7.16 Homecoming
December 2384
The rain fell ceaselessly, with heavy drops noisily hitting the metal shell of the now inert mech. Confused, shivering people stood under the cover of a nearby bus station as the Magical Girl who just freed them prepared the final blow against the dimension-collapsing machinery inside the mech’s torso. The tubes were still active, even with no more sacrifices in their chambers to amplify the attraction between worlds, doing unknown work, which she intended to end.
She summoned her trusty halberd into her hand and lifted it above her head, only taking a moment to take in the sight of the defeated machine before she brought the blade down and cleaved clean through the machine.
Some of the tubes ruptured, and sparks flew in the air, signaling that it was time for Bellona to build some distance. She flew into the air, away from the unstable machinery, and not a moment too soon: it ruptured and the remains of Christian Hayder’s personal mech were annihilated.
“You may have stopped our machinations today, but we are far from done with you!”
Fraus was still conscious, talking directly to Bellona’s mind as she held the remaining shard of her crystal. She scoffed in response.
“You will join Discordia and her daughter in father’s custody, unable to do anything further. Your numbers are dwindling,” she replied and stowed the shard before it could protest any further as she landed on the ground.
A man approached, wearing a pilot suit. Her mysterious ally, judging by the barely functional mech he landed on the street beforehand. He kept looking at the crashed snake mech in disbelief.
“So, can you explain to me what in the hell was really going on the past days?”
***
“I’m going to be honest… worlds colliding due to malicious gods… I would have arrested you and handed you off to a shrink before today,” the man spoke, with his eyes lingering on the ruined machine in the distance.
“Until my own boss started shouting something about a goddess, got his head blown off by a guy who should have been dead at least ten seconds before he managed to pull the trigger, and then this mech started rampaging through the streets, that is.”
Bellona gave him a shrug and a tired smile as she turned towards the survivors from Earth, looking at them one by one. They didn’t have any external injuries, though she wasn’t sure if their stay in the machine’s compartments had done anything else to them. She expected some trauma, at the very least.
“We’ll have to wait a little, then we can get you home, just like the others,” she reassured them, looking towards the large pyramid-shaped structure in the distance.
“Can you walk? We should get you indoors…”
They nodded, one after the other, and Bellona guided them through the streets. Thanks to the ongoing evacuation alarms, no one was outside to bother them, instead securely huddling inside underground bunkers.
“I have one question, however,” the pilot now spoke, looking directly at Bellona.
“Ask away, then.”
“Why did you save me when I tried to blow us both up?”
“Because that’s what a Magical Girl does.”
She could hear a little snort from him after she spoke those words, but he didn’t look put off. He stared into the distance, towards the towering pyramid.
“…I guess that’s a good enough reason.”
Father Winter’s Embrace, 6310
Athena reached the top floor of the palace just in time for the large doors to be pushed open. The confused elves scrambled to their feet and bowed their heads as they saw the High Enchantress leave the throne room, though the woman looked terrible.
Her royal make-up was ruined by her recent, obvious crying, with her puffed eyes crowning two grey streaks running down her cheeks. She let her head hang as she stared at the floor, as if she didn’t dare to talk to her subjects or even look at them. An understandable reaction, given how much cruelty she inflicted on her subjects in the name of saving them from starvation, all at the behest of a cruel goddess who came in the guise of a benefactor.
Miyu and Momo followed her, holding hands while looking at the Enchantress with contemplative expressions. As they noticed Athena, they quickly hurried to her, while the Enchantress faced her people – and bowed deeply in front of them.
“Nothing will ever be able to make right what I did to all of you. In attempting to save you, I used you. I threw your lives away. Gave you away to a foreign ruler, counting on her mercy to keep you safe and fed. I stole the food of another world, to buy you more time. For this and many more things, I fully expect to be judged appropriately. I will not object, no matter what you decide to do with me,” she spoke quietly, keeping her head low.
“To be fully honest with all of you: I deserve nothing less than death.”
“And what would that accomplish, child?” a gruff voice spoke. Athena turned her head and saw Caelon, who emerged from the staircase. He appeared entirely unfazed by the climb, giving Athena more reason to believe that the elves simply didn’t tire as fast. The High Enchantress turned her head away from him, speaking quietly.
“It’s a matter of justice, Caelon.”
“Killing any more of our kind would be a greater injustice, Lilieth.”
“But…”
“Just this once: listen to your elders. Your mother wouldn’t have wanted any of this. Not at all. And least of all that her last remaining daughter begs for her kin to execute her. You were deceived, and so were we all. I will not punish you any more for being a tool of a malicious force!”
The woman looked at the ground, and Athena could see tears hitting the marble floor while Caelon approached and put a hand on the High Enchantresses’ shoulder. Athena faced the pair of idols, turning back into Seika.
“You two did great. I never doubted you,” she remarked, and she could see Momo struggling to fight back some tears in response before she swallowed them and asked a question instead.
“What happened to…?”
Seika shook her head, and for the first time, Momo didn’t look like she wanted to wring Maria’s neck. She looked at a distant point past Seika.
“…well, she went out doing a, like, good thing in the end.”
“Are we going to bring her back home, then?” Miyu asked, and now Caelon approached them.
“Actually, since she killed the source of the drought, we thought we could give her a burial in our world. Unless, of course, there are some attachments in your world that you are aware of?”
Seika shook her head. All she ever saw of Maria was a lonely woman at the top, who paid the world back for its cruelty in kind. Her parents were dead, and there was no other family that Seika knew of.
“Honestly, I think she might be happier with being buried in your world than ours. She didn’t appear to like it all that much,” Seika responded, and Caelon nodded his head.
“Then, what are your plans for now? We would hold a feast for you, but… you know.”
“We will have to wait until some of our allies come and pick us up. We lost the scythe, and with that our way back,” Seika admitted.
Caelon nodded and was about to say something, as a familiar voice interrupted them.
“That won’t be necessary. It appears that with the destruction of that machine, your adversaries are no longer interested in this world, and the shroud is lifted. Presumably to empower another of its kind elsewhere.”
Nicola stepped out of the heavy doors of the throne room, as if she had always been there. Behind her was the white void of Janus’ infinite domain of doors, and more than that, there were wagons behind her as well. Wagons filled with produce, and wagons transporting people. As Seika approached the doorway, she could see more than a hundred elves accompanying the wares. A young elf in a maid outfit stood by the puppeteer’s side – the one who saw Maria off, Seika remembered.
“High Enchantress,” Nicola addressed the elf, who was still on her knees, though now her sorrowful visage was showing awe and surprise.
“I would like to make you a formal offer of peace. I bring with me enough food and seeds to keep your people fed and to prepare a bountiful harvest once the seasons allow for it. Additionally, I will deliver to you everyone who expressed the desire to return home. Some chose to stay in Romystedt, and I hope you will respect their wishes, but the vast majority will gladly return home.”
The elf kept quiet, appearing too stunned to speak at the moment. It took her a while before she managed to utter a quiet ‘why?’.
“Because,” the maid next to Nicola spoke and stepped forward.
“Despite everything; the mind control, the invasions of other worlds, becoming the thrall of a malevolent deity, your mind was ever set on ensuring the safety of your people, Lilieth. You were deceived, but you never stopped loving your people, no matter how misguided you were.”
“You’re much too forgiving, cousin,” the High Enchantress spoke with a bitter smile to the elven maid. Caelon approached the girl and gave her a hug as he saw and recognized her.
“I believed you dead…!”
The maid let him hug her, showing a little smile as she patted his back.
“I have been well cared for, uncle. I even got these pretty clothes!”
“You were always carefree… I heard you were the one who guided the dream shaper our way? How do you know her?”
The maid squirmed a little in place and looked to the side with an awkward smile, causing Caelon’s brow to furrow, turning the wrinkles on his forehead into deep canyons.
“All of my kin have horrible taste in women.”
The reunion was interrupted by Nicola clearing her throat, gesturing to the many wagons she brought with her.
“If you don’t mind, High Enchantress, I think it is about time that we fed your people and decided our next course of action.”
***
The elves accompanying Nicola were quick at work, preparing a feast in the palace’s large audience hall on the ground floor. The High Enchantress recalled every mind-controlled soldier, and one by one their helmets were removed, with their disgraced ruler offering each and every one of them a sorrowful apology.
Only a handful were genuinely angry and walked away. Seika couldn’t fully grasp how these people had such capacity for forgiveness, with only humans available for comparison. She herself held on to a grudge for the longest time, and her anger at Lethe never fully ebbed, even after defeating her and seeing her tragic past.
Miyu and Momo were transformed into the Celestial Sisters and entertained the children of the stranded French family, which Caelon had brought here after his reunion with the High Enchantress and the maid, now identified as his niece, called Laenna. The two were conjuring spells and performing a mock battle between each other, much to the children’s delight, while the parents were visibly and understandably nervous in this strange environment – though they were glad that they could at least talk to the Magical Girls.
Nicola was in her element; she sat right next to the High Enchantress and quietly talked to her about a possible mutually beneficial agreement to allow the nation of the elves to recover; Seika could already imagine what the puppeteer had in mind as compensation, given the lush, magical forests surrounding the city, which had even withstood the famine.
Seika herself, however, was deep in her own thoughts.
That is one fewer god trying to kill our daughter. But I don’t like how close they came to destroying our world with their plan.
“I don’t like that we have no clue what they will try next,” Minerva chimed in, and Seika let out a little sigh.
Whatever it is, I will be ready. I must be.
Her thoughts were interrupted as the doors of the castle were noisily pushed open, with an elf hurrying inside.
“High Enchantress! Outlanders! I… think you should see this!”
December 2384
Bellona watched over the rescued people inside Hayder-Katsuya HQ’s lobby. They were cared for by a few of the company’s employees, who were strangely receptive to the recent change in leadership, once Katsuya had registered himself as the new CEO.
She saw one person make a strange face after trying a can of Synthcaf and had to hold back a laugh as she remembered her own first experience with that gross beverage.
Garnuk stepped next to Bellona, giving her a nod.
“We will finally know peace now that no one is hunting us anymore. I know we were cold to you after what happened in our town, but… thank you.”
She turned towards him, giving him a nod before she posed her next question.
“The girls who picked my people up… they will return. They can bring you back to your world, if you like. Back home.”
Garnuk looked at her with a pained expression in his eyes, then his eyes wandered over his people. The younger generation of orcs effortlessly talked to the human employees, once those got over their initial fear.
“It is too late, I’m afraid. I had a family seventeen years ago, and now I have a new family. If I returned now, what will I find beside another man with my former wife? Children who have forgotten my face? Many of my older companions share the sentiment, and the young ones… they don’t even know their home. If Doctor Masao… Katsuya, keeps his promise, we will finally have a home here.”
An elevator nearby announced an arrival with a ping, and a few heads turned as Annie stepped into the lobby, accompanied by Katsuya himself.
“What a shitshow,” the man complained loudly, even as Annie was grinning from ear to ear, running towards Bellona to wrap an arm around her shoulder.
“Good job out there! And now that every last trace of Hayder is gone, we have full control over the corporation. We can finally achieve something!”
“You’re way too optimistic, girl! We still have no idea how the military branch will react once word reaches them. The asteroid belt and moon colonies, too.”
“If you don’t mind,” another voice spoke, belonging to the mech pilot, who identified himself only as ‘Carl’.
“I know I said I quit my job, but if you need people to restructure this company and protect you from any retaliation from rogue branches, I’m humbly applying for my old job back,” he spoke with a little grin, and Katsuya raised a brow in return.
“Well, why not. The most important thing during this transitory period will be stability. We can’t simply announce that we took over and we’re going to change things. It’s best if the average citizen doesn’t even realize that the situation has changed while we gradually improve their conditions.”
Annie looked suspiciously at Katsuya, and he let out a long sigh.
“You still have that gun I gave you, yes? I’ll name you COO, mostly so you can stick around, and if I ever sound like old Hayder, I’d be thankful if you pulverized my head.”
Annie looked taken aback by that declaration, but after some initial hesitation, she nodded in agreement.
“There we go. With that, Valkyrie Zero-Alpha, ‘Carl’, I want you to speak to these orcs and find out if you can’t build a new security force.
“Hm… might be hard to convince the people that everything’s good when their police are suddenly green, but I’ll find a way,” the pilot confirmed.
“Just stick them in full-body armor and tell people they’re augmented police forces, whatever. With that out of the way we can focus on- could you stop doing that?!” the man spoke in an irritated tone as he once again stared at an open portal that appeared right in front of him, with two witches and a girl with an eyepatch climbing out.
“Sorry! But it’s urgent!” Arisu spoke apologetically, then she immediately ran up to Bellona.
“You stopped the crash but the worlds, are, uh… overlapping.”
“What do you mean, ‘overlapping’?”
Mana walked up and opened a portal into the middle of the city, and there Bellona saw a familiar sight: an empty lot where a house used to be, phased out of existence and transported to another world.
“…you should come back to Tokyo and have a look.”
***
Father Winter’s Embrace, 6310
Seika saw a strange sight: houses from Earth, standing in the city of elves like they had always been there. A traditional dagashi store was right next to an elven goldsmith’s workshop, with the old proprietress stepping out and looking around in confusion. A few buildings over, there was a bicycle shop with signs in English.
Where a tower was supposed to stand, there was now a hotel with a concrete grid covering its front of square windows that made the building look like stacked boxes; Seika even recognized it as Sequence Miyashita Park and immediately wondered what the location might now look like in Tokyo.
“Wh-what’s all this?!” Momo shouted behind her.
“Did we, like, fail after all?”
“No. This is a consequence of the worlds moving closer to each other,” Nicola spoke as she joined the group, looking at the strange sight of the mixed styles of architecture.
“No one should be in serious danger, but I’m afraid we will all have to do some additional work,” the puppeteer spoke with a little smile.
Momo grumbled, but she launched into the air, keeping a look out for any houses that didn’t belong in this world, and soon Seika joined her as Minerva, wondering what their home would look like after all of this.
Nevertheless, her mind was already back home. The first thing she planned on doing once she figured things out was to embrace Miori, Ayame, and Arisu.
December 2025
“For today's news: there has been another series of strange disappearances among the population and buildings of Tokyo, but this time, something came back: strange architecture appeared in place of the vanished buildings; buildings not unlike ours, but with oddly modern components, that still looked to be older than most of their surrounding buildings. Other buildings were of strange make, consisting of white marble carved into elaborate columns, with spiral staircases and floors. The inhabitants of these buildings are confused, and some appear to be of a different species from humans.”
The news anchor tried to appear as detached and neutral as possible despite personal worries, Ayame could tell at least that much. The video feed cut to footage of various empty lots, and some phone camera footage of the moment the new buildings phased into existence where the missing buildings had been. She couldn't even begin to imagine what the people who weren't in the know must have been thinking about these incidents; they might be thinking that this was the end of the world, and they wouldn't be far off, to Ayame's knowledge.
Come on. I know that you two will come out on top. There's no need for me to be worried here, is there?
Light doubts gnawed at the edges of her mind. She didn't want to doubt her wives’ abilities, but she would be lying if she said that she wasn't at least a little bit worried that things may not have worked out the way they wanted them to. They were up against what humans once considered gods; multiple of them, conspiring to bring the world to an end.
“One moment… we are receiving some new information,” the news anchor spoke, and the image cut back to him. He was handed a piece of paper from off-camera and carefully read the contents, then he cleared his throat.
“We just received word that all the people who were reported as missing have just returned, by none other than the Celestial Sisters, as well as two other independent Magical Girls. Their mentors, Minerva Crimson and Bellona Azure. They’re… confronting law enforcement and offering safe passage for those stranded in this world.”
Ayame breathed a sigh of relief after that news and sank back on the couch.
“They succeeded,” Amicitia commented. Only now did Ayame notice that she had clutched the small pink gemstone in her hand throughout the entire broadcast.
“They did. I'm a little ashamed that I doubted them.”
“It was a rather spontaneous attack with barely any reprieve before they had to act. It was natural for you to worry, even if just a little bit.”
Ayame nodded and closed her eyes. Now that her anxious thoughts faded, she felt herself growing tired. She felt herself peacefully fall asleep on the couch, while the heroic Magical Girls still had to do some overtime.
***
“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” Seika's voice pierced the haze of Ayame’s nap. She opened her eyes and found herself staring up into the faces of her wives, who smiled at her. It was the most beautiful sight she had seen in days.
Her head rested on Seika's lap, while Miori sat on her other side, leaning her head against Seika's shoulder. The two looked a little worn out, but whatever exhaustion they must have felt didn't stop them from caring for Ayame first and foremost.
“Welcome back,” Ayame spoke with a smile, slowly sitting up and looking around.
“And where is Arisu?”
“At Mana's place. The invasion and the troubles after interrupted their date, as far as I know, so they're catching up. I also have the feeling that our daughter is mature beyond her appearance and is giving us time to, well, do our own catching up.”
“How thoughtful,” Ayame spoke with a little smile. And no sooner had she said those words than she felt her lovers embrace her.
The TV was still running as the Magical Girls enjoyed their own little victory celebration, though its reports about the new state of affairs, about contact with other worlds and everything related to it remained unheard.