Chapter Text
For just a few milliseconds - the heavens descended. Effie’s legs tucked in and she repositioned to brace against the wall of the building and the angel’s voice emanated out infinite and sourceless; she wondered, truly wondered, if divine intervention was taking place.
I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity, said the Lord, the angel orated from nowhere. Its body hovered unerringly and it spoke in an unnatural, unearthly cadence, a voice not of this world. I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant, and lay low the pompous pride of the ruthless.
Effie stared at divinity for just half a second longer and decided she wasn’t buying it. She had actually met God, and she didn’t exactly strike her as the wrath and punishment type.
Her brain locked in and she kicked off. It took two full hammer swings (triple weight forward, weightless on the return swing) to build up the momentum to crash back into the angel, driving the head of the weapon into it at Mach speed. It tilted its sword defensively, predicting the strike but not how heavy it’d hit. It soared backwards, too much velocity to stabilise with its wings before it clipped against a building.
Also, now that Effie thought about it, that might have actually just been a Swedish accent.
She pinged off a lamppost, her boots in contact with it for less than a microsecond, and toward the angel for a finishing hit. Their weapons thrashed once more and the angel’s sword shockingly survived a second consecutive full-power hammer hit.
This time it retaliated by pushing its palm forward and releasing a blast of blinding light. Effie adjusted her gravity just in time to dodge but the sheer power of the beam burnt the skin on her cheek. Effie baulked slightly. Was this thing actually strong?
A foreign and powerful Magical Girl in London?
Oh, fuck.
The road below was packed. The humans had seen it, whatever they were interpreting it as, and were trying to escape, but not fast enough.
A microsecond of panic preceded an instant adjustment of the plan. Effie grunted as the angel lined up another shot. She gave up on all pretence of dodging and jumped toward it.
Laserbeams and holy light tore through her flesh, evaporating her ligaments and bones. She invited it all. Go on. Rip it to pieces, it wouldn’t stop her. Effie’s body was no longer tethered by the laws of physics. It contained only facsimile of crucial organs and muscle and a vestigial nervous system. It moved as a mass of formless material that bent to the whims of a two-inch diameter stone in its pocket.
Effie’s knee drove into the angel’s stomach, its plate armour crumpling inwards like cardboard. She gripped its arm, fighting it upward so the third blast of light pierced the clouds. She dug her boots in and took two steps up the angel’s chest to kick off its face with the weight of a mountain.
It rocketed downwards and Effie put all her focus on swinging her hammer so she could drop down onto it for-
Something hit her in the side with the force of the sun and Effie barely reacted in time to correct her trajectory before she destroyed the Eye. Instead she managed to crash straight through Nadia’s windows (which, for the smallest moment, was incredibly satisfying). Her back bounced harshly against the black tile, skin perforated with glass shards, and then everything went black as her torso smashed into something wooden.
She allowed herself a breath.
“-fit an entire cucumber in there? Blud I swear down, I don’t even really rate her like that but-”
Effie snarled and ripped herself forward out of the wreckage, landing on her palms and knees. A quick recalibration with her surroundings told her she had ended up inside Nadia’s kitchen counter. Katie sat nearby and talked nonstop to a disinterested Aqua, who was doing a pretty decent job of making sure whatever body part Katie was trying to touch didn’t exist.
“Losing your touch, Effster?” Katie smirked. “Aww. Can’t even deal with a wittle invader anymore?”
Effie threw a hand above her until she managed to grip the counter and tug herself to her feet with a grunt. “That,” she hissed, snapping her attention back to the window, “is a fucking Termie.”
The reaction was instant. Transformation flashes and chairs clattering against the ground, Effie became the room’s sole focus. Nadia materialised beside her.
“Are you certain?” she asked.
Effie nodded.
Nadia said nothing, her cannon hoisted on her shoulder.
“We need-”
“I know. I’m sending hundreds of texts to every phone I can.” Nadia betrayed no emotion save the twitch of a finger on her trigger. Faulty part or genuine nerves? Effie didn’t know which made her feel worse.
The pile of rubble on the rooftop opposite shifted. The angel dislodged itself from the rooftop Effie had cratered it into, hissing and twitching unnaturally, like a machine releasing steam. It rose again with one undulation of its glowing wingspan, loose white feathers whirlwinding around it. A titanic rush of air blew through them a moment later, shattering the last of the windows that hadn’t broken from Effie’s trip through.
Each of Effie’s girls were now sufficiently stirred. They crowded by the windows with their weapons in hand. Hostility brimmed, tangible, their placid stares malformed into snarls and leers. Their multicoloured outfits, capes and coattails and scarves, flapped in the wind as they looked out over the fifteen storey drop. Even Katie had stopped sexually harassing anyone in a two metre radius, face set in stone as she summoned dual machetes.
But none of them attacked. Dogs on a leash. None of them would move, until Effie gave the command. Which was good, because Effie had no idea what the fuck was happening.
Without movement on its seraphic face, the angel spoke once more.
And as such the Lord uprooted them from their land in anger, in wrath and-
“What the fuck are you talking about,” said Effie.
-shut up in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day-
Right. If there was a universal truth about Terminatrixes: they were fucking mental. All she had to do was keep it talking. And as long as it was talking, it wasn’t firing laser beams at her. Or-
Something pinged in Effie’s head.
“Fire alarm,” she muttered. “Set it off. Now.”
After a quick scan of the room revealed no obvious alarm button, someone shoved the nozzle of their flamethrower into the kitchen and drenched it with fire. That worked. Doors began to burst open in the hallway, and Effie listened as footsteps made their way to the stairs.
-for you, sinners, must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the flesh, whether, uh - shit, uh - good or - or bad-
“Hey!” Aqua pouted, leaning forward with her arms folded across the sill of an empty window. “That is not how it goes.”
-and, after-
“The Bible does not have swears.”
STOP FUCKING TALKING HOLY SHIT?
“But you are getting it wrong! All the words in the wrong order!”
Well YOU spend an hour on BibleStudy dot co dot UK on a train with NO internet connection and tell me-
“Oi.” Effie strode across the room until she was beside Aqua. “What’s the sin, then?” She leaned atop her hammer’s hilt, unimpressed. As long as she could burn a few minutes…
What? The angel turned.
“What sin are we getting punished for,” droned Effie.
AH- SHIT! I don’t know. Why are you asking questions? Fucking - fucking annoying. The angel’s hands gripped the hilt of its sword tighter. Whatever. Excessive homosexuality. All of you. Punishment by death.
“I don’t think that’s-”
Ever read the Bible?
“That’s not-”
Leviticus.
“You-”
Fucker.
Effie stared in disbelief.
No one spoke for a few moments. Humans began to filter out from the reception below. Good. Okay. Just a little longer…
“Also,” Aqua continued, unperturbed, “you are trying to kill us. The commandments say you shouldn’t kill.”
“Fucking hell Aqua, did you get converted in captivity?” Katie snickered.
Aqua turned inwards to face them, frowning. “What exactly do you think they made us do in rural private school?”
Effie shrugged. “Just pictured horseback riding, really."
“Yeah, well,” Aqua laughed humourlessly, balancing her scimitar on her fingertip. “I ran away for a reason."
The faceless angel stared at Aqua in what Effie could only read as disbelief.
Right - fucking - the Lord descendeth from heaven once more and He said that He forgot the eleventh commandment which is that if a white rat or a cat or whatever tells you to kill some mental bitches occupying a city to save the universe you can do that don’t worry it’s totally fine you can ignore the one about killing to do that if you want.
Out of the corner of Effie’s eye she watched as humans, hastily dressed in dressing gowns and wrapped in blankets, filtered through the street below. Perfect.
Fuck you all. Die.
Then, across the span of the rooftops, something began. Figures, silhouettes clambered and crawled their way into view. Their figures lacked any semblance of humanity - they barely even mimicked, having sold the last vestiges of what they were with their twisted wishes. Four, five, six of them in view from just here. More, surely, just out of sight. Shit, Avalon had been right.
“Surrounded,” Effie whispered to herself, pacing parallel to the window. The cobwebs dusted off, her brain kicked into sixth. “Avalon,” she murmured, “how many. Estimate.”
“F-Fuck, I don’t know, ten, twenty?” Avalon whimpered beside her, wide-eyed. “E-Effie, what are we gonna do?!”
Effie looked at Nadia. Everything was understood in their instant wordless exchange. Whatever doubt Nadia had harboured evaporated, not from trust but necessity. Effie had thwarted one invasion, she was their best chance of thwarting another.
There was, Effie supposed, some comfort in that. When it came down to it, Nadia wouldn’t defect - she didn’t have the capacity to. She would work, unblemished by emotional disturbance, to ensure her own survival. That meant winning, which meant working with Effie.
“Okay.” Nadia nodded tenuously. “You’re in charge.”
Effie quickly swept her eyes across the others. “Aqua,” she muttered. “Gonna help?”
“Oh, I dunno…” Aqua, leaning forward with her hands gripping her scimitar, literally bouncing on the balls of her feet, pantomimed indifference so awful that even Effie could detect it. “After the… disappointment of last week, I might be able to be convinced…”
As for the rest... Quite a lot in the living room right now. More on their way. This wasn’t even a question. This was beyond winnable. What was Kyubey playing at? Effie could take any Terminatrix one-on-one, easy (she just hadn’t been prepared for the angel. Already her head brimmed with ideas on how to kill it.) Add a few more Termies in, things get iffy, but with London outnumbering them almost two to one? He didn’t have a chance.
She swept the room once more. About twenty. Ah, fuck it, good enough for now.
Effie pointed a finger to the window. “Alright. Go.”
Someone screamed a warcry. Her dogs attacked. Effie swung her hammer around a few times, warming herself up as she prowled to the window and-
“Effie, Compton-”
“What?!” Effie spun around to face Avalon, neurotic. “What about her?!”
“Compton, she’s here!”
“Here, in the city?” Effie’s heart rate increased. “Or the boroughs?”
“She’s COMING UP THE FUCKING STAIRS, EFFIE!”
What? No. No, no, that couldn’t be possible. Now? Right now? By what cosmic, fate-damned coincidence?
Coincidence…?
Something clawed at the back of her brain. Something was rotten here. Her eyes drifted to the door to the bedroom, where Collins’ limp legs were just in view.
“Effie,” whimpered Avalon, who was almost attached to her arm, the little infernal fuck, “Effie, I’m scared. Compton is coming to - to kill us. She’s going to kill me.”
“Need - I - need to kill,” Effie hissed, “I need to kill her.” She gripped her hammer tighter, made her way to the door. If she could just - if Effie could just kill Compton, make up for her mistake - her idiocy - on the train…
“Effie, no.” Nadia snapped her fingers while she took a potshot at a Terminatrix with her cannon. “We need you. For this. Effie, pay attention!”
No. No, fuck, fuck, Effie could see it all too clearly already, before it had even happened, Compton sneaking in and snatching Collins and escaping in the middle of a war, finally realising what she had gotten into and getting out of Effie’s grasp forever, Kyubey finally realising that Effie had no fucking idea what she was doing, starting to contract again, everything - everything - falling apart, and-
“Nadia you’re in charge!” Effie yelled, shook Avalon off, and dashed out of the doorway.
She gripped her hammer tighter, spun it again, bit her lip in anticipation as the clicking of heels echoed up the staircase.
What came up the stairs was not what she expected. Wasn't even recognisable as Compton. It was another rabid animal, bloodstained and battered. Her tiny dress was tattered, her arms glistening red in the moonlight.
Effie’s mouth was dry. She swallowed.
Compton looked up. Noticed Effie. Registered her.
Her nostrils flared.
It was cold.
Marina trod through the streets of Paddington. Kyubey dangled from her grip, a child’s toy with half its stuffing missing, limp and gaunt and in a little bubble of soundlessness cos Marina was sick of his voice. She ambled, one boot shakily in front of the other, parallel to the black glass of closed storefronts.
She baulked every time she caught her ghoulish reflection, mascara layered over mascara. She couldn’t remember the last time she had washed her face.
Her heart felt scarily light, blood trickling at snail’s pace through her veins.
“Tired,” she mumbled to no one.
The comedown had plummeted her straight into anxiety attack this time. She had expected, braced for it even, given the law of entropy - no, not entropy - Newton… motion, something, whatever, the pattern her emotions followed where misery stalked elation. Actually, if she asked Kyubey, he probably could put it to some sort of equation. Studying shit like that, quantifying emotion into numbers, that was his job, wasn’t it? Maybe he could generate her a fucking bar chart.
Bridges criss-crossed overhead as she passed. Marina was gonna get herself in a state again.
She could just put one foot in front of the other. It was easy for her to ignore everything else when she could do that.
Magical Girl combat was strange. In the vast majority of cases, especially one-on-one, the outcome relied not on who was smarter, or who had the better strategy, but quite simply who had the better attributes. Who moved faster? Who could react faster? Attributes that eventually plateaued despite infinite training, bottlenecked by nothing but how much magic your soul could pump into your body, ie, your potential - and as far as Effie was aware, she had the most of it.
So when Compton, knife in hand, stumbled clumsily into a slow slash Effie slid around easily, she quite comfortably assumed the fight would be over in seconds. Then Compton caught her follow-up punch and nearly tore her arm off. Effie yelped.
Compton dropped and Effie couldn’t adjust her weight fast enough to avoid careening down the stairs with her. They hit the tiles hard and Effie ducked under a wild swipe for her eyes to kick Compton off. She stumbled back into the opposite wall.
Somewhere above, something exploded.
“Are you,” Effie spat blood onto the floor. “Are you trying to kill me?” She couldn’t help it - she laughed.
Compton snarled. “Don’t laugh at me. I know you want to kill me. I know you have Cerys. I don’t care why. It doesn’t matter anymore.” Her voice came out low, breathy. “I belong here. I belong in this city. I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way.”
Effie wiped her face, grinning a little. “There you go! Now you’re a Magical Girl.”
“I was a Magical Girl the day you met me.” Compton’s fluffy hair fluttered in the wind.
They clashed again, and Compton won out. She pushed Effie back, striking lightning fast with hits Effie could only barely block or dodge, each little leap sending her back a couple steps until there was no more room on the staircase, no more space to dodge, and when she tried to block, the full force of Compton’s punch was enough to send Effie hurtling up the staircase and through the ceiling.
What.
The fuck.
A breeze. She blinked twice.
She was on the roof.
Effie had never been pushed like this.
But she could win. She had to win. No other option.
Around her about two dozen Magical Girls battled amidst a sea of Kyubeys failing to dodge as boots and bullets mutilated his bodies. The fight was indecipherable, without uniforms it was a mess, even to Effie’s heightened senses. All she could make sense out of was blasts of multicoloured light and attacks out of children’s television shows colliding and exploding in mid air, caught in flashes of vision between frills and capes.
Except something was intangibly wrong.
The Terminatrixes were all alive, despite being outnumbered almost two to one, Effie couldn’t spot a single dead Terminatrix yet. They weren’t winning. Why the fuck weren't they-
A red spear gored through Effie’s chest from behind.
She had lost focus. She roared in frustration as Compton roundhouse kicked the immobilised Effie and she went flying back, barely dodging a blast of ice from somewhere before she collided with someone.
Effie flipped herself around to see a girl she didn’t recognise - a Terminatrix whose face was half-morphed into a fox’s. It snarled at her and Effie spotted its Soul Gem, tucked up against the underside of its snout.
She allowed a millisecond to check Compton was far enough away - she was - and dived with her right hand. Her fingers curled around the snout and forced it up and she gripped the Soul Gem-
An errant sword strike from another duel came down and sliced her fingers off at the knuckles before she could crush the gem. Effie howled in frustration, spun in search of the culprit and couldn’t spot them, how unlucky, how unlucky could she be?!
The fox girl grinned and dashed away from Effie back into the fight, unharmed.
“FUCK!” Effie wasn’t thinking fast enough. She wasn’t thinking at all, she needed to compose a strategy, but that was pretty fucking difficult when-
Compton dived for her again and Effie ducked under before delivering a decent hammer strike to her leg. Compton landed uneven, yelled in pain and rolled to nurse the injury.
See? Compton wasn’t going to win, Effie consoled herself. She just needed time - something to break up the fight, to let them regroup.
A dragon the size of a house exploded out of the crowd. It roared, shook off two girls caught up in its wingspan and corkscrewed into the air. Aqua morphed back into a human, although kept the wings, and instantly soared back into combat with another Terminatrix, one made of goo and slime dangling from the building’s TV antenna.
But Aqua simply outmatched. As if she was on the ground she danced around each lethargic slop of its arms towards her, dodging the poisonous ooze easily. Effie almost felt like cheering as she watched from the corner of her eye (Compton slowly got to her feet).
Aqua found an opening and dug her scimitar into the Terminatrix’s gelatinous body, which she used as leverage to hook herself and drive forward, her left arm sharpening into a claw and stabbing straight through the Terminatrix’s chest.
Then she froze with the grin plastered on her face. The portion of flesh driven through the Terminatrix bubbled, purple streaks running up her veins. She tried to tug it out, eyes widening as her body locked up.
“AQUA!” Effie screeched and bent her knees to intervene and then a beam of pure angelic light eviscerated the side of Aqua’s head.
Aqua frowned as her Soul Gem shattered into a million pieces.
Effie gurgled.
The girl made of slime kicked Aqua off her.
Her body ragdolled, dressed in dirty shirt and torn leggings, spinning gracelessly in the air before it disappeared, swallowed by the skyline.
Effie watched listlessly.
And then Compton laughed.
“What are you…”
“After - after all that…? After everything she said?” Compton’s eyes almost bugged out of her head. “After everything she said! Just hours ago! HA!”
Then she turned back to Effie, rolled her shoulders, and ran at her. Effie sidestepped, grabbed her by the neck, put her in zero gravity and tossed her off the rooftop. That would keep her busy for a second.
She turned back to the fight and her stomach fell out. Another girl - one of hers - had died, her corpse nearly unrecognisable beneath the crowd.
“What is happening, what is happening,” whispered Effie. She squinted her eyes, tried to watch, tried to find a pattern.
And then, all too slowly, she noticed the Kyubeys on the floor and the Terminatrixes and she pieced it all together.
That Kyubey had gotten them to do the one thing she thought Terminatrixes would never do.
“They’re communicating.” She looked at the Kyubeys, the way the hordes grouped subtly by each Terminatrix. “They’re working together.”
The horrific pieces clicked into place fast. The laserbeams Effie kept having to dodge, the convenient sword strikes to cut off her attacks. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh FUCK.
They weren’t fighting a horde of Terminatrixes. They were fighting the most advanced supercomputer to ever exist.
“YO! RETREAT! EVERYONE BACK OFF!” Effie howled, throwing her hammer into the fray. It caught the fox girl on the neck, pushed her off long enough for Katie to scramble away from a gunshot aimed right at her gem. “BACK THE FUCK OFF!”
No one could hear her.
She turned, scanned the rooftop for Nadia and couldn’t see her, either.
Useless. Literally all of them.
Effie just needed - she just needed a second to think.
She turned and slammed her palm into the ground. She readjusted to brace herself, second hand’s remaining fingers thatching to join the first.
Effie could control the weight of anything she touched. This power had limits, of course. The heavier something was, the harder it was to adjust its weight.
Effie hissed.
But really, magic was nothing more than visualisation.
So, what was Effie touching right now? The top floor of the building.
She started to huff. She hooked her fingers into the asphalt, tugged upwards as the building heaved and steel beams snapped. She didn’t have long before Kyubey figured out what she was doing. He probably already had.
Effie yelled at the top of her lungs as the ground shook around them, and slowly, ever-so-slowly, the top floor of the building and the forty-odd Magical Girls on it began to rise into the air.
She heaved. One inch. Two inches. Three inches.
Good enough. Effie let go.
The rooftop plummeted into the building, then shattered. The fighting abruptly stopped as the Magical Girls lost their footing and fell down to the flats in the floor below. Some of the more heavily armoured girls cratered straight through it.
Effie hadn’t braced herself at all and so hit the floor at an awkward angle, probably snapping her neck. She panted, reaching into her coat to trickle some cubes against her gem. That might have broken up the fight enough - disrupted the plan Kyubey had been feeding them - for just long enough. If she could just find-
“Effie.”
Oh thank fuck.
“What do you think you’re doing. Are you insane?” Nadia glared at Effie in between firing cannonballs and bursts of flame at a green-haired Terminatrix barely holding its body together behind some rubble. “The whole building will come down.”
“Aqua’s dead.”
Nadia didn’t miss a beat as she reloaded cartridges into her weapon. They clunked into the cannon with infinite precision. “What?”
“Kyubey is - commanding them. Kyubey is commanding the Terminatrixes. With telepathy. They’ve been trained.”
“Fuck,” muttered Nadia. At any other time Effie would’ve laughed at her. “Okay.” She pulled the trigger and a cannonball split the Terminatrix in two, its top half flying out of the window.
“I, fuck,” Effie gasped for air she didn’t need, magic exhaustion hitting her hard. “I tried, to stop them, but, hah-”
“The Incubator will already have a new plan devised. We cannot beat him.” Nadia turned around to stare at Effie. “If you hadn’t wasted time with Compton-”
Effie ignored her. Mostly because she was right. Effie finally knew what was rotten. She had let Kyubey play her again, his army was tearing hers to shreds while she had been distracted and now-
Wait.
Effie gasped. ”Nadia, where is maid bitch?”
“Who?”
“KASAGI!” Effie sputtered. Her brain whirred. Kasagi - Marina’s power could block telepathy. An idiotic power - completely fucking useless most of the time - but if Kasagi just encased the building in a bubble, Kyubey’s strategy would fall apart. Then it would be easy pickings, taking them down one by one. “Where,” Effie scanned the rubble, “where the fuck is she?!” she pleaded to Nadia.
But as the robot made one of her rare grimaces, and began to speak, the last piece of Kyubey’s plan fell into place.
“Her phone is dead, Effie. She’s not here.”
“Hey… hey, it’s okay.” May whispered. The fighting was almost quiet enough in here that she could hear herself think. She tried to smile, but she probably looked creepy.
Avalon, curled up in the corner, whimpered as May climbed in through the shattered window. May had used her powers to find Cerys, and had found it shockingly easy.
Avalon's paper-thin limbs trembled, curled protectively over Cerys’ unresponsive body. Her fingers webbed around Cerys’ lime green gem. It was horrifyingly, existentially dark. Avalon’s eyes crawled over May.
“It’s okay. I promise it’s okay, sweetheart. I’m not going to hurt you,” whispered May. “That’s my friend. Will you please just put her down?”
“G-Give me y-y-your Soul Gem first.”
May sighed. “I can’t do that. Why do you need it, Avalon?”
Avalon turned green, tried to choke something down, then gave up. “E-Everyone upstairs… everyone upstairs, they don’t-” Avalon’s eyes flicked upwards as if they were lagging her brain, “-care about me. Effie says I’m useless. But I’m n-not. They hate me. But I can be helpful. I can. I can!”
“If they hate you so much… why don’t you just leave?”
Avalon hacked out some impression of incredulity. “Dumb - you’re dumb. Stupid. You don’t get it. You can’t - go - you can’t - live outside of this city,” she rasped, clutching Cerys like a comfort toy, “here - I can endure anything to stay here, because it’s better - better than - better than going out there.”
May stared. This girl was broken. She bit her lip, swallowed her instinctual reaction. “I promise. It’s going to be okay. Just put her down.”
The door flew off its hinges. Effie ran inside, dropped her hammer on the floor, and dived at Avalon. She ripped Cerys’ body from her, spun it around and grabbed her wrists. She tugged the metal strings with a finger and howled in what May could only assume was blinding rage.
May didn’t dare move a muscle. Cerys' gem had never left Avalon's hand. She was one squeeze away from annihilation.
Effie didn’t even seem to register her presence. She turned to Avalon, hair whipping around her head. “Find Kasagi. FIND HER!”
Avalon whimpered. “E-Effie, what? What do you mean? Are you l… leaving? But - Compton!”
“What? What are you - AVALON, FIND MARINA! SHE'S GOING TO ESCAPE!” Effie screamed.
“N… No… Help me! Help - kill Compton - wasn’t that what you wanted to do the whole time? Are you seriously going to let her go AGAIN?”
Effie turned to May. “Kill - oh. HA! You nearly got me.” She snorted. “Nearly. His plan nearly worked!”
“I have literally no idea what you’re talking about,” said May.
Effie lost interest and rounded back to Avalon, shoulders hunched, growling. “Avalon. Where. Is. MARINA?” She punctuated each word with a smack.
“I’msorryi’msorryi’msorryi’msorrysorrysorrysorry-” Avalon tried to cover her face. “She’s - I’M LOOKING - she’s in Paddington, okay? SHE’S IN PADDINGTON! AT THE STATION!”
Effie scanned her face for a second longer and dropped her. Avalon shuddered as Effie contorted herself back into the living room.
"Cerys. Cerys, hang in there, okay? I'm going to sort this all out." Cerys said nothing, so May made her way to follow Effie. "HEY! What are you doing? Hey! Fight me. FIGHT ME!”
The entire wall was gone. Effie dug frantically in a pocket, retrieving a shining purple gem.
“AAARRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Effie tossed it into the air. The gem, mostly full, burst with purple energy and as it drained of half its contents, starting to hover in mid-air.
Effie hoisted up her hammer as it grew in size, and without hesitation swung it towards her gem.
For a split-second May wondered if some temporary insanity had caused her to kill herself. But it instantly became obvious that wasn’t it.
A shockwave burst out from the impact of the strike and tore Effie’s body to shreds. Her gem, a tiny purple streak, launched out of the window and arced through sky, over the horizon, until it vanished.
The little shreds of Effie’s body that remained twisted and burnt away into purple fire, and then nothing remained of her.
Marina could drag herself the requisite steps, one foot in front of the other.
Except the leather boots were hurting her feet now. The heels were too high. She wanted to take them off. But she was still naked. Ha ha. Fuck.
She ducked into the entryway to Paddington Station, luckily basically empty, and wandered past a dozen or so platforms until she could crumple into a pile of frills and fabric atop a freezing metal bench. Cloud-covered moonlight, split into criss-crossed lines through the station’s arched roof, segmented her body into irregular parts.
Somewhere - she couldn’t see where - someone was playing the station’s piano. Something slow. Melodic. Each hammer strike echoed.
You get on the first train that arrives. You never look back.
All you have to do is wait, Marina.
Ninety seconds passed. No trains arrived. Kyubey then perked up a little, wiggling cutely, which distracted Marina for about ten seconds longer before she thought about how Luna wasn’t waiting for her a train journey away but was dead, and Marina had cheated on her corpse out of - what, boredom, revenge, what the fuck - and the only thing that awaited her, her reward for all this work, for escaping, was famously shit normal Magical Girl life - Marina wasn’t an idiot, she had spent the depressed evenings scrolling MagNet on a VPN, she had read the chat logs and the posts, the pleas and the desperation from the new girls that any of it would ever change and the gentle letdown from the veterans that it wouldn’t, you better just learn to fucking cope with it, the inevitable followup posts the week after that girl x or y had died, pleas for someone to come fill in their territory - fuck - Marina didn’t even know where she was going, what if she couldn’t find anywhere - she was strong, but, what if - if - if even after all this, what if she ended up having to kill a girl for territory, wouldn’t that be funny, haha, that was the whole reason she was running away from this shitshow - to avoid killing someone - or she could - stay? Stay, come back to her normal life, her fucking stupid life, except Kyubey was flattening the city as they spoke and so London would become just like every other Magical Girl shithole city in the world and Jesus FUCKING CHRIST THIS WAS A MAJOR METROPOLITAN CITY SO WHY WEREN’T THERE ANY FUCKING TRAINS ARRIVING?!
Marina slid off the bench, choked as her frilly collar got caught in the grooves of the metal, hissed and ripped the fabric into shreds, awkwardly rolled into a stride and began to jog while Kyubey pawed at her wrists. She paced up the station, down the station, beginning to get impatient, desperate, no fucking trains were pulling in! And Kyubey’s little seizure continued no matter how tight she squeezed him, even when she squeezed him so tight she worried his head might pop off like a - like - like something she couldn’t muster up the brainpower to remember right now, and-
On her sixth violent trip down the station she ended up beside the help kiosk. She wobbled, groaned, leant against the desk and gloomily looked down to realise it was also empty.
Then she looked at the huge LED displaying the train times. Underneath, a blinking digital clock read: 04:46 AM.
“Oh,” she said. “I forgot.”
Because of course she had forgotten. She hadn’t even thought about it. Because for Marina, who slept and partied and ate when she wanted, who existed outside of time, who hadn’t checked a clock in weeks, it had not even entered her mind.
“The trains only start running at five.”
She stared at the clock blankly.
Kyubey twisted meanwhile, contorted himself horrifically in ways a living creature couldn’t, and dragged his paws across Marina’s bloodied hand. She hoisted him up to eye level and tapped her thigh twice to dissipate her power. “What. What do you-”
Run-
The ceiling exploded. The glass shattered radially, a tiny blur of light soared down into the tiles, shredding the benches, and barrelled towards Marina. Flesh and clothes began to form around it, a tussle of brown limbs and black hair collided with her and pushed her toward the tracks, snapping the flimsy plastic barriers. Marina’s boots couldn’t keep grip as cold hands gripped her neck and forced her back over the platform edge. They toppled onto the train tracks in a scrambling heap.
“No - NO! EFFIE, NO!” Marina wailed as she kicked and smacked and kneed and summoned her weapon but it wouldn’t do a thing, the last time they had fought Effie had been angry, now she was beyond furious. She screeched as she was slammed once, twice, three times to the ground, the rigid tracks jutting into her vertebrae. Shards of glass rained down around them and a million little cuts formed on her body.
“What the fuck are you playing at?!” Effie growled, feral, as she rolled forward and Marina felt herself become weightless, pulled entirely by Effie’s right hand. She floated in the air, dress and all, weightless frills and ribbons like some monochrome jellyfish. Effie, snarling obscenities, hurled Marina up onto the platform before climbing up herself.
“You knew. About the attack.” Effie’s fingers curled under Marina’s armpits, dragging them close until their noses touched and searched her eyes.
Marina gave up. She didn’t have the capacity to pretend.
“You cowardly, traitorous FUCK, YOU KNEW!” Effie shouted, keeping Marina held close as she began to hurry surreptitiously out of the station.
“Let me go, let me go! Fuck you,” Marina cried, “I hate you. I hate you so much. As if - as if you care. As if. You wouldn’t care - if all of us were dead - I’m just trying…” Marina gasped for breath, her ribcage constricted against Effie. “I just want… I want to be happy…”
“We're going back. Use your powers exactly as I say. Don’t ask questions.” Effie said nothing else as they passed back out into the open street. There were actual people here, for some celebration, and so Effie improvised - she wrapped a hand around the back of Marina’s head and shoved her inwards to keep her muffled and to avoid suspicious glances from sparse passersby. She clearly hadn’t put much thought into it - they looked like a pair of runaway lovers, girlfriends, their faces pressed so close they could be kissing.
Girlfriends… hehe. Marina wiped her eyes with a hand.
Then she noticed something. Effie was panting, exhausted for some reason. Actually, she barely looked conscious.
Marina’s arms curled over Effie’s and wrapped around her back. Her hands pressed against the fabric of her coat.
Effie kept her Soul Gem in her coat.
Marina’s hands ran up Effie’s back slightly, and the girl, too focused on moving, too focused on articulating the hatred she had for Marina, didn’t seem to notice. It had to be in there somewhere. Marina’s hands pushed up, around Effie’s back, across her shoulders, around her sides.
Come on. Where was the gem? It had to be in there somewhere. Marina’s fingers pressed deep into Effie’s shoulder blades, and lean muscles flexed back. Oh…
Marina bit her lip.
She spread her fingers further, ran the tips across Effie’s strong frame, dug them into the grooves.
“Effie…” Marina tilted her head. “Would you like to have sex with me?”
Effie jittered slightly, mistimed her jump as she dropped off the curb and had to stutter-step to keep her footing. “What? I - I misheard you.”
“Fuck me. Effie. Let’s fuck,” vomited Marina, continuing her clutches at Effie’s shoulders in no gravity, which was easy because Effie was holding her so close.
“Shut up.” Effie kept walking, while her face hardened in - in disgust, or, Christ, disappointment, even. Or maybe she thought Marina was joking?
“Effie. Effieee. Fuck me. Come on.” Kill yourself you fucking disgusting whore. “It’s been like a week since I’ve - fuck I’m so warm - look - let’s-” She leaned forward, despite weightlessness, anchored her arms to Effie’s broad shoulders - so broad - and tried to cuddle them, tried to hook her legs around Effie’s and got denied with a forearm shoving her back. “I bet you’re so strong. I bet - It’d be nice. It’d feel good.”
“If - If I didn’t need your magic right now,” spluttered Effie through gritted teeth, mouth tight with fury. “I - you are going to kill Terminatrixes with me. If. If I don’t kill you after. I’ll let - you go. I never want to see you again.” She gripped Marina’s hair and harshly tore head from neck, snarling.
Marina whined as her face was exposed to the cold air. “Aww, nah, come on, don’t be like that!” She buried her face into Effie’s chest instead and interestingly the muscles in her face seemed to be tightening it into a smile. “Don’t be boring, do you really think I care about - I mean - what’s out there?” If she kept this up, would Effie kill her? She wondered. “I’m so fucking warm, so don’t…” She pulled herself closer. “Don’t turn me down. Effie. Effie. I bet you’d feel amazing. Why are you being a pussy? Don’t you think it’d feel good? I mean,” Marina squeezed Effie’s midsection, “why aren’t you saying anything? Don’t you think it’d feel amazing? Effie? I mean, I know you can’t feel pain but did you lose the ability to feel anything ?”
Effie’s face twitched and her eyes flicked down.
“Oh my god.” Marina gasped. Then burst out in breathy, hacking laughter. “You did? You actually did?! Oh, oh,” she wheezed, “oh my god? You can’t - feel - that explains so much!” Marina howled, grabbing at strands of Effie’s hair to keep steady as she convulsed. “You - HA!” Marina’s head rolled back. “Oh, Effie, you poor thing, now I get it! Oh, oh, ten minutes, give me ten minutes with you and I bet I’d fix you right up,” she spat as she laughed and when Effie’s fingers forced their way between her lips she didn’t stop laughing, even as her hand gripped Marina’s tongue and tore it from her mouth she kept laughing, laughing at the least funny joke ever told, even as blood spilled out from her lips and she choked she laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
A war waged above. The building was beyond repair. May would be shocked if it lasted the night. The ceiling to this flat had caved in. About six girls were fighting to the death in the room above.
May was scared. Effie wasn't here anymore. That left her with one goal.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please will you give her to me.”
Avalon’s limbs cocooned around Cerys. Somehow, the preteen outsized the grown adult. The Soul Gem trembled. “I’ll kill her. I-If you do anything I’ll kill her.”
“I know. I know. I’m not going to do anything.” May tried to speak calmly, taking soft sideways steps. She managed to wrangle her tone down to level, a gentle hand raised. “Please calm down. It’s okay.” She had no idea what to say. She had no idea what to do. She spun her wheels endlessly and nothing came up.
Avalon moved in turn, gently rotating around the living room opposite to May. “T-That stuff - that stuff that stupid retard Effie did-”
“I don’t care,” said May, as gently as she could manage. “I couldn’t care less, okay? That doesn’t matter to me. Please put her down.”
“When she comes back…” Avalon stole a glance to the window. “I’m not - I’m not stupid. Effie’s the stupid one. Do you remember - remember the train?”
“Yes,” May breathed.
“She let you go.” Avalon muttered erratically. May wasn’t sure if it was a question or not and decided it was best to let her talk.
“I’m gonna k-kill you,” Avalon said. “Then I’ll - then Effie-”
Another explosion rocked the entire building and the hole in the ceiling widened. A corpse, from whose side May had no idea, tumbled over the edge and smacked into the floor. Its whole midsection was gored out.
Avalon hissed like a terrified cat and leaped away, Cerys’ feet dragging on the tile behind her. May watched worriedly as the gem trickled another shade closer to complete blackness.
“U-Untransform,” barked Avalon. “Now.”
May just about heard the command over the chaos from upstairs and obeyed. Her thin nightshirt billowed out, legs covered only by tiny shorts. She shivered gently, the tiles freezing under her bare feet. “Happy?”
“N… Now drop your Soul Gem.”
May’s hand tightened around the gem.
“D-Drop it! Or I’ll-”
“That’s not fair. That’s-” May paused, forced her voice steady again. Calm. “Have you seen what’s happening upstairs? You’re asking me to-”
“DROP THE GEM OR I’LL FUCKING-”
“Okay, okay!” May jerked down, letting her gem roll from her palm to the floor. Avalon grunted, apparently happy. “Now… Please put my friend down too. That’s fair, right?”
"N-Now give me the gem," Avalon snapped.
May nearly choked. “You’re asking me to die.”
“Give it to me before I-”
“May…?” something mumbled. The body stirred.
“Cerys? Cerys!” May gasped. “Hey. Hey! Cerys, it’s okay. It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”
“No it’s not.” Avalon shook her harder. “It’s not okay. I can - I’m gonna kill both of you bitches. You think I can’t? You think I can’t?”
Cerys chuckled a little, although it came out as more of a wheeze, limp and tired. “Of all the people - of all the people, Avalon fucking Edwards… ha, ha.”
Avalon’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t talk. You don’t - don’t - talk. You. Stop.” She vibrated Cerys madly, and May almost vomited as her Soul Gem rattled around recklessly in Avalon’s claw-like grip.
Cerys, apparently unbothered, continued. “That girl… Marina… you were gonna… you were making peace with her, weren’t you, May? I was thinking about it. While I was… tied up.” She coughed. “What a fuck up I am, huh? After all my preaching…”
“Cerys, come on…”
“But! In the end it just goes round and round and round and round and round and round and…” Cerys slurred her words, looking deathly sick. She drooped for a few moments before she seemed to regain some lucidity, her shoes sliding against the ground. “May… May, I really thought… I really thought I was doing something important, you know…?” Another wheeze. “I really thought… I…”
“Please stop, Cerys, please not now…”
“...But you… May… You’re different…” She perked up slightly. “You just want to protect your sister… I mean… You’re such a lovely girl. Did you know that? You’re doing something so good… fighting against something so horrible.” Her speech looked painful. May could feel herself on the verge of a meltdown. “If you - I just think, if… if things work out for you, I think it’ll have… my whole life, maybe… might have meant something after all?”
“Cerys, shut up! Your gem is f-fucked!” May pleaded. “You aren’t thinking properly!”
“...Hey...” Cerys rotated herself slightly in Avalon’s grip, her half-lidded eyes catching sight of the green smartphone in May’s pocket. “Is Ida okay?”
“I - I don’t - she-” Fuck, idiot! “Yes! Yes, she’s fine, she’s fine. She’s alive, okay?”
Cerys stared through one eye. “You’re so unbelievably shit at lying.” She chuckled again and deflated entirely, limply draped atop Avalon’s limbs.
May screamed at herself internally. “Cerys. Cerys! I have cubes in my pocket, okay! I have cubes - oh my god, Avalon, please!” she screeched, gripping her head. “This is so fucking INSANE! You’re insane!”
“W-Why should I - why - why would I let her live?” Avalon tightened her grasp. “Why? I-If I let her go you’ll just - you’ll try and k-kill us!”
May’s heart pounded in her ribcage as precious time slipped through her fingers. “Okay, we’ll - we’ll go. We’ll go! Won’t we, Cerys? We’ll leave! Straight away, soon as you drop her we’ll leave. We won’t fight. We’ll go - go to Swansea! Swansea, do you know where Swansea is - it’s in Wales! We’ll go right there!”
Avalon observed. Her fingers fidgeted around the gem. Come on, there wasn’t time for this! May pleaded silently for them to open up, for Avalon to see reason.
Then, eventually, her lips parted and she barely spoke. “You’re lying.” Her hands closed around the gem entirely, obfuscating it from view.
May bit down on her tongue hard to suppress a scream. She hated, hated this fucking girl, hated Kyubey, hated Effie, hated all of them, and hated herself most of all for her utter ineptitude.
Was she really that pathetically obvious to read?
May began to pace panickedly in arcs around her gem. Okay. Okay, this girl was clearly fucking broken. Negotiation was pointless. May was shit at it anyway, she’d never been good with people. What had she been expecting? All that time wasted-
No. Think. New plan. New plan, new plan, new plan.
Actually, why was Avalon keeping Cerys alive?
She squeezed her eyes shut tight and tried to think. Why? There was no benefit to keeping Cerys alive.
Well.
Unless Avalon had grown a guilty conscience, which she highly doubted, May could think of one reason.
Her eyes snapped open. Avalon flinched a little further behind Cerys.
Avalon… needed the leverage. She was scared of May.
May stepped into something wet. Her bare foot was surrounded by a puddle of blood. The source, the corpse’s wound, had been bled into a puddle over the last few minutes. The plan formed.
“Alright, listen, you little creep,” May snarled in a tone she was all too ashamed to slip into so easily. “It's pretty fucking clear you’re useless without Effie-”
“I’m- I’M NOT-”
“Shut up. Listen to me now. Effie’s obviously not coming back. You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. You watched me fight her, didn’t you? I’m powerful. If you crush Cerys’ gem I will fucking kill you.”
“I-I- y-you, you can’t-”
“You’re scared of dying if Kyubey takes the city?” May sneered. All her worst instincts bubbled to the top. “I’d break you. I’d tear you to fucking shreds.”
Avalon blubbered incoherently, tearing up. May grinned.
“I knew that scary girl shit was an all act, Avalon. It's obvious. You’re fucking pathetic. If you kill Cerys, there is a one hundred percent chance that-”
The room rattled with an earthquake. Avalon yelped and braced behind Cerys.
May turned and kicked her gem and transformed. She yelled. The pool of blood her foot was in formed into a javelin which she gripped, spun, and hurled straight into Avalon’s shoulder.
Avalon screamed, slipping back slightly and dropping Cerys’ body, which crumpled to the floor. She turned to run but in half a second May had closed the distance and was atop her, clutching her wrist and trying to pry her fingers open.
Avalon yelled, slapped May’s face, screamed for help, but she didn’t crush Cerys’ gem. May smiled wider. She had guessed right.
She kept wrenching at her fingers but Avalon’s size gave her the advantage in keeping May off the gem, so she swept out Avalon’s legs and they fell to the ground, May on top and battering Avalon’s face with both hands. “Drop it! DROP IT!” And when that didn’t work she made a knife from the corpse puddle and sunk it into Avalon’s shoulder, then another, then another, until Avalon was shrieking and finally, finally, the pain response forced her fingers open and May stabbed one more dagger through her wrist for good measure, snatching up the gem. May leant back and drove a boot into Avalon’s head to stop her getting up - her head hit the tiles with a resounding crack - before tumbling off of her, gasping.
She didn’t have time to catch her breath. She cradled Cerys’ gem close to her chest, the most precious thing in the entire world, and checked it.
There was a speck of green left swirling around the bottom.
There was time.
Relief flooded her. “I told you it’d be okay!” May cackled, giddy, and immediately began to dig in her pocket for cubes as she staggered unsteadily towards Cerys’ body.
She was vaguely aware she was covered head to toe in blood from how it pooled down her neck and off her back onto the floor. Her eyes were tight, bloodshot, irises wide, heart pumping. She couldn’t wipe the smirk from her face.
She began to place the grief cubes to the gem’s surface as she bent over Cerys, who was laying catatonic on the black tile, right in the centre of the living room.
Except Cerys wasn’t unconscious. Her eyes were wide open. She was staring straight at May. Right into her eyes.
“Oh,” Cerys whispered sadly. Then she disappeared.
May blinked.
“Cerys?” she murmured. “Hey… Cerys?”
The wind howled.
May looked down at her palms oddly, where there was no gem.
Invisibility magic. Teleportation. She - no. No. May’s hands twitched, curled inwards around nothing. The grief cubes trickled through the gaps between her fingers and bounced against the floor.
“Cerys.” May began to shake. “Cerys. Cerys. Please.” She leaned forward instinctively, trying to touch Cerys, because some part of her believed - knew - Cerys could not just be gone. May crawled onto her knees, cheeks hot with blood and tears. “Cerys.”
Her arms swept through nothing. It couldn’t - it couldn’t work that way. It was too cruel. What sort of person would allow this?
“GIVE HER BACK!” May screamed at the top of her lungs. “GIVE HER BACK! GIVE HER BACK! I HAD THE CUBES!” She swung her arm back desperately and scooped up a fistful and hurled them at the empty space. “I KNOW - I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME! THIS ISN’T FAIR! GIVE HER BACK!"
The cubes pinged off the wall and scattered across the floor helplessly.
May sobbed.
She couldn’t just be gone - it wasn't fair - the cubes had been right there…
Except. That wasn’t how it worked, was it?
Aqua had told her. Told her that once you give up, whether you have cubes or not…
May keeled over, pressing her forehead into the tiles. “Fucking FUCK! FUCK!”
The wind drowned out her voice.
Her own Soul Gem jutted out from her chest. Taunted her. Half-empty. Shining bright red. The blood in her ears pulsated madly.
She laid there, curled up, holding her own dress. There was nothing of Cerys to clutch.
The floor remained empty.
She cried.
Something moved behind her.
May sedately pulled her head from the ground, wiping her eyes on her dress.
She patted the ground beside her until she found the discarded corpse. She dug her hand into its wound and withdrew a handle. She kept pulling. The body whitened. A metre long red chain slipped out from the body link by link, clinking against the floor. She tugged hard and a gargantuan spiked ball emerged from the end. The corpse, whoever it had been, was completely pale. Drained.
May climbed to her feet and turned with steady, deliberate steps. The mace eviscerated the floor as she dragged it through the tiles.
Avalon was on her feet. Her injuries were bad. She stumbled shakily against the wall, one arm against it for support, watching May like a cornered animal as she limped to the battered door. May stared back, silent.
Avalon said something. May charged.