***(?)
"Do you regret it, for those you cannot save, and for those you could. What your entire journey has amounted to... A question that cannot be answered.
Who deserves to stay alive? Who deserves to stay dead? Is immortality okay? Even if it ends in the earth becoming overpopulated... Who gets to decide all of this? " (Himei)
" Of course... If my path of carnage here ends in vain... Then I would have only caused pain and nothing else... It's not something that I would inherently want... I want people to be safe, to be happy...
I want to save everyone, not decide who is worthy of being saved... But it is a question I am forced to answer... To play God and decides who lives and die... Is not a choice, but an obligation... " (Kaori)
For example, when she raided Zedicia's cult and killed all of those clones... When she reaped the lives if those that came after her... But most importantly... Having to decide...
"... I've found your parents for a long while now. They weren't hard to find...
They didn't survive The Great Disaster. Most people did not, about 80% of humanity didn't and your parents happen to fall into that 80%. What do you want to do... I can lead you to their location, or you could use your own genes as the link... " (Himei)
Was it done intentionally? Did Himei perhaps hold some sort of Grudge? Do his parents deserve to live after being dead for all this time? Then what about the parents of other people? It was easy to answer to Myuu, having given her a verbal promise. Then, was it only those who received a verbal promise who would benefit from her? Was it only them? Was it really right to decide it this way? What was the right way to decide? How should she decide? How could she come to the right decision?
Everyone else might do it without hesitation, but with her intuition... Kaori felt that there was a limit to this situation... There was also a moral limitation about this. Only when she wielded her power to revive others from the dead did she fully comprehend the consequences, only by reaching this goal did she really feel the effects of her magic and its actions... To describe this moral qualm as a mental barrier would do it disservice, but it was something that she could never cross. It was way easier to run away and pretend she didn't have this power, to never ever revive another human ever again, to continue... To play human...
***(Present)
She couldn't handle it anymore... So she quit. This was the end result. She ran once more, she turned her back and gave it all up to someone else. And now when asked by someone else to fight for them, she gleefully did it without a trace of shame... Even though she was practically pushing all of the responsibility to them, under the assumption that 'it is all under their orders'.
"Haa~" (Kaori)
She exhaled deeply, her sight returning to the present scenery. A space of white clashes against a space of black. Kaori's white Oblivion Magia remains in conflict with Arasovi's black, there was no end in sight. This was the nature of Calamity, a never ending event that only drives out hope. If Kaori governs calamity, which is she on the receiving end that runs out of hope? Or is she also governed by calamity at the same time?
' A magical girl's destiny looks like it has no end in sight, yet it arrives to a complete stop all the same. '
The nature of magical girls was to struggle until they die. That's why there were so little magical girls who actually surpassed the human life span. The human psyche was not designed to live a long and unending life, that's why some reach insanity, while others subconsciously drive themselves to ruin. Most magical girls still arrive at death one way or another, despite ostensibly being immortal. Then it was simply a result of nature that Kaori went insane... That she could no longer handle the weight of her own powers and collapsed under them.
Perhaps it was jealousy that drove her to find Ledia in the first place. An individual with a living and loving family, someone who lived in an entirely different world of safety and stability. With dangers nowhere to be found, you would likely derive the fact that most people prefer safety and stability to danger and ambition. The substantially lower risk to life was well worth the lack of adventure and adrenaline.
Then the reason to it all... A subconscious desire to retire, to escape from the undesirable situation. Cowardice. She can't help but mock her opponents, her cowardice has only placed her in what she opines to be rock bottom, so even if she became more of a scum she could only go up from here. She faces the present, trepidation was a constant that rocked her heart unsteadily, taunting her own fate like a pendulum, dangling her life over an abyss. Her thoughts fade into the darkness, trussing her into the deluge of battle.
She can't help but want to mock herself too. There was no excuse, she's been really pathetic. But before that, a sensation more primal than any matter wells up from the pits of her soul. She points her rapier forward at Arasovi, firing another barrage of Veils. A rapid fire of infinitely pressured pillars of black light assault Arasovi. No matter how many times she erases them, more of them always arrive, breaking past the boundary of dimensions effortlessly, they bring death nearer to Arasovi.
Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Don't stop firing at her. You talk big, so you must win. Her rapier points straight, as if it dictated the target of her attacks, though it was only a perfunctory action. There were many things that magical girls did that were actually perfunctory and unnecessary, including the incantation of the name of their skill. There could be many reasons, simply put Kaori wanted flair, romance, and beauty. If she didn't do these things, then what's the point of being a magical girl?
Fire. Fire. Fire. It might result in an impasse, but it's fine. Because this time, you'll win. Every Veil shot upon Arasovi was promptly erased by her magic, she might be using her final magic, it was hard to tell if the effects of her skills overlapped.
"... Hmmm?" (Arasovi)
She could easily read the attacks before they even arrived, Kaori's infinity was being surpassed. This was by no means Kaori weakening her attacks upon having her confidence injured, she was growing in strength by the moment... But her speed of growth was being surpassed.
"... There is no such thing as an ego being a 'burst type', your previous disposition must have been a front. It is more accurate to call it... The last moments before a star dies out, as it is the brightest then." (Arasovi)
"..." (Kaori)
Her attacks stop, and her territory crumbles under the unmeasurable weight of Arasovi's magic. The white space surrounding her rapidly shrinks, as if it was shrivelling like her heart. She promised so much and she boasted abundantly, even if she did fulfill her promises and took action without hesitation... She still regretted how it all turned out. She regretted the reality of it all, and even if she could say she didn't do anything wrong nor did she make any decisions she didn't like... Reality itself was something to regret for, for how everything turned out, for how she reached this ending. For how her fate was forlorn, and her actions vain.
She wasn't weakening, but the gap between her and Arasovi was growing rapidly. She would die anytime soon, the timer to her termination could not be measured in any unit of time.
For a short bit, an emerald green flower appeared in front of Kaori. A familiar voice echoes in her mind, fate that she thought was long sealed has proclaimed new colour.
"Is it so easy to discourage you? A small standstill and you crumble... What happened to Kaori, saviour of saviours... What happened to Kaede?" (Grail)
"... Kaede is dead. And I will join her soon." (Kaori)
This was a wall that she could not scale, a barrier that could never be broken down. A trial she could never escape. It was the weight of her own achievements, and the ensuing expectations that follow. The dillema of deciding the sanctity of life, the violation of the rightful order of time.
"Excuses. You just want to retire from being a magical girl, throw in the towel and call it a day. If given a chance, you would be one of those useless bums who hole up in their rooms and never get a job..." (Grail)
"..." (Kaori)
She didn't even have the strength to refute. Then, what's the point? If she doesn't even have the motivation to argue, has everything she accomplished been utterly pointless? She materialises her rapier into her right palm once more, feeling its weight, and taking in the sight. The breeze was violently swaying her hair and dress back, her skin was drenched in sweat yet it remained pristine and spotless like a goddess...
Reality, the present, the scenery before her pupils... The sensation of the universe... She took it all in and reexamined herself. Her grip on her rapier tightens, its powerful motion causes it to have an unmeasurable weight, it contained more energy than the universe itself, yet she was able to wield it. Her achievements are real, her powers, her magic, her desired future... It was all real. Then, there is equally no point in giving up, in retiring. To reach the desired future is everyone's goal, to protect her own world when given the power and ability to do it.... Was a given.
Arasovi's Oblivion Magia reaches Kaori's feet before being stopped.
"You finally reached at the answer by yourself... Well done." (Grail)
And farewell, it felt as if Kaori could hear that. But she must have imagined it. Grail was a magic cast by Myuu, she can be cast again. She was merely an ego who shared a body with Kaori, she won't ever disappear. Even though she might never regain the strength to manifest herself like this again, her existence is secured in Kaori's.
"Tch! What a nuisance!" (Arasovi)
Feel the weight with your body and soul, take in everything. All the sensations, movements and changes, the entire universe. Her radar expanded to now cover everything in existence, it wasn't ever necessary, so this was the first time she did it. There was no rhyme or reason to procuring every single bit of information in the universe, but she did it anyway. Her body felt small, insignificant under the scale of it all. At the same time... The fact that she exists was empowering, it was enough to assure herself that nothing was in vain. That there would be an answer to all her difficulties, that retirement was no longer the solution.
She charges into Arasovi's territory, her rapier tears it apart. Space, time, magic, everything is torn apart in a slew of hyperviolence. She has to grow stronger, faster, and more magical... Surpass with all of your being...
It felt like the rapier became an extension of her body, intricately weaving around the air while savagely annhiliating everything around it. This was infinite motion, perpetual despair, calamity. Her wedding dress of pure white flowed along with her movements without pause, her body executed motions bordering on the divine. In one motion, she swung her rapier horizontally and threw multiple kicks, before returning behind Arasovi who was thrown by those kicks. Arasovi vanished and reappeared behind Kaori, who then did the same thing.
When she swung her rapier once more, a great sword slashed down and beared its weight against the rapier. Her Oblivion Magia was no longer functional, Kaori used her rapier and synchronised it with the universe by extending her radar over the entire dimension. She tied it down to the universe, making her rapier a universe in itself as it intruded into Arasovi's Oblivion Magia. Then it cut up her territory and dissolved it in an instant.
Kaori swung 3 more power attacks, which were stopped by Arasovi's great sword every time. Her figure blurred as she never stopped growing faster, throwing 3 thrust attacks in a single instant. Each attack caused the world to creak, as if Arasovi's Oblivion Magia has encountered a giant blender. The rapier attacks continue to rain assault after assault onto Arasovi, at the same time, they cut apart any magic that Arasovi threw at Kaori.
This was the true potential of [Hollow calamity], after synchronising with the world it was able to cut even magical particles apart, nothing could continue to elude the edge of her rapier, even Arasovi's authority and her destruction magic was split apart and scattered into the air.