Alice grabbed the other girl by the scruff of her coat, yanking her back up to her feet and shoving her forward, both of them stumbling as they tried to hurriedly regain their footing in the sudden panic.

  “A-Ah?! Oh, no, I-I didn’t realize you were in the middle of tracking them…!”

  “I think you’re confusing who’s tracking who here…!”

  They ducked low as they moved, another car spiraling over their heads as the threat advanced to meet them, sensors having successfully identified a target as they shifted into a direct combat stance.

  “Okay Gwyn, y-you practiced for this, deep breaths…”

  She mumbled to herself, clearly terrified but trying to steel herself in front of her supposed senior, hands trembling as she shoved them into her bag, rooting around for something out of sight.

  “R-Right, so… so the area is clear of onlookers, m-meaning it’s safe to find a pce to change now, is that… right…?”

  Looking over to Alice for confirmation on standard engagement procedures, she instead found empty air, the other girl already pnting a sneaker into the side of a totaled sedan as she leapt over top of it, having completely shifted her attention back to the metallic insect opposite them both the millisecond she’d been moved out of harm’s way.

  “…hey, w-wait up, I’ll be right there!”

  Alice didn’t wait up for her, eye already locked onto the carapace glistening under the dingy moonlight, face locked into a grimace as she sprinted full speed directly towards it, not giving it time to recalibrate where its target was after the first pair of lobbed projectiles.

  She stayed low as she ran, trying to scan for anything even remotely weapon-shaped, finding a distinct ck of discarded rebar clubs in her immediate vicinity. And before she could find anything usable, she was already close enough to reach out and grab the beast, lunging with one arm outstretched, just needing to get one good grip on it to rip it open like with the st one.

  “C’mere you goddamn pile of rust-- guh…!”

  Her attempt at immediate resolution was swiftly answered, one of the creature’s front legs raising quickly with an audible whir of gears, kicking her solidly in her ribcage and unching her off to the side, smming spine-first into a streetmp hard enough to nearly crack it in half.

  “Ugh, fucker… you weren’t that fast before, that’s cheating…”

  “Need I remind you its legs were massively damaged beforehand with the st entity of this description you encountered?”

  “…right, shit, forgot that part.”

  She rolled to the side as she fell from where she was dented into the light pole, one arm filing behind her back before it finally found purchase, pushing down hard until her spine snapped snugly back into position, wiggling her toes testingly before jumping back to her feet once again.

  “Oy, over there, you feel like doing something to this one or what?”

  “…o-oh, right, sorry, got distracted again!”

  Gwyn spped her cheeks a few times, shaking her head and trying to focus herself at all as she finally out what she’d been burrowing through her belongings for.

  Proudly brandishing it, she raised a palm-sized book over her head, pages fluttering open as magic burst out from within it.

  “Hearts beat free! Sugar Change!”

  Light erupted from the tome she held aloft, washing over her body and engulfing her entirely, popping moments ter like a soap bubble, revealing the newly attired magical girl within.

  A pure white dress hugged her body, matching fingerless elbow gloves and knee-high boots completing the uniform, pastel pink detailing and accessories lining every inch of the attire as she transformed.

  “…nailed it!~ Did you see th--”

  Her excitement over her perfect, textbook execution of her magical girl transformation was short lived, her attention returning to Alice and only barely noticing their mutual enemy lunging in, one sickled arm punching a hole into the ground in front of her as she leapt backwards just barely in time.

  “Yeah, great, you do anything other than pose?”

  Her eyes were wide as she’d nearly been stabbed through, staying stunned for half a second before scrambling backwards and standing back up again, clearing her head again as she refocused.

  “Y-Y-Yeah! Sorry, I’m ready here now, p-promise!”

  “Don’t tell me, just-- gah…!”

  Alice had stepped forward slightly, instinctively moving to try and help the other girl, the mantis between them both instantly taking the chance to pivot the other arm in its socket, swiping it at her midsection and gouging deep into her, spilling messy entrails out of her abdomen before she could dodge backwards away from them.

  She spat up a mass of blood, her stomach already pulled back inside of her skin by the time the sanguine fluids even reached the ground, the pain unfortunately significantly more permanent than the wound that caused it.

  “Urgh… okay, we’re good again. Fuck, I’m never getting used to that.”

  She stumbled backwards, wiping blood from her face, Gwyn watching in momentary horror as she was eviscerated in front of her, before her unnatural rapid healing stitched her shut once again.

  “Oh, geez, are you--”

  “I’m fine, yeah, no worries, focus on the fucking bug thank you!”

  “…r-right!”

  The uniformed magical girl took what advantage she could from the creature’s diverted attention, throwing her hands forwards, palms outwards, brow furrowed, trembling as suppressed as she could manage in her given circumstances.

  “Okay, okay, you practiced this… f-focus the energy into your fingers… let it gather up, and… release!”

  Her fingers slowly squeezed inwards like she was squeezing down into something, before finally shooting into their upright and outstretched positions, a fsh of pastel light running down her arms and erupting outwards and forwards, bursting free as she fired off her own magic.

  It hovered shapelessly before her for a millisecond, before taking form inches from her fingertips, shaping itself into multiple crystallized chunks about the size of her fist, firing off one after another at her target like gemstone bullets.

  “Take this…!~”

  She smirked as her attack unched off, a second wave of projectiles joining the first as they sailed through the air, catching the scattered light illuminating the makeshift battlefield and shining like starlight.

  The missiles reached their target, and one after another all pelted against its hardened shell, smashing upon it harmlessly, only a scant few managing to find seams and joints in the armor, wedging themselves in weakly before dissipating like the rest had.

  “…eh?! It didn’t do anything…!”

  Her only shred of confidence that she’d managed to work up melted just as quickly as she’d found it, her expression shifting back into hopeless worrying, already taking a few fearful steps backwards.

  “I-I… that’s the only thing I can do, I… oh gods, I can’t even hurt it…”

  She started to turn on her heel, every instinct that her told her to run from the first one bubbled back to the surface mockingly, wholly sure she was helpless.

  If she stayed, she’d just be in the way… the other girl was stronger, more experienced, more capable… she just had to let her--

  “Don’t just stand there, again!”

  “…e-eh?!”

  She looked back upwards, her sinking heart jumping back up into her chest, if only for just a moment.

  “Hit the fucker with that again! Hit the legs or something, get it to slow down!”

  …Gwyn had expected to be told off for how useless her only attack had been. Every time she’d failed a practice shot or missed the targets or just failed outright to even create her crystals, she’d been immediately scolded for it. But…

  “…right!”

  Her hands locked back into practiced position, teeth clenched tightly, her arms no longer trembling at all as familiar sensations returned to her extremities. Squeeze, fill, aim, and release.

  Another starstorm burst forth at her command, masses of solid crystal firing off once more towards the armored enemy across from her, her aim slightly lowered this time as the hardened chunks pelted into its lower body.

  And once more, almost every shot bounced harmlessly off of it, the few that would have struck home being avoided as the mantis responded to the first attack, skittering to the side to avoid the pestilence of projectiles.

  “I-It just dodged it…!”

  “Yeah, they’re a twitchy little prick, huh?”

  Alice gred at the annoyingly swift insectoid, its head swiveling back and forth as it tried to identify which target to attempt to neutralize first.

  “Get ready to shoot it again, ok?”

  “But it’ll just--”

  “Just get those rocks ready again and let me handle the dodging bit!”

  The uniformed magical girl hesitated slightly before nodding, backing up just a hair before returning to charging her singur attack, leaving Alice to stare back at their foe with a sigh.

  “Well, I gunked you up the st time, so…”

  Clutching onto another terribly unpleasant idea yet again, she gathered as much air as she could in her sore lungs, screaming like an enraged beast as she charged directly in towards the mechanized construct.

  It’s attention had been turned to the other girl in that exact moment, giving Alice a slight window to get in closer while it wasn’t looking at her.

  However that single extra moment could only account for so much distance, the arm bde nearest to her swiveling to meet her even more quickly than its eyes could move, stabbing downwards with a calibrated precision at the excessively noisy enemy target charging at it.

  Unlike the earlier grazing blow that had only spilled a scant few of her internal organs, this stab struck true, the tip of the long bde finding purchase just below her sternum, pressing in and piercing right through the soft flesh it found as it ripped straight through, severing nerves and blood vessels and muscles alike as it stabbed deeply into and through her, finally emerging through her lower back with a spray of viscera.

  “No…!!”

  It stabbed downwards until the bde’s bloodied tip met the ground below, holding it there for a second that felt like hours, eventually lifting it’s impaled trophy off the ground as it turned its attention back to the girl still nervously charging her spell.

  That is, until it felt the slender, bded limb it held aloft trembling, head jerking back to the side to find its trophy still impossibly alive.

  Hands alternated pressing ft against the smooth steel and pulling forward, dragging herself further down the bde tearing through her entire chest cavity, still hellbent on reaching the bug that was now attached directly to the blood-soaked hellhound of a woman.

  “Eyes… on… me… asswipe…!”

  Red saliva gurgled out from her lips as she forced words out with at least one punctured lung, her own intestines reaching out and wrapping themselves around the beast’s arm as she yanked herself down the length of the sword.

  There were zero pnned responses in the wires and circuits composing its brain for how to react to a woman nearly cut entirely in half still pursuing it, the robotic bug eventually lifting its other sickled arm to try and pry her off of itself, desperately attempting to shake her away violently as she advanced on it, slowly and impcably.

  Even the addition of a second bded limb proved mostly unhelpful, the edge slicing into the immovable woman’s arm easily as she screamed in even more pain, though it quickly found itself being pulled into the mass of twisting meat as muscles reformed around it, yanking it into the fused lump as well as the insect was left stumbling and pulling uselessly at its trapped arms.

  “Now… shoot… gughh…”

  Gwyn, still holding her charged shots back, did her absolute best to not lose her lunch from the horrific sight in front of her, her previously steeled conviction now once again thoroughly shaken like a frightened kitten.

  “…r-r-right…!”

  Mustering what strength she could stir up, she once more followed through her practiced motions, releasing her overcharged avanche of crystal all at once.

  Masses of even rger crystal than before rocketed forwards from around her, countless shooting stars firing off under the evening’s illumination en masse, glittering brilliantly as they traced their trajectories with mirrored moonlight.

  And with crunch after satisfying crunch, they began striking home, pelting the leg joints of the distracted and immobilized mass of meat and metal, snapping through the weak pting covering them as both legs on the side facing her with snapped off, the seams in its lower body also being caved in and torn open at certain points, revealing complex machinery underneath that was swiftly crushed under the pointed gemstones that struck after.

  A second barrage fired off shortly after the first, peppering the already heavily damaged structure’s of it’s thoroughly abused carapace, tearing through the circuitry beneath as the beast shuddered violently, parts of it shutting off and breaking down under the glistening barrage.

  Having lost most of it’s motor functionality on that side, the monster’s other arm finally fell limply to the side, leaving it only half its legs and the arm ensnared by Alice’s makeshift web of winding flesh, the barely conscious girl finally dragging her disemboweled corpse all the way down to its shoulder, bracing her own hands against the ice-cold metal as she squeezed down with what strength she could muster on the exposed edges of twisted pting to steady herself.

  Her palms slid upwards over the shiny exoskeleton, grasping half-blindly until they reach the seam of its neck, hands bracing on either end of it, pushing its head out of the way as it’s wounded servos struggled to fight back.

  It turned to face her directly, its eyes staring directly into hers, the emotionless gaze of ceramic and gss seemingly pleading for mercy as it felt its st functioning system begin to be tugged at roughly.

  Alice Decaras, however, was not currently in a merciful mood.

  With a screeching howl, her hands pulled in opposite directions, her muscles tearing and pulling themselves back together as she overexerted them with reckless abandon, sparks firing off as cables split in half, joints twisting as she pulled and pulled and pulled harder still, ripping the mantis’s metal skull further and further out of its socket, exposing the delicate machinery withing to the te night air.

  Eventually, the gap between head and shoulders was wide enough to almost crawl into, the st shreds of am internal skeleton clinging on hopelessly against her rage-fueled assault.

  Singurly focused on breaking it beyond the barest possibility of repair or recovery, she forced her head into the opening, scuttling in closer still, leaning her entire broken body in ft against it.

  Teeth dripping with her own spilled viscera clenched down around the creature’s spine, blood dipping into oil as she bit down harder than humanly possible, the muscles in her jaw protesting just as much as the soft metal they sank into.

  Her head wrenched side to side, snarling like a dog pying tug of war, fighting the thing’s own internal structure as she tore it side to side, her fangs steadily pulling upwards, feeling the pop of wires and artificial muscles being torn loose one by one as its head rose higher and higher still out of the socket it had been pced into.

  And with one final, snarling jerk of her head, Alice ripped her head back out, pulling several feet of robotic spinal column out with her, the st glimmer of light behind its insectoid eyes finally blinking out as the st system keeping it vaguely functional failed entirely.

  The entire structure, including the wadded meat grown around one arm, colpsed onto the pavement below, the woman in the middle of it all already solidly and hopelessly unconscious, a grin seemingly pstered to her face under the gore soaked trophy she kept clutched between her teeth.

  The lone magical girl was once again left by herself in the cold, quiet evening, entirely lost trying to process any of the emotions running through her mind as she looked out over the eviscerated and satisfied mess of the woman who had now saved her life once again.