and she's a fantastic cook!" Peace replied. Another Shadow threw itself at them and spread a pair of huge war fans wide. The force of the dual punch they dispatched it with wasn't exactly distributed evenly due to their difference in height, but it did the job. "But she's also big and strong and tough!"

"Right." Jupiter grinned. "The mighty Senshi of Protection is way too tough to let some small fry take her out... but still. I'll be safer if you're watching my back. Think you're up for it?"

Jupiter's image became blurry due to just how enthusiastically Peace nodded her head. "I'll do my best!"

"I know you will. What do you say, should we hit them with a combo?"

Peace jumped for her hand as she extended it. "I'd love to!"

"Perfect," said Jupiter. Some part of Peace was conscious of how funny they must look, one of the shortest Cures clinging to one of the tallest Senshi as they stood side-by-side... but what did it really matter when she was living out a fantasy like this? Trembling with nerves and excitement, Peace vowed to etch every detail of this moment into her brain, even the scary stuff: Jupiter's confident smile, the specific way the light gleamed off the golden orb at the tip of her tiara's lightning rod, the Shadows descending on them like a flock of maddened birds... oh, this would inspire some amazing drawings later, she could tell. Jupiter's hand squeezed hers, and they called out together: "Supreme Peace Thunder!"

Only then did she consider what usually happened when she performed her attack, how the noise and flash of light would make her cringe and cry out when the lightning struck her fingers... She was fine with Happy and the others seeing her do that, but she couldn't embarrass herself like that in front of her heroes, what would they think of her? But her hand was already raised, her fingers spread, the bolt was on its way. Peace said a silent, desperate prayer: Please don't flinch, please don't flinch, please don't flinch!

No good; the bolt struck with a terrific crash, electricity coursed through her, she flinched, she squealed...

... and Jupiter squeezed her hand again, as if to say, It's okay. I've got you.

Precure powers were regulated by emotions, for better and worse. Almost all the Cures could name specific examples: righteous anger made them stronger, while losing heart would make it difficult or impossible to stay transformed, or to transform at all. Peace was used to crying, both on and off the battlefield, but thanks to the flood of power which accompanied her happy tears this time, she was able to match, if not exceed Jupiter's voltage with the storm of green and sparkling yellow lightning that followed. Twenty, thirty, forty Shadows melted in a localized electrical storm, which swelled to encompass the Castalia's roof and the airspace beyond it.

"AAaHhahhAHHaaAHAhHAaAHHaAHAhaa"

Two hundred meters away, the massive shape hovering in the sky belched an enormous gout of rainbow flame and shed the outer layer of its bonds...

"[Dammit!]" Red-faced and sweaty at the edge of the roof, Venus yanked hard on her chain, pulled taut. "[Saturn better hurry it up! Already lost my voice, don't wanna lose my arms too!]"

Movement from the Axia: a huge orchid-colored moth took off from the roof, its wings bore a dazzling tableau of space. The Shadow-Familiars scattered before it and left it a clear path to fly straight to Walpurgisnacht...

"That's it, isn't it?!" Sailor Moon called from near the lip of the rooftop. Having cut a furrow through the horde of Shadows, her tiara flew back to perch on her outstretched hand. "That's the Morendo!"

Neptune nodded cooly and sucker-punched an unlucky Shadow sneaking up behind her without looking. "Indeed."

"Great! Now we just have to kill the damned thing before it kills us!" No need to guess which half of Mars that came from. "Venus, let go! That's enough!"

With a groan, Venus released the chain, sank to her knees, and clutched both shoulders. "[I'll be fine,]" she said as Mars ran to her side to cover her. "[Just gimme a few.]"

Mars raised her right arm, and her left hand hovered over the bracelet of ruby magatama beads on her wrist.

"[No.]" Venus shook her head. "[Not yet, Kagura will take too long. Save it for—]"

Peace stopped listening, her mind had gone blank. By instinct, she wrapped her arms around Jupiter's waist and hugged her tight.

"aahahAAhHHAAAhHAHAHaHAaahaAHaHahahAhAHA"

A city's skyline was supposed to be a constant, unless one of its buildings was demolilshed or a new one went up. Skylines weren't supposed to change in seconds. Skylines weren't supposed to move. But before her eyes, first the Axia Azabu skyscraper, then a dozen others rose up out of their footprints...

*****

Street Level

Ground Team

Sakura chuckled softly. "H-hey, Hayate-chan," she said. "Do... do you think ERASE or NOTHING would work on—" That question went unfinished; at that moment, her eyes slid out of focus, her grip on her wand went slack, and she crumpled on the spot.

"Sakura-san!" Hayate made a flying leap to catch her...

... only to find that she was beaten to it. The Guardian Beasts had separated from the falling wand in the blink of an eye. Yue held Sakura's limp form in his arms with Kero hovering near his shoulder.

"Rest, Master." Yue placed a gentle hand on her forehead. "You have done more than enough."

Hayate opened her mouth to order the three of them to transport back to the Arthra—

—and her voice was lost in the wail of the storm as all hell broke loose. Typhoons were a regular occurrence in Uminari, and she had lived through more than a few. This was like no typhoon she had ever seen or imagined, it was an unholy thing: in its opening seconds, the gale tore three electric display signs from their mountings on both sides of Zoshiki Street and sent them spinning like oversized buzzsaws past Yuuno's barrier. Power lines snapped like cotton threads and came to life in frenzied dances, their severed ends sprat loose sparks across multiple blocks. Torrents of rain poured down in continuous, near-horizontal sheets that made horrible, deafening rattles as they struck the district's roofs...

"Kero-chan!" Hayate screamed and threw her arms over her face. The wind stung with such force that even the barrier couldn't stop it completely. "Yue-san! Get Sakura-san out of here!"

She wasn't even sure if they heard her. It didn't matter; they vanished anyway.

Guys! Her telepathic call went out to all their forces from across the district. Rooftop and Aerial teams, regroup and start Phase Two, NOW! Everyone else, find high and stable ground if—

*****

A blinding flash lit the sky pure white from horizon to horizon for a split second.

Three seconds later, it was followed by a sound that washed over the whole of the Juuban district and beyond, an explosion for which the word "ear-splitting" seemed hardly adequate.

Those on the Ground Team had no way of seeing exactly what happened. By contrast, the Rooftop and Aerial Teams had a perfect view of it from their vantage points, once the phosphemes cleared from their eyes: one kilometer away to the northeast, the Tokyo Tower was split in two down more than half its height. Its halves drooped away from each other like wilting flowers, the hundreds of lattice strips that once connected them were melted, deformed and curled in all directions like flyaway hairs. What wasn't burnt black slowly cooled from white-hot to red, shedding globs of molten alloy, and dozens of stray arcs danced back and forth in the gap... residual electricity from the tremendous spear of lightning that struck it from the clouds above.

*****

Axia Azabu

"HahaaAHhAHAhAHahaHAHhAAaaHhAhahahAHaAHhHA"

Numb with terror and barely able to think, Chibi-Moon gaped at the twisted wreckage in the distance. It made no sense, no sense at all. The Tokyo Tower was one of the most well-insulated structures in Japan. No lightning bolt, no matter how powerful, should have done that kind of damage to it. Yet even as she watched, more pieces of charred latticework crumbled and fell to the pavilion below. The tower's primary observation platform, the Main Deck where she once spent many happy afternoons with Usagi, Mamoru, and Hotaru, was unrecognizable... it looked more like a burst overripe fruit than anything that could safely house people. Of the Top Deck near the tower's peak, there was no sign at all. Was it melted? Exploded? Vaporized? Her insides squeezed into a dense little knot. What if there were still people in there? Most of the civilians were probably in shelters by now, but there were still maintenance workers and—

*****

Crack. Homura's hand left an angry, throbbing red mark on Chibi-Moon's cheek. "We need to get off this building, now!" she shouted. This high up and in this weather, Chibi-Moon wouldn't have heard her at her typical volume if she screamed directly in her ear. "We can't protect the city if we're dead!"

Though she wobbled a bit, Chibi-Moon's eyes were clear once more. "Right. You're right."

After a moment's pause, Homura said, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that."

"No," said Chibi-Moon. "I was spacing out, I'm glad you did. Thanks."

Beneath them, the roof lurched and tilted ever more toward the southwest corner. Beyond the corner lay empty space, a sickening eighty-meter drop to the street below... or more, now that the building was afloat.

Saturn was back on her feet, using the Silence Glaive for support. "We're... we're supposed to regroup with Teams Bravo and Charlie, aren't we?"

"I don't think we can stay up here much longer!" The roof tilted a few more ominous degrees, and Madoka's voice tinged with panic. "We may have to make a run for it! Homura-chan, you can still use your shield, right?"

"I can."

"All right, then, everyone stick close together!" As Solace's ribbons extended from her wrist, Madoka clutched Homura's hand and held it tight. Her pulse was frantic, the heartbeats barely discernable from one another. One ribbon curled around Chibi-Moon's forearm, the other around Saturn's. "Ready when you are, Homura-chan!"

"On my signal, aim for the closest flat surface you can see." Homura willed herself to stare at the southwest corner, and only the corner. With practiced skill, she pushed the rest out of her mind. "Now!"

The shield turned over, plunging the world into greyscale, stillness, and eerie silence. Together, the four ran for the corner at all speed and took a flying leap over the edge... Even in time-stop, the laws of physics applied locally. The air still screamed and bit at their skin as it rushed past their faces. Beneath them, a lonely ten-meter strip of concrete sidewalk hovered before a twentieth-floor balcony, partly sheltered within a spreading cloud of dust. Fist-sized clumps of soil hung below it, caught in the process of falling away. "There!" Homura angled them in that direction and tucked her limbs in as much as possible to speed her descent.

"Will that hold us?" asked Saturn, shouting to be heard over the roar.

"It'll have to for now!" Madoka said. "The others won't know where we are until time starts up again!"

The soles of four pairs of shoes touched down on the walk. Its footing was solid enough. Homura's shield turned over once more...

It took no more than an eyeblink: gleaming lights in all colors blinked on from within the swirls of dust. A merry chorus of giggling voices floated from within, and—

"Silence Wall!" Saturn slammed the blunt end of her glaive against the concrete, fog poured from its curved blade—

The Shadow-Familiars' combined blasts tore through the dust cloud's meager cover with ease. Rays of magic pockmarked the concrete beneath their feet. Homura saw one leave a sizzling mark on Saturn's shoulder and another scorch Madoka's cheek before Saturn's barrier could close against them. Neither was a serious injury, but she still couldn't suppress a flare of anger... Apparently in this case, anger was a positive emotion, for d'Argent grew lighter again. The sidewalk was drifting away from the Axia, she factored that into her trajectory calculations as she summoned her bow and six arrows, pulled back on their fletching...

"HAAAAHhaHAHAaHAhAHahAAaAhAHAHaaaHaAA"

Its laughter was loud, much louder than before. Somehow, its enormous eyeless face, now dotted with countless moth-shaped holes, was right before them, staring directly at them from less than twenty meters away. Homura knew, without knowing how she knew, that it could see them.

Instinct took over, she loosed the half-dozen arrows and guided them into and through the first group of Shadows between them and Walpurgisnacht. Another volley was at her fingertips in an instant. If they could damage it from this position, just a little!

At her left side, she felt more than saw Madoka stand and summon her own bow. The rose at the peak of its upper limb burst into pink flames.

At her right, Saturn pointed the Silence Glaive at the enormous grinning face.

And next to Saturn, Chibi-Moon drew her wand and gripped it with both hands.

Nothing needed to be said, no orders had to be given. For this moment, for the first time, all four of them understood and were in perfect synchronization. Homura stayed silent as she fired, but the others cried out invocations in unison:

"Magical Squall!"

"Silence Buster!"

"Pink Sugar Heart Attack!"

Hundreds of flaming arrows, twin helixing ribbons of violet energy, a concentrated stream of bubbly hearts... their disparate energies coalesced into a single white-hot crescent, which swept through the hordes of Shadows like a sickle through wheat. Higher and higher it climbed, dwarfed by the size of the behemoth Witch but still shining bright until the moment it splashed across its pockmarked porcelain face—

"HAahAaHaHaAhHahAHahhAaAAHaHAHAhaHa"

—and blasted a hole five meters wide in its outer shell, which exposed the countless cogs of myriad sizes that spun within. The largest cogs were losing cohesion, their surfaces boiled and oozed as if made of thick molten tar instead of iron.

"We..." Chibi-Moon said, sounding equal parts excited and incredulous. "We're actually hurting it! The Morendo's working! Akemi, look, we're hurting it!"

Homura had seen it damaged before, and knew it could still fight even with half or more of its body missing. To Chibi-Moon she sent only: "We are. Don't let up, prepare to fire again."

Movement at the bottom edge of her vision, writhing motions. Homura's hand twitched in the direction of her shield, but before she could move it more than a millimeter or two, long, paper-thin things sprung from the concrete beneath her feet, circled her neck, and drew tight. More around her waist, still more seized both wrists and dragged them down to her sides. Jet black, but with the rainbow sheen of oil on water, hideously strong despite their fragile appearance. Ribbons.

Renewed giggles sounded as around them a new platoon of Shadow-Familiars spawned from the ether. All the same silhouette, impossible to mistake for anyone else: curled pigtails, generous curves, armed with matchlock rifles...

There was no end to the ribbons, nor would there be. Homura fought Mami often enough, and lost to her more times than not. Mami was an adept fighter with incredibly versatile magic, but she never took full advantage of how deadly her ribbons could be to other people, not when she was in a stable state of mind. These Shadows—her Shadows—had all of her power, but lacked any hesitation to put them to lethal use. Mami was one of the worst Puellae Magi for Homura to fight against, a natural counter to her abilities even when she held back... and the Shadows never would.

Storms of ribbons came from every direction, wrapping ceaselessly, constricting tighter, tighter, tighter like the coils of a snake. An AMP's personal air supply was designed to keep its weilder breathing even in jeopardy, but it was of no help if one's lungs had no room to expand. Unable to breathe, dark spots dancing in her eyes, Homura sank to her knees. Further strips snagged her shoulders and hauled her down until her cheek ground against the concrete, then anchored her in position. Almost everything below the bridge of her nose was already mummified in black, and still more ribbons piled on though she could barely move a muscle. Her ribs creaked with audible distress, one of them snapped altogether under the pressure. Fire bloomed in her chest to accompany the burning sensation in her empty lungs. d'Argent, d'Argent could cut her loose of these infernal things, if she could only focus...

Strangled cries came from the others as they struggled with their own bonds. A wriggling black bundle dropped to Homura's side with a thump, only recognizable as Madoka by the few tufts of pink hair peeking out from between countless bands of magical cloth. The two subsequent thumps behind her had to be Saturn and Chibi-Moon. Immobile. Helpless.

Twelve Mami-Familiars took to the air, surrounding the chunk of sidewalk in a wheel. Their rifles doubled, then tripled in size. Not rifles anymore, but cannons. Even to Homura's fading vision, the glow that lit each cannon barrel was like a miniature sun... No hesitation, indeed. The four of them weren't to be crushed or suffocated to death, they were to be tied down and fired upon by a dozen simultaneous Tiro Finales. Enough firepower to incinerate them, shields and all.

Something passed in front of several of the twelve suns, a pearly white blur. Someone shouted the Lights' battle cry in a strident voice: "C'EST POUR DEMAIN!" A rain of steel blades which cut through the Mami-Familiars on the ground, a release of pressure, then air, blessed air. Homura lay there and heaved, sucking in as much oxygen as she could as their rescuer dropped down from above, came into focus, and said: "Shoulda known. You always did have trouble with Mami-san's ribbons, didn't you, Devil?"

Perhaps death would have been preferable after all. Beyond speech for the moment, Homura could only wheeze and stare daggers at her.

The dozen Mami-Familiars in the air flailed their enormous cannons wildly, still giggling even in the throes of apparent panic. There was something wrong with their weapons, lines and spots of color crisscrossing what was swirling black mass seconds before. Lines of green, spots of red. Roses, and rose vines connecting them. What...?

With a click of someone's fingers, the cannons exploded and took the Shadows with them. And to Homura's utter disbelief, a winged shape swooped down in front of them, backlit by the conflagration... no, two shapes. A man in a caped tuxedo atop a pearly white pegasus. "Tuxedo Mask's Pegasus Taxi, at your service, ladies! Available to magical girls from across the multiverse, with steep discounts for cute pink ones in complex relationships with brunettes," said the man, tipping his top hat at them. "Sorry for the delay, the traffic was murder."

From behind Homura, a weak voice let out a feeble groan. "Mamoruuuu... Suh-stop embarrassing me... in front of my squad..."

For some reason, Homura wasn't at all surprised to hear the pegasus chime in as well. "And I would prefer not to be referred to as a taxi, my Prince," it said without moving its lips. "It is undignified."

Bleary-eyed, Madoka tried to push herself upright. "D-did that horse just talk?"

"C'mon, guys, up you go," said Sayaka, extending a hand to her. "We gotta clear the area, the Aerial Team's about to start attacking."

"Chibi-Moon, Saturn, there's room for you two here!" said Tuxedo Mask. He patted the pegasus's flanks for emphasis.

"But Madoka and I—" An involuntary cry left Homura's lips. Attempting to move with a broken rib was a mistake, the injury was worse than she thought.

"Homura-chan, you're hurt! Hang on, I'll use my magic!"

"Don't waste power on me, I can do it myself. I'm fine." Her response was brusque, automatic...

... and she found herself caught off guard by just how hard Madoka shut it down. "No you're not. Don't start that nonsense again," she said. Rosy pink eyes gave her a ferocious glare that belonged more on a mother tiger than on her face. "You're hurt. I'm healing you. Deal with it."

Homura nodded, unable to argue further, and submitted to Madoka laying hands on her side. It took no more than a few seconds for the rib to set itself and fuse back together.

"'Attagirl, Madoka-chan." Saturn smiled from the back of the pegasus. Her arms were wrapped tight around Chibi-Moon's waist, as Chibi-Moon's were around Tuxedo Mask's. "That's how you do it. See you on the other side!"

"Take off, Helios!" At its rider's command, the pegasus beat its feathered wings and launched into the air, dodging the burning tongues of flame and scores of attacking Shadows with supernatural grace until it and its passengers were lost to sight.

Madoka blinked. "Sayaka-chan, how are we supposed to—"

"Us?" said Sayaka. "Our ride's already here."

A white face twice the size of a subway car peeked over the edge of the broken sidewalk, a grinning face like something out of a cartoon. Its eyes were rings of multiple colors, its nose was like an oversized party hat, its smiling mouth was filled with gleaming, razor-sharp teeth.

"I know, I know, you were supposed to come to us," said Sayaka. "But when the Familiars got you, we had to change the plan on the fly. Mami-san's still waiting for us on the Apartments Tower building, wherever it went... Hurry, climb on!"

The cartoon face nodded in agreement and turned over, exposing a wide stretch of its polka-dotted hide.

*****

"AahAaAhAHAAAHHaahaHHHahAHhAhAHaHAha"

Never before had Homura contemplated fighting one Witch with another while riding a third. It was not an experience she cared to repeat. She had never ridden a roller coaster before, and never wanted to; before the time loops, her heart could never take the strain, and after the loops began... well, nothing more needed to be said. Whatever miniscule interest she might have had to try one was now gone. Nagisa weaved and dived and corkscrewed her wormlike Witch form through the warzone's airspace at blinding speeds that would have shredded them all to pieces long before wind or the G-forces could tear them from her back. Their AMPs' shields and gravity engines protected them and kept them in place, but still Homura gripped the Nagisa-Witch's spongy hide as tightly as she could with her legs, and across from her Madoka did the same with an expression of considerable more distress.

If it were possible, they would have used both hands to cling to Nagisa as well. As it was, they both needed both hands free to fire arrow volleys to either side of her. Nagisa's Witch form was a nigh-unstoppable beast, and there was little her terrible, bear-trap jaws couldn't swallow or bore through. Despite the form's size and strength, though, all her force was directed in one direction: face-forward. Her sides and the rest of her considerable length were unprotected. True, she had enough sheer bulk to shrug off most things short of sustained bombing, but even small injuries could be debilitating if allowed to pile up.

Therefore, Sayaka stood at the crown of Nagisa's head, right between the feathery antennae-like wings, posed like a sea captain with her cutlass pointing straight ahead. Her cape was blown out nearly horizontal behind her by the rushing air, and from its folds Sayaka's own Witch was materialized, as different from Nagisa's as night was from day. It was the same form Homura saw too many times: a hulking three-eyed armored knight with a mermaid's tail. At Sayaka's direction, it laid about with its own larger cutlass, and anything that strayed into reach of its blade was pulverized or sliced to ribbons.

Homura and Madoka were relegated to support fire at the moment, defending Nagisa's flanks from any Shadows in her blind spots and clearing what little debris she couldn't eat. Each mighty clash of her teeth thrummed through the hide they sat on, a sickening sensation. It wasn't Nagisa's fault, but neither of them could forget what those teeth had done in the past, and the sounds they made...

Nagisa performed yet another series of aileron rolls through the floating ruins of an office building, and emerged before her target: one of Walpurgisnacht's enormous empty sleeves. Just the one, looming before them like the mouth of a mountain cavern. Not a vital spot, Homura told them that already. Her hope was that attacking there would distract the Witch and its Familiars enough that the Aerial Team could take on their true objective unobstructed.

"Nagisa!" shouted Sayaka into the screaming wind. The armored Witch lifted its cutlass high...

Some part of Homura found the spectacle of what followed fascinating to watch, in a horrible and disgusting sort of way. As they reached the hem of the sleeve's frill, Nagisa opened her jaws wide and tore into it with such vigor and ferocity that it became impossible to distinguish the sound and feel of one bite from the next. Fabric, metal, clockwork, all of it disappeared into Nagisa's bottomless stomach or was simply chewed to tiny, unrecognizable pieces. Sayaka's Witch slashed through what Nagisa couldn't reach, and together the two of them carved a destructive path through the Witch's body little by little. On a grander scale the damage was insignificant, like the run that a single pulled thread made in a person's shirt. Still the fact remained that their efforts were damaging it, and in this case—

"HaAAhAhAhaAhaAHaAHaAhAHHAaHAhaAhAhaaahAHAHAa"

—the Witch's gargantuan size was a detriment. Multicolored flames reduced the destroyed office building they had just left to ash and slag, but at this range its fiery breath couldn't easily hit such a small moving target.

Homura drew and fired, drew and fired without stopping, taking out Shadows as they came. All she could do was hold on, and hope the others did the same before Walpurgnacht's counterattacks escalated...

Thunder and lightning crackled from the skies. Not from the storm, but from electricity gathered around a glowing golden mana blade the size of a city block. Half a kilometer above Walpurgisnacht, the blade swung in a wide arc, a half circle that briefly cleaved a layer of turbulent storm clouds in two... then it plummeted edge down, igniting from atmospheric friction but still holding its shape. The wielder's invocation rang out strong and clear, even over the wind's howl:

"Thunderlight flash! PLASMA ZANBER... BREAKER...!"

Fate Testarossa Harlaown descended from the heavens like a space capsule in reentry, preceded and dwarfed in size by Bardiche in its Zanber Form, a claymore many times larger than she. The two falling stars keeping pace with her were Yuuno and Chrono, who kept any approaching Shadows at bay. Nothing could be allowed to interrupt her strongest, most devastating attack before it connected...

... and it did, as with a mighty crash, she slammed the claymore's blade into the largest of Walpurgisnacht's gears. That was the key, Homura told them all: the grotesque mannequin was mostly a decoy. Its real "body", if such a word even applied, was the immense gear the mannequin hung from, all but impossible for most magical girls who faced it to reach. But if those magical girls could fly...

Sparks spewed in all directions from the clash of solidified mana with hardened metal, the gear made an ungodly, piercing squealing sound as Fate's blade ground against it. For a moment, they appeared stalemated, Walpurgisnacht simply continued to turn... but there, an irregular chunk of weathered iron sheared off from it and tumbled out of sight. Actual, visible damage to the closest thing it had to a weak spot.

"hAaahAaHAhaHaaHaAHaAAHAHaAHAHAAahAhahaahAHAha"

Walpurgisnacht rounded on Fate, and as if enraged by her audacity, the next jet of fiery breath was twice the length and three times the width of the last. As she withdrew, the iridescent flames pursued her, setting everything in their path alight: stone and steel burned just as easily as wood, a sight so uncanny that the mind reeled to behold it. In seconds, the Central Heights apartment complex, the Queensway, and Lions Mansion all blazed like colorful torches in spite of the torrential downpour, and still the fire licked at Fate's heels, threatened to overwhelm her...

"Moon Diamond Absolution!"

"Pink Moon Diamond Reaction!"

"Mars Ruby Wildfire!"

"Jupiter Thunderbolt!"

"[Venus Topaz Storm!]"

"Neptune Aquamarine Torrent!"

"Tuxedo La Smoking Bomber!"

"Precure Peace Thunder!"

... until attack after attack from the uprooted Castalia Building hammered the Witch and threw off the trajectory of its breath, allowing Fate to slip away. Each successive hit its gear pushed it a bit further southeast; it teetered back and forth, resembling a child's top about to fall over as it attempted to right itself. The last attack, the vortex of sparkling golden lightning, left it hovering roughly above Amishiro Park.

And for the second time that night, the Juuban district was bathed in the glow of a pink sun, an orb of condensed mana wrapped in two crisscrossing runic ribbons. It drew in lines of power from all the mana particles that had been expended over the course of this long and grueling night, particles that glittered like fine stardust in its light.

"Gather, light of the stars!" From on high, five hundred meters above the gear, Nanoha Takamachi shouted the invocation: "Maximum power! STARLIGHT BREAKER!"

For Homura, who had never seen Nanoha perform her signature spell in person before, the beam was awesome, terrifying, almost like a natural disaster of its own. Holoimages and recordings could only convey so much; not the wall of sizzling heat and sheer power that swept through the district like a tidal wave. Not the beam's heart-stopping roar, which rattled her bones from head to toe and threatened to shake her teeth loose. Not its effect on the atmosphere, the way she knew solely by how it felt on her skin that the air for tens of kilometers around was ionized. Not its blinding pink glow, which brought forth pangs of blended sadness and nostalgia in her heart...

"STARLIGHT BREAKER!"

Again she fired, fueling the second beam with the mana particles expended by the first. Where there once was uniform black iron, now a circle of dull copper spread outward from the beam's point of impact with the gear.

Below the Witch, just beneath its sliced-off skull, in fact, an emerald green disc spread over Amishiro Park and a hundred meters beyond it in all directions. Walpurgisnacht was too huge and hostile to drag into a temporal force field, as Yuuno said. The battlefield was a populated city, not an empty pocket dimension where she could fight without restraint... any collateral damage caused by Nanoha's Starlight Breakers would be on her head. While she bombarded her target, Yuuno's duty was to shield as much of the Juuban district as he could from the spell's energy, to use his specialty with barriers to intercept the runoff should it spill over.

"STARLIGHT BREAKER!"

Copper became burgundy, burgundy became brick, brick became crimson. The surface of the gear began to run and boil, just as the clockwork innards were boiling from the Morendo's curse. Sluggish tides of molten metal crawled to the gear's outer edges, began to ooze over the sides and trickle between its teeth.

"STARLIGHT BREAKER!"

And crimson escalated from orange to yellow and finally to white-hot. The airspace between Walpurgisnacht and Nanoha now shimmered with a heat mirage. Little was left of the stack of smaller gears mounted above the largest one, only a mountain of shapeless slag. Still it laughed, crowing its twisted amusement for all of Tokyo to hear...

"STARLIGHT..."

From even higher above, an enormous shadow fell on Nanoha, one that dwarfed the orb of her fifth, still-in-progress shot. It ripped through the storm clouds, descended at too great a speed to plan for, too great a speed to stop. The Axia Azabu building, most or all twenty-five stories of it, turned upside down and hurled at Nanoha like the fist of a god.

The comms erupted in warnings:

"Lyrical!"

"Lyrical, break off your attack—"

"You have to retreat...!"

Many people spoke. Only one acted. Only one could act.

The pink orb eroded and vanished, and so did Nanoha, in a streak of green. Homura couldn't see where she ended up, but the cry that came from her comm a second later... it put to rest the notion that Nanoha was always stoic and cool-headed in battle. It was a wild scream, a terrified one, cracking with desperation: "Yuuno-kun...!"

The emerald disc that had been protecting Amishiro park was now holding up the falling skyscraper, but only just. Barely visible, a mere speck beneath it, was an emerald green Midchildan magic circle, spread almost to its limits.

"Yuuno-kun, get out of there!" Nanoha's order was frantic, without an ounce of control. "Even your barriers can't take that weight for long!"

There was a small chuckle in response. From Homura's comm, and Madoka's, and doubtless all the others, a flickering holo-image appeared, choked with bursts of static. The expression that Yuuno Scrya wore was one that tore at Homura's insides. She didn't know Yuuno, but she couldn't forget that expression if she tried: the calm, confident, sure smile of someone who was about to choose their next words carefully, because they weren't expecting to have many more. "Sorry, Lyrical... Nanoha. I can't," said Yuuno. "If this thing falls, it'll do catastrophic damage. It has to be me. I'm the only one who has a prayer of holding it, and I won't put anyone else in danger."

"Dammit, Scrya!" said another voice Homura failed to recognize for a moment, "I'm ordering you to withdraw!"

A laugh. "You can't give me orders, Chrono, I'm not even really part of the TSAB. And I'd like to see..." He grit his teeth, strained. Sweat poured down his forehead. "I'd like to see you try this. Your barriers... are like rice paper..."

Someone sobbed over the comm, Homura wasn't sure who.

"Listen... Fate," said Yuuno. His holo blinked out, then reestablished itself, less stable than before. "It's... it's partly my fault that Alph died. I could have stopped her from going on that mission... but I didn't. I helped her... and I've been... regretting it ever since. I know this... won't make up for what I've done, but... it's all I can do. If I see her...well. If it's anything at all like people say it is... she already knows you love her... and that you're making her proud. So I'll just say hello."

Fate's only answer was barely a whisper: "Yes. Thank you."

"Hayate." Her name came out as a gasp. The disc wavered... and a second spell circle shone briefly below the first. "Before I came to the Lighthouse... I cast a spell to hide the Infinity Library, seal it off. Only me and Mary-san can unlock it, together. Willingly. I just... rewrote the spell... to give you full control of my half. If I trust anyone that's not Nanoha... to guard the most dangerous knowledge in the multiverse... it's you. Book or no Book... I know you'll keep it safe."

That sobbing again, harder than before, with intermittent moans of "Yuuno-kun". So it was Hayate.

"And Nanoha?" Yuuno bowed his head, then lifted it once more. "It's okay. I c-couldn't let anything happen to you. You're... a shining star, and I've always been... in your shadow. And that's f-fine... I'm just a side character... in your story. Couldn't shine... as bright as you if I tried. Promise me... that whatever happens to me... you'll keep giving Dead End hell. For me. For Alph. For the Wolkenritter and Reinforce. For all the Bureau officers we lost. For Iona. For Vertex Three, and for everyone... those bastards made suffer. Promise me... please..."

The reply came without hesitation, in a husky tone that didn't sound like Nanoha at all. "I promise, Yuuno-kun."

"I know you will." Yuuno gazed up at the skyscraper, pressing down on him with incalculable force. "Gonna try... to break it up... and use the last of my mana... to teleport as much as I can... into the ocean. Not a perfect solution, but it'll have—"

The window blinked out.

A terrible groaning sound. Beneath the Axia's weight, Yuuno's disc flexed into a concave shape. Cracks raced through it, it trembled... and it vanished as he channeled all its energy through the building. For a moment it lit up from within with a brilliant emerald glow, then it crumbled into countless smaller fragments. Thousands of tons of concrete and steel and heaven knew what else plummeted from the sky, and Yuuno's tiny form was lost to sight. Approximately a quarter of the debris vanished in a burst of the same emerald light that saved Nanoha. The rest... the rest was...

Nanoha's voice howled: "All units, target and vaporize as much as you can!"

Stunned and empty inside, Homura drew her bow, summoned an arrow... and had no chance to fire. Something remarkable, no, impossible was happening.

They appeared in the path of the falling ruins with no fanfare, no flashes of light, no sound at all. Simple wooden doors with tarnished knobs and peeling white paint, floating in midair untethered to anything else. From doors of human size to doors big enough for giants and every size in between, they appeared by the hundreds, by the thousands, by the millions. Each one opened to a swirling multicolored tunnel, and each one caught a piece of the broken skyscraper and swallowed it up. Once the fragments passed through the frames, they were gone without a trace... in a matter of seconds, the rain of inescapable destruction was no more.

"I've got him!" Fantine's voice was ragged with exhaustion. "Sent him... directly to the Arthra's... ICU. He's alive... barely. Sent the rest... into space... I—" And there was no more.

"AhAaaHAhaaHahaAhAaHAhaHahAHAAhaaHAHAHa"

Still it turned. Still it laughed. Mocking them, mocking their efforts, mocking Yuuno's sacrifice.

Thick with tears, Hayate was next to speak: "A-Alpha, Buh-Bravo, Ch-Charlie. Regroup and c-commence Phase Three. G-Ground Team, target Walpurgisnacht's gear directly. Jean... wh-what do we do now?"

Nanoha stole Homura's answer before she could give it. Outwardly her words were calm, but just beneath their surface was an edge as sharp and deadly as a knife: "We do not waste this chance. We fight, we finish it, and we send this thing to Hell. C'est pour demain."

Homura joined almost thirty other voices and answered: "C'EST POUR DEMAIN!"

And for her, time ceased to have meaning. Both brain and body went on autopilot as the third phase of battle degenerated into a senseless whirl of driving rain, of explosions, of wind that blew with a ferocity that seemed like it should flay them all alive, of endless shooting and dodging and reloading and shooting again, of Shadows attacking in great swarms like frenzied hornets, of echoing laughter, of more fires burning than she could count, of bursts of light like fireworks in every color. Orders shouted back and forth, all running together:

"—most of the southern blocks are flooding—"

"—can't keep this up—"

"—four tornadoes in the northeast, repeat, four—"

"AaAhAhAaHaHhHaAhAhAhAaHaAhAhAhAaHaHa"

"—F-Frontier and I caught that metal stuff that was blown off the gear before it hit anything, but now it's moving... wh-what—"

"—go for it, Sankeien, use it now—"

"—is Little Ox with Apples, she needs medical attention. Binaries broke her arm—"

"—told you, dammit, I'll be fine, don't waste—"

Homura was only dimly aware of the tightness in her chest, of the faint feeling of acid swirling in her core. Part of her knew it was her Soul Gem darkening, but to replenish it would mean breaking off her attack. She couldn't do that now, not when so much was—

"Here!" Just as she thought that, a gloved hand pressed one against the back of her left hand. The acid subsided, her chest relaxed. "Figured you must be low by now," said Sayaka. "You didn't take all the ones I had on me!" That infuriating smirk of hers. "You're welcome. And for the record, I still hate you."

"The feeling is mutual," said Homura without hesitation.

Sayaka gazed over her shoulder, leaning far to the left side to see clearly past Homura's wildly blowing hair. "Damn, would you look at that! We could use those guys in our world, huh?"

Homura looked, and as much as she despised agreeing with Sayaka on anything at all... damned if she wasn't right.

Only one of the Precure they had could fly. Lacking proper training and fine-tuning of their AMPs' flight engines, the rest had to make do with taking aim at whatever parts of Walpurgisnacht they could reach, primarily the hanging mannequin. To Homura's inward astonishment, even with that limitation, the Precure were making progress...

One of the Witch's sleeves was gone. Not the one Sayaka and Nagisa attacked, either; half of that one still remained, bleeding smaller, rusting gears from the tattered edge where its "elbow" used to be. But the other sleeve—or arm, whichever—was simply gone, there was a burnt and smoking hole in its torso where it used to be. Networks of cracks spiderwebbed most of the shell that formed the mannequin's upper body. And as she watched...

"Precure Galaxy Chorus!"

"Precure Scarlet Prominence!"

Showers of flames and stars pelted the Witch's skull, cast from the roof of what was left of a four-story complex. Each individual hit did almost nothing, but so many in rapid succession eroded both horns of its headpiece away, little by little...

"Precure Peace Thunder Hurricane!"

Cascades of golden lightning from the Castelia scored a hit on the axle and raced up and down its body, blackening and weakening everything it touched...

"Precure Pink Forte Wave!"

"Precure Heartful Echo!"

Next was a simultaneous attack: from above, a magical construct of a huge, luminous pink flower bud crashed into the gear, while from somewhere below came an almost invisible, lime-colored spark which struck its skull... and detonated, with a thunderous sound that Homura could hear from a hundred meters away. An expanding sphere of pastel green radiance swallowed up Walpurgisnacht's head and neck and ate away everything inside it.

More comm chatter:

"Th... this is Sankeien..." Wheezing breaths, and then: "I'm sorry... already used it four times... That's all I can give you..."

Hayate's voice cut in. "It's okay, Sankeien, that's enough! Fall back! Crosse, are you still there?"

And then came Cure Black, who sounded winded but otherwise in top form: "Yeah, I'm here! Just finished my lucky seventh lap."

"That's more than enough, do it now!"

When the next roar of thunder spread through Juuban, it was not from the skies or from the rooftops. In seeming defiance of nature, it came from the streets. Since the moment the Lights sprung into action to take on the threat of Walpurgisnacht, Black had been running laps, circling the entire district over and over, only fighting when there was no other option. It was all to build up energy, to prepare herself for a single, targeted attack.

Ebony bolts lashed the remaining buildings on either side of Amishiro Street south of where the Witch hovered. Glass shattered across entire blocks, facades and edifices collapsed, street lights burst like party favors. Black herself could only be made out by the writhing tangle of dark lightning emanating from her right arm, from her AMP...

As one of the prototypes, Black told them all when she explained her part of the plan, Yang's unique properties were not all that far from the functions all AMP Devices were built with. That was their core mission: to bolster each wielder's strengths while covering for their weaknesses. Separated from Cure White, Black was gifted with incredible strength, agility, stamina, fighting skill, and resilience... but she lacked any long range attacks. The Marble Screw—or any of their other purification techniques, for that matter—couldn't be performed unless both she and White were together and holding hands.

However, Black's athleticism was her speciality, even in civilian form. Her idea for Yang was for it to take advantage of how physical she was, in and out of battle. To that end, when Black threw a punch or a kick or even ran around, any kinetic energy she expended while wearing Yang would be converted into electrical and magical power and stored for later use. During the attack on Joker, she was transported to Juuban a hundred and fifty meters from the battleground for precisely that purpose: sprinting to his location with all her might built up all the charge she needed for an electrified punch that put her normal ones to shame. And if she should, for random example, decide to circle the entire Juuban district seven times...

The results of that effort made Black easy to spot from half the city. That was fine; they were long past the point where stealth was a priority. She and her tangle of lightning ascended, leaping from one side of the street to the other and climbing higher each time. At the top of the Rapport, she bounded westward to the Takeda Building and ran up its side, defying gravity and blowing out its many windows in her wake. From the Takeda's roof, she took a running jump and landed on a mangled chunk of suspended concrete hardly big enough to support her weight, one of countless pieces of the city which now dotted the skyline, thanks to the Witch's influence. As she leapfrogged from it to a support beam, then to a road sign, then to an upended tractor trailer, she cut a zigzagging, wandering path... but one that led her to directly beneath Walpurgisnacht itself. Yang's charge, straining to be let loose as it was, grew ever more violent with each motion. Black crouched, then propelled herself straight upward at the yawning hole where the mannequin's neck had been mounted, like a launched rocket. Seconds before impact, she curled her right hand into a fist, pulled it back, and bellowed: "PRECURE BLACK THUNDER PUUUUUUUUUNCH!"

The peal of Yang's release could be heard for fifty kilometers all around, in districts well beyond Juuban's borders. All Black's stored power was unleashed in an instant, an entire thunderstorm's worth of dark lightning bolts ravaged through the Witch's body from within. The mannequin comically swelled up for a brief moment before it burst into a million disintegrating shards: mannequin, clockwork, axle and all.

Someone, probably Nanoha or Blossom, swooped in to catch Black before she could fall back to the street. Homura didn't see who; all her attention was on the largest gear. The most well-protected part of the Witch, its true "body", the only thing left of it. She knew better than to let herself hope, but...

"AAhAHAaHAhAHAHahHAhAaAhAhaHahahhaAAhaAha"

The temptation lasted a scant few seconds. Cold dread took its place and hollowed Homura out from the inside, for the immense gear now began to rotate on its horizontal axis... slowly, as if it understood that it could afford to take its time.

Voices cheered and shouted from her comm. Homura ignored them and talked over them, almost in a daze: "Jean to everyone. We have to kill it. Now."

"Homura-chan...!" Madoka ran to her side, her face was ashen. She knew. She had seen it do this before.

"Jean, what is it? What's the matter?"

Homura answered as if someone was working her like a puppet, with little awareness of choosing her words. "That gear... if it's allowed to turn over completely, so that what's left of the axle faces upright... it's over."

"Over? We've almost beaten it!" said Black's voice. "How could it be—"

"It was in my research," said Homura. Numb, she felt numb... "Only a few times, but. When other Puellae Magi fought in the past, once Walpurgisnacht turned itself over with the doll to the skies, it would raze everything beneath it in a single flash of light. Destruction comparable to a nuclear weapon. Entire cities, leveled in an instant..."

A pall of silence fell on the comms. Then...

"I... I guess we need to pull out all the stops," said Sailor Moon. To her credit, there was only a slight tremor in her voice. "Peach Pie, you gather up your team for your Finale. I'll do the same here. The rest of you... keep fighting, however you can, but stay safe."

Mami's reply was calm and even. "Understood, Mochi. Good luck."

Madoka clasped Homura's hand, gripped it tight.

Homura squeezed it in return.

From behind them, Sayaka said: "Nagisa? We gotta get back to Mami-san. Fast as we can."

The worm nodded. Holding tight to each other and to Nagisa's hide, they flew...

*****

What waited for them on the roof of the Apartments Tower was not a single Tiro Finale cannon. As strong as Mami's signature finishing move was, it wouldn't leave a scratch on the gear. Homura knew that from experience.

What waited on the roof as they touched down and Nagisa shrank back into her human form was an entire battery of cannons, one for each of them. And as they approached, their respective symbols engraved themselves on the barrels: a diamond for Homura, a teardrop for Madoka, a C-shape for Sayaka, and something like a wrapped candy for Nagisa.

"Where's—" Sayaka began.

Kyoko vaulted herself over the lip of the roop before she could finish, a heavily frosted donut in one hand and her spear in the other. Without a word or a glance in Sayaka's direction, she marched over to the empty cannon... and hauled it to the end of the line, as far from Sayaka's as possible. "'Bout time you let us play with your big guns, Mami," she said in a sort of grumble. "We killing this thing, or what?"

Dithering back and forth, Sayaka looked as if she wished to say something, but had no idea what that something was. Eventually her hands dropped, and she trudged over to take her place at her own cannon with her shoulders slumped in defeat. Her eyes glistened in the weak light.

"I hoped there would be time to practice with all of you," said Mami, who stood in the center of the group, roughly equidistant from both Sayaka and Kyoko. "But I'm afraid it's an emergency. We must do this now, all of us together. We all know the consequences should we fail..."

Madoka bit her lip. "Of course, Mami-san. We're with you."

"I'm with you too, Mami-nee." Nagisa reached out a hand and patted Mami's leg. "I'm ready."

"Ready here," Sayaka said dejectedly on her end.

And Kyoko added, "Let's fuck 'er up and go home already. Sooner this is over, the better."

In lieu of speaking, Homura elected to nod and take hold of her cannon and rotate it toward the gear...

Next to her, Madoka began: "Homura-chan, if—"

"We'll finish it," Homura cut her off. "Whatever it takes."

The other five cannons moved to point in the same direction as her own. The gear now hung at an odd, slanted angle...

"AHAhaHahAAhAHAHahaAHaHAhaHaHAHAhAha"

Her nemesis, the embodiment of her Sisyphean ordeal. The horror that waited at the end of too many timelines. Homura stared up at it, unwilling to blink. Thanks to Hotaru, they had ensured that its reign of terror would end forever, and they were so close to finishing it... Of course it would do its utmost to deny them victory at the last moment. Walpurgisnacht wasn't meant to be defeated. Its phenomenal power would forever twist the odds in its favor, no matter how improbable.

Still she swore, as she swore so many times before, that she would see it dead anyway. Whatever fate or the odds or the will of the universe decreed, she would defy it. No one else would have to die. No one else would have to sacrifice. No one.

"aHaHAhAahAAhAHahaaHAhahAaHaHHaaAhahAhahAA"

Six barrels began to glow from within as magic funneled into them: red, pink, violet, yellow, orange, blue... Six matches lit and hissed softly, and six serpentines cocked.

"Everyone, fire on my mark!" Mami called out. "Puellae Magi... GRAN FINALE!"

Six cannons erupted into six massive fireballs in their signature colors. The recoil blew everyone save Mami to their knees, the thunderclap left high-pitched ringing in their ears. Their shots flew straight and true and caught the underside of the gear, splashing across it in a wide spread. Once more its metal burned white hot...

From the opposite direction came a shining, blazing pink orb that grew larger and larger the closer it came to the gear. For a moment Homura thought it must be another Starlight Breaker, but no... she could feel its energy, and for all its power, the Starlight Breakers felt nothing like this. Something about the way it washed over her was a little like cleansing her Soul Gem with Grief Seed, but different... better. She picked herself up and watched as the orb of light struck the gear's other side...

... and...

Cracks were slow to appear at first, but soon they spread into great fissures. From one end of the gear to the other, iron split and buckled. It was working, it was actually working...

"AHahHAahhAAhahahAHAHAHAAAHahAhaA"

And then disaster, as the comms flooded with panicked voices once again.

*****

Castalia Building

Moments Before

Sailor Moon stood at the edge of the roof, pigtails blowing like blonde streamers, visibly suppressing the urge to tremble like a leaf. Her Moon Stick was clutched at her chest as if she were cradling an infant. "O-okay, guys," she said. "This isn't gonna be like the last time. No Silver Crystal, so less power, but—"

Jupiter clapped her on the shoulder and made her jump. "It's gonna be better than last time. This time, we're not dead."

"And we've got more people to help you." Mars came forward to embrace her.

"And hey, if it's a Silver Crystal you need..." Chibi-Moon flipped open the cover of her brooch. "I know it's not yours... not anymore. But it was yours."

Neptune gave a sage nod. "I wasn't there the first time, but. We know that you don't need to sacrifice yourself if each of us takes on part of the burden."

"We're all with you, Sailor Moon," said Saturn. "We can finish this."

"[No time like the presence, right?]" Venus chimed in.

"Um, Minako..." Tuxedo Mask raised a hand, then dropped it. "Never mind, not the time. I believe in you too, Usako. Show it who's boss."

Sailor Moon sniffled and wiped her eyes with one finger. "I love you all. Thanks, everyone. Guess we'd better line up."

One by one they took position behind her in a V-formation behind her: Tuxedo Mask and Chibi-Moon on her immediate left and right respectively, then Mars, Jupiter, and Venus on the left side, and Neptune and Saturn on the right.

That left the sole other Morning Light present shuffling awkwardly away in the corner. Peace twiddled her fingers, her joy at seeing this attack in person dampened by the realization that she didn't belong there. This was their moment, not hers. The right thing to do was to go join Twinkle and Scarlet on the next roof over. She wasn't even from the Senshi's universe, she had no right to intrude on—

Sailor Moon looked over her shoulder, concerned. "Peace? Are you okay?"

Peace stared down at her boots. "Um, d-don't mind me. I... I should go regroup with Twinkle and Scarlet..."

"What are you talking about? There's more than enough room for you here."

Peace gaped open-mouthed, unsure if she heard correctly. "But... but I'm not a...!"

"We need all the power we can get." Saturn's lips spread into a soft, gentle smile. "I'm sure the Silver Crystal won't mind if some of it is a little different from ours."

By contrast, the grin Tuxedo Mask flashed at her was downright heart-stopping. "You've proven many times over that you know us better than we do. And from where I'm standing, there's not that much that separates a Sailor Senshi from a Precure. Don't you dare say no."

Struck dumb, Peace came forward and took position behind Saturn. The wink and thumbs-up from Jupiter across from her nearly made her swoon. She could only hope she wouldn't faint...

"All right," said Sailor Moon. "Here goes everything."

Chibi-Moon waved a hand over her brooch...

Light.

The light was warm and blinding and achingly beautiful, and Sailor Moon changed as it wrapped around her... Her fuku bloomed into a pearly white gown that Peace had fantasized about wearing countless times since her early childhood. An upturned crescent moon gleamed on her forehead, and her very bearing changed. Immeasurably more graceful, more regal than before, she radiated an aura of calm and strength and dignity that brought Peace to tears. Princess Serenity stood tall and pointed her Moon Stick at Walpurgisnacht, and cosmic energy gathered between its horns...

One by one they called out:

"Tuxedo Power!"

"Mars Power!"

"Jupiter Power!"

"[Venus Power!]"

"Neptune Planet Power!"

"Saturn Planet Power!"

Unsure of what else to say, Peace concentrated as hard as she could and improvised: "Precure Peace Power!"

To finish the incantation, Serenity and Chibi-Moon shouted together: "MOON PRISM POWER!"

All their energies condensed and combined into a brilliant pink orb. Fired like a shell from a cannon, it grew and gained momentum as it carried on the wind. Their voices raised together, Peace could feel each heart contributing to guide the shot to its destination. Its glow filled her entire field of vision, and by the time it collided with the gear, she was blinded...

And then the backlash hit, as Peace knew it would, but she was unprepared for just how vicious the sensation was. It was as if someone reached into her and scooped out... something precious of hers that she couldn't define, but whatever it was, its absence turned her knees to jelly.

At least she wasn't the only one sprawled out on the roof. Only Serenity remained standing, a guardian angel keeping watch over them all. Peace blinked tears from her eyes and followed her gaze...

The gear was cracked. Gaping fissures crisscrossed its scarred bulk, its rotations were unsteady. Was... was it dying? But it seemed to be turning over faster than before...

"AHahHAahhAAhahahAHAHAHAAAHahAhaA"

Serenity sank to one knee. Her transformation came undone, she was Sailor Moon once more. And however much the attack took out of Peace, she could tell at a glance that it affected her with three times the potency. "Again," she heaved. "It's almost done... I can feel it... One more shot..."

"Usako, you can't even stand!"

"D-don't mother hen me, Mamo-chan, you know I have to—"

Perhaps it was the stamina afforded by her larger body, but Jupiter was the first to fully right herself. "What the hell is that thing even made of?" she said, putting her hands on her hips.

*****

"We've—" said Jupiter.

Sailor Moon didn't know how she knew, but all the information flooded into her brain in a heartbeat. There was something hard and metallic approaching from behind Jupiter, approaching much too fast. It would be upon her at any second. Of the nine of them on the roof, only Jupiter and Tuxedo Mask had no shields... her numerous cuts and scrapes and bruises were proof of that. No shields and no AMP meant she had no protection. Sailor Senshi were tough, and Jupiter was tougher than any of them, but she was also taller than any of the other Senshi, and standing up straight, in the path of something at that speed—

She moved without thought, her body acted on its own. With the last dregs of her energy, she pounced to her feet and shoved Jupiter aside. She had already lost Jupiter once in this war... not again. Not again.

She still had her shields, it would be fine.

She still had her shields.

It would be—

*****

Ananke, in Orbit of Jupiter

Approximately 722 Million Kilometers from Earth

Now.

*****

Azabu-Juuban

Castalia Building

"Sailor Moon!"

"Sailor Moon, please answer me!"

"Usagi-san!"

"Usako, come on..."

Sailor Moon lay flat, bleeding from one temple, the movements of her eyes rapid beneath her closed lids. Tuxedo Mask pressed a torn-off scrap of his cape against her, staunching the flow of blood, while Mami applied a basic healing spell...

"What the heck happened?!" Twinkle stood on her tiptoes, trying to see. As they were closest, she and Scarlet had jumped over from the roof of the building nearest them.

"We think it was an I-beam," said Nanoha, who made no attempt to disguise her bitterness at the unfairness of it all. "Torn from one of the buildings. She was the only one who saw it coming... If her shields hadn't been up, she'd—"

"Red Dog to Arthra, come in!" Fate was on her comm. "Arthra, we have a medical emergency, please respond...!"

Nothing but static.

Clutching at her hair, Hayate looked as if she might soon lapse into a nervous breakdown. "How could comms go down now, of all times?!"

"Give her room, give her air..."

"She's moving, look!"

"Come on, Sailor Moon, you can do it!"

One deep blue eye cracked open, then the other. Both were unfocused. Sailor Moon made a light, confused sound.

"Usako," said Tuxedo Mask. "Come on, Bunhead, talk to me. How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Thuh..." Sailor Moon mumbled. "Thir...teen..."

"I believe she may have a concussion," said Mami. "It's not the worst injury she could have, but if that's the case, the problem can't be fixed with standard healing magic, not entirely. It's partly psychological, the only cures are care and time..."

"We don't have time, Mami! Dammit, that thing's gonna blow us up at any minute!"

Back from the others, Homura stood hand in hand with Madoka, her insides an icy black hole. She knew better than to attribute this to random chance; Walpurgisnacht, like any Witch, brought misfortune wherever it went. Most of the time it was as dramatic as a typhoon or another city-scale natural disaster, but other times... other times, it worked with relative subtlety.

Her hopes were all but gone. The only remaining option...

"Homura-chan," said Madoka. Quiet. Calm. Sure of herself.

Homura couldn't bear to look at her.

"Homura-chan, you and I both know what I have to do. Everyone's exhausted. Sakura-san can't fight anymore, and neither can Sailor Moon. I'm the only one of the Three left."

Homura stayed silent. Was this the result of her defying fate? Was this her punishment for her sins?

"Homura-chan, look at me."

She cast her eyes upward...

... and the inside of her head went blank as Madoka's lips pressed softly to hers.

The moment hung frozen in time, as if Homura had turned over her shield. It was wrong. Not like this, not now. Yet she could do nothing but surrender utterly to the moment, to something more warm and bittersweet than she had ever imagined. All the times she fantasized about this, and it felt nothing like she expected. She was too overcome, too frightened to move. There was no question of returning the kiss, or resisting it.

It lasted an instant. It lasted forever. As they parted, Homura became aware that everyone else was staring at them in silence. No cheers or gasps of shock or any of the other reactions people usually expect... somehow, they all knew.

"It'll be different this time," said Madoka to them all. "Our... our AMPs are made of Immaterial, right? The same stuff that the Lighthouse is made of. It protects us from what Joker's done to time. And Fantine-san told us... Immaterial is dreams and hopes and memories. So I'm sure that this time... Homura-chan won't be the only one who remembers. I won't let her be alone like that again. I'm counting on all of you to make sure... make sure she never doubts that it was all real. That I was here.

"And maybe... maybe this time, since it's different, once I fix all this... I can come back. Change the rules again."

"Don't," said Homura quietly. Her world, her world was falling apart. "Don't say that. Don't give me hope—"

"I can't help it, Homura-chan." How she smiled... "That's who I am. What I am. And even if I can't come back... you know I'll be watching over you, and waiting for you when it's over. I promise."

"But how would you even..." Black sputtered out, unable to finish.

Madoka closed her eyes. "Fantine-san?"

The voice that responded was weak, devoid of all the steel they had come to know. "I'm sorry," she said. "I... can't operate the siphon. It's too much for me. I'm trying... but I can't..."

"It's okay, Fantine-san." And Madoka opened her eyes, glowing golden... "I already felt it once tonight, a little bit of it. I'm sorry if this sounds selfish, but I don't... think I need you to work the siphon. Not if I can grab hold of that little bit and use it to pull the rest out. I'll be careful, and I promise I'll try not to break anything."

"AHahaAhahaHAHAhaHaAAhaHaHAhAhaHaHAHahaHAhA"

Walpurgisnacht's gear was fully on its side. As they watched, it began its final tilt...

"Hotaru-chan, Chibi-Usa-chan," said Madoka. "Please, I need you to come stand next to Homura-chan. Hold onto her."

Homura couldn't even feel their hands taking hold of hers. The loss was so overpowering that it should have shattered her Soul Gem, why was she still alive...?

And Madoka bowed her head, though she was the last who should ever bow to anyone. "I'm sorry. I really wanted to try to make it work with all of you. I'm trusting you both to take care of her, whatever happens. I love her... she's more precious to me than I could ever say."

"I know." Chibi-Moon nodded and choked back a sob.

"And Hotaru-chan?" Madoka turned to her. "I know what an incredible, miraculous thing it is that Homura-chan fell in love with you... so I'm counting on you especially. Make her happy. Help her through this. She'll come back stronger than ever with you at her side, I'm sure of it."

Solemnly, Saturn whispered, "Yes. Of course."

"Homura-chan," said Madoka.

This was it, wasn't it. I have changed, she said several times tonight. And here was the ultimate test of whether that was true or not: when faced with losing Madoka again, what would she do? What could she do? All her heartbreak, all her effort to rebuild herself... would it all be undone?

No more time. Never enough time.

"Don't forget," said Madoka with that heavenly smile, brighter than the sun. "I love you, and you are not alone. Bye bye... for now." Wrapped in a pulsing pink glow, she turned toward the gear...

Someone's comm, Homura didn't know whose, burst back to life, interrupted by blasts of white noise. "... to all Morning Lights, this is Arthra..." said the voice of Operator Amy Limietta. "... enormous burst of unknown energy from one of Jupiter's moons... fried our systems... signature in Earth's exosphere... descending rapidly... heading your way...!"

And—

A brilliant white comet punched straight down through the layers of storm clouds, vaporizing them and turning night to day in its wake. Its arrival was announced by a deafening sonic boom, and what little intact glass was left in Juuban shattered instantly. Ignited from friction, the comet hit the upper edge of Walpurgisnacht's gear with the impact of a falling bomb... but a mere explosion could not explain the sounds that followed. One almighty metallic CLANG after another after another, like the drums of Hell.

Chibi-Moon stared, open-mouthed. "What... what is that...?"

With an expression of impossible hope, Black gazed at the comet... No, it was a humanoid figure, burning bright at surely lethal temperatures but still upright and fighting. She whispered a single word: "White...?"

Another CLANG. Another. Another. Another...

"AAHahahaaHAhAhaAhA—"

... and the gear finally gave way, splitting into hundreds of irregular fragments, which crumpled into scrap metal, which dissolved into nothing.

Walpurgisnacht was dead. Gone. Forever.

And the burning figure continued its plunge, slamming into the grounds of Amashiro Park below. The impact threw up a sizeable mushroom cloud of dust and dirt, blocking whatever it was from view.

Everyone stared as the storm finally abated, and silence fell on the battered district...

Madoka stood speechless. Her eyes were rosy pink again, back to normal. "I..."

"We need to get down there," said Homura. "This building will fall soon." That was all she said out loud. Inwardly, terror saturated her brain, for she couldn't dismiss a single, dreadful thought:

Who or what could possibly finish off Walpurgisnacht with its bare hands...?

*****

Amishiro Park

The dust was still too thick to see anything by the time all the Lights and their allies made it down. Victory was theirs, but the district still lay in ruins... and it appeared that Homura's anxiety was now shared among the others as well.

They approached the crater with nerves on high alert, Tuxedo Mask supporting Sailor Moon as she made slow, unsteady steps alongside him. Her speech was still slurred, but her eyes were back in focus and she was coherent enough to speak to people. The flow of blood from her temple was stopped, and with Tuxedo Mask's help she could remain upright. At least they survived, she thought blearily. At least they won.

A smoking, twenty-meter crater lay dead center in the park. Whoever or whatever was inside was no longer burning, but it—or they—lay motionless for the moment, shrouded in dust.

Black preceded the others and threw herself over the crater's lip. "White," she said desperately. "White, is that you...?"

The shape in the crater stirred, stood with a laborious effort.

Something about that shape...

It was humanoid, definitely. Two arms, two legs. Very long legs. Not much else was visible. It... no, they staggered in the direction of Black's voice.

Oh, that was right, Sailor Moon remembered. If she just concentrated a bit, forced her aching head to work properly, she could read the stranger's aura. There it—

She collapsed.

Her heart hammered against her ribs.

Everything went cold at once.

It wasn't Cure White, not at all. Maybe the farthest thing from her. The figure emerging from the dust cloud was a mature woman in a uniform with a certain resemblance to her own... except that it was entirely composed of golden armor. The collar, the leotard, the skirt, all of it. In lieu of gloves, she wore bejeweled golden gauntlets. Her headpiece was like a crown, it held back a set of impeccably coiled, fiery orange curls.

And as more details became clear, the appalling state of her body was evident. Her arms, her legs, and half her face were horrifically scarred, as if someone had flayed the skin from them. One crimson eye was milky and blind, the other stared down at her, unreadable...

Somewhere in the back of the crowd, Sailor Iron Mouse moaned in mortal terror.

Cure Peace drew in a whimpering breath.

And Tuxedo Mask and every Sailor Senshi present moved to shield Sailor Moon with themselves...

Sailor Galaxia was back. The nightmare had returned to Earth.

Galaxia paid the others no mind. Her working eye was fixed on Sailor Moon, and Sailor Moon only. She moved, and Sailor Moon was vaguely aware of Tuxedo Mask drawing a handful of roses...

Galaxia tilted forward at the waist in a brief, polite bow. "Sailor Moon," she said in an ominous contralto. "Usagi Tsukino, Princess Serenity. I am here to request an alliance."

END OF ACT III: UNBREAKING

NEXT:

THE FINAL ACT

SHATTERED SKIES:

THE MORNING LIGHTS

ACT IV: UNDYING

"RED... the blood of angry men!
BLACK... the dark of ages past!
RED... the world about to dawn!
BLACK... the night that ends at last...!"