Great idea, now that nobody is paying Sayaka any attention.
Sayaka doesn't respond, but a pair of swords appears in her hands. She rears back to throw them, but just then Tira finishes her lance, her peacock quickly approaching, so you launch your shatterwords at Tira while Sayaka releases her swords —
Tira's mount swoops low to evade as Mami forms another massive cannon —
Something long, black, and red suddenly springs out of the nearby grass —
Sayaka's swords impact, shredding through the ribbons restraining you —
Tira twists as the black and red thing lunges towards her, eyes widening —
You throw yourself to the right as Mami's cannon fires —
There's a loud, extremely audible crunch —
A shell the size of a wrecking ball goes sailing past you, smashing into and through a distant skyroad instead —
Sayaka screams as Tira's lance falls out of the air along with a severed arm and leg —
And the unknown entity crashes to the ground, flattening the grass beneath it.
Just like in the show, the MOGU MOGU is depicted in slow motion to maximize that unexpected realization of dread. And it's even more brutal than canon if Tira's soul gem wasn't destroyed just now.
You whirl around, reeling from Tira's abrupt and rather brutal demise, and find yourself looking at what appears to be some sort of humongous, sharp-toothed worm thing. In contrast to its incredibly savage entrance, the creature is almost cartoonish in appearance, with a clown-like face and a multitude of colorful red polka dots covering its- wait, is that Charlotte?!
Surprise! *burst of
confetti sprinkles*
But how did she- WHEN did she-
Ashy now has the distraction she needs. Instead of gawking, she should start retreating to Canvas.
"Narumi... san?"
You spin back towards Mami, who seems no less shocked than you are. Her expression is outright thunderstruck; her mouth hanging open and her eyes wide as dinner plates as she stares at the spot Tira was just snatched out of the air.
I expect Mami will either attack Charlotte in an anguished fury or lose all will to fight and witch on the spot. Or both, in that order. She can't handle losing her friend right in front of her. Not that Tira is dead, because we don't know that yet.
Slowly, her gaze pans to Charlotte, who pokes her tongue out of her mouth and licks some of the spattered paint and blood off her face, smiling goofily all the while.
No, Charlotte! Bad sugar snek! Humans may be tasty, but this is not the cheese you are looking for!
Mami's face twists with simultaneous fury and anguish.
"TIRA!!!"
The magical girl's heartwrenching cry is accompanied by another enormous cannon forming in the air directly in front of her. You flinch away, but this one isn't aimed at you — it's aimed at the witch who just ambushed and killed her friend.
Yep, just as I thought.
Charlotte strains, wriggling furiously against her deceptively tough bindings, but remains well and truly immobilized long enough for Mami to land from her extended jump, redirect her cannon, and this time fire it directly into the witch's mouth.
I really like how this mirrors episode 3. In canon, Mami attacks Charlotte, Mami MOGU MOGU, Madoka and Sayaka watch on in horror, and Homura feeds Charlotte lethal inedibles. Here, Mami attacks Ashtaroth, Tira MOGU MOGU, Sayaka and Mami watch on in horror, and Mami feeds Charlotte lethal inedibles.
...Charlotte has been utterly obliterated. What little remains of the witch is a mostly-charred husk, still swinging above the ground from a small cluster of somehow undestroyed ribbons. The vast majority of her head is missing, including everything below a small portion of the upper jaw, while the bottom half of her body is simply gone, by all appearances having been literally vaporized by Mami's supremely powerful magic.
Uh... Charlotte should be well and truly dead by now, but she has repeatedly subverted that expectation. She didn't simply crumble to dust and drop a grief seed, so I wouldn't be surprised if she revives again.
Mitakihara's resident badass, obviously.
What do you mean, "It's rhetorical."?
Looking strangely even more upset than before she did that, Mami dismisses both her cannon and her ribbons one after the other.
Mami definitely used way too much magic doing that. She's going to have a Bad Time™.
Released from their bonds, Charlotte's remnants begin to fall to the ground, the witch looking to truly be dead for good this time.
…until the corpse's single still-intact eye bulges, and yet another fresh version of Charlotte explodes out of it like a jack-in-the-box, winding through the air with shocking speed to come face to face with Mami before the magical girl can even react.
Oh, so she's alive after all. That's reassuring! Also, déjà vu!
And then the witch's neck is cut clean through by a sword the size of a car, Sayaka having finally broken out of her stupefied trance and decided to jump directly into the middle of things. Charlotte's severed head goes flying off into the grass from the force of the strike, though with the way things have been going you doubt that'll put her down for long.
Disaster averted!
Maybe. Probably not.
Meanwhile, as if in dismayed acceptance of the sweets witch's seeming immortality, Mami falls to her knees, looking utterly defeated despite nothing thus far having even so much as touched her.
I retract my previous statement: Disaster very much
not averted. Despair event horizon incoming. No more determination for you, do not collect 2 grief seeds.
You hear the distinct crack of breaking glass. Sayaka's gaze snaps up to Mami's flower-shaped hairpin, a jagged line running through the surface of the almost fully black gem at its center. Oh no, don't tell you she's about to-
"I couldn't… protect… anyone…"
"No, please, DON'T-!"
Sayaka doesn't even get to finish her sentence before Mami's soul gem erupts. The explosion of force created in the wake of her grief breaking free of its confines literally blasts Sayaka a good 30 or 40 feet backwards, sending her flying across the newly grassless ground in a wild, uncontrolled tumble. She rolls to a halt and scrambles back to her feet, eyes wide as she stares into the whirlwind of darkness that's formed around her friend's collapsed body.
"MAMI-SAN!!!" Sayaka shrieks as the now empty metal frame of Mami's soul gem rises into the air, twisting in on itself and reshaping into that of a grief seed.
Episode 8 all over again, but it's Mami and Sayaka instead of Sayaka and Kyoko. Man, saving your senpai only to immediately lose her really sucks! Being meguca is suffering, indeed.
About half of the free-floating corruption begins to pour back into it as it does, while the remainder drapes itself around the seed like a shroud before streaming into the air and carrying it off towards the center of the barrier.
With this, both magical girls are crippled or worse. Ashy won. This is a bad thing.
You turn just in time to see the haze of black crash into Saar's section and all but carve it in twain, barren trees suddenly shunting themselves to the side in favor of smaller, greener ones that start growing out of the ground in perfect lines. Massive tea platters fade into existence, miniature rainbows forming to connect them, while a dark red liquid begins seeping up from below. The sky above the area shifts to an unsettlingly bleached-looking white, and a profusion of identical black clouds scatters throughout it before the shifting stops, your barrier quickly settling into its new state of being.
By now, it just goes without saying that Ashy's barrier is very weird. Very... modular.
…perfect. Just perfect. You suppose that certainly ends the fight, but now what the hell are you supposed to do?!
Absolutely nothing. Making things better is exactly what witches are not good at.
Stretched between their fingertips are the same rough basins of interlaced vines you saw them using before, each one filled to the brim with purple liquid that can only have come from Saar's canals.
I'm still having trouble visualizing Saar's familiars, unfortunately.
It's at this moment that Charlotte reemerges from the grass near Sayaka, having evidently brought herself back from death once again.
Something something determination. She wasn't this persistent in canon, so I guess Homura's bombs are more powerful than Mami's laser cannon.
"GET BACK!" Sayaka screams furiously. "GET AWAY FROM HER!"
Does this mirror something in canon? I'm not certain, but it feels like it should. Maybe that time when Sayaka wanted Homura to cough up Charlotte's grief seed? Or that time when Kyoko futilely preserved Sayaka's corpse?
Before either Sayaka or Charlotte can react, you move around behind the latter and wrap your ribbons around her middle, holding her in as tight a grip as you can manage. The other witch twists her neck around and gives you an almost affronted look before immediately attempting to escape, the force behind her movements easily enough to forcibly tug you along with her.
Charlotte gave her allies a silent "Hey, whose side are you on?!" Unexpected comic relief in the midst of grimdark.
"STOP?!" Sayaka shrieks, not taking her eyes off Charlotte as the witch looms over her. "This thing BIT OFF that Tira girl's limbs, ATE her, and got Mami-san turned into a-!"
I'm not sure how to interpret this. Does Sayaka not recognize Charlotte? Or is she just very angry and sad and angry and more angry and also angry?
You begin squeezing Charlotte from the bottom up, her body simultaneously firm yet malleable in a way that kind of reminds you of a piping bag. Charlotte begins thrashing even more in you and Sayaka's combined grasp, clearly not enjoying your less-than-tender ministrations as you wring her body like a wet towel. Come on-!
This idea was brought to you by
that bizarre Cake Song! They plan to
burp Charlotte until Tira is squeezed out of her system.
*hisssssssssssss*
With a noise akin to a punctured tire, Charlotte's body abruptly begins collapsing in on itself.
Ha! Comedy. Mood whiplash never gets old.
You can't say part of you isn't grateful that she basically saved you, but she also just… gah, you'll figure out what to do about her later!
At this rate, Charlotte will become Ashy's
Sitcom Arch-Nemesis.
You spin around and float to where Tira is now lying on the ground. Sayaka has already started trying to heal her, but you're not really sure how much good it's going to do: Tira's breathing is shallow and shuddering, and while her eyes are open, they're completely unfocused, staring up sightlessly into your barrier's sky. A sickly scent pervades the air around her, an unpleasant combination of sugar and iron, and the remnants of her right arm and leg are hard to even look at, jagged ends of bone sticking out freely where Charlotte chomped through the limbs. The magical girl's outfit hasn't come out of the experience any better, torn in various places and soaked through with her own blood, along with not a small amount of paint. Her tiny top hat is completely gone, probably still in Charlotte's stomach, exposing the alice band beneath, as well as the...
The comedy followed Charlotte offscreen. Now there is only horror and drama.
...as well as the swirl-shaped, orange-gold gem set into its fabric, which is rapidly being crept over by blackness even as you look at it. Oh hell no; you are not letting a SECOND new witch result from this catastrophe if you have any say in the matter whatsoever!
You plunge Novella down towards Tira even as the vortex is still forming on its pages. Sayaka falls backwards with a surprised yelp as you scoop the bloodied girl into your book, slamming it shut a moment later.
Ashtaroth is HALPING!
The growth starts immediately as you slip into the increasingly familiar exultant trance, the branches and height you lost upon releasing Sayaka returning as your various wounds vanish like they never were. Excellent…
Witchstincts seems to like it, which means it's precisely the wrong thing to do. Not that it was avoidable; as with Sayaka, her soul gem was about to literally give up the ghost.
Oh, and from this point onward, take your pick of
this,
this, or
this. Just to set the mood.
<Healing wasn't going to be enough.> you reply. <Her soul gem was about to reach its limit; given another few seconds she'd have turned into a witch, and I really don't think we need another one of those in this barrier right now.>
"So you sucked her into yourself instead?!"
<Yes, I did, because this way there's no fight, and she stays both human and sane. Even you have to admit this was the preferable option here.>
Well, can't argue with that logic.
Sayaka sputters, unable to deny it but unwilling to admit it. "At least let her back out then!"
<What, so we can deal with her freaking out alongside you?> you ask irritably.
Based on limited experience, Ashy immediately assumes that all her thralls will be as annoying as Sayaka. Egocentric, but not obviously so.
"I just- Mami-san turned into a witch, and Charlotte was a monster worm, and I- and YOU-!"
Yes, it's a lot of trauma to take in.
"You… weren't lying about where witches come from..." she whispers.
Sayaka has overcome denial. Next step, anger. Let the hate flow through you!
You're happy you're alive, but you doubt Madoka and Hitomi are going to be thrilled their friend/acquaintance just turned into a monster, no matter how understanding the latter has been thus far.
"It's okay. Mami still likes you, and she wouldn't mind staying with you forever." Yeah, that's not going to work...
Similarly, you doubt they'll be particularly pleased that you've put the girl who followed Mami inside in the exact same position as Sayaka, seeing as how it rather effectively undermines a lot of the things you claimed earlier.
Each captive magical girl weighs on Ashy's conscience. I wonder how she will cope as she collects more.
You honestly wonder if this could get any worse-
You uttered the profane words. You summoned... Murphy!
A portal tears open on the side of your barrier, and a moment later there's a dark-haired girl you've never seen inside, not seeming to have even stepped through it to enter. Oh what the hell, who is THIS now?!
Homura has finally decided to take over the mission and succeed where Mami failed. She also needs to know
what in Samsara is going on, because Sayaka and Mami are suddenly
gone, and Madoka is freaking out like never before.
You don't get the chance to be shocked that she just teleported, as a glance at her proper suddenly sends your senses reeling — the girl is weak, the pull only half as much as it was with Sayaka, yet she's also strong, massively strong, enough to dwarf your own power by several orders of magnitude. Something is affixed to her, a great many somethings in fact; you can't see them but you can feel them, binding her even as they strengthen her, bettering her even as they chain her; her magic, her power, it's... it's...
...overwhelming...
This confirms that karma makes souls enticing (and that Ashy can somehow detect these threads of karma). I'm not sure that's the only factor, but it makes sense. I'm also not sure whether this matters only to Ashy specifically or to witches in general. But it probably means that Madoka and Homura are supernatural superfoods.
