Chapter 72 - The Qliphoth
Long ago, buried beneath centuries of duty, you remember how you would weep at the deaths of those who served under you. Each failure, each loss, left you begging and pleading for somebody to make it stop. Each time you too fell, you would cry out. You would weep and scream for somebody, anybody to help you. To save you. To save anyone. Until one day, you learned that it made no difference. No matter how you asked, how you cried, how you prayed, there was nobody who could help you. And so you stopped crying.
In a cold and indifferent world, there was no god to give you salvation. Only one person could put an end to the suffering that surrounded you. So there was no miracle that would rescue you from this pit? You would craft your own miracles. There were no commandments to guide you to freedom? You would give your own commandments. By your hand, you lifted those beneath you up from the depths and into the future with you. The future that you made, with your own will. And you loved it. For all the suffering, the death and pain, you cherished every small victory and step forwards. It was a purpose handed to you since you were made, but you would never dream of anything else. What greater cause could there be than helping others? That facility may have been your hell, but it was yours to rule.
You were foolish to think this world was any different. Kinder though it may be, it is still hell all the same. A part of your kingdom.
The first sensation you register is the cracking of your skin. Agony rips through you as flesh breaks off in stony chunks, the cracks spreading up your arms and running across the rest of your body. You do not scream as you fall apart, like a cocoon being torn open by an emerging butterfly. Beneath the fragments is a primordial lifeblood; the essence of divinity spilling onto the earth. Freed from structure, the pain fades into a dull emptiness. You collapse into an amorphous puddle, a hole in the world that twists and reaches outwards. You cannot see, cannot hear, cannot feel. Everything is but an empty void.
How inadequate.
A single clawed hand bursts from the mire, its warped metallic skin reflecting constellations that never were. The other soon follows, and your grip pierces the earth as you drag yourself up from the nothingness into being. Your body is twisted and monstrous, a towering mess of dull grey steel that branches and churns as if it had a life of its own, tracing infinitely complex patterns into your new flesh. Your upper half is still vaguely humanoid, featureless and twisted as it is. Metallic branches sprout from your skin, forming impressions of spines and horns. Your face is in contrast a smooth featureless plate, so pitch black it seems like a hole in space. Two moth-like antenna sprout from where your eyes would be. Your hair billows out behind you from between the boughs emerging from your skull in an immense cloud. In place of your coat ten stark white insectoid wings rest across your back, each one decorated with colorful patterns. Monstrous, yes, but still recognizably human.
Below your waist is a different story. Six enormous insectoid legs each end in something between a digitigrade claw and a hoof. The false wings line all along your back even as your body loses human shape and is twisted into something truly monstrous. A gnarled metal carapace encloses your abdomen, which ends in five whiplike tails that each terminate in a vicious spike dripping with iridescent fluid.
You take your first step forward. Your metal skin splits open all across your body, many-colored mechanical eyes staring out from the gaps. As your heel touches the concrete, it writhes and roils. The stone melts into sludge, which rises into the shape of flowers, which burn in impossible colors before collapsing back into formlessness. Another step, a new spring of creation bursts forth from the floor of the empty subway. The rain shimmers unnaturally, as if a million liquid prisms were falling from the sky. You exhale with lungs that you do not have, and a gentle breeze fills the stagnant tunnels. This world, kinder though it may be, is merely an extension of your old hell. And like the Facility before, it will obey your commands. Your very touch calls life from the nothingness. A thought could destroy it just as easily.
And yet, something is still missing. Could it be…
You spread your wings, and for a moment all is as it should be.
Not the false, useless things that drape across your back. They are beautiful, reminiscent of the nerve-like branches of glittering light revealed by Lobotomy. As you stretch, exploring the sensations that come with your true form's unveiling, they grow larger and longer until your radiance encompasses the sky. Each brilliant bough, each splayed nerve, grants more sublime clarity with which to see the world than you could ever imagined.
Your vision expands through Mitakihara, each street and building and person carefully witnessed and accounted for. You can feel your sight stretch further, clawing at the sky, but you reign it in. For now, all that you need concern yourself with is here. Instead, you focus your gaze and look deeper, peering into the world in a way you never could before. Your pinions claw at thousands of people all at once, carefully cataloguing the city's population. You are once again all-seeing, all-knowing. All secrets laid bare before a being who can comprehend anything.
With the exceptional clarity granted, the ecstasy of freedom drains away. There is no time to bask in your ascension. More urgent matters are before you, in need of resolution. Nothing There tears free of their cocoon, a towering figure of formless flesh dotted with misplaced features that could perhaps be contrived as human. Twenty-three of the thirty-seven Magical Girls, Kyoko among them, scream within the depths of the Abnormality's flesh. You ward away the chorus of chatter that inexplicably pours from the creature's body. Your work is not yet done. First you need to dispatch the Abnormality before you and retrieve their victims. Then, you'll need to begin working on repairing your seal. It wouldn't do to actually follow through on your threat to Kyubey.
Suddenly, reality shifts and ripples. The quarantine field closes in around you, cutting off the rest of the world. The crystalline structure folds in from nowhere, leaving only a small enclosure where you and Nothing There stand opposite one another on the ruined subway. You would gasp at the sudden loss of sensation if you still had lungs with which to breathe. Instead, you can feel only a wave of relief. It's too soon, too dangerous for you to exist freely. You're not stable yet. Within the containment, you aren't at risk of hurting anyone.
A single branch of your wings pokes at the field confining you. It's well-made, fully capable of restricting your reality-overriding effects to within its limits. Either Kyubey had been planning to use this against you ever since you were observed, the Incubators created it only in the time since your apotheosis, or they simply are used to confronting similar threats and already have countermeasures developed. None of the possibilities bode well. However, it has one critical flaw.
Your wing pushes through the barrier, as if it were not there. While you can't leave the field, Lobotomy can still reach through it. Nevertheless, it would do little good for you to circumvent the field now, while it serves your purposes. You will withdraw yourself, after you take care of one last issue.
You turn your attention to your children, gathered outside the crystalline void in space that is the outside of the containment field. Mami is on her kneees, weeping at the emptiness, Yuma pressing into her side. Homura stares blankly into space, on the verge of falling over. Madoka and Sayaka are saying something, but their smiles are fragile and desperate, about to break. You wish you could reassure them, console them, anything… but you cannot risk it. You have only enough time for one last gift.
A touch flenses the vile cancer of Grief from their souls. What would normally be an hours-long operation, completed in the space of a thought. You must learn how to harness this safely someday. It will be worth it, no matter what you must suffer in the process. With that last act, you withdrawn back into your temporary prison. Again, you are separated from the world.
There is only one thing here with you, and they're exactly where they need to be.
There is nobody here that you can hurt. Nobody but you. Everyone is safe.
Your fingers catch on the flesh of reality and tear it open. A multicolored wound in space opens, spreading and consuming the tiny world you and your foe are trapped in. Nothing There, no longer content to simply stand by, rushes forward a moment too late. In an instant, your facility swallows the tiny world.
The sun and moon enclose one another in the sky, ribbons of black and white stretching and entwining to engulf the horizon. Gouts of murky green liquid leak from the cracks between. The deluge crashes down to form an emerald sea which stretches as far as the eye can see. From the ocean rises islands of metal, half-formed fractal buildings peeking up from the depths. As they grow closer to your perch, the aberrant structures grow more distinct and properly-shaped. Between the offices and laboratories are trees of gleaming iron and fields of glass. This world is artificial, constructed, built by the hands of man.
You stand atop the largest of these great islands, looking down at the facilities you have always ruled.
Nothing There charges across the expanse, each step reducing islands of steel and silicone to dust behind it. You lash out, your wings raking through the earth and sky. The Abnormality opposing you turns, changing from a straight run to irregular, sharp bursts of speed. Even as you redirect the pinions of your wings, they dance through the burning lights with a feral sort of grace. The few that do strike send your foe tumbling, but they bear-instantaneously right themselves and resume their course. Ineffective, but irrelevant. All you needed to do was slow them down.
Nothing There reaches the isle where your 'throne' sits and extends an arm. The first swing hits the earth, scattering rubble in what seems like an explosion that fills the air with thick dust. To an ordinary person, it would be impossible to see their arm stretch and into an immense, horrible blade, letting them strike a moment earlier than they would have otherwise been able to. Fortunately, you don't even have eyes anymore.
You decide to be elsewhere, and the world responds to your order. From several islands away, you watch your previous perch cleaved into pieces by Nothing There's blow. The assault continues, the Abnormality twisting and hurling a barrage of bony spikes in all directions at speeds that should by all logic be impossible to achieve without instantaneously combusting. One of the spikes impacts your shoulder as you reappear, making a tiny crack in the metal bark of your skin.
Nothing There's victory is short-lived. The earth rumbles as the island it stands on cracks and crumbles in on itself, jaws that could swallow buildings whole tearing through the ground and closing around the targeted location. Your opponent leaps forwards, attempting to escape, but before they can reach the edge the jaws slam shut. The enormous worm, thick brown chitin covering its exposed head, sits idle in the middle of your domain. It won't hold. You know very well that Nothing There is undamaged, and they will dig themself out eventually. But in the meantime, you can make preparations.
Shrines to gods whose names were long forgotten ruse from the depths of the viridian ocean, the air already crackling and warping at their presence. Smaller edifices surface around them, radiating an unsettling amethyst glow. Around them ancient machinery whirs to life, already churning out hordes of mindless automata. The first are crude, metal and wood, with only the barest remnants of even the shape of a human. You reach into the machinery, and the next set of creation begins.
Effigies of the past, entombed in black steel and lit by sickly green light. Coils of wires form the shapes of hair, hammered plates the memory of faces. In their hands are spears, hammers, swords, scythes, guns. Scattered through the isles of your realm they may be, but the echoes of a formation already begin to take shape. Your agents have returned to you, even if only as memories.
"You know the drill by now, everyone." you whisper to no one. "We've got a short day ahead of us."
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Kyoko Sakura: Exposure 0 -> Exposure X
Mark of Qliphoth Designated
Homura Akemi: Exposure IV -> Exposure X
Mark of Qliphoth Designated
Mami Tomoe: Exposure V -> Exposure VII
Sayaka Miki: Exposure IV -> Exposure VI
Madoka Kaname: Exposure II -> Exposure IV
Chitose Yuma: Exposure 0 -> Exposure III
Humanity: Exposure 0 -> Exposure III
Incubators: Exposure 0 -> Exposure I