"Imagine something you can win with."
Those are the last words your father says to you before vanishing, just like all the other servants on your team. You fall to your knees, unable to stop the tears from falling. Your allies are hard at work, raising their shields to keep the buildings from falling on their heads, but you can't even bring yourself to rise to your feet and help them. You stare at the back of your hand, your vision blurry, as the Command Seals which had tied you to Archer for the past forty-six days fade away.
The battle is lost.
Your servants were always the ones dealing the most damage to Walpurgisnacht. Without them, how can you possibly hope to win?
"Imagine something you can win with." "How can I?" you say to yourself. "How can I imagine something I can win with if I can't even imagine winning in the first place?"
Your hand shakes as you raise it up, resting it against the edge of your shield. You've come so close to victory, but with Archer gone you can't see any way to reach that final stretch, to claim what he believed you could. "I'm sorry," you say; whether it's an apology to your allies who are still fighting, to Madoka and your friends who are expecting you to come back alive, to Archer for betraying his belief in your success, or to yourself, you wouldn't be able to say.
But you'll have another forty-six days to think of what to say next time.
"What do you think you're doing, Akemi-san?" Your hand is stayed by the voice of Tomoe-san. You do your best to blink away the tears, looking up at her, as she looks back at you. "I know how much it hurts, losing your father, but you mustn't give up."
"There's no hope left," you say. "We can't win, not like this."
"Well, you're right about that."
She's agreeing with you? "We are a team, Akemi-san. How can we expect to win if one of us is intent on sitting the rest of the fight out." Tomoe-san extends a hand to you, her golden eyes urging you to take it. "Archer believed in us, Akemi-san; believed in
you. There will be time to mourn later, but first we have to make sure we win before we can mourn what we've lost, and we cannot do it without you."
"Imagine something you can win with."
You reach for Tomoe-san's hand, and she helps you to your feet as you say "Sorry," to her. "I was being a real idiot there, wasn't I?" Though Tomoe-san says nothing, nor makes any motion of her head to confirm, on the inside you're sure she's agreeing with you. "Believe it or not, but I used to be really good at running away from my problems. I thought,
'as long as I survive to try again,' that it didn't matter who I left behind; and if you hadn't caught me just now, I know I would have done the same to all of you. But..."
You feel the tears coming on again, but Tomoe-san is there to help you, getting a Grief Seed ready for you to cleanse your clouded Soul Gem with once you've dried your tears. "But when I see all of you, still trying your very hardest, still fighting no matter how hopeless things look..."
Madoka stares at you, a look of determination on her face. "That's exactly why." High above, far, far above the darkened rainclouds, the ominous figure looms over the city, laughing maniacally, as the slight "tick-tock" of its geared undercarriage echoes to infinity with each rotation. "Walpurgisnacht still needs to be stopped... And I'm the only one left."
"... It reminds of the person who inspired me to become a
puella magi in the first place." The middle of a ruined city is hardly the place for propriety, but something within you forces you to bow for Tomoe-san, and you say "I'm sorry. I know this probably isn't the best time for apologies right now, but I'd like to fight beside all of you, one last time! I don't want to let my friends face this by themselves!"
Tomoe-san smiles, accepting your ill-timed bow and saying "Thank you. We all want you to fight beside us too."
The crack of thunder roars high above your head, and Kyouko barks "Hey! You two! Quit with the yakking, an' get with the attacking!"
You take stock of your inventory; "I've only got a few Grief Seeds left." You don't know how many more attacks you have left; you'll have to make each of them count.
But how? What's the best way to maximise your chances of winning in a situation like this? What can you imagine yourself winning with?
That's when it hits you; that there's still something left you haven't tried. "I have an idea," you say to the members of your team.
"Well, spit it out already! Ain't like we've got all morning to wait on you!"
"Right," you say, nodding your head. "My
Inguz rune- There's still an application I haven't tried using yet. I don't know if it'll work the way I want it to , but if it does it may be our best chance of winning."
Your teammates look between one another. "It's not like we have much of a choice," Kirika says. "I mean, some of us can't even touch that stupid thing."
"It's risky though, isn't it?" Mikuni Oriko asks. "Placing our hopes in an untested application? What are you hoping it will accomplish?"
"I have another finishing move, beyond
Finitora Freccia. It should be strong enough to defeat
Walpurgisnacht now that it's been softened up this much, but..." You recall that day, which now feels so long ago, when you discovered this attack lurking deep within the recesses of your love for Madoka. "But it's incredibly taxing on my Soul Gem, and with as few Grief Seeds as I have left, I don't know if I'd be able to survive if I used it at its full power. I'm hoping that, by using this application of
Inguz, I'll be able to... I don't know,
hold hands with each of your souls and use your mana to bolster my own. If I'm right, it'll be taxing for all of us, but not to the point where it's fatal to any one of us."
Your teammates look between one another a second time. You can see it etched onto each of their faces. "I guess we really don't have much of a choice, then," Tomoe-san says. "Risky or not, we're not going to defeat
Walpurgisnacht standing around here, doing nothing but rebuking its attacks. With our servants gone, we have to bring the fight back to our opponent. If Akemi-san thinks she can do it, then I'm all in."
"Agreed."
"If Oriko's in, then so am I!"
"If this fails, Spooky, I'm gunna find yer ass and haunt ya ta whichever world yer spirit ends up in."
"It's like you all said. We don't really have any better options at the moment. I'm in."
"Then it's settled." You pass around the last of the Grief Seeds, making sure everyone has enough to cleanse themselves with before saying "I'll need a little while to get everything prepared. We'll clean ourselves up, and hit
Walpurgisnacht with our counterattack as soon as it finishes throwing its most recent round of attacks at us. We'll finish this, together."
Together, you can accomplish what you never could fighting by yourself.
You'll never run away from your problems again.
Walpurgisnacht rains fire, death, and concrete down on your teammates, but each of them is ready to shoulder the burden,
to give you the time you need to make sure you'll win this! Tomoe-san tears the largest chunks of concrete to shreds with an artillery barrage, before Kyouko breaks the back of
Walpurgisnacht's attack with a wall of giant spears. Nagatsuki Miyuki meets a torrent of flame with a wall of ice, stopping the fire in its tracks as Mikuni Oriko brings up her barrier lattice to protect your heads from the falling debris.
You discard your bow, and call upon every memory you possess to create the image of Madoka's rosewood bow.
"I invoke the Inguz rune," you say to yourself, tracing the shape of the rune in the air with your finger, focusing all your thought on achieving the desired result. On holding hands with the souls of each of the allies fighting valiantly alongside you.
On imagining something you can win with. You draw back with your hand, though there is no string and no arrow to be drawn back.
But it doesn't matter if there's no arrow, because you'll be the arrow. In imitation of your father's mantra, you chant
"I am the arrow of Madoka's bow."
Your Soul Gem burns with a brilliant light as every part of you becomes a part of the arrow forming in your hand. It burns with the vibrant pink of Madoka's soul;
but there's something else there, something that wasn't there before. You can see a swirling mix of other colours, helping the burning pink to take its shape; emerald, gold, amber, cherry, wine, and royal purple.
A flash of light blinds you for a moment, but before death has a chance to claim you Kirika has intercepted the blast with the sheath given to her by Archer.
Even though he's gone, your father is still watching over you, making sure you stay safe. "Do it!" Kirika cries out, tilting Avalon to divert the course of
Walpurgisnacht's laser, giving you a clear path to victory. "Finish this stupid thing off already!"
"Right!" You take aim with Madoka's bow, leveling the massive arrow of your soul -
of everyone's souls - directly at
Walpurgisnacht. You only have one shot, one chance to make sure your aim is true;
it has to be. "Quintett Fuoco!"
You loose the tremendous arrow of mana, aiming straight for the heart of the devil. It soars, flashing brilliantly with every colour of the rainbow as thick arcs of mana trail off in its wake. The arrow pierces clean through
Walpurgisnacht, sending a shower of light washing over the city as the black gear hangs motionless in the air. A second passes, then another, and for a moment it appears that even
this attack has failed.
Then, with the most brilliant explosion you've ever borne witness to,
Walpurgisnacht is no more, and you fall to the ground, exhausted in body and spent in soul.
You have just enough strength left to move your head, to confirm that all of your allies have met a similar fate, and have likewise fallen under the spell of exhaustion. You can't even lift your hand to reach for a Grief Seed, as though you still had any in serviceable condition. With nothing left to do but wait for the end, you decide to take one last look at the city you've given your life to defend.
Ruin. The city that had once been Japan's shining symbol of modernity is reduced to it as a sunless dawn breaks high above the city skyline. All around you lies ruin; broken towers of concrete, steel, and glass stand like gravestones for the dead; and beneath them, what had once been roads, sidewalks, flat lines drawn up by a city planing committee, have been reduced to concrete lakes in the middle of nothing but ruin. It would be such a pitiful sight, if only you had the strength to move and see it all.
"It looks like it's over for both of us," you say to the Madoka you imagine laying beside you. "Do you have any Grief Seeds left?" Even though that Madoka isn't there, you can still see her, just as clearly as you can see the sunrise. You can see her shaking her head, just the way she did that time, too. "I see."
"Say... Do you want to become monsters, and destroy everything in the world?" You can hardly hear the sound of your own voice, even though what little remains of the city has fallen silent in its ruin. "We'll destroy everything, and we'll keep destroying until it looks like all the bad things... All the sad things... Never happened at all."
"Don't you think that sounds nice?" you ask yourself, as your eyes grow heavy, and your world fades into darkness.
