There's more than one person in this city who's earned Fiore's ire. The little blonde viper has committed the greatest sin, and it is still she that he is focusing his efforts on -- but there are many hours in the day for one who does not sleep, and with his flowers planted all over the planet now, he has resources to spare.
It's time to even the score with a certain Puella Magi.
She hasn't been difficult to track down. With his eyes everywhere, it took mere seconds to find her trash heap of an apartment, and only moments more to scope out her route home. Not everyone can avoid him the way Mamoru has; certainly, this girl carries herself like there's nothing to be afraid of, like she hadn't weeks ago attacked and kidnapped the one who would destroy her planet. Like he doesn't know the fastest, cruelest way to end one like her.
This will be fun indeed.
Fiore's not one to announce himself when no one of worth is around, and so his appearance is silent, accompanied only by a few pink petals that flutter in front of her eyes before a fist like iron darts out to grab her arm. She must henshin before his plan will work -- no doubt this will do the trick, given what he knows of her and her temper.
Kyouko is just trudging her way home from work. Normally she's not so trudgey, but these have been a rough few days. Fiore is trying to destroy the planet. Kyubey is trying to kill her, personally (and Homu too, but still, he had named Kyouko). She'd be less concerned about that if he wasn't positioned to take all the other Puella out with her, including Saya-chan. On top of that, her dead sister had walked into her store yesterday, claimed to be brought back from the dead as a Puella of all things, and then stolen three burritos when Kyouko had expressed understandable doubt given the circumstances.
All of these things put together have conspired to put the redheaded Puella in something of a foul mood. She walks with her hands in her pockets and her head down, gaze focused on the sidewalk in front of her, a pensive frown on her features.
At first, when the hand grabs her arm, she assumes it's some human ruffian, taking a teenage girl walking home at dusk as an easy target. This wouldn't be the first time she had sent such an unsuspecting thug scurrying with his tail between his legs.
But when she does snap her head up, red eyes focusing on her accoster, it's obvious that that widen in surprise for a moment. Perhaps less expected is the way they narrow in what looks surprisingly like pleasure a moment later. "Oh, good." She says, her lip curling in a sneer. "Maybe one of my problems is about to sort itself out." And then she does henshin, a blinding flash of red light and power that should force Fiore away from her, if only temporarily.
The henshin does its job. Fiore's hand -- and the rest of his body -- flies backward in the flash of red light, but this is nothing that disturbs him. He'd come prepared for a fight, and in his travels had seen enough Puella Magi in action to grasp the basics of their powers. Only the slightest crouch is needed to stay on his feet, even as he slides several feet deeper into the alleyway, and the calm smile never leaves his face.
"Funny," he says when his vision clears. "I was thinking the very same thing."
Soul Gem, Soul Gem -- ah, there it is. His eyes scan only for a moment before he finds the crimson jewel of her life force, fastened conveniently enough on her chest. That'll be an easy enough target even if he can't secure her in one place. If he wanted to, he could simply spear her through there and be done with it...but such a painless death would be a mercy for any Puella Magi, let alone one that has wronged him. She deserves a more fitting punishment.
Fiore throws out his arm, and great lengths of vine pierce through the concrete, whipping up towards her limbs to bind her and bring her to the ground. He's no fool -- he knows this girl is superhuman, and he's seen how easily that great spear of hers can slice through his summoned plants. But he only needs a moment of distraction to get in close. And when he does, everything is over for her.
Kyouko should be conserving her power- saving it. She can ill afford to flex her magical muscles, and she knows it- the supply of Grief Seeds is finite, and though she has several still in reserve, every one she has to use is weeks of non-henshin time cut off of her life- possibly of Saya-chan's life as well. She had given this very advice to the other girl only a few days before.
But Kyouko has never been the most rational person when her anger has a hold of her. These past few days have done much to fester her frustration: the uncertainty of the future with Kyubey gunning for them, Momo's sudden re-appearance, the feeling of helplessness both in face of the lack of Witches and Fiore's attempts to suck the world dry.
Kyouko hates feeling helpless. It is possibly the thing she hates more than anything else. She sees before her here the possibility of making a difference- If I'm going to go down, her soul screams, then I'm going to go down saving the world in a blaze of glory like no one's ever seen. These are very much the same thoughts she had just before she detonated her own Soul Gem in Queen Beryl's face at D-Point.
As Fiore is thrown away from her, she all but snarls, baring her fangs in a challenge predators the universe over will recognize- 'come on then, if you think you're strong enough'. Previously when they had fought, Kyouko was annoyed, angry on behalf of Mamoru, wanting to teach this stalker a lesson.
Now she is enraged, at Fiore and at the rest of the world that never seems to want to give her a break, that always tries to steal away everything she works so hard to achieve.
Vines burst up through the ground around her. There's hardly any visible motion, just a blurr of silver and red, and those vines suddenly fragment, falling away in pieces as her spear materializes in mid-spin, to be caught easily in one hand. But it doesn't stop, spinning around her in a whirlwind as she snaps out, "You want to play with vines? Fine!"
The spear fragments apart, lengths of haft joined by sections of chain, coiling around her in a cyclone until she grabs the spear, just underneath it's head, holding it just behind the point instead of the normal way.. so that she can whip the segmented length of it around. It cracks across the ground, scoring a deep groove in the concrete that crackles with red lightning for a moment. "Then we'll play with vines."
She spins and snaps the whip-like length of chain-linked spear out towards him once, twice, each with a crack like thunder as it splits the air faster than a human eye could track.
Faster than the human eye indeed. But Fiore is no human; joined with the fully awakened Xenian, he is something even more than he was before. Impressive as she is, Kyouko will need a lot more than pure power and rage to defeat him.
If they're playing with vines, after all, there's no doubt who has the upper hand.
Fiore answers her whip-like spear cracks not by dodging out of the way -- he will not give her the satisfaction of seeing him run. Instead, a half-sphere of vines unspools itself from the earth and takes each blow, disintegrating into sprays of sap and thorn that join the remains of his first attack on Kyouko.
"See how well your Earth obeys me now?" he says, a slight mocking smile his only change of expression through the entire assault. "Do you really think you can defeat me alone, without that black-haired girl around to give you some semblance of strategy?
The shredded vines scattered on the concrete glimmer once with sickening light before they shoot into the air, cracking and snapping as they stiffen themselves into thousands of tiny spearlets that launch themselves at her, so fast that they blur into a verdant wave. Perhaps one who could stop time could dodge the attack -- but could she?
Kyouko doesn't dodge- at least not in the conventional sense. There's no delay, no hesitation. Homura strategizes, thinks, plans- Kyouko just acts, her instincts guiding her better than conscious thought every could. As that wave of projectiles speeds towards her to shred her flesh, she simply vanishes.
Only to reappear to one side, running left- and on the other side, running right at the same time. There are now two Kyoukos, each an exact duplicate of the original, no telltale signs to give away which is the false one. The projectiles will have to veer to hit one or the other- or split and hit both with lesser impact.
Of course, regardless of which choice they go with, the floral spears simply hiss through empty air and stab into the pavement. Because neither of those Kyoukos was real.
When did she replace herself? It's hard to say. The whip-spear attacks never landed- maybe that Kyouko wasn't real either. But the one who suddenly stabs out of the shadows behind Fiore certainly is, moving like lightning while he focuses on guiding the projectile attack on the illusions, her forward foot slamming into the pavement as that oversized, deadly-sharp spear darts forward, whole again.
"It ain't my Earth!" She snarls, "But it belongs to a friend o' mine, so it's about time somebody cleaned it up for 'im!"
By the time he sees the two separate Kyoukos, it's already too late to guide the hail of thorns to a different target. A thousand spearlets slam into the wall where the Puella Magi used to stand, and Fiore can only whip his head around, frantic, trying to see where the little red rat got off to --
There's a *thump*, a fleshy impact and a tearing of cloth at his gut. The air goes still around him for a moment, as though the Earth itself is holding its breath in shock. Every part of his body is numb, the Xenian has filled his mind with shrieks of rage, drowning out his thoughts. Something terrible just happened, says the lucid part of him. If only he could figure out what...
With a curiosity that's almost innocent, Fiore looks down in silence and sees the head of a spear, stained with green blood, impaled through him so thoroughly that its haft is only barely inside his body.
"Oh," he says, and he is childlike, surprised. Trembling, his hands reach up to grasp the silvery metal, to verify that it's real. After all, a wound like this should hurt...shouldn't it?
It should -- and the moment he realizes it is when the pain starts, searing up his spine like fire, too overpowering to let out even with a scream. Instead, his knees buckle beneath him, and he collapses to all fours, head hanging only inches above his elbows. He is shaking, his breathing ragged, tears stinging at his eyes like the thorns he's so familiar with.
Fiore realizes, with a wave of cold terror, that he is going to die.
Her host may be incapacitated, but the Xenian has her own defenses. A banshee-like screech splits the air, drowning out Fiore's pitiful mewls of pain, and from the alien's body spiral several black roots that crawl up and over Kyouko's spear like snakes. They wrap around her wrists, shackling her to the weapon that committed this grave sin, and grow further still until a single tendril has laced itself around the scarlet oval on her chest.
If the girl is so eager to kill, let her do it as the monster she is.
Kyouko's spear sinks home, piercing Fiore's body and emerging from the other side in a spray of alien gore. The snarl on her face is one of triumph, her lip curled and fang bared, her strike true and without hesitation. In the moments after though, it begins to dawn on her what she has just done. She... really didn't expect it to be that simple. Mamoru would be furious with her... even though she had just saved the world.
These are the thoughts which spiral through her brain as it returns to a semblance of sanity following her instinctive, anger-fueled killing blow even as Fiore falls to hands and knees on the pavement. It is this moment of uncertainty in the act's aftermath, this moment of doubt, that prevents her from reacting quickly enough to the roots which sprout froum the wounded Fiore and crawl snake-like but lightning-quick up her body.
One of them reaches her Soul Gem. Her source of power, the very core of her being, worn almost defiantly in the open as if challenging attackers to strike for it. And now one does. Her hands tied to the haft of the spear, she cannot, pull back quickly enough to prevent the root grasping the gem.
She feels the drain begin almost immidiately, her magic, her very essence being pulled down through the root and into the alien wavering before her. Terror spikes within her, and for a brief moment she struggles, dragging a step back, writhing against the imprisoning roots. But she cannot escape.
And strangely, once she realizes this, in an intsant her terror fades. Kyouko doesn't despair- it's simply not in her nature. She just gets angry. And, the thought briefly crosses her mind, at least this way Saya-chan and the others will have at least one more Witch to hunt.
"Fine!" She hisses between clenched teeth. "You want my magic? You can have it!." And then she surges everything she has left through that connection.
Puella mature, like fine wine. The longer they exist, they more powerful they become. This is part of the reason why Kyubey wants so badly to destroy Homura, Kyouko, and Mami. They have broken the rules and lived longer than a Puella should. They are becoming dangerous. The torrent of magic which surges through the root is a cascade of red fire, but more than that- it is shot through with other colors. Kyouko's Soul Gem is unlike that of any other Puella; it has been invaded, touched, and tainted by other kinds of magic- more than one kind.
The firey cascade is shot through with lines of bright green, a color matching the Linker Core of one Hannah Sharpe, who injected a piece of her own magical core into Kyouko's Soul Gem. Along with those green streaks is a blackness, a light-consuming darkness that underlies the endeavor- Dark Energy, the remains of Apatite, the gift Queen Beryl gave her that briefly elevated her, saved her, and doomed her. All these forces work in concert as Kyouko opens the floodgates of her soul and sends all of that stored magic raging through the draining connection like the tsunami of a collapsing dam.
It manifests as a huge flare of red light shooting skyward, shot through with green and black, taking on the shape of a gigantic spearhead as it hurtles into the heavens like a reverse lightning bolt.. and then vanishes, just as quickly as it had appeared.
It's hard to say if Fiore is aware of the Xenian's actions. Half his mind numbed with pain, the other half paralyzed at the thought of dying, there's not much room for him to think, let alone notice the tiny stream of life flowing back into him through the spear.
Until that stream becomes a torrent, then that torrent an explosion. Raging crimson, tempestuous emerald, deep and all-consuming black slam into him, threatening to rend apart his soul with his body, overpowering every sense he has with rage -- with the burning desire for him to *die.*
He'd thought himself beyond screaming now; as it turns out, there's a little of that left in him yet.
*/FIORE!/* the Xenian calls out in his mind, her usually gentle voice erased by a banshee of desperation and fury. */RUN!/*
Half-dazed, he looks down at the spear still pierced through his gut -- there is nowhere he *can* run, he can't escape, not without -- with a lurch of his stomach, he realizes his body is moving on its own. Powerless to stop it, Fiore can only watch as his feet carry him forward, the spear ripping through him a second time as the wide end plunges back into him and out the other side, dripping with a fresh sheen of blood. The roots he did not know existed snap along its silver edges, and the screaming assault on his soul abruptly stills into silence.
Fiore collapses in a heap not a foot away, emerald blood pooling from his twice opened wound, unable to do more than cradle himself with his arms and mouth a silent plea for help.
He cannot speak the name, but it is a familiar one nevertheless.
Kyouko would not have thought that Fiore had the strength to escape her final, vengeful assault. But he did- and in doing so, he probably saved her. She had not intended to survive; ironic, that she was willing to destroy herself to save the world not once, but twice, after all her selfish acts in the past. But as the alien pulls away, severs the connections of the roots, he manages to do so just before Kyouko can release the last of her angry, defiant soul.
As he collapses in a heap nearby, she totters, suddenly without the support of the restraints. The Soul Gem on her chest is nearly entirely black, just a few, stubborn streaks of red through it. The air around her is beginning to warp and twist, the same heat-shimmer veil which precedes the formation of a Witch's Labyrinth. Her head hangs, red hair hiding her face as she sways in place.
Then she grits her teeth.. and the red in her soul gem strengthens, pushing back the blackness despite no Grief Seed in evidence. 'I will not surrender', her soul shrieks, even in the face of a world, of a system, that demands she do so. No wonder Kyubey wants her dead.
The shimmery unreality fades. As it does, Kyouko collapses heavily to her knees with a thud. A fanged smile plays over her lips. "Never let anybody.. say that.. Kyouko Sakura.. was afraid to do what needed doing." She gasps, though there's no one around to hear. Then she collapses sideways onto the ground in a heap, red hair spread around her, her spear vanishing and her henshin breaking to leave her in her streeth clothes, her still almost-entirely-dark Soul Gem clutched in one fist.
Momo doesn't recognize that surge of power, but at the same time, she does.
She's running before she realizes it, Dog easily keeping stride with her fast pace.
She hears the tail end of what Kyouko says, and she nearly shrieks at her. Though, it's probably hard to hear with Kyouko being all unconcious.
"Yeah well you'll be afraid when you wake up you--" The following language that ensues would make Kyouko proud. It also weaves a colorful tapestry that will float in the atmosphere forever.
Dog sniffs around, trying to figure out what the heck's going on. Humans are so weird.
She jerks a finger at the weird green guy on the ground. "Watch, Dog."
To anyone coming up, what follows would look like a looter trying to rifle through the dead or half dead. That fear may be someone alleviated when Momo screams. "Where the hell is it, you stupid frikkin frak frelling frak frak!" More tapestry. "I swear if you've gotten all dead, I'mma kill you!"
Sailor Jupiter couldn't have said what she expected to find at ground zero of that ominous surge of energy - but it seemed familiar, and even if it hadn't, it's not the sort of thing she can ignore. A rush of wind carries her to the ground not far from where Momo is ranting frantically at the collapsed Kyouko; she lands in a three-point crouch, taking in the carnage with wide eyes as she straightens.
She's arrived too late; punching things is not going to be of help here.
The girl she doesn't recognize is beside Kyouko. Fiore seems to be on the verge of bleeding out. There is nothing to hit. For a half-second Jupiter stands paralyzed; then she shakes herself out of it and raises her communicator, words spilling out sharp and hurried. "--Kyouko's down, and she made a damn thorough try at taking Fiore with her. If anybody's got their hands free, I could use some advice--"
No time to waste on indecision - Jupiter moves to Fiore with some half-formed idea of helping, of maybe getting the damn flower off him. Would that kill him? As badly injured as he is, it might not matter. Distracted, she glances toward Momo, who is far too agitated to be searching Kyouko's pockets for loose change. "What are you looking for?"
And Jupiter's comm sounds immediately. "I'm on my way-- Endy said that was way too big an energy spike, is she physically hurt? I can take her to the apartment or call Asclepius-- oh this is Jadeite."
And there is, in fact, in the distance and approaching, a bright figure with a dark cape, or so it seems from below. "Wait did she take Fiore down for reals?"
Dog lets out a low growl at Jupiter's approach, but he's still keeping an eye on Fiore. After all, he was told to watch. Good Dog.
Momo's grumblings and grouses will probably make the more ladylike Jupiter blush if she caught ear of them, and for a moment, the white haired girl doesn't answer.
Finally, she sits on her heels and huffs, arms flapping. "'We're in a drought' they say. 'Take it easy,' they say." The thwacks Kyouko upside the head. "This ain't takin' it easy, ya dummy!"
She looks up at Jupiter. "I'mma kill her! I'mma strangle her with her own hair, just you watch!" Back at Kyouko. "Where is it?!"
She grabs her by the shoulders. Shake, shake, shake!
After a moment, she finds it in Kyouko's hand. Perking up, she picks up the gem and fishes out a grief seed. "Here it is! Found it~!" Humming, she taps the grief seed against the gem and tsks. "I'm so gonna yell at you when you wake up, Buttface."
She turns up at Jupiter and beams. "See? I told you everything's gonna be okay! You can tell Disembodied Voice Guy...I have no idea if she's got actual booboos."
Kyouko's Soul Gem hisses as it releases the massive amount of blackness as it had built up, glowing more and more with that pure crimson as it is cleansed. So close was she to the edge that cleansing her requires the use of an entire Grief Seed, which is a dire loss in the current circumstances. As it does so, her breathing steadies and her color improves, but she doesn't wake up. She'll likely be out for a little while after that.
There's activity around him. Voices he doesn't recognize. Blurs of color and shape he can't patch together into a whole. People have arrived, people who must know him, because he can pick out his name being said from the incoherent hum of noise that surrounds him. He cannot say who they are -- the screaming of the Xenian in his head drowns out all thought not devoted to searing waves of pain radiating from his gut.
But Mamoru is not here. He knows that much.
Mamoru abandoned him, and now he is going to die.
The tears perched on his lashes finally leak out as he lies there on the pavement, balling up the fabric at his shoulders with clenched fists. The effort of sobbing wracks his body, and so they are silent, pitiful things that hiss out between his teeth. There's nothing he can do anymore -- he's already losing the feeling in his limbs, the world is going dark at its edges as the colors in front of his eyes turn grey.
Someone saved him when he was like this. Once. Long ago, when he knew nothing friendship or love. He'd dedicated his life to him in gratitude. They'd made a promise.
And now that promise is broken, as he dies here where flowers cannot grow.
Somehow, as the figure in green approaches him, Fiore wheezes out a few words, punctuated by jerking spasms and droplets of blood that fall from his lips to Jupiter's feet.
"Mamoru...I'm -- please forgive me. I'm...I'm *sorry.*"
Well, that tears it. In another moment Jupiter is kneeling next to Fiore, white gloves quickly soaking with green as she tries to put pressure on the gaping wound. "He's bleeding all over the pavement," she tells her communicator. "Can't tell about Kyouko, all the blood I can see is green."
It's a losing effort, trying hold back the wash of blood. It seeps between her fingers, keeps on flowing. Sailor Jupiter's lip curls back from her teeth in a scowl of frustration. She can feel his energy fading, like a plucked flower oozing sap from a broken stem--
"...come on," she murmurs, willing what remains to hold together, drawing on the same will that hears the voices of the trees and calls flower petals out of nothing. The Xenian is right there but in this moment the evil plant takes second place to keeping Fiore alive long enough to free him, somehow--
"If you're sorry," she tells him in a voice both clear and blunt, "you'd better stay alive and tell him yourself."
And that's when Jadeite lands, cape billowing out behind him; his Golden Kingdom uniform's been a somewhat-visible presence since well before the Dark Kingdom fell, though he's mostly kept out of the spotlight. Now, he takes everything in in a quick glance, sees Kyouko's soul gem gleaming and Momo being scowly at her, sees Jupiter kneeling by Fiore and trying to keep his insides in, and he bites his lip.
"If," he finally calls over to Momo, "you handled her gem, any other injuries she has are gonna have to wait triage. Don't yell at her too bad, this guy's been trying to destroy the world, and has been hurting basically her best friend, so like--" His hands wave frustratedly in the air, and he crouches down on the other side of Fiore and fumbles with his communicator. "Kunzite! Can you raise Asclepius? It looks like Fiore's bleeding out. Jupiter's trying to keep his insides in, and--"
He knows what Mamoru would want.
"--I can't just take him home, he'll make another grab for Endy and Endy can't even move--"
This all with his very pretty watch up by his face, and his other hand's down absently trying to help apply pressure. Then his brain kicks in and he tears off his cape and tears it in half, then wads up one half and pushes it at Jupiter's hands. "Maybe if I freeze it in place-- there's blood from his back too, you keep handling his front." And the other's getting wadded up and pressed to Fiore's back.
Momo sticks her tongue out at Jadeite. "I'll yell at her as much as I want! She's a stupid buttface. But if either you yell at her, I'll beat you up. Only I get to yell at Kyou-nee."
BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
Doesn't matter how cute he is!
Satisfied that Kyouko is no longer on death's do--
Er.
Satisfied that Kyouko's no longer dyin--
Um.
NOW THAT SHE KNOWS KYOUKO WILL BE OKAY Momo shoves the gem in her purse. She scowls at the grief seed. "Ug, this so covers the cost of that last burrito, you jerk."
Standing, she hoists Kyouko over her shoulder. She's suddenly feeling a bit left out.
Curiously, she hovers around the two Mamoru Friends as they try to fix up a...Sort of...Mamoru Friend?
"Guys need a lazer? I hear that can help on...gut stuff?"
The voice that answers from Jadeite's communicator is familiar to ... everyone there, honestly, to some degree or another. Momo doesn't know it by that name. Fiore knows it much better than he wants to -- or does when he's conscious, at least. "On it." Nothing more than that.
...someone's helping him. Healing him. Strengthening the ties between his soul and his body so that he cannot slip into darkness. It is a slow thing, tenuous at best -- someone else covering his wounds in soft fabric, pushing so that whatever blood he has left stays inside his body. Neither of them are Mamoru. And neither of them can truly ease the pain, or stop the screaming in his mind.
But, for some reason, they are trying.
Fiore uses what little energy he has to lift his head a half-inch from the ground, squinting so that he may focus on the blur of green in his sights, and on the voice that comes from it. The voice that he knows has been turned on him in anger before, and joined with a blow that knocked him from the very sky.
So then...
"Why?" he hisses at her, at the stranger he cannot see. It is all he can manage, fighting to stay present and awake in his body, and after the word escapes him, his head slams back down on the pavement. The Xenians, sleeping in the earth below, hum against his ear -- but for all their power, they cannot keep him from dying. They cannot even try.
There's only one person who can do that, and he has only one chance to find him.
The mass of petals that descends on the alleyway is chaotic, wholly unlike the deft stream of pink that typically carries him away when he chooses to leave. Flurries and cyclones attach to bodies indiscriminately, swayed both by the wind and Fiore's own weakness, and thus there are many that follow him in his teleport. The Xenian's upset about that -- these people can't be trusted, you fool, you're going to die, you'll ruin everything -- but he has run out of options.
Besides, if his target location is wrong, the presence of the strangers won't matter. If he cannot find Mamoru now, he will die.
He feels the soft touch of carpet beneath his cheek as reality warps itself back around him, and he prays that everything has not been in vain.
Meanwhile, in that alleyway--
The rush of petals is everywhere and they are NOT SAKURA PETALS, and Jadeite's stomach sinks like a lead weight. The asteroid. He's going to take them to the asteroid. And--
...the petals fall to the dirty ground, and Jadeite's standing alone.
He looks completely incredulous for a second. (Is this even the same damn alley--?) A quick check to make sure that he is, in fact, alone, and his eyes light on Kyouko's, unmoving on the ground. That blonde girl had been carrying her-- her sister, right. And--
Oh crap.
"You have GOT to be f'ing kidding me," he mutters, trudging over to pick up the unconscious girl. He crouches to do so, and... she's... not breathing...
Where is her god damned soul gem. Casting about frantically, Jadeite looks around on the ground; not here-- no wait she's-- right, no pulse, it's further away than... oh god DAMN that girl had it in her HAND.
Kunzite is going to kill him.