first rosso fantasma ⚜

[prayed]

The warehouse had probably been sealed off long ago. Already it had begun to fall into a state of disrepair. Sand bags, empty boxes and other supplies were littered about. Abandoned, locked away and forgotten, no longer anything that a person would care to look for. The evening sky, the sun fading fast, made it feel somehow older than it was. Like a relic from long ago. It looks so fragile. The pillars upholding it might just collapse, the beams above might fold in on themselves and bury her.

Even so, it was the perfect place for Kyoko to work though. Unwanted places, unwanted people, they all bred curses and those curses drew out Witches. So, she carried her Soul Gem in one hand as she walked along the concrete floors. The other was occupied with a piece of taiyaki. Kyoko didn't even glance at the cans as she kicked them aside, the papers as they crumbled under her boots. Her mind was wholly occupied by her cause for coming here.

But that cause was no long showing itself. Certainly, since she was still here, somehow still alive, that person should be too. Somewhere, in this place, she was there just moments ago--ah, did she feel a familiar magical signature just then? But it was gone too soon and she was left with only more wandering to look forward to.

"Tch. This is really pissing me off, y'know," she said, to no one in particular. She kicked away a can, more forcefully now.

Comments

[prayed]

"Tch. I don't need you to tell me that." Kyoko glared at the the fellow Puella Magi--not a friend, but the closest thing she's had to an ally in some time--before turning to looking forward once more. Her annoyance was less with Homura, whom she had been left with something of an understanding (vague, incomplete, but enough,) of so much as the situation that had been presented to her. It wasn't like her to have so much trouble hunting down a witch. It wasn't like her to miss the presence of another Puella Magi.

"It's gonna get away if we don't hurry up and find it, y'know!" She added. Her patience was wearing thin, her mind still muddled from the events that transpired before she came here, making it impossible to focus on any one task--even (or perhaps, especially) one simple and repetitive as hunting a Witch.

[braidstobows]

Homura was immune to Kyoko's rough ways; she simply shrugged off the blunt speaking, and said nothing. Her own manner was in decided contrast. Her fellow - yes, she supposed, she could truly call it that now - fellow puella magi was right, however.

She still failed to quicken her pace. "If we go too quickly, we may miss what little we have been able to pick up of its presence." If she was inwardly as impatient as Kyoko, ready for the battle with it imminent, it showed only in her heightened alertness.

"Are you prepared to lose our prey to haste?"

[prayed]

Kyoko didn't immediately respond outside of an annoyed "tch." The only thing she hated more than how this girl liked to show off how much she knew was the fact that she was too often right about things. Her Soul Gem began to brighten as she slowed her pace, giving a better idea of it's position. Kyoko moved up the stairs and onto a mesh grating. It wouldn't be long now.

"We're not gonna lose it. There's no way I'd let this one get away." Although she already had once, hadn't she? She shrugged at her own unasked question.

[braidstobows]

Homura did, at least, refrain from pointing that part out. In fairness, she supposed more of the blame seemed to belong to the soul gems than to Kyoko anyway. (Which was strange, and therefore troublesome. Why wasn't the reaction stronger? Was the thing really that far ahead of them? She would have liked to run ahead to find out.

Perhaps she would.)

"If you do not wish to lose it," she suggested to Kyoko, "Perhaps we should split up once more. We can cover this ground more quickly, and signal to the other when something is found."

[prayed]

It shouldn't have been, but of course in dreams things rarely went as one would have liked them to. Kyoko offered a noncommittal shrug in response to Homura's suggestion. She had the same question about why it was so weak, but chose not to vocalize it. For all she knew this could be her own personal Hell. It seemed likely enough.

"Do what you want. We're gonna have to kill it either way, so as long you don't try and steal the Grief Seed from right under my nose or anything, I don't care how we do it."

[braidstobows]

"I have no intention of robbing you of this night's rewards." This left open the question of what she was doing here, fighting for essentially nothing at all. It was something she found herself doing more and more frequently, at first for all the obvious reasons and Madoka's sake, but now... perhaps habit. She didn't think she was soft enough for it to be more than that.

"However, if it has gotten far enough ahead of us for the signal to be that faint, now is the time to begin hurrying." She wasted no time in following her own words, quickening her pace to a run that only another puella magi could have kept up with.