You're not letting them get away. Not here, when you're so
close to ending this. You break into a sprint after the black-haired magical, who's loping over the ground at a fast, limping three legged gait, coiling and jacknifing with her entire body into long bounds that are more animalistic than anything, if animals could leap four meters into the air.
You, in turn, shift into a long, bounding gait that takes full advantage of your enhanced strength, pushing
hard off the ground. You snatch up the marbles of Grief scattered across the ground with your magic, and fling them forward in a vicious hail that carves rents into metal and sends chips of concrete flying. Only a few hit her, though, and at that, only on her broken leg, getting a bubbling snarl from the girl.
You feel a pang at leaving Mami behind. "
Mami! Are you OK?"
"
S-she caught me in an ambush and broke my arm," Mami replies, her mental voice shaky. "
I'll be OK. Are you?" You can see her tracking you as you sprint after Kirika.
"
Yeah," you reply. "
Just flesh wounds." And it's true, even - you've got a bladed claw in your leg, and some deep cuts across your stomach, and that's it. "
I'm going after Kirika, she's rejoining Oriko."
"
Be careful, Sabrina," Mami calls.
"
Yeah. But this ends here," you reply as you put on another burst of speed, eyes fixed on the form of the black-haired magical girl, not that far ahead of you, but ducking behind a crumbling old wall. She's leaving behind a trail of blood as she moves, blood splattering across the ground every time she lands, every time she pushes off the ground.
You can sense the nauseating wave of antimagic building up again, and you tense in preparation. The pulse rolls out, and you barrel right
through it, fighting the stinging pain it brings to your eyes. As your foot crashes to the ground, you coil your entire body, and launch yourself
past Kirika as she touches against the ground with her three good limbs.
Her head snaps to you, and you can see her eyes go wide with shock as you pass her. And then you lash out with your hammer, slamming into the back of her elbow. Kirika's prepared for this, though, and moves fluidly with the blow, preventing you from breaking her elbow. You shift the hammer, hooking the head of the hammer behind her elbow and the haft of the hammer across her arm.
Off in the distance, you can hear Oriko scream again, and the rasp of the MG3 as Homura looses another streamer of bullets.
You grind one foot into the ground ahead of you and pivot about it, hauling the girl off her feet and whipping her bodily in a tight orbit around you. Her elbow, supporting her entire body weight, snaps with a sickening little crackle, and you slam her into the old brick wall.
She falls to the ground, dazed, and broken masonry showers down on her unmoving form.
The unnatural deadness of the antimagic field fades.
Kirika... doesn't seem to be building up for another, and you let out a sigh of relief. Just to be sure, though...
Dropping one of your warhammers, you dip your hand into your miraculously surviving bag of grief, still unscathed through all this battle. The strap came alarmingly close to being severed by Kirika, but other than a few bloodstains, it survived untouched. You pull a handful of marbles out, and press them together in your hands, letting the Grief flow like soft clay.
Holding the mass of Grief in one hand, just in case, you cautiously approach the fallen magical girl. She doesn't react, even when you pull both her arms behind her back and manacle them together with bands of Grief, loose enough to not cut into her flesh, but tight enough that she can't slide her hands free.
"
Oriko down," comes Homura's telepathic voice. She sounds
happy.
"
Dead?" you ask urgently, icy premonition siezing you. Leaving Kirika behind -you'll be able to sense her doing anything, with the Grief manacle on her- you lope over to where Oriko and Homura are.
"
Body killed," Homura replies, as you sense her leaping down from her perch.
Swerving around the corner, you take in the scene. Oriko's body, collapsed in a bloody pile on the ground. She's been virtually decapitated, and her left arm is simply
gone below the shoulder. You spy the silvery blue gleam of her Soul Gem, still intact, but rapidly swirling into abyssal darkness.
Homura's approaching the fallen seer, MG3 held out cautiously, but when she hears your footfalls approaching, she looks up at you, and smiles at you. The smile is twitchy and uncertain, but if feels all the more genuine for its lack of polish. Her shield, on her arm, has stopped its violent shuddering, and the gears are still, if blackened.
You can sense the last moving magical presence in your zone -Mami-, moving laboriously towards you and Homura.
[] Write-in
=====
You let Homura go after Oriko by herself. And, well, Homu gonna Homu.
