2131/This Witch Has Teeth

This Witch Has Teeth
Date of Scene:	03 December 2024
Location:	Mitakihara Ward
Synopsis:	There's a Witch in Mitakihara, and she is hungry. Amy, Madoka, Kyouko, Hinote, and Takuto are able to stop her ravenous hunt... at a cost. CW: NPC Death, descriptions of blood and violence.
Cast of Characters:	Usagi Tsukino, Hinote Kagari, Takuto Tsunashi, Kyouko Sakura, Madoka Kaname, Amanda Faust

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Usagi Tsukino has posed:
        Mitakihara Ward, 11:30pm.

It's late though not as late as it could be. Schools, offices, stores, these are all long closed, the majority of people are watching TV, are in bed, are laughing, crying, screaming, dying -

Ah, but on this dark night there's still light, the gloom of the city still pierced by streetlights, by neon signs, by the lighted windows of bars - those are still open. Those are still ever-populated, even now. Office-workers make up a good chunk of the population in those bars, but there are university students, there are retirees, there are the washed up and the bitter and the sad and the unloved and the hungry and the desperate, gnashing their teeth, and they drink until they can't feel anything, and try in vain to soak it up with food.

They stumble home, through the streets, drunk, and they are replaced by more souls, overworked and underloved and hungry -

And they've been going missing, bit by bit, swallowed up by the dark. It's been in the news, a few times, an uptick in vanishings, in disappearances, and it's been whispered that sometimes - sometimes they don't entirely vanish.

There was an arm found, two days ago. The news covered it only briefly. A topic not safe for sensitive audiences, but a warning to the people anyway, a warning that people are missing, a warning, don't go off alone, don't go off alone -

But the bars are still open, and there are still people in them, some of them miserable, some joyous, some overworked and underloved and they are so hungry that is it any wonder, some of them go off alone, anyway?

Sheometimes they aren't so alone. Like now, like now, and that should be okay, right?

And so it is that it's 11:30pm in Mitakihara and the bars are open and the moon is a waxing crescent high in the sky and a group of people are stumbling off together. Drunken revelry right, nothing to see here, their eyes are glazed because of the drinks, see, their bodies are sluggish because of the drink, see -

But if one is looking, they'll see that there are marks on their necks. And they're heading for a restaurant, but the restaurant is closed, abandoned, the windows shuttered but the door opens.

Oh, no it didn't. The door ripples as they pass through, and it's butcherblock paper that shimmers like moonlight on blood, and it's not butcherblock paper at all, but the entrance to a Labyrinth that just looks like it.

The drunken witch-kissed revelers waltz right on through.

Nothing to see here.

Hinote Kagari has posed:
People go missing. Hinote Kagari watches the news. There's a mystery here.

"Don't worry about it, Hinote, it's Mitakihara Ward." says Tracy to Hinote as the two walk down the street. "I'm going to worry, people are going missing. And honestly. You and I both know what 'just an arm' means."

A Witch is eating people.

"Hopefully, we'll run into a Puella Magi on the way." says Hinote to Tracy, who's floating just behind him. He stops as he looks ar a group of drunken revelers and he backs off behind an alleway. He watches them disappear into a rippling doorway. "There it is." he says. "Come on Tracy..." he says to his partner. "Right!" says Tracy.

The two merge as Hinote grabs Tracy's egg he disappearss into, a black and white decorated egg with a magnifying glass on it. He places it into his chest and he becomes... Pulp Noir!

Pulp Noir quickly walks up to the door, places his hands into his trenchcoat's pockets. Takes a deep breath, and enters the Labyrinth.

Takuto Tsunashi has posed:
Overhead, a comet! --no it's just Takuto on his way home, to Sugata's house, after fighting a youma that wanted his bag of melonpan for Wako for tomorrow morning. That's fair, melonpan is delicious. (It wanted his energy too.)

The comet pauses, though, because that's a restaurant that the Ginga Bishounen knows for sure is closed. It was a great little place that served ice cream pizza. So why are there people streaming in to it at eleven-thirty at night? People including... that detective kid he's seen before!

It's probably not a job for the Galactic Prettyboy, but--

No, he's curious, and he's a magical boy, and he's landing and stashing the melonpan in an alley for the second time tonight, and red-and-yellow spiky hair and flashy militaresque drip and all, he plunges into the crowd and follows. He balks at the door when he sees someone enter and the 'door' shimmer and let them in instead of the paper parting properly.

"Hey!" he says to the next person going in, and catches at them. He sees the Kiss but doesn't know what it is. "Hey, what are you doing? This place is closed!"

The person ignores him, and as soon as he lets go, the person sidesteps with a drunken laugh and goes through the door. ... Well, the detective kid went in -- whatever's on the other side, maybe he needs help.

Takuto draws his swords from his chest one after the other -- "Star Swordo! EMERAUDE! Star Swordo! SAPHIR!" -- and steps through.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
The patrolling never /really/ stops. Not in a city like Tokyo. Certainly not where there are familiars roaming about. If there was any thoughts that the Puella were going to be off the hook after Walpy? No such luck.

Kyouko heard the rumours. The people vanishing. The arm. It might have barely hit the news, but Kyouko barely watches the news. She listens to the people, to the murmurings and the rumblings and the drunks emerging from the bars, and the people wondering where Haruto is tonight, or this week and what happened to Mei, anyone seen her?

It's on a building across the way that Kyouko has paused a moment. Already in henshin, leaning on her spear as she watches people head into the closed building. People with marks on their necks and then she starts watching other magical girls and boys find the place. Well that seals it, they're going to need someone to help them in there. She jumps down, landing lightly on the pavement outside the restaurant and heads her way in after Takuto and Pulp Noir.

It's not about helping other mahou, not at all, there's just no need to waste that grief seed.

Madoka Kaname has posed:
    A Witch Hunter's work is never done.

    Especially not when the huntress in question is Madoka.

    'Just an arm' could mean a lot of things. It could mean a serial killer or yakuza activity, or it could mean a wild animal... but with it being Mitakihara it's probably only one thing. This is where Puella Magi tend to operate, which means that this is probably also where a Witch is likely to be found.

    It was always heartbreaking to hear the rumors that often float around this town. Madoka, who still volunteered at Mitakihara General when able, would often overhear some concerned mother or brother showing up at the receptionist desk asking if a missing loved one had turned up overnight. People never being seen again was often more terrible than the cases where the person was actually found, whether they were found in whole or in part. The always wondering and never knowing... the lack of resolution...

    Madoka could never bring herself to hate Witches after knowing the truth of them, of where they come from and of who they were, but... one does not need to hate a rabid animal in order to know it needs to be put down. The source of harm needs to be addressed, and even with her effective godhood she couldn't change that simple fact.

    She is already merged with Medo, because that was the closest Chara around when Madoka started this hunt, meaning that she's wearing her flossie today. Kamiko hangs off of Hope Blossom's shoulder, saying, "I sense her nearby. I wonder... those people!"

    Hope looks down over the ledge of the roof to see where her fairy is pointing. A crowd, seemingly drunk, heading towards the entrance of a restaurant. "A cruel joke," she mutters. "For a Witch to chose a place like that to feed."

    Kamiko tugs on Hope's pigtail and points at the other magicals who are going into the Labyrinth. "Looks like we wont be alone."

    Hope nods, then pats Kamiko on the head. "Hold on and stay safe, okay? I'm going in. I might need you soon."

    Then the magical girl jumps down into the street, shouting, "Wait for me!" before running for the Labyrinth, nearly leaping through the barrier.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy went out on patrol, but got lost in thought. Thinking about stories. Thinking about the future. Thinking about Hinoiri stuck powerless, and Norie, stuck emotionless. Thinking about everything but where she's going.

    She's almost at her old apartment building. Well, it was hers in a past life, anyway. This street... in another life, she'd walked down it a number of times, but only once was it ever this late.

    Several years ago, others who'd come over to teach English at the same time as Mallory all went out at the end of the school year for a late-night party. He went because he should be social, he needs to get out more, right?

    But it was the same as it always was, as he knew it'd be: He was the uncomfortable one, not drinking alchohol (he tried a beer to be a good sport, but... meh), just sort of awkwardly there, unable to loosen up and have a good time, whatever it was that was such a good time about it. He felt alone in a crowd of people, seeing their smiles and not understanding, wishing he was at home on the computer. And thinking that maybe one day, in the very distant future, he'd have a different body and not be this ugly guy and maybe, maybe then he'd see the appeal of these places--

    Amy frowns at the memory as she looks down at the bar across the street. She's still not exactly a partier, but... well. Maybe she'll find out the appeal in a few years, if she doesn't die first, or get replaced by some amnesiac.

    She hears someone shouting the place is closed in the next alley over, and that brings her fully out of her reverie as she glances down to see if someone's going to need a hand with an unruly drunk, and instead sees people stumbling in and catches a glimpse of Ginga Bishounen and Kyouko going in. And the doorway shimmering. What.

    And that's when she focuses on her soul gem, and the feeling of darkness, and

    WITCH. Close!

    She really wasn't focused... get out of your head, Amy!

    She takes a deep breath, lets it out, and drops down. Can she do something to stop the people getting in...? With mahou strength, she pushes a dumpster almost in front of the door, so that she can squeeze her little body behind it but most of the would-ne patrons will have a difficult time. Hopefully that helps.

    "Here I go again..." She mutters, as she steps into the Labyrinth.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Chattering, chattering, chattering, the sound echoes and echoes and echoes and it's coming from a thousand different mouths -

Mouths? Oh, yes.

The chattering is the first thing that they're allowed to notice. It's only when they've heard it, well and truly heard it, felt that sound echoing and sinking into their bones, that the rest of the world comes into view.

First, the flooring beneath their feet - wooden planks nailed together with warps like an old dock, gaps between the planks, and there are hands - oh there are hands reaching for them, deformed and small and the fingers seem too long for the palms but they don't bend right, and there isn't a thumb, not properly, just a fifth finger, and they have little claws, those pale little hands reaching beneath the planks, grasping.

The wooden bridge stretches on and on and in the distance there's light, and there's the chattering, still, endlessly chattering ahead, behind, below, with the grasping little hands.

Then, to the sides, the details filling in - great stacks of round things, with crud and crumbs dried to them, and liquid gone dry and sticky and tacky and - oh they're plates, enormous ones, plates with the circumference of a round table, thick as a hand, stacked in piles fifteen feet, twenty feet, high, slanted and threatening to the spill and slip.

There's spillage on the wooden slats, they'll release, old, dried stains with hardened bits dried to them, and the little hands are digging for those remnants as much as they're grasping for their ankles.

Beyond the stacks of plates, in the distance, there's counters and a corner of an enormous table - and even from this distance, it seems tall, so tall, they could stand one ach other's shoulders and combined not reach the top - and abruptly they may realize they're in some kind of monstrous restaurant kitchen.

Over, off in that distance, near the legs of that enormous metal table, they can see the drunken revelers turn a corner, disappear behind a stack of filthy plates.

"Dude," one of them can be heard slurring, "This place is kinda gross... we sure this is where your girl got that hamburger steak?"

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Chattering. The sound is everything... There is only the sound.

    As the Labyrinth starts to come into view, Amy thinks of the martian Witch and its space station Labyrinth drawing itself into place. Great. Witches will never stop being weird, she sees...

    Hands. "Gah!" She jumps a bit, staring at them, watching and making sure she's not grabbed, until

    Plates.

    She's. The size of a mouse, or an action figure, on a table? Or, counter?

    Amy has been small before. This doesn't quite feel the same; especially as she's in her own body and not a tiny doll or something. It makes her feel like she's wandered into the home of a giant. Or... the back of a giants' tavern or somthing?

    Her gut feel is confirmed as she looks over and sees the tables, and yes, they're in a kitchen. The Witch-Kissed are too far to reach just yet, and the thought goes through her head:

    Don't go! She'll-- "...grind your bones to make her bread...", Amy mutters.

    At least she's not alone, and after the wrongness of realizing the alien world she's trapped in, she can't help smiling at some familiar faces. "Man am I glad to see you all-- hey! No!" Amy stomps on a hand trying to grab her.

    "Uhhh... is everybody familiar with Witches and Labyrinths at this point?" she asks, ready to explain but wondering if she needs to. She'll follow them if they decide to chase after the Witch-Kissed right away.

Hinote Kagari has posed:
Pulp Noir stops at the sight.

Yeah this Witch is going to be freaky. He trudges on, sees emaciated claw like hands reach up through the slats. He decides to take it slow, stepping on the middle of the slats. And moving quickly between them. Which he accomplishes, trench coat flying behind him.

He can hear the chewing of teeth. Don't think about it. Oh crap. He's thinking about it. Ewwwww.

Up ahead, he can see the group of revelers move behind a stack of plates.

But for now he's still on that bridge, eyes looking up at that table in the distance.

That's when he SMACKS down to his face when a hand grabs his arm and soon, arms are grabbing his body and he can't get up. "HELP, PLEASE!?" he calls out, begging to be pulled up and ripped from the hands.

Takuto Tsunashi has posed:
Little reaching sorta-hands are WAY WORSE than little moving skittering mushrooms, Takuto is sorry to realize. He hates the chattering, but his swords are bright in the darkness, but they don't reveal anything until Takuto's positive he'll never stop hearing that sound--

And then it's handlets and that's enough, that's absolutely the limit, that's Takuto silently lifting off the floor with a blue-white comet nimbus around his booted feet, because No Thank You.

And then the dishes. The piles and piles of dishes, designed for someone many, many times larger than this Ginga Bishounen is-- and the plates are caked with what, exactly? And it's a kitchen, ohh it's a kitchen, and the plates are big enough to--

With a horrible creeping feeling, and the half-memory of something terrifying on the television when he was very young, Takuto drifts past the plates and drunk people at roughly the same pace as them. He's very easy to catch up with, especially since he keeps stopping to turn people around and try to get them to walk the other way.

"How do we stop them? I don't like this at all, what is this?" he asks the mahoujin who came with him, some more familiar than others. And then Amy, specifically, "No! What--"

Then the detective kid falls, and that's one thing Takuto can help with -- he drops the sword in his right hand and swoops down to grab Pulp Noir and haul him up into the air. "Careful!"

Madoka Kaname has posed:
    The chattering is unnerving in a way that Hope Blossom is afraid to think too deeply about. "I feel like I've seen a tooth witch before..."

    "Nope, we never have," interjects Kamiko, shaking her head emphatically.

    "Are you sure? Not even a Familiar?" asks Madoka. "Something about gnashing teeth..."

    The tiny goddess fairy clings tighter to her Bearer's shoulder and says, "Look, if such a thing happened, I'd remember it too. This is just another weird Witch among many. Don't overthink it."

    Madoka looks down at the hands reaching between the slats. One of them grabs her feet, and she yelps, immediately leaping away. She puts a hand on Kamiko and says, "S-stay close to me, Kami-chan. Especially in a place like this. Don't let them grab your hair!"

    Upon seeing Amy join them, Madoka flashes her a friendly but worried smile. "Eheh... well I'm sure most of us are. I don't know about him, though." She nods towards Ginga Bishounen, whom she's fairly certain she hasn't seen before.

    When she hears the revelers ahead, just around the plates, she worries and starts dashing after them. "Wait! Don't go that way!" she calls out, branch bow forming in hand. "Kami-chan, be ready to pull us out, okay?"

    The little goddess is clinging for dear life. "Wha-! Don't be so reckless!"

    "But they're gonna---!"

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
There's little enough anymore that makes Kyouko shudder, but grabby little hands and a place that has descrated dinner? Filty disgusting messy plates and dried food and hungry and chatter and ...

Kyouko growls, a fully feral sound as she stomps her way into and then through the other mahou there. Her spear flicks away the grasping fingers, casually cruel? Yes, but it's a labryrinth and everything in here is cruel. Except them.

Probably not them.

There's various mutterings coming from the puella that seem to be variations on 'FFS' and other assorted swearing and grumbling and the storm cloud that she brings with her. She's following the people, looking for the centre of this mess.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Takuto went furthest, before he doubled back to save Pulp Noir, so he's the one who sees where the revelers turn, for a moment - beyond those plates and up by that table, there are counters and like you'd see in a restaurant, with tickets hanging up from a string and clasps, the text all scrawled Witch runes. There's a path up to that counter window, stacked and leaned trays that make something of a path, and on top of the counters there's silverware as large as a buster sword, dirty but waiting for the grabbing. On the other side of the counter window, there's a the shadow of a person.

Something that looks like a person, anyway, sized to fit this enormous kitchen. An arm, pale and skinny and too long, with too many joints, stretches out, pins another ticket to the string, then slams a little service bell that wasn't there, before.

There's an instant response - the chattering of teeth goes from a background rumble to a dull roar, and they see the sources, now, in the aftermath of that bell - human jaws, biting over and over, gums pink and wet, teeth yellowed and dry, chattering over and over, rushing forward with little pink feet that slip and stick to the floors, leaving wet footprints behind. They're emerging from the darkness and from behind the stacks of plates and around the table chairs, streaming in the dozens.

They're each as tall as the average professional basketball player, wide-around as a refrigerator, and they're coming for everyone moving.

The revelers might have been witch-kissed, but maybe there's only so much that effect can have, because faced with these gnashing, chattering teeth, they start to panic, fleeing in all directions. One of them starts running up the ramp of leaning counters, two start racing in circles around a table leg, trying to outrun their pursuers, and the remaining two start trying to climb the stacks of plates, which wobble ominously.

Takuto Tsunashi has posed:
It's carefully that the Ginga Bishounen sets Pulp Noir down, in a place where there aren't so many tiny hands grabbing, and then he says to Amy, "Actually hold that thought?" and she's seen him angry before, she's seen him happy, she's seen him jittery and comedically scared, but she's never seen this blend of boiling anger and sour fear on him, and odds are pretty good no one else has, either.

And then he does, in fact, rocket ahead overhead, going around the corner and divebombing the jaws as he draws his other sword again, right out of his chest. "STOP THAT!" he yells, and then, "Flair! GALACTIC CROSS SLASH!" and it's a huge blue and green X afterimage as he cuts through the first set of enormous teeth with little pink feet.

He turns to do it again on another one, calling it out again, and then swoops up out of the way of a pair of jaws that try to take his arm off, and then he dives in again and goes cuisinart instead of calling attacks anymore. The energy swords don't hold blood or ichor on them, but that doesn't mean nothing nasty is spattering in the already-filthy place.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    I feel like we've seen a tooth witch before. Are you sure? Not even a familiar? "Baast. Or Bastet. Was a statue, but her Familiars were crocodiles made of teeth. One that got out of the labyrinth got the Scroll of Ka." Amy states, plainly. "Really hated those. My weapons aren't the best for... like, you blow the teeth apart, so what? It just reforms!"

    Pulp Noir falls, but others are helping him up. And-- "Gah, No!" Amy stomps another hand, and starts thinking of how to deal with those. They're probably not actual creatures, just part of the background, so they probably won't react -- she thinks. Drop burning things into the cracks, maybe? But what if it draws attention, or sets the whole place ablaze? "Very Dark Souls... or Elden Ring, at least, I never actually played--"

    The movement of a giant shadow gets her attention, and she jumps back at the abrupt movement of that too-long arm, landing in a stance she can spring in any direction from-- "Yeah this is very Dark Souls alright!"

    She glances at the arm, at the window, it hasn't seen them yet, they can still sneak--

    And then the dinner bell is rung.

    TEETH.

    Immediately, the one she's looking at is blasted by a rocket -- and it is rockets this time, soemtimes she has to shoot straight across the room -- from the launcher suddenly on her shoulder... and she wastes no time, like an FPS protagonist who's wandered into one of those doom levels with hordes of monsters, just keep firing, just keep moving!

    "There's three kinds of things in here! The background, the familiars, and the Witch! We'll know when it's the Witch, so until we see her everything else is one of those!" Amy tries to helpfully advise!

    She's not really focusing on clearing a path for now, just... trying to thin the horde, especially near the poor witch-kissed. "Hey! Stay near us, we can defend ourselves!"

    She has an idea. Probably a bad idea. But it does't hurt to ask, right?

    "...Actually, are any of you NOT drunk? And skilled in using weapons?"

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
Not all that far behind Takuto, Kyouko watches in horror at those creepy not at ALL little teeth who are coming towards them. Ginga Bishoune has gotten all cuisinart on them, and that's exactly Kyouko's plan as well.

The spear sends her up into the air, letting Kyouko start with the stabbing. And at this point, she is wholly in favour of just stabbing anything that isn't a mahou and is moving like a manic sewing machine.

"Stab everything, it's the only way to be sure!" Kyouko's directives are more.. succinct than Amy's nuanced ones. But there's TEETH and too many joints and these THINGS need to DIE.

Hinote Kagari has posed:
Pulp Noir is put down. "Thanks." he says to the Galactic Bishounen. He is placed down on his feet as he looks up to the shadow figure and suddenly... a ring.

And there's so many clattering teeth. So many chompy, teeth. He pulls out his Tommy Gun from the confines of his coat, and starts firing magical lasers in rapid succession from the tip of the gun as he frowns.

"Why does it need to be TEETH!?" he calls out.

He starts taking after one of the runners. They'll need help!

Madoka Kaname has posed:
    Hope Blossom is keenly aware that one of the worst things that a crowd can do in a crisis is panic.

Hersnd that's exactly what the revelers do.

    Amy reminds them of the crocodile Witch. "Oh, right! There's that one," says Blossom. Was that what she was thinking about? Probably. There's probably been a thousand Witches spread out across roughly a hundred and fifty timelines, so there might actually have been a few different Witches with...

    ... Teeth.

    Kamiko shouts while clinging to Madoka's shoulder, "We'll know if its the Witch when it introduces itself. Like there's a boss title and everything. Usually."

    Hope Blossom cannot possibly actually protect all of these revelers. She starts firing arrows into the air. Some of them home in on the teeth minions that get too close to the normies. Others plant themselves into the ground, blocking off passageways, trying to corral the revelers away from the darker, unknown parts of the Labyrinth. "Everything here could be a death trap. Be careful! Don't just wander off!"

    Sadly, if there's one thing that drunk adults are classically bad at doing, it's listening to teenagers who tell them what to do.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
The teeth have come out, and it's unfortunate for the revelers that they just might turn out to be the hamburg steak on the menu. All of them are running about in different directions, trying to outrun the teeth - the two who were running in circles are the ones who end up closes to Ginga Bishounen, and they watch him go in on the teeth with awe.

Well, awe and disgust, because while his gleaming swords don't drip with muck, they sure are sending it flying - shattered bits of tooth, wet chunks of gelatinous flesh, drips of blood and bodily fluids - they're all over the place now, spattering the wood flooring. The little hands are grabbing those bits, dragging them into the space between boards and below the floors.

Pulp Noir manages to catch up to one of them, and they look at him with wild eyes, reaching for his shoulder.

"What the hell is going on?! I just wanted hamburg steak man, I just, why are there - did I do drugs?! I can't do drugs, I'll get kicked out of school!"

As Puella, Red and Kyouko seem to be doing even more damage than the average would expect - Amy's rockets are blasting the teeth apart, in little spurts of biomatter each time, and Kyouko is creating a whirlwind of residue that's easily as rapidly growing and gross as Takuto's.

The problem is they keep coming - at least, when they can.

Hope Witch's arrows are effect for damage of course, but even more than that, they're blocking off paths - making it so the teeth swarm around the arrows but are blocked off, a pack of ravenous monsters worse than zombies could hope to be.

But there are five of these drunken victims, and two of them might be safe with Ginga Bishoune and Pulp Noir, but three of them are in trouble.

Two are the ones climbing plates, because, drunken climbing is not a good idea - one makes it to the top of a stack only to promptly fall off, landing on the ground with the sick snap of breaking bone, and howls, clutching a knee that should not be bending that way. Teeth start swarming towards him.

The other makes it most of the way up before pulling too hard, and sending plates toppling in a way of falling ceramics - luckily, he stays on top of a plate, and sliiiiiiides right next to Amy, covered in sticky red-brown residues. "Weapons?! What weapons gonna do anything against -"

He takes in the carnage and then swallows.

"Little sister, can I hide behind you?"

Yeah, his courage is gone, seeing the carnage this group is unleashing.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
The one in the most trouble though, is the one farthest away, who hears Madoka's warning and keeps running up the incline of stacked trays, scrambling higher and higher, trying to get away, because none of the teeth are going up there.

It's just the counters and the windows and those tickets and he hadn't seen that arm, that long, spindly arm, and he turns and shouts, "It's not wandering off when you're running for your life, you dumb kid -"

He shouldn't have shouted. There's a shadow above, and he looks up, stumbling to a halt, pinwheeling as he tries not to fall back because stopping on an incline is a bad idea -

And the enormous hand at the end of that arm snatches him up. His body is about as impressively sized as a snickers bar, as those pale hands grip and squeeze.

"What the hell?! What the hell, this can't be happening, this can't be happening - " kicking and yelling, but the hand isn't letting him go, and anyone who looks will see the person at the counter window turn, and they're facing the window now, they're leaning in, and they have a face that's an uncanny valley impression of a fast, bulging eyes in sunken, waxy flesh, hollow cheeks and a mouth twice as wide as a human mouth should be, full of jagged teeth and flat teeth and overgrown buckteeth - like the animal kingdom had gotten together and shoved their teeth all in one hellish mouth.

The hand moves to that mouth with all due speed, squeezing and squeezing all the while, and the drunken reveler caught inside it has stopped screaming and started wheezing, unable to draw breath -

And then her jaws shut and her teeth snap through flesh and bone with all the ease of biting the end off a carrot, and there's a gush of blood to stain her lips. The legs, still caught in that enormous hand, kick weakly in dying spasms.

Only then is there that boss title Kamito warned about, a dizzying overlay in their vision, that proclaims a name in Witch's runes.

The name is Rosina Leckermaul, though only Kamiko (and perhaps Hope Blossom) can read it.

Hinote Kagari has posed:
Pulp Noir is blasting through teeth, the Witch's familiars, as he frowns hard. He keeps up the fire, his gun making firing sounds the whole while and he looks to the drunken reveler as he speaks as he turns away from him to face the teeth and continue firing, occasionally looking over his shoulder as he feels his shoulder grabbed.

"Stay behind me. You won't need to worry about this once we're out of here, chief." he says.

That's when he looks upwards and his eyes go wide. Did.. what...!

That's horrifying. He stops firing just for a few seconds to take in the carnage, the strange runes he's familiar with but can't decipher. He fires again, as he grits his teeth.

"Fuck..! Fuck fuck fuck fuck." he lets out as he keeps firing, trying to clear out the jobbers now.

"How do we get them out of here!?" he calls out.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
"Kill everything!" Kyouko yells back to Pulp Noir's query. This is not a labrynth where one can daintily stride in and out of the horrors, not any of them are. Once it's all gone to hell with or without the handbasket, there's really not a lot of things to do except carnage.

And there is plenty of carnage. Kyouko doesn't even seem to notice the fact that she is liberally splattered with gore, mercifully none of it hers. At least not yet.

Kyouko watches that defiant climber as she starts making her way up towards where he's headed, and then.. well..

"Found the Witch!" It wasn't ideal, to say the least, to have one of the hapless mundanes end up as bait, but it was highly effective. Kyouko leaves aside the chompers for the moment, to bounce her way off counter and plates and trays and aim her unrelenting need to take out her fear and horror as violentce upon the witch in question.

Kyouko uses her momentum coming off that stacked tower of trays, pushing herself off to launch herself towards a spear attack into the hellish face full of FAR far far too many teeth.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Perhaps it's a bit of psychological armor; since she had that thought, Amy's slipped into the mindset of this being a game -- albeit one she can't lose -- and that's made it easier to focus on move, shoot, move.

    It does affect her rockets, a certain gamey-ness to their sound and visual effects -- rockets go unrealistically slow, and their explosions have that somewhat muted quality to them instead of sounding like an actual real explosion. They're just as effective as ever, though!

    Small help that does the fallen drunk, though. Well, at least he's not been eaten! Amy winces as she hears that crack -- an intrusion of realistic falling damage into the worldview helping stabiize her.

    What weapons will do anything against--?

    Amy just glances back at him. She has been shooting the monsters with a weapon the whole time! "I'm not very good for hiding behind, sorry. You need to stay away from my backblasts."

    And if he asked to hide behind her... She hasn't lucked into encountering an ex-soldier or anything like that. Well, she didn't have much hope of help from the civilians but it would've been nice if one could help shoot Familiars.

    ...That one guy is shouting. He's running towards the-- "HEY!" Amy shouts, "ARE YOU CRAZY?! DIDN'T YOU SEE THE--"

    And he's grabbed, and

    She flinches away, there's no point in looking, although she was too slow, she still saw out of the corner of her eye.

    Harden your heart. Shut up and multiply. Push feelings down and get to the next screen.

    The Witch-Hunting-- no, Witch-Killing machine turns her eyes towards the Witch. Gorey mouth. Legs. Brain destroyed. Already dead.

    She's suddenly holding a massive artillery cannon. "Down and cover your ears." Amy warns the human on the plate with her, and

                                      BOOM                                      

    A magical 105mm explosive shell is propelled into the witch at half a kilometer per second, regardless of that being too fast to see in a game. This is not a game, this is a cosmic horror, and Amy knows it's one of the ones that can die if you hit it hard enough, enough times. So you hit it hard with brutal physics and cold math.

    So she'll do that. Because she's special, and has the power to break those physics with her soul. Making explosives, getting them here, reloading, she bypasses all those restrictions and turns magic into physics -- and if train A leaves the station at 6PM and Jane has six apples and if 9.89 kg of high explosive hits a Witch at 0.5 km/s and then converts all of its magical and chemical energy into thermal and kinetic energy, that's a math problem, and she's always been good at those.

    "Kill everything." Rocket Girl Red states, at the same time as Kyouko.

    How many shots to Kill the Witch, so that the Humans may live?

Madoka Kaname has posed:
    Hope watches as one of the revelers gets far ahead, too far away for her to reach him.

    One day in the future, Madoka will wake up in a cold sweat. Homura will be nearby, stirred by her distress, holding her and comforting her and telling her that it's okay, it's just a nightmare, she's safe now. When things calm down and Madoka actually describes the dream, it will be of this moment. Except maybe it wont be of a stranger then. Maybe it'll be her own mother.

    After all, this could easily be Junko too, couldn't it?

    Yet this, too, is part of the job. One cannot protect people from the horrors of this world without facing those horrors oneself. This isn't Madoka's first trauma. It's just one among many, another mental scar, another image for her nightmares. Another burden for Gretchen to bear, should Kamiko ever wind up on that dark path again.

    "Everyone, please remain calm! I can't..." She hesitates and considers what to say. She grits her teeth. "You know what? Screw this! You're doing what -I- say today!" She draws back an arrow and releases into the air, where it splits into a swarm that follows her around. As the chattering teeth get too close, the arrows split off from the cloud and rain upon them, wiping some out and pushing the rest out of the way. "This is for your own good, whether you like it or not!"

    Madoka's moving now, with a speed that only a magical can match. Her feet land near the man with a broken leg, and with sudden precise movements she grabs the limb and sets the bone. "Sorry. This is going to hurt. I don't have painkiller," she warns, after she's already done it. One of the benefits of being a Chara Bearer is getting brief spurts of competence, and the Chara she's merged with is Medo.

    A wooden branch wraps around the leg, acting as a split. "You'll need a better one when you get to the hospital. We don't have time to argue. The rest of you, stay behind me! Don't go running off!"

    Hope hears Pulp Noir ask for a way out, and she points at the giant Rosina. "The quickest way out is through the Witch!"

    A ring of arrows surrounds her and the leg-broken reveler, providing a protective barrier. She turns her determined, angry pink gaze at the Witch and starts releasing arrow after arrow at the large monster.

    Kamiko mutters the Witch's name out of habit, "Rosina Leckermaul."

Takuto Tsunashi has posed:
"Yeah good stick around," Takuto tells the victims close by him and Pulp Noir, "we can clean up later." His voice is light and a little high, and there's a little too much white around his eyes, but his movements are graceful and impossibly smooth. It's almost a dance on three axes as he moves through the air and slices through teeth, gore and blood and ichor and general ick splattering everywhere--

--and he makes the mistake of glancing up when he hears that snap and that wail, and seeing past the broken-legged person and the teeth going for him to the guy who's--

--who's being crushed and eaten alive.

Takuto almost throws up.

Instead, his breathing shallow, he only keeps fighting the mouths harder. So many of them and they keep coming... he throws one sword through the mouth of one that's approaching to pin it to the floor for now, and does the same with his other sword. Then he slams his fists together in front of him and calls out, "TAU GALAXY BEAM!" and a big blast of homing projectile energy that zigzags through the air heads for mouth and mouth and mouth--

"I don't know!" he answers, anguish in the back of his voice. "We have to kill it! I'm not-- I just attack things--"

He's not the one who rescues people. He's used to dealing with problems that have tenable solid solutions that he just needs to find. He's used to victims not dying while he's fighting. To Pulp Noir, "Will you be okay?? I gotta fly up there and help the girl with hair like mine--!" Suddenly he's got another sword in hand and he stabs through something coming their way from behind, and he slashes at it, and it comes all apart and he hisses through his teeth. The sword goes back to his belt and he lifts off the ground again, making like a meteor-- and he yells, "TAU MISSILE!" and rockets straight at the thing's forehead.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
The Witch is chewing and chewing and chewing, patiently rending her meal into chunks that will slide into her gullet. There's an expression of something like peace on her face, as she satisfies her hunger -

And then Kyouko opens the flood gates, with a spear that punches through her cheek and lodges between two of those vicious teeth.

She howls, tossing her head furiously, and the slack pair of legs fall the counter with a wet thud as she goes to grab at Kyouko -

And then the 105mm explosive magical shell explodes against the hand that was coming for Kyouko, and it erupts in a messy spray of flesh and bone and there's too much of it all, too much flesh, too much bone, and an explanation is there, because the flesh knits and binds and clamors over itself to repair the hand and the Witch howls as Tau Missile that is Ginga Bishounen fires at her forehead -

She topples back, with Kyouko and the Ginga Bishiunen possibly barreling through with her, on the other side of the counter, and they're in an oversized Western-style diner, on this side, dusty and old and as covered in stacks of filthy dishes as one might expect from the state of the kitchen, but the Rosina Leckermaul is enormous, and she is -

Enraged.

On this side, with her whole body exposed, it's clear that she isn't a whole body - she is what she made of her victim, head and torso and arms, the end of her torso a weeping mass of flesh and entrails hanging behind.

She swats at them with enormous hands, screaming in wordless rage and hunger.

And on the other side of the counter, the teeth familiars are being destroyed, killed by shoot after shot from Pulp Noir and Hope Blossom, arrow and magical blast and water and rockets from Amy, a growing and expanding mess of biomass residue being steadily devoured by the hands which grasp and clasp from the ground below.

The man with the broken leg howls in pain as Madoka sets his injury, and mercifully for him, passes out. His buddy, cowering behind Amy, is starting to drunkenly weep, muttering, "Sean, Sean, Seanie nooooo-"

Sean must have been the one who he is no longer with them.

There's a growing quiet, on this side, and the gathered fighters will realize it's because the teeth are no longer chattering. One final blast from Pulp Noir, and there are no more teeth coming - at least for now.

Hinote Kagari has posed:
Pulp Noir will wonder tonight, if he could had done anything different to prevent this situation and it's going to haunt him for a few days. Yeah... he's gonna talk about this with Miho-chan. He has to. He has to work this out.

But that'll be later.

Right now he stops firing finally, putting way too many extra shots in the body of the last familiar with the chattering teeth. His shots finally end however as the tip of his gun stops firing. He does nothing cool after this. This isn't the time to be cool.

"I'm so sorry." he says towards the weeping man. He reaches into his coat and removes a revolver with his free hand and he hefts it upwards towards the Witch and he fires. And he fires. He fires again, large magical blasts from the tip of the gun, recoiling heavily with every shot. It hurts to keep it up.

But he keeps going.

"Kill it. Kill it now."

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
There is not a whole lot stopping Kyouko's forward momentum, and she tumbles through into the rest of the diner and then tumbles all the more as she's swatted aside by one of those hands, changing her trajectory to crash her off another stack of dripping filthy and now gore splattered plates. Her landing sends them crashing to the ground, the noise of broken crockery filling the disgusing kitchen.

Kyouko picks herself up, giving herself a shake as she bounces up that teetering tower to launch herself off and into another full on attack, her spear coming with all of her weight and momentum, lashing out into the jointed whipping form to spear it right into the Witch's eye. "You are a filthy disgusting mess, and you do not deserve anything anymore. It is time for you to be /done/." The puella's voice is calm, almost icily so as she throws herself into the face of the Witch.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    You're a Witch-Killing Machine.

    It's something you can tell yourself because it makes you feel like you'll win this,

    That you need not FEAR.

    Carnage won't matter. Pain won't matter. The fragility of the human body -- for all its incredible resilience and survivability when compared against other animals, flesh and bone don't stand against high speed metal, or flame and frost, or hard vacuum, when pitted against the uncaring physics of a universe of nothing filled with rocks, flying in curves -- the sheer amount of processes that have to not be disrupted so that the person, the pattern and neurochemical processes in a soft wrinkly skin wrapped around a blob of jell-o, can continue to exist, don't matter.

    (And isn't there something very Mahou Shoujo about that? People should not be connectomes and neurochemical impulses in wrinkles wrapped around jell-o, they should be souls, they should be hearts, and if those souls had a form separate from the body shouldn't it be something like a beautiful crystal?)

    It hurts, though, to think it. It's stressful, it's straining, to be it. However familiar it is, however easily slid into, thinking like this...

    The thing inside Amy's soul gem that shines bright red, shines just a bit dimmer right now.

    But the gem, and its setting, and the body it's attached to, and the magic, will keep it safe, so it can be a little girl sharing tender moments and laughter and love with her friends another day--

    Sean, Seanie no...!
    Familiars down. Arm him? No, he might blow himself up. Red almost ignores him, but a thought occurs, from some part of her still trying to think of feelings: "Stay with the girl in pink. She's... as close to a doctor as we have." Amy states, neutrally.

    She doesn't see what he sees, the small girl in white and red spattered with gore like a magical girl back from a helldive.

    She dismisses the cannon, and the pillar of flame that engulfs her to power up her henshin doesn't actually burn, fortunately, and the last the man sees of her up close is with the armor parts and helmet, still more Science Ninja Gachaman than any hard scifi, but in this moment, in this context, as with below Paris, it calls to mind a certain Slayer.

    Witches are a kind of doom, after all.

    and then she's flying towards the window. Hovering above and away from the others so there will be no accidents with backblasts, no deafening others with her shots, she just conjures the cannon, takes aim at that mouth, with all those teeth, because everyone knows a mouth is a weak point you should shoot, and she fires.

                                     BOOM!                                      

    And she fires!

                                     BOOM!                                      

    Again! Kill it! Kill it now!

                                     BOOM!                                      

Madoka Kaname has posed:
    This whole thing has already gone to hell.

    Well, that's not quite right. It was always hellish in here. They just walked in on it.

    Still, if they can stop any further death, if they can put the Witch down here and now, that at least will make things a little bit easier.

    Madoka watches as the man passes out, and she catches his head to make sure it doesn't bash on anything before turning her attention back to the Witch. She leaves him there, within a wall of arrows that will hopefully protect him while she fights. The clattering has stopped, and now they face the monster herself.

    "Kamiko-chan... still with me?"

    Kamiko whimpers. "Believe it or not, I've seen worse."

    Hope Blossom sighs, and then says, "My Heart: UNLOCK!"

    Medo's egg leaves Madoka's chest, and the tiny nurse fairy flits down to the passed out guy. Kamiko's egg forms around her, and she takes Medo's place in Madoka's heart. The frilly pink dressed is replaced with the white flowing dress of a goddess, and in spite of all this horror the Aura of Hope washes over the area.

    Hope Concept sends her magic to the other magicals; whether they be friends, allies or strangers; giving them a boost to their attack power, and a bit of a prismatic aura to their spells. When she draws back her bow, a platoon of phantasmic Hope Blossoms appear behind her, each drawing back an arrow of their own. Hope Concept and her clones release all at once, filling the air with pink and rainbow destruction.

    There's no attack name, but there's a feeling of Hope Concept suddenly calling out some random yet fitting phrase. As if she forgot, for a moment, to actually speak instead of communicating entirely by feel.

Takuto Tsunashi has posed:
The Ginga Bishounen's white longcoat, his gloves, his boots, even his cravat and the golden epaulets on his shoulders, are all spattered with blood and gore and it's even in his hair and he's furious and sick to his stomach and furious, and he takes a deep breath--

APPRIVOISE!

He continues yelling: "Dashing FUCKING Entrance! GINGA BISHOUNEN... TAUBURN!"

Ghost-light, white and gold and pink and blue, sparkles around the boy hanging in midair with the blue-white rocket nimbus around him. It forms a ghostly set of extremely dapper and very tall armor around him, in the shape of the small robot that's occasionally seen with him, including a mask and a fantastic hat-looking thing with a plume on his head--

--and he rockets up again, face set and pale behind the masked robot face, and as Madoka buffs them all and the extra energy focuses his resolve like a magnifying glass, he yells out:

"TAU PILE CRUSHER!"

The 'coat tails' of Tauburn's body -- the piles -- circle around one of the armored Takuto's phantom robot fists, creating a mixed energy-and-armor weapon, which he uses to blast a glittering crackling energy cannonball of HOW DARE at the Witch's head.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Kyouko is the first to launch herself at the Witch, the many jointed lengths of her spear snapping together into a single propelled shaft, a length of metal that's driven through her eye and into her skull, into the space that would be, in a creature of mere flesh and blood, her brain. She cannot knit the wound with the spear in place.

Shehe howls in agony, tossing her head like a horse resisting the reins, like a buck bearing its antlers for the goring.

Pulp Noir fires. And fires. And fires.

Hersnd every crashing bolt of magic tears flesh asunder, until it no longer reknits, until the wounds weep tar-like blood in steady streams.

Amy's fires into the gaping mouth and Rosina Leckermaul's screaming cuts out, as her throat explodes out, again, again, again.

She is a monster of sinew and bone and her flesh is not flesh is meat that reaks and rots and blood that clumps and Hope Concept cannot offer her salvation in the form of life.

She can only escort her soul to its final place, as her arrows rain down, piercing flesh, pinning her in place -

And Ginga Bishounen Tauburn's mighty fist, blazing with energy, with the force of his Drive, bursts clean through her skull.

The Witch writhes like a fish on the line, gurgling and weeping for a moment of terrible noise -

And then she dissolves into nothingness, leaving behind a single floating grief seed.

The biomatter clinging to their bodies turns to dust, and flakes away.

The Labyrinth trembles.

The three remaining conscious civilians, formerly revelers, now a weeping trio, collapse in a pile around their unconscious friend as the Witch's Kiss peels off their necks.

The little grasping hands are gone.

Hinote Kagari has posed:
Pulp Noir stops firing only when the ... thing ... dissolves away. He lowers both guns and drops them to the ground. They clatter. He watches any mess on his body dissolve, and flake away, leaving him clean.

He doesn't feel clean. He'll take a shower later. He still won't feel clean. Yea.

He walks over to the group as they cry over their friend. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry you won't remember what really happened here." he says as he makes no attempt to move them. Let them grieve for now while they can remember.

He steps backwards. He steps backwards again. He finally turns around and starts walking away.

He has other places to be.

He needs to.. to punch a TV Turned into a gameshow host or something. Something more silly than... than whatever this is.

Takuto Tsunashi has posed:
For a long moment, Takuto just breathes, staying in midair, covered in unspeakable horror. Then he lets go of his armor, and his breathing is ragged, and he lowers but not far enough for them to see his bloodspattered face and any overbrightness of his eyes, any spilling of that overbrightness, any tracking of it through the blood on his face...

"H-hey," he calls down, his voice wavering. "I'm Takuto Tsunashi. Eleventh grade, I-- I bet you know what school. If you need me for anything. I gotta... go."

And then go he does, dipping as soon as he can see the real sky again and vanish into it.

Madoka Kaname has posed:
    Not all Witches can be saved. This, too, is known to Hope Concept. During her trip around the world to fix all of the damage that Gretchen had caused, she had to put a few Witches like this to rest. Gruesome creatures, no longer recognizable as anything human. Many, potentially, never were. Hope still cannot say with any certainty whether a given Witch was a person or merely a stray Familiar grown fat off of human life.

    Whatever it was, it's a Grief Seed now.

    And grieve she does. Not openly, or in a showy way, but as her phantasmal copies vanish she's left alone, an angel floating over the mourners, joining them in spirit. It does not occur to her for several moments that the former revelers cannot see her in the way that the magicals can, and when it finally does she makes little note of it other than to observe the translucency of her hands for a moment before returning to her quiet contemplation and commiseration.

    As for their chewed up friend, she can offer them no further help. The afterlife, if such exists, is beyond her reach even in her current state. For the one with a broken leg, she actually can offer one bit of help, as she takes out her cell phone and starts dialing emergency services.

    It's only when the other side answers and hears nothing but silence does she realize that she needs to power down in order to actually talk to people. One day she will manage to use this henshin without something weird happening, she promises herself, but for now she simply drops henshin and says, "Hi, yes, there was an accident here on <Street Name>. A man fell and broke his leg. There was another who got hurt but... I'm pretty sure he's beyond saving, and I'm not sure where he went."

    Takuto leaves, and Madoka covers her phone to say, "Madoka Kaname. Same place."

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
It is hell. Kyouko has known that for quite some time already and it's moments like this that the puella becomes certain. There's gore everywhere. There's visions that she will never unsee. There's grief and devistation and she lands in what is still, on some level, gore in her mind, even if it not longer is in reality.

Kyouko is breathing heavily, on the ground, still leaning on her spear as she watches the grief seed that all of that horror has crystalized into. She looks around, her attention watching Takuto leave, she knows wehre to find him again and then back to the others. And the grief seed.

There's no visible signs of horror or truma, save that Kyouko is still and cold and icy. "Which of us is taking the seed, Amy?" Because there's no point in just /leaving/ it.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Later, Amanda is chatting on Datcord and, whether there is any intersection between her favorite genre, and slasher horror, comes up. There aren't a lot of examples, but...

    Anyway, that reminds her that she never did finish reading Shuffle Academy. Who will turn out to be the killer? Why are the students trapped there, and will they escape? She wants to know!

    Until she gets to the next gruesome scene of the killer's handiwork, and the mental image flashes through her head, the sound of the crunching, the squishing, the gnashing of teeth, and the half a person, runs through her head, and

    ...Ugh. Now she feels awful and she has to clean vomit up off the floor. At least she turned away from the keyboard in time...

    Now, though, she's trying not to feel. Kill the monster. Save the people. She's done this before, and she'll do it again.

    Maybe 'as long as I have my friends to help me, I can do anything!' is a thought too far from this mental state, but... Allies raise the probability of a good outcome tremendously, and their efforts mean she's not spending as much magic, which is good, because she needs it to kill more monsters and protect more people--

    The flesh, the mass, is being reduced by their attacks, until there is nothing. The goal is achieved, the problem is solved, the mission is complete--

    And Amy snaps out of it, landing by the fading Witch as she dissolves, because there is one order of important business before she can just stand around talking.

    Amy dismisses the armor parts, returning to a normal henshin which is magically clean, and holds out her arm, the gem on the back of her costume's wrist about a sixth-full of that roiling black corruption, as red eyes meet red eyes. "I've got one seed, about half-full. How about you? ...I could top myself off with this seed and then you take the rest of it, maybe?" the Rocket Puella suggests.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
The soul gem at her neck is fairly dark, and Kyouko lifts her hand to touch at it. "I've one that's pretty ragged." She nods to Amy and then gestures. "Top up, I'll take the rest." She's pacing, up and down the pavement full of restless energy rather than the tired that she really should be feeling, or the after effects of having gotten slammed into a stack of crockery.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy's eyes widen in alarm at the sight of Kyouko's soul gem -- how did she let it get that low?! -- and she clearly wants to say 'no, you just take it!' ...but, social instincts are telling her that Kyouko might react badly to such charity.

    Red picks up the seed and holds it to her gem. When about half the corruption is purged, she pulls the seed away, hesitating... but, Kyouko will clearly be able to see if she doesn't finish it, so.

    Amanda's soul shines bright red again, and she hands the grief seed over to Kyouko before turning to the others.

    "Hey, are you al--" she starts to ask, but is confronted with. Only Madoka.

    "...It's just us, huh?" She glances at the phone. "What story do we tell to Emergency Services about why students are outside a bar at almost midnight?"

    She also turns back to Kyouko, since apparently explaining to Pulp Noir or Takuto about Witches is not happening today. "I'm Amanda Faust, grade 10. Or, Magical Rocket Girl Red." She half-smiles, and holds out a hand to shake. "You're... 'Cherry Spear', right? I've seen you a couple of times but I don't think we ever got to talk."

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
"Thanks." Kyouko accepts the grief seed and she doesn't hestitate to brighten up her soul gem, although certainly the remainder doesn't get her all the way to topped up. Perhaps her mood isn't willing to feel quite that good right now.

"I've seen you." Kyouko confirms to Amy with a nod. "I'm not really much for talking." She might be, on another night, but tonight is not that night." She considers the hand a moment and then she remembers that shaking hands is a thing. She gives Amy's hand a firm shake. "Kyouko. Uh.. I've no idea what grade I'm supposed to be in."

She nods, looking over to Madoka to consider her a moment and then back to Amy. "Yeah. Another time."

Tonight is the night for Kyouko being social either.

Madoka Kaname has posed:
    Madoka Kaname hears Amy's question and hesitates for a moment before saying, "I'm out here to pick up my mom, who frequents these kinds of places. You're here with me, unless you don't want to be, in which case you don't have to stick around and I'll see you at school."

    She gives Kyouko a sideways glance before saying, "Thanks for coming, Kyouko."

    Madoka may be a social creature, but she's not feeling very chatty tonight either.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    "Thanks for coming." Amy echoes, to Kyouko, before turning back to Madoka. "...Do you want me to be here? You don't have to be... alone, after all this."

    Beat.

    "I dunno if I wanna be alone, either."

    She dehenshins. She's got sweatpants and an oversized jacket on over her sweatshirt, which is fitting enough for suddenly deciding to help a friend with an errand at late night in the cold.

    Amy holds out her arms, looking concerned for her friend.

    "Do you want a hug...?"

Madoka Kaname has posed:
    Madoka frowns at the mourners, says, "Yes, actually," gives Amy a hug and then goes back to quietly waiting and staying on the phone.