238/The Witches of Mitakihara

The Witches of Mitakihara
Date of Scene:	01 August 2015
Location:	Mitakihara - Downtown
Synopsis:	A Witch appears in the middle of Mitakihara, resulting in a traumatic experience for Madoka and a pretty crappy time for everyone else, too.
Cast of Characters:	Madoka Kaname, Mami Tomoe, Homura Akemi, 37, Mamoru Chiba, Takashi Agera, Seishi Tamashige, Kyouko Sakura, Misa Sakagami

---

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    Evening in Mitakiara. The sun has just sunk below the horizon, but the western sky is still aflame with pinks and golds in the aftermath of its departure, glimpsed through the tall buildings which obscure most of the sky. The lights of the city have come alive, and people mill on the sidewalks, going about whatever business they might have after work. For all intents and purposes, it is a normal evening.

    However, not everything is as normal as it appears today. Those with a sensitivity can feel it first.. the onrush of dread, the feeling of wrongness. Something is coming, and it's coming fast. Why here, and now? There are several vetern Puella in the vicinity- surely a death sentance for any Witch choosing to make an appearance. Maybe it's not a particularly bright Witch... or maybe it's an unusually powerful one.

    Either way, the result is the same. The Labyrinth blooms in the sky just outside Mami's appartment, the ripple in reality spreading outwards to engulf anything within a radius of a block or so. Those normal streets, milling with people suddenly vanish as the Labyrinth expands, replaced by a bizarre, hellish landscape.

    The sky is green and brown, like rotten meat. The land is gone- what had been a city is now a sea. A sea of roiling, sloshing.. paint. Thick and liquid, swirling with every color combining and rippling in nauseating, psychadelic patterns, it stretches from horizon to horizon, an ocean of the stuff. Protruding from it at various, seemingly random intervals are rock-like projections, sharp and jagged. Other than these, there is nothing solid to stand on.

    Pedestrians who had been walking on the street suddenly find themselves treading paint in this vast, bizarre sea, the Witch's Kiss appearing on those who are unfortunate enough to have been drawn into the Labyrinth. But worse than that, there are Familiars in the sea. Huge sharks, of rainbow hue and seemingly constructed out of randomly jumbled parts of painter's equipment- easels and paintbrushes and stuff, with jagged teeth made of painting knives. They thrash through the water.. one lunging up to encompass a helpless former pedestrian in a single snapping flash.

    Of the actual Witch which has spawned this nightmare, there is currently no sign.

Misa Sakagami has posed:
     A spike of energy, a feeling of dread, and that wrongness. It felt... so... wonderful! It was like a magnet attracting the Forsaken Doll. She began to approach, basking in that darkness, especially as that Labyrinth blooms. As the labyrinth blooms, it might not be that hard to mistake Maeko for a particularly strong familiar... but that was wrong. She was not a creation of despair... she was a creation of /hatred/ and /anger/. Passion. Also, she definitely didn't look like a huge rainbow-hued shark.

             ~My, my.~
        ~Such an interesting little place I have stepped into.~
            ~Are you a curse too?~
        ~Hmm... no... you feel wrong... but... still. Let's play together.~

     Maeko smiles cheerfully towards those sharks, looking for the source of it all, her voice coming out an /off/ sing-song as she spoke in the general direction of the Witch. A hand reaches into the back of her outfit, slooowly withdrawing her massive, hooked cleaver. No doubt with this much energy, someone would come to disrupt her play... and there were so many that looked like her dear former owner that were in this 'curse's' grasp, which caused an unnaturally wide grin to spread over the Forsaken Doll's face.

            ~Yessss, suffer.~
    What a terrible night for two curses to join forces... maybe.
        You never could tell with Witches.

Mami Tomoe has posed:
Mami Tomoe is intricately, uncomfortably aware of the feeling of Witches coming to. The fact that one spawns so close to her apartment of everything is vastly unsettling. She stares at the door. She's hoping that the trio got out in time, but part of her doubts it. She stares at the labyrinth forms, before she sighs, a delicate sort of noise.

~ o/ solti ola i ... o/~

One pretty transformation sequence later, Mami is standing at the edge of what is no longer her building, eyeing the paint distastefully. She's not going to get dirty - so she flicks her hand, and her ribbons anchor themselves to high points in the barrier, and she backs off, then takes off at a run, swinging through the barrier with decent ease.

"Paints, easels... some of artistic-related witch, I would presume." Mami, also make the obvious statement.

Madoka Kaname has posed:
Madoka nods mutely at Mamoru's advice, clenching her eyes tightly shut as he carries her ever closer to the apartment's stairwell. She has no idea what's going on, and suspects that she really doesn't *want* to, if her friend is running so fast and telling her so little. At least at this speed, they'll certainly be down all those flights of stairs in no time.

Well...she thought that's what the plan was. When she feels linen turn to silk and the telltale 'whoosh' of falling in her stomach, her eyes snap open reflexively, not stayed even by the calm that Mamoru is attempting to give her.

Calm can only go so far in the face of madness.

The girl's frightened eyes dart wildly around as they fall, trying in vain to piece together what's going on. Suddenly, she's clinging to a sharp tuxedo, not Mamoru's everyday clothes, and they're plummeting past floor after floor in the shadow of the stairwell. Worse, there's something changing around them. Shifting. Like reality itself is tearing at the seams and becoming something *else*. Stairs and shadows give way to a sky the color of rancid meat, and instead of the dread silence of a moment before, she hears the crash of waves beneath them.

Halfway down, and Madoka's screaming.

Thankfully, the girl only has a few terrifying seconds to take in this new world before they both come to a sudden landing on a rock. No doubt that, for Tuxedo Kamen, such a thing is trivial; Madoka, however, is not at all prepared. Her grip is shaken loose by the sudden impact and, in her instinctive struggle to correct it, she realizes all too late that she's knocked them both toward the sea of paint.

Plunged into a Witch's Labyrinth about as literally as possible.

Homura Akemi has posed:
Homura is lying on her bed, looking at the cieling, thinking about how messed up her life is.

Well not exactly. She's thinking about how the Kyouko situation is probably just going to get worse and not better. She's thinking she'd go about dealing with Kyouko if it came down to it. She's thinking about what she'd say to Mami the next time she sees her. She's thinking about checking up on Madoka to make sure she isn't in trouble.

So yeah, she's thinking about how messed up her life is.

Her phone rings. She picks it up. It's Mamoru. She answers. "Hi?"

His words come too fast for her to really interject. Mami's address, then. 'Madoka. Witch here. Trying to get out.' Then silence.

Homura doesn't need any further prompting. Mamoru wouldn't joke about such a thing. She is henshined, out the door, and running through a timestop without a second thought.

So Mami really is befriending Madoka this time, or at least that's what Homura assumes. Mami might be trying to recruit her as a magical girl, or maybe Mami's just lonely again. At least, that's what Homura assumes. The timestopper girl would never just guess that this was all a part of Kyouko's revenge scheme.

Homura shows up almost immediately after the Witch appears. That's the benefit of having timestop powers. She drops into the labyrinth, landing perfectly on a rock, and looks around. Color water, not to be confused with watercolor. Sharks. A doll that confuses Homura in that she can't decide if she fits the aesthetic or clashes with it entirely. Mamoru. Madoka. Madoka falling into the paint water and Mamoru falling in with her. No no no no no that's not acceptable!

"No!" shouts Homura, running across the rocks to Madoka and Mamoru. She's in a hurry. She slips. She falls into the water. Paint covers every inch of her with bright colors.

She doesn't stop for anything, swimming through the paint to reach her friends like she's some kind of rainbow-coated determinator.

Seishi Tamashige has posed:
"Twist the cord of fate!"

Mamoru's urgent words do not give Seishi very much pause as she runs pell-mell for and down the stairs. Seeing him jump the railing with Madoka on his back does - but only for a heartbeat. In the next moment, already reaching to pull the ribbon from her hair, she vaults the railing after him.

With a fluttering of wide kimono sleeves, a girl in red samurai garb and a mask crafted in the grimacing face of a scowling oni lands on the same rock that Tuxedo Kamen and Madoka did. She's not unbalanced by carrying another person on her back, and manages to keep her footing, but behind her mask her eyes are wide. "A Nightmare--?"

More importantly - her attention quickly focuses on the two floundering in the paint, and she quickly moves to the edge of the rock to offer a hand out. "That doesn't look safe at all."

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    Kyouko Sakura had been sitting on the roof of Mami's apartment building, considering her next move. She probably should have thought about what to do after kidnapping Madoka /before/ she actually went and did it, but well.. as has been mentioned before, strategy is not exactly Kyouko's strong point. She sits on the edge of the roof, chewing on a pocky stick that hangs out of the side of her mouth, watching the sun set. She'll have to deliver a ransom note to Homura.. something like, 'don't interfere with my battle with Miss White, or Madoka gets it!' or something like that..

    These thoughts are interrupted by the feeling of an onrushing Witch. Kyouko's brows furrow as she feels it. "Here? Now?" For her, she doesn't even think about dread, or fear. She's not thinking about the hostage she assumes is still safe in the apartment below her, nor does she spare a thought for the innocent civilians who are likely to end up Witch-food. Rather, a small grin comes to her lips, one fang peeking out of the corner of her mouth. "Dinner's coming to me tonight. And I didn't even order out. I guess the big city really is more convinient!" She stands, already in Henshin, her spear materializing out of thin air into the grip of an extended hand.

    Then the building vanishes, and suddenly she's falling.. straight towards a sloshing sea of paint. "What the- mother effer!" She curses, not having expected this. Kyouko can't swim!

    Luckily, Mami is below her. She watches Mami spear out some ribbons and begin to use them like vines in the jungle. This suits her just fine. Spreading her arms and legs, she directs her fall skillfully, lacking a wingsuit but managing to use her limbs to angle her descent towards Mami's most recent ribbon. She snags it as she zooms by, hand closing on the magical fabric, body whipping around it as she stabilizes herself, then leaps to the next one without hesitation as Mami forms it, the ease with which she does this speaking of the years the two of them spent hunting Witches together in the past.

    "Mami!" She calls down, suddenly seeming to realize. "Where's the kid?!" Her brows suddenly furrowed as she searches around for Madoka, not spying her flailing below in the paint. Oh, shit. She just wanted to kidnap her, scare her a little, get Homura off her back. If she /dies/, things are going to get a lot more out of control.

Takashi Agera has posed:
Already in his henshin, and flying down at a high rate of speed on the back side of the complex, is one Takashi Agera. He'd been flying through Pikarigaoka when the witch's barrier began to expand. The system he'd set up throughout Tokyo was paying off, and now he could afford to be on top of many more major energy surges - from artifacts, fights, and witches.

He hits the ground outside, and can feel the barrier. Not being a Puella Magi though, getting into a Witch's barrier was a more difficult task. "Axion, we're going inside." he says to his device.

<<JAWOHL>> comes the response. He pounds his fist into his other hand a few times, charging up negative energy in it as he does, and he slams it as hard as he can into the barrier. There's a tremendous spike of negative energy, and his fist is fighting to crash through the outside of the Witch's barrier and grant him entry. "BREAK THROUGH IT!" <<JAWOHL. Barrier break!>> the voices announce, and a final surge of energy pushes the barrier aside for just a moment - flecks of energy shooting off around him as he slips through the hole before it closes.

On the other side, Riventon is deposited above the paint sea, nowhere near a rock, and has to instinctively take flight, looking for one of the many rocks to perch on. <<Danger! Multiple contacts in vicinity!>> reports his device.

"You mean multiple opprotunities, don't you?" he asks as his feet come to rest on the jagged tip of one of the protrusions. <<JAWOHL.>>

Mint Chip (37) has posed:
There's a sudden shudder in the barrier, and out of the space literally /falls/ Kyubey, in the path of Mami's swinging. "Mami-san!" he all but yells telepathically as his body falls from the sky.

While Kyubey can't show fear - even he can be surprised, and his voice is clearly communicating a degree of shock. If Mami doesn't catch him during her swings, this particular body of his is not going to be silky and white for long.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Well, Tuxedo Kamen can't actually blame Madoka for screaming, but he really wishes, as they fall, that it wasn't directly in his ear. Nothing to be done for it: he shifts in mid-fall, one hand coming up to grasp Madoka's arms around his neck and shoulders, and the other moving what of his cape isn't squished, like a rudder -- a rock, yes, good!

A Madoka panicking, no, bad! SUBMERGED!

Determinedly not letting go even in the lightless opaque rainbow they've fallen into, the masked boy wrenches Madoka off of his cape and ditches it so it doesn't tangle them, then works his way up and up-- he hopes-- Homura can probably see his hat floating by-- and then there's Seishi's hand grabbing at his as Homura swims closer.

He grabs that hand and immediately twists around, trying to get Madoka up and out first.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    Nothing overly urgent seems to be occuring in the paint sea at the moment, as various parties enter the Labryinth with varying degrees of grace. There's still no sign of the actual Witch. Those with the senses for it can feel it.. somewhere below. Under the paint. But still a ways off. It's definitely coming closer though.

    In the meantime, the paint sloshes like a sea in storm, waves of the stuff crashing into the rocks, ensuring anyone standing on them gets speckled with colors like they stood too close to a sneezing pixie.

    The sharks continue to feed. Every few minutes, one less hapless pedestrian is swimming in the ocean as a shark surfaces to swallow them down in huge, oversized bites. None of the sharks have attacked any of the arriving magical people yet, though.

Mami Tomoe has posed:
Something is falling at her annnnnd Mami suddenly recognize who - or what - it is. Mami lets go of her ribbon to dive forward to catch Kyubey, sailing through the air down towards rocks, landing on the paint-covered lsickness of them and sliding forward, teetering dangerously close to getting dumped in like Mamoru and Madoka were. Speaking of Graceless And Graceful, Mami whirls around to glance down at the group, before she stomps one of her feet, grumpily. Of all the witch barriers to caught in, god. A trio of ribbons suddenly appear down the quintet - one short, but Madoka's tiny.

"Kyubey, what are you doing here?" She asks of the white creature, comfortingly stroking its silky soft fur.

She lifts her voice then, to Homura and Kyouko. "You don't think the witch is under all that paint, do you?" It's a horrifying thought to the elegant Puella Magi.

Misa Sakagami has posed:
     There's energy from one person. Were those... ribbons? The doll's purple gaze shifts up towards Mami Tomoe, taking her in silently. Well. She had a lovely aesthetic. The doll could admire that. And none of these newcomers that arrived without the influence of the Witch's Kiss didn't seem to match the appearance of her hated target. Which meant one thing.

                They were food.

    Some of them moreso than others. The pink-haired one didn't seem to have that much energy, though the one holding her seemed to have a fair amount. The doll began to slowly approach, not seeming to mind the paint that was covering clothing and cape. One of the ones with more energy seemed to have just fallen in the paint. That meant she would probably be more vulnerable. Paint in the face and eyes was not pleasant, after all.

     Another falls from the sky. Grabbing onto the yellow girl's ribbon. Yelling about a kid? Perhaps the one that the man was carrying. The Forsaken Reaper is slowly lowered, the tip of it dragging through that sea of paint. A panic, people flailing in the paint. Her attention is drawn upwards. Dark energy. Deliciously strong dark energy. Maeko's gaze lifts up towards that Barrier Break. The appearance of Riventon, flying above the sea of paint. The source of that dark chill, that dark energy. And... and... was that a flying rabbit? He was almost like a toy. The Puppet lifts her hand, thin wires appearing from her hands, as a small rabbit-like puppet appears. She lifts her hand, before sending it flying towards Kyubey. If nothing intercepts it, that rabbit would catch Kyubey on its little body. To recover him and bring him towards the Doll's side. Likely sitting atop the little rabbit puppet's head.

        ~You are cute. I am going to keep you.~

     Yep. Priorities for the doll. Get and keep the little cute animal. What? She hates humans. Not whatever Kyubey is. Slowly, Maeko continued that approach towards the girl covered in paint, and the two flailing in paint. She slowly moved that rabbit doll alongside of her. For now, just walking. And humming some tune or another under her breath.

     That tune only becomes more joyful as the sharks surface, as they eat those hapless pedestrians. Her smile was definitely not friendly. ~Such delicious morsels this curse seems to have attracted.~ Maeko giggles softly, hopping from stone-to-stone now, landing with a 'click' each time her feet touched rock, those high heels not seeming to impede her movement at all. The kidnapper of their 'dear' Kyubey is coming.

Madoka Kaname has posed:
It's not that Madoka can't swim. As though her mother would let her go without such a basic skill -- she'd been in lessons since she was three. She's a perfectly capable swimmer under normal circumstances. It's just that these circumstances are anything but normal.

So the pink-haired girl flails about under the paint sea's waves for several seconds, the lack of air burning in her chest, only hanging onto Tuxedo Kamen because he refuses to let her go. The paint nearly blinds her -- combined with the violent rocking of the waves, it's not long before she loses which direction is up.

Is this how she's going to die?

No. Not today, it seems, for she feels the strong pull of Kamen's arm and hears the sounds of the world come back to life around her as her body surfaces once again. Somehow -- she can't really see the details with the paint still in her eyes -- Madoka finds herself back on the rock, propped up on her hands and knees, coughing as air rushes back into her lungs.

"Where..." the girl manages after a moment, rubbing at her eyes to clear away the rainbow paint that obscures her vision, "where are we?" There's panic there, as anyone might expect, but she's reining it in as well as she possibly can, considering. "There -- there wasn't anything like this before."

It's probably for the best that she can't properly see just yet. Riventon's presence wouldn't do her fragile composure any favors.

Homura Akemi has posed:
Homura keeps swimming after Mamoru and Madoka. She sees the ribbons coming down, probably Mami's. Homura grabs one, wrapping it around her wrist, but she doesn't start climbing yet. When she gets to the spot where Mamoru fell in, she takes his hat and places it on her own head.

Colors and hats aside, Homura's priority is getting Madoka to safety. A shark approaches as Mamoru is helping up the pink one, and Homura doesn't even hesitate to produce a shotgun and fire. "No you don't!" She keeps firing, and the shark charges closer.

When it gets close, its mouth opens wide, Homura turns the gun around and smacks the shark on the nose. It whimpers and turns away.

It's only after Madoka is safe that Homura leaves the water, using the ribbon to climb up. She holds a bit of her sleeve out to try to clean Madoka's face, if she lets her.

To Mami, Homura responds, "It feels like it is, but it's not like we can swim in there after it. We wouldn't be able to see anything. Is there a way we can lure it up to the surface?"

Kyouko gets an empty stare, but nothing else. Homura still isn't sure how to deal with her. Maybe she wont have to, at least until the Grief Seed comes out.

The cursed doll approaches. Homura decides that the talking doll is probably not a familiar. She says, "Uh... hi. Actually you can keep that if you want. Just keep him on a leash or something. He drinks tears and subsists mostly on his own smug little grin." Homura tries to give Kyubey away. If only she could get away with it.

Riventon's appearance doesn't make Homura happy. She swore to kill him. She meant it and still does, but now isn't the time.

Takashi Agera has posed:
Riventon stands on the edge of that rock, as the two small orbs detach from his gauntlet. Orbiting around him, they do a job of keeping the sharks away with pinpoint energy bolts - and, of all things, he leans down and sits on the edge of the rock while they do.

He also waves to Homura. He's challenging Kyubey in the 'smug grin' department now, as well.

In reality, he's waiting. He's here for the grief seed, and the fight is secondary.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    Kyouko swings from Mami's ribbons easily, passing from one to the next with expert ease, her spear held in the other hand not used for ribbon-gripping. When Mami settles on top of a rock, she helpfully produces yet more ribbons, which Kyouko continues to cling to. The longer she can stay out of that paint the better. Her eyes quickly scan the situation below- she spies Tux hauling Madoka back out of the paint.. ok, good. Hostage is still safe. The Witch.. she can feel it down there, but it's not here yet. There's still time.

    Her eyes dart about, settling on the creepy floating doll-girl and narrowing slightly. What the-well. It's not a Witch. Unless it attacks her, she dismisses it for now, although it does seem to be trying to make off with Kyubey. Meh, not much of a loss. She spies the creepy guy who had been jonesing on Madoka the other day too, off in the distance on a rock but again- he's not a Witch. Unless he attacks her, she has other priorities.

    Those priorities swing dramatically when she sees Homura crawl out of the paint and move to help clean Madoka's face. Oh, Akemi-san. Of course you would show up. Her lips curl back in a feral little snarl. And oh look.. you're distracted by Madoka. How /perfect./

    Kyouko sees red, and not just because that's the color of her eyes. Her plan was to use Madoka to get to Homura. Maybe it just worked out differently than she expected, but the result is the same. She knows Homura can't respond to attacks she doesn't see coming, and she seems /pretty/ occupied with cleaning Madoka's face and fussing over her at the moment. Kyouko spies an opportunity.

    She's moving before she spends too much time thinking it over. Using Mami's ribbon, she swings, getting up momentum.. back and forth, back and forth, until she's whistling through the air. And then at the exact right moment, she releases the ribbon and pushes off.. arrowing her body like a torpedo through the air straight at Homura.

    If all goes according to plan, Kyouko is going to literally spear Homura off the rock with the high-speed impact of her body, crashing into the dark-haired Puella, tearing her away from Madoka, and sending them both careening into the paint sea.

Mint Chip (37) has posed:
Kyubey wraps himself around Mami in his quickly-becoming-a-standard stole position. "This witch is pretty powerful, and the area's pretty busy! What's going on here?" he asks.

That's when Misa's puppet familiar begins to dive for him, and he shirks back and hides behind Mami. "This is very important, Mami. I need to talk to that girl over there, the little one with the pink hair - and I need to not be grabbed by whatever that is."

Kyubey doesn't know fear, but he does know the annoyance of perhaps not reaching his goal, and 'going over to creepy doll girl' is not a part of his plan.

Seishi Tamashige has posed:
Between Tuxedo Kamen's efforts and her own, the samurai girl sees Madoka safely up out of the paint. Once that's accomplished, keeping a firm grip (wrist to wrist for greater security), Akashimaru takes a step back to haul the young man in his paint-soaked formalwear up onto solid ground.

Where are they? poor Madoka asks. Good question.

"It's a nightmare," Akashimaru tells her, speaking with a confidence that she doesn't quite feel. "A terrible dream." She doesn't know of anything else such a strange, surreal landscape could belong to, and yet - something doesn't feel quite right.

Well, even if it's not a Nightmare, the description doesn't seem inaccurate. Straightening up once everyone's out of the paint sea, the samurai girl begins to reach towards her belt, looking to one side and the other to take stock of their situation and its immediate dangers--
--just in time to see Kyouko come flying at them like a rocket. With no time to think about it, Akashimaru acts on instinct. "Look out!" she cries, leaping to physically shield and yoink her out of Kyouko's path before the puella magi makes impact.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"I'm going to be really angry if the Witch is the rocks, like a sea monster--" mutters the completely paint-covered boy, wrenching out of his jacket and kicking his shoes off and dropping them in the paint to go with the lost cape. He mushes his hair back and loses the gloves next, so he can wipe the damn paint out of his eyes under the mask, and he's just gotten himself to the point where he can see when there's an explosion of Kyouko and Homura and Akashimaru-yell-tackling, and he flinches back and crouches by Madoka and Akashimaru, taking stock.

Riventon, ugh.

Homura and Kyouko and Mami he's just not going to worry about right now. (He can't even point fingers at Mami wearing a stole as part of her henshin, he has a god damned tailcoat.)

Sharks eating civilians, he can't do a damned thing about.

CREEPY DOLL GIRL? Can't be the witch, she clashes with the aesthetic. She's approaching, but she's not the witch and there's a lot of noise and fuss, so for the moment, he turns his attention to the two remaining on the rock with him. "I'm afraid this isn't a dream. It's a warped reality created by a creature made of despair and it's trying to kill everyone it can get its hands on. They," he points up at the three Puellae, "are supposed to find and kill it. I am *not* a good fighter, and *they* are distracted with each other. There's also a jerkbag hanging out over there and I don't know who this other girl is. We can't get out until the witch is dead. We need *you* to fight for us," he tells Seishi, then grabs Madoka's (paint-coated) bare hand with his own. "I need you to try and talk sense into those three."

Misa Sakagami has posed:
     The world comes back to Madoka! And a doll lady is approaching her! Her head tilting slightly as she looks at the paint-covered pink girl. ~She has not recieved this barrier's curse, yet does not seem to have the same energy as the rest of you. Interesting.~ Maeko's voice comes amusedly, watching Madoka for a few moments. And then one of the humans was speaking to her!

     Oh hey she can keep the cute thing? Maeko turned that smile towards Homura, giving a slow bow of her head towards her. ~Why thank you. That's very gracious of you. It seems we feed on similar things.~ She says matter-of-factly. Nope. She doesn't care that she's basically just giving herself away. The doll's arm lifts, the Forsaken Reaper lifting. Coincidentally as Kyouko leaps to attempt to spear Homura. That massive cleaver is swung, attempting to slice through Homura -- which might also coincidentally slice through Kyouko! ... ... ... Strangely, the cleaver would do... no real damage. In fact, it would feel more weird than painful, if it strikes. Oh also the magical energy in their Soul Gems might be mildly drained. Not a major one... just enough to be alarming, most likely!

     Kyubey recoiled from her puppet though. That annoyed Maeko, though she was somewhat understanding. Animals didn't like being grabbed. ~Aw... you don't want to play with me, little bunny-rabbit..?~ Comes a disappointed voice. It would be innocent and adorable, if it didn't come from a cursed and malicious doll. ~I'll definitely take you to the little pink girl.~ She didn't care what happened to the girl. Kyubey was cute though. And that might be a way to get him on her side.

     Really, Maeko's presence... might be helpful for Riventon! Since she was hungry and they happened to be her chosen meal right now! Which means that things are probably going to get extra complicated for the good guys! Sharks. Infighting. A creepy doll... Kyubey... and finally Riventon! For once, things might be on even footing... for 'evil'. Or it'll just devolve into an all-out-combat. That might work too.

     If that wasn't a sign that the creepy doll girl wasn't on Tux's side... it'd be hard to make him believe otherwise! She is definitely not there to help them.

Homura Akemi has posed:
Homura is completely caught off guard by Kyouko. This is actually a pretty decent feat. Homura is in the middle of a labyrinth so she knows to stay aware. Homura is also half-expecting Kyouko to attack her at any time. She isn't quite expecting to get clobbered in the middle of cleaning Madoka's face, however.

Yet that's exactly what happens.

Homura is slashed with the Forsaken Reaper while being tackled. There isn't much she can do about it that wouldn't give away Homura's powerset to Kyouko. Her Soul Gem darkens from the hit. What kind of attack is that?!

So even if the doll isn't a Witch, she's still an enemy.

There are two big flaws in Kyouko's plan. The first flaw is that Homura's arm is still wrapped in Mami's ribbon. This might backfire on Homura later, but for now it means that when Homura is sent flying into the water (and Mamoru's hat is sent flying off in a random direction), Homura can just pull herself back out. Which she does, but takes considerable effort since she's doing this while also recovering from being Kyouko'd.

The second flaw is that explosives are still effective in a thick medium like water. The waves of force still transfer. Ever hear of dynamite fishing? Homura's response is like that, dropping grenades into the colorful water as Kyouko is still in it.

On the bright side the explosives probably keep the sharks away from Kyouko, too. Homura's helping!

As a side note Homura probably looks really freaky, dripping with color and dropping grenades into the ocean with a :