*
If I run now, I would lose all of my dignity. Was it worth it? My life or my dignity. Gughhh! Why... Can't I decide... Why did it have to be like this... Why can't life just be easier... I don't want to make a decision like this... This irrational state of mind... This absurd situation... There's nothing good about this. I've walked through a lot of tribulations. I've fought through tooth and nail to survive. I've been inhumanely treating everything like a show... Like one of those I used to watch before the disaster.
Magical girls, they face obstacles, breakdown and cry. But in those shows they always bring themselves back up. They make it look so easy. They make themselves look invincible. As if nothing could truly hurt them even if they're too weak to defend themselves. What do I even make of my own situation? This fear of death, this deep dark spiral of thought is an endless abyss. It is far darker than the deep ocean and the sea pressure is just as suffocating. It feels like my heart is suffering from that same sea pressure, being squashed into a fine paste.
There is no hope. What are they even fighting for? Surely they see that. If the opponent wished, they could turn everyone here into a red mist. Why are they trying so hard.
"... Why are you putting so much effort in this... It's so pointless..."
"... Kaori... Being able to treasure one's own life like you... It's not something one would willingly give up. Please, cherish it. Cherish yourself and run. We'll hold her off. "(Fiel)
" Don't worry, I'll be right behind you. I won't let anyone die. " (Myuu)
"..."
I want to help. But my legs won't move. It was very easy to recognise my flaws. I was that type of self aware person. I can easily see what was wrong with myself, but I could never do anything about it. I can see yet I cannot remove. I don't want them to die, I can not let them die. They were pretty much all that I have left. I've long forgotten about Kyou and Yuuka. Kyou must be living an exciting life with that rebel group fighting against the Eye God. We pretty much turned a blind eye to them, as we weren't too trusting of the Eye God either. If Frey managed to kill her, she'll just be the new god magical girl, and hopefully a reliable one.
I... Need to move... Out of the corner of my eye, I could see them getting smacked around and impaled. Myuu was expending a lot of magical energy trying to heal everyone. Barius is trying her best to drown her, but the water just gets sucked away into another space. How... How were normal people like us suppose to deal with her? My body may not be able to move, but the enemy should have lowered her guard towards me. I can discreetly use a skill. I doubt that she would pull oxygen from nearby if she was using her skill as an oxygen tank. As she manipulates space a lot, the air around her gets sucked dry many times to leave a vacuum or extremely thin air.
That's it. I'll wait for Barius to try to drown her again... Then now! My most simple skill, the low magical particle cost should lower the chance of my involvement to be detected. In the single moment she sucks away the water with her skill and breathes from either her mouth or nose, I reverse the gradient and pull the air out. Magical girls may last longer than humans without oxygen, but they ultimately still need it to survive... Unless she can directly teleport them into her lungs. But even that will be sucked out immediately as the gradient becomes stronger.
Passive 2 - spatial awareness.
"!..." (Elliot)
Her eyes were enough to say 'I'll kill you!' even if her body couldn't muster her voice anymore from the lack of air.
"I'll kill you too!"
Applying more magical particles into my skill to strengthen it, the air flies out of her body at a faster rate. Because the water from Barius had made her out of breath and everyone had been constantly healed by Myuu, they managed to drain her stamina to the point she couldn't muster Strength from her lungs to breath in deeply. She could recover the stamina very quickly, so it was not a victory in a battle of attrition, but seizing a vital moment in the battle.
She arrives next to me in an instant before I could even blink, her speed far outclassing every single one of us. I pass the activation of my skill to my Stick, so that it became automatic and would continue on even if I die. As long as someone pumped magical particles into the Stick, for this tiny sliver of an opportunity to win, I'll remove the need for permission to use my Stick.
Even if I keep saying I want to live a life of no regrets, and use it as an excuse to do whatever I want, in the end I'll always have regrets. This is the human limitation. We will always sin or do something wrong that we would agonise over. To agonise and cry over our own actions, I suppose I haven't abandoned my humanity. I'm so glad, I thought I had left it behind when I killed all those magical girls. I thought I had lost my humanity when I stopped being able to cry during the first wave of attacks.
I've killed and killed. This blood on my hands is not fitting for a magical girl. It's also not something I can casually wipe away. It's here to stay, maybe it'll even be etched in history. In this one moment, it felt like my body was floating and getting carried away. She punched around my collar bone from where she stood, naturally I was sent flying away. Blood shot out of my mouth and nose as I broke through a few buildings. Unlike the others who were near Myuu, I was at a bit of a distance away.
I was laying on my side, my right arm resting comfortably over some debris. To be honest, I couldn't feel much of my body left. I couldn't run or move, I was that scared. But in the end I still manage to attack her and made her mad, that should count as overcoming my fear right?
I don't want to die. I don't want my friends to die. I'm satisfied, now she's moving solely from the energy generated by her magical particles. Using magical particles to substitute human chemical energy has a really bad conversion rate. She can move and think perfectly fine, but I managed to distract her. Would that be enough? Enough to proof my worth, as a magical... Girl...
***(Barius)
" [Second step to completion] - time stop. This is the final one, Myuu go save her." (Barius)
It felt good. It felt unbelievably good to the point that I felt sick. To see Kaori cry and despair, begging for her own life and then ours. It was like I finally had a victory. But if she died now, then this would be my last victory against her... Even then, I suppose I soften up. It also felt weird, incredibly weird to have her rely on me instead of the other way round. Whether it was my choice or not, I've always been left behind in her shadows, stuck there as if I was meant to be there for eternity.
Was this the world's way of telling me 'Prove yourself!' ? I have no way to know if this was a mere coincidence or something that fate had arranged for me. In any case, it was finally my turn to be relied upon. My main drive is to be the perfect magical girl, one that nobody could insult, one that people could look up to and admire as a standard of good virtue and morality. One that people could rely on and feel safe. Perhaps I want to become a god? A god magical girl. They stood at the pinnacle of the world and sneer at everything below them. Maybe I'll reach there one day. For now, I must defeat this enemy.
I can apply time stop to a large area, perhaps if I only stop a portion of her body, her body's time will go out of control and malfunction. It's been a few seconds, Myuu has caught up to Kaori and began to heal her up. Unfortunately, I don't think she'll be awake anytime soon. Myuu had noticed and is fueling Kaori's Stick now. Time would resume at any moment now... Kaori, did you think this through? How much magical particles do you think she has? She certainly hasn't been wasting her magic... And this plan expects to suck her dry and let her asphyxiate...
Time stop deactivate.
***
"Look, the Stick is beginning to suck out her magical particles as well. It seems that Kaori could input commands before hand so that it activates in sequence later." (Garion)
"Second skill, [Unbearable storm]" (Fiel)
A familiar voice echoes out behind us. Walking with a limped gait, she points her katana straight at Elliot. Unlike Kenzi and Vibell who were support type magical girls, Izumi was a close range fighter who had built up much more endurance than they did. She was grasping her dislocated left shoulder with her right arm before she summoned and pointed the katana at Elliot. Blood was practically coating half her skin from head to toe. Traces of dried blood lie under her lips, and her eyes were a little sunken. She must have exhausted herself greatly on the way here, using her sheer will to drag her half-dead body.
"[Ephemeral severance]. I can cut what is not there or is already there from this distance. If it's something indeterminable like the existence of your soul, this skill will disregard that ambiguity and cut through it. Mana paths, rend! " (Izumi)
By forcefully creating a weakness and cutting it open, magical particles flood out of Elliot's body as they were sucked by Kaori's Stick in great volume. And Fiel's second skill caused her vision to blur and shake around like an imaginary earthquake. This skill had to slowly overcome Elliot's magic defences, so she had been applying it since the start of the battle to erode away at Elliot's will. Overtime it finally took effect, disorienting Elliot a little.
The person holding the Stick could also direct the magical particles into their own well for their own use, Myuu had been channeling it into her own skill to keep healing everyone. If it managed to fall into Barius' hands, she could maintain a timestop while draining Elliot at the same time, this would doom the entire operation to invade the labyrinth. Seeing as such, Elliot quickly kicked away Barius into the far off distance. As she was now wielding the stick, Myuu was able to heal as much as she wanted by stealing Elliot's magical particles for her own use. Naturally, Barius got up even faster than ever before as Myuu stopped holding back to preserve her well.
Observing as such, Elliot contacted her partner and left in an instant. A wide boom echoed with a labyrinth splitting shock wave, the ground and ceiling got effortlessly gouged away under its pressure. It was a mere shock wave from Kanou's battle. She had gone into Oblivion Magia to fight the other S-grade magical girl, setting the fight in another dimension so the labyrinth doesn't get damaged much. If 2 S-grade magical girls were to go all out, the labyrinth wouldn't be able to survive.
Upon hearing the shock wave and turning to face its origin, Kanou and the white haired magical girl appeared. She must have received Elliot's message as she also began to run away. Vanishing as if nothing had happened.
The main front of the war with the low grade magical girls hadn't went through much change. Due to the battle of their leaders, they could effectively save lives if they simply stayed on standby and didn't attack. If their leader lose, then they lose the war as well. So this war was now on the shoulders of their leaders. Rather than waste the lives of their subordinates, the main front became extremely inactive.
"Are you guys okay?" (Kanou)
"... Yeah, barely. We've suffered fatal injuries and got it healed so many times that it feels like the battle was not real." (Barius)
"... I'm glad. Nobody died, did they?" (Kanou)
" Nope... Just somewhat comatose..." (Myuu)
" That's a win in my book, I expected half of you to die. You did much better than expected. "(Kanou)