Kari saw the cross-shaped slash coming her way and shouted, "Stampede!"

The skill propelled her forward and shattered the restraints, but Sachi vanished not a second too soon. Kari swiped at empty air instead, and whipped around to see the assassin stumble a few paces like a sprinter coming to a hard stop.

"If it's a game of rock, paper, scissors, you know I win the second I activate my empowered form," Kari warned, calling Sachi's bluff on the magic-infused weapons.

"I can flip between physical and magical damage, Kari. My class is the perfect counter to you!" Sachi vanished again.

So much for that, Kari thought, clicking her tongue.

Without Rocky, she didn't have the leisure of going wild and relying on sigils. Jumping straight into [Destruction Incarnate] would sap half her health and all her magic. She was confident, however, recalling Sachi's stats that the assassin didn't boast much health or defenses. Unfortunately, the trade-off of being fragile was in having significant physical prowess and speed.

"Over here," Sachi's disembodied voice taunted her from every direction.

No sound on the pavement. Even as Sachi moved, her body didn't so much as disturb the wind. Kari couldn't rely on her sight or hearing to find where Sachi would attack from, but—

Kari swung wide, carving only the winds. Then attacks came from nowhere and everywhere at once.

A cut across the back.

[Health: 320/320 ⇒ 275/320]

A lateral slice across both arms when Kari raised her soul-weapon to defend herself.

[Health: 275/320 ⇒ 230/320]

A stab into the shoulder when she lashed out at random.

[Health: 230/320 ⇒ 185/320]

Sachi had gotten strong. Really strong. It was the strength of a magical girl who boosted several levels after snatching the points from a defeated seraph, and with the addition of a subclass Kari could only make guesses on, the assassin was sure to have more tricks up her sleeve.

Kari was hurt all over. She pressed her back against the cold concrete and metal of the bridge railing to catch her breath. When she rubbed the cut on her forearm, it seared her fingertips like touching a stovetop. The cuts Sachi had inflicted didn't bleed. They were cauterized on hit. Magic burns, it looked like. Those swords dished out magic damage alright.

What were her options? Hope Jade was awake and ask for help through the communications app? Run or hide?

Couldn't take the fight to the skies or someone might see. Glancing over her shoulder, it didn't look to be a long drop.

The girl before her, another high school student and magical girl, was only Sachi Tamura. A bully who, alongside Ena, once tormented Kari and Makina. Kari had every reason to kill her, seize the points and grow stronger. Maybe strong enough to fight Flare and Hurricane, and end the apocalypse. But at what cost?

A question that Kari hadn't given much thought to until recently, after losing Chu Hua who sacrificed her life to save this monster.

Sachi's posture wasn't anything like when they had fought the Messiah magical girls together. Kari knew that if she really wanted to, those hits she landed could very well have been from the shiv and drew blood. Instead, Sachi chose to use those swords. There was a part of her that could still be reached. Or so Kari hoped.

"I don't want to fight you Sachi, but I'm not going to hold back if you're really trying to kill me!' Kari shouted, stretching her arms along the railing.

"Then give me your soul-weapon," Sachi demanded.

"You know that's not going to happen." She slowly positioned herself until the water was just below her.

"Thought so— Assassin's Shiv!"

A volley of daggers flung her way.

Kari threw herself over the barrier and landed with a splash. Cold water up to her ankles seeped into the boots. It was shallow just like she hoped. Sachi landed from the other side of the bridge and wasted no time, flinging deadly shivs down the way. Using the soul-weapon, Kari easily deflected them all. The real test came now…

Sachi vanished from sight again with the Shroud skill. The water, Kari zeroed her eyes to, wasn't splashing. However, the assassin's movements very slightly parted the waters in her approach. Sachi was flying to avoid making sound, but there was only so much she could do to mask her physical effect on the surroundings.

"Gotcha."

Kari pivoted on her right and swung an uppercut, the attack knocking away a piece of metal. Sachi emerged from her invisibility and forfeited her ambush by somersaulting away.

"How the hell?" Sachi extended her palm to receive the shiv back. She wasn't dumb. It took her a single glance at her feet to see the ripples in the water for her to realize.

"Well, what now? I'll know where you're coming now, and it's only going to take one good hit to knock you out of form. So you still want to fight? Because I can do this all day," Kari said, letting the head of her soul-weapon drop into the creek.

Without saying a thing, Sachi flung two shivs. They came at a wide arc from the left and right. Kari leapt back, intending to deflect them but something caught her feet as she landed. Two muddy constructs, halfway formed out of the creek, clutched tightly onto her legs.

"You're a Summoner?!" Kari gasped, then glanced up in time to feel the knife plunging into her abdomen. The cold steel— the soul-carving blade, punctured through her being. Just when Yuria had done it, now it was Sachi who held the handle which was quickly soaked in blood instead of souls.

"Looks like it's my win," Sachi said.

"Wanton Smash!"

Sachi dashed back as the skill went off. [Wanton Smash] demolished the constructs, painting mud on the sloped banks. Showered by cold and rank mists from the filthy water kicked up by the hit, Kari doubled over in pain. She pressed a hand to the wound on her stomach as hot blood stained the outfit a deeper crimson.

The assassin flicked the excess blood from the shiv, throwing red droplets into the murky waters and staining the concrete walkway. She raised the knife to her eyes to let a single drop fall onto her palm and clenched it shut.

"Jack of All Weapons lets me use any magical girl's soul-weapon. All it takes is a drop of blood." Sachi opened her palm, allowing the bloodstain to expand and take shape.

Kari tightened her grip on [Destruction and Ruin] only for nails to bite into her skin. The soul-weapon disappeared and was now in Sachi's hand. The assassin marveled at the giant weapon, but her distractedness was her mistake.

"I don't think so." Kari extended a hand to Sachi. "Come Here!"

"What—"

An invisible force ripped the soul-weapon from Sachi, bringing it back into Kari's grip.

"No! No!" Sachi's demeanor wrinkled with frustration. She smeared the bloodstained blade against her palm, but it wouldn't reform the soul-weapon into her grasp again.

"You stab me as many times as you want to take from me, but as long as I'm conscious, I'll continue to take it back," Kari said. "Or we can just talk! You know, like we used to?"

"I don't want to talk! I don't care. I don't care! Flare took everything from me! She took away my best friend, my parents, and my home… I don't have anyone or anything to go back to! If I can just see her dead, it'll be enough for me!" she cried deliriously, throwing a tantrum by stomping the creek and splashing water everywhere.

Seeing Sachi whine so pitifully, Kari almost let her soul-weapon drop. She walked only three steps before two shivs plunged into the water at her feet, almost as though Sachi was begging her not to come any closer.

"Why did you really try to offer me the ring back at the arcade? You remember when you offered it to me, right? You told me I can take my revenge on Flare with this power. So why did you stop me in Kyoto?" Sachi asked, her lips quivering as she spoke.

"Because things were different back then. I made a deal with Flare, to kill Hurricane and Chu Hua for her. In exchange, she would leave you and Makina alone for good," Kari confessed at last, not that it would matter keeping it a secret any longer since Flare reneged on it by messing with Makina.

"You…" She drew a sharp breath, the revelation causing her grip on the shiv to falter.

"Maybe I should have told you sooner," Kari continued. "But I was afraid of Flare killing any of us if she knew I told you. It doesn't matter now though. Flare turned Makina into a magical girl, and I need help bringing her back, so please—"

"Makina, huh… I take it you had no choice, but it's obvious you didn't make the deal for my sake. It was for Makina, wasn't it?" Sachi wiped the tears from her eyes and met Kari's gaze with renewed conviction.

"No, it wasn't just—"

"Back when you first reached out to me, I knew. There's no way you would've cared about talking to me. Who makes friends with their bully, right? But I know how it works. I've been backstabbed and used before by girls worse than Ena. When we started hanging out, it's because you wanted to use me to get back at her. That's fine with me because that's how it's always worked. So no hard feelings, Kari!"

Cold mud crept up Kari's legs again, holding her in place. Sachi flung two knives from a distance. It was the same trick, but she was ready this time.

"Final Siege!" Kari created a copy of Sachi from the mud right before the assassin vanished. But Sachi was cutting through the winds at breakneck speeds, so fast that she created wakes in the water. As Kari felt the tip of the knife at her throat, she uttered the [Stampede] skill and smashed into the earthen clone point blank.

The impact sent them both hurtling away from each other. Sachi skidded and landed face down in the water. Kari flexed her back to the bristles of weeds poking into her. Both of them climbed unsteadily back to their feet.

While Sachi pushed herself up by her knees and elbows, coughing up her lungs, Kari didn't wait to give her a chance to recover.

"Come Here!"

With a gasp and shriek, Sachi came flying up to Kari. She swung [Ruin] hard, but seeing Sachi's fear brought the bladed edge to a stop from cleanly decapitating her. The hands which held the weapon trembled, but every fiber in her body down to the last cell wanted to do it. Even the abyss in her stomach wanted to eat. But she held back by will alone and chucked her soul-weapon before giving into temptation. Losing hold of the weapon, her hands found purchase on shaking shoulders instead.

Kari began to tear up, staring into Sachi's horrified eyes.

"I can't do it… I don't want to kill you, Sachi… I don't want Minato's sacrifice to be for nothing," Kari cried.

"You used to be a lot more ruthless. I'm sorry, Kari. I have to do this." Sachi plunged the shiv forward, but a golden javelin forced her to jump away.

"If you wanna gut Kari, then get in line." Jade leaned against the railing on the bridge, five javelins around her, poised to strike again. Her eyes went wide with recognition upon seeing Sachi. "Hey, I remember you."

"Damn it, Kari! I had a feeling you were coming out alone again!" Rocky pouted.

Jade, Rocky, and Gauntlet had arrived in the nick of time. Finding herself outnumbered, Sachi cursed under her breath.

"Sachi's with Hurricane now. They want my soul-weapon," Kari told the others.

"For what? To fight Flare with? You have a better chance with us than that cunt," Jade said.

Sachi shook her head. "Maybe things would've been different if Candy was still alive, but she isn't, and I've seen how strong Hurricane and her pet monster are. So I'm going to take my chances with her. She did ask me to try and convince you to join her one last time. What do you say about fighting Flare? All four of us?"

Kari and Jade traded glances.

"Take the offer back to Hurricane, and tell her to shove it up her ass. Better yet, tell her I'm coming to do it for her," Jade said.

"Figures." Sachi sighed, vanishing from sight. "Doesn't look like I have a chance against all of you, so this is where I dip."

"Sachi, wait!" Kari shouted.

Sachi's words echoed from nowhere in particular. "I wouldn't suggest fighting Hurricane anymore. Take that time to visit your loved ones before it's too late. Wish I could do the same, but that's not possible for me anymore…"

An eerie calm returned to this remote part of Nagoya. Under the bridge where nothing but the insects were buzzing, Kari's mind was aflame with resentment for herself from not being able to do more. She dropped to her knees, shedding her magical girl form, and pounded into the water and concrete.

"I don't have anyone else either…" Kari mumbled.

"I thought you two were tight?" Jade asked.

She ripped a handful of weeds growing along the cracks in the bank. "Not after I screwed it all up."

They returned to Chiyo's place and startled Shuu who was in the kitchen. He choked on the water he was drinking the second they burst through the door.

"What the hell happened?" Shuu asked, shutting the fridge door and switching on the living room lights.

"Street brawl," Jade said, helping Kari to the couch, where she slumped down still squeezing the open cut on her stomach.

"I'll get Chiyo." He ran upstairs and seconds later, returned with Chiyo and Yuuko in tow.

"Uh. That's the sort of cut you need to go to a hospital for," Chiyo said, pointing to the wound.

"We're not going to the hospital." Kari groaned. "Just stitch me up."

Chiyo relented, fetching from the bathroom a suture kit. Kari lied down on the couch for the nurse to do what she did best. In no time at all, she cleaned the wound and closed it shut, leaving behind a professional stitchwork

"Sorry for waking you," Kari said after being stitched up.

"Well, I gotta get to work in an hour anyway. No sleep when there's thousands more like you that need help during the apocalypse. Try not to move around too much." Chiyo nodded to them, then went back upstairs with her cousin.

The cats, many of which were woken up from the commotion earlier, had gathered at the foot of the couch and stared. Shuu shooed most of them away as he took a seat on the other couch, eyes fixed on his laptop.

"As much as I'd like to sit still, we have to head to Hokkaido. Whatever Hurricane's planning with that last seraph, we need to stop her." Kari sat up, feeling the cut biting back as she did.

"They ain't gonna make it easy." Tsubasa came back from the kitchen with a beer in hand. "But I'm thinking we go pay Flare a visit."

Kari threw an appalled look her way and didn't find any hint of joking.

"There's no way I'm keeping my shit in check if I see her face," Kari warned.

Tsubasa jerked her chin towards Shuu. "Before I went to fetch you, Shuu and I found something interesting."

"We looked into Flare." Shuu turned the laptop around to show Kari. On the screen was a blurry image of the fiery magical girl herself and Blaze. They were battling something out at sea, a large being that must have been a Malevolent Domain or angel-class monster. "The photo's metadata tells me that it was taken three years ago on the twelfth of June by a phone camera. Must have been an ancient phone, because the resolution and bit size of the picture is tiny. What really boggles my mind is how there's no other record of it. None. This is a unique picture that hasn't been shared until recently."

"I don't get why that's supposed to be important?" Kari asked.

Shuu cleared his throat and brushed his hand over his disheveled hair. "Because of how popular magical girls are, you'd think whoever took this would have shared it. Hell, even the shittiest photo of you guys will easily earn tens of thousands of impressions on the web. You're telling me the person that snapped this pic just kept it in their gallery for shits and giggles?"

"Three years ago," Tsubasa began, taking a seat on the couch's armrest and nursing on the beer, "was when she fought an angel off the coast of Hachinohe. Chances are, some lone fisherman snapped that photo."

"Weren't you and Flare already a team? She just went out and fought this thing on her own?" Kari asked, intending to patronize her.

She didn't take the bait and answered casually. "I would've gotten thrashed, but I did offer to help. Flare told me to sit out. Said she would handle it. My guess why she went alone? The easy answer is to get all the points herself. Or… you can take a closer look."

Shuu zoomed into Flare's hand. This close up made the picture incredibly pixelated. Kari thought she saw a stick in hand, but it was thick like a branch and had a sharpened point on one end.

"A stake," Kari whispered, recognizing it from the glimpse into the past when she had taken Inyanga's hand.

It belonged to Jhenne, a magical girl from South Africa who wielded a soul-carving weapon, manipulated by Flare and whatever voices spoke to her to turn on the others. Flare had taken and kept it since then, which would mean she had the ability to tear souls out of monsters if she wanted to. Or mortally wound magical girls.

"So you want to confront Flare about the stake?" Kari asked. "How are we getting through the JGSDF in Sendai that's holding her?"

"Lucky for us, I helped the military enough in your month-long absence to be on good terms with them. At least enough that they don't want to put a bullet in my head like they want to with you. We get there, I talk to 'em, talk to her, find out where your girl is, and if you want to take your chances at killing her afterwards, then be my guest." Tsubasa tipped the rest of the beer down her mouth and crushed the can.

"You two are going to have to get through more than just the JSDF," Shuu said, navigating through the web browser to a livestream of a drone flying over the city, where thousands of people have packed the streets of Sendai. Braving the cold, they marched through the city, waving pickets and signs, stalling traffic for miles in every direction, and clashing with police and JSDF.

Protesting in Japan has never happened on a scale like this before. The people were always so reserved and didn't have a single confrontational bone in their bodies. However, seeing from a bird's eye view of the masses was as impressive as it was terrifying.

Because they all had a single, unified message to give: Free Flare!