A dream, a nightmare, or a failed world remembered?

Murderface gazes through the broken window of a tenth-floor corner office, staring down into hell. As the fires gutter down in the nearby building's ruins, the prickle of unshed tears burns at her eyes. From the smoke, she tells herself, even as a sad, quiet corner of her mind whispers that it's so much more than that. A dark figure picked out with burnished gold gleaming in the firelight, she watches half her life burn to charcoal and cracked bone and tries not to feel. Gives in to the part of herself that doesn't need to. Doesn't want to. Instead, she accepts irises fading slowly to black and the sweet smell of decay.

Inside her vision, a faint shadow flits about, alighting on things that catch it's mothlike interest. It turns to face her, posture curled with childish glee, illusory hands wrapped around a lump that could just as easily be a pale stone, a piece of machinery, or an almost adult skull with a half-inch bullet's hole through it. A ragged slash across the specter's head serves it as a wide smile - Faust. A prospective buyer at an open house, examining the decor. Already idly planning what she'll keep, and how she can... redecorate.

Murderface feels more than hears a presence creeping up on her, dodging it's way through scatted debris and glass, staying out of sight. Taking her attention from the shade, Murderface considers how to end it, plotting trajectories, terrain, fencing steps with tactical detachment. "M- Matsuda-sempai?" a quavering voice behind her asks from just outside of perfect disemboweling range, thick with fear. Midori - a vulture and a turncoat, who hitched her soul to a falling angel. We should kill her. If anything, it would be merciful...

Chiaki staggers slightly, trying to pick out which thoughts are her darker nature and which, Faust's whisperings. From the same place as Midori, a soft, self-satisfied voice croons: "Are you so sure there's a difference anymore, Homura-chan?" Of course there is, she thinks as she turns to face her inner demons, hope and despair coloring the unsaid words. Pinky herself stands wrapped around the ash covered, green-haired girl, claws resting gently on a glowing red gem affixed to Midori's collarbone."This one's starting to grow a spine. Even if she's worthless at fighting, she came back for you. How cute." Pinky says, offhandedly tracing a finger up Midori's neck. "You could take your *time* with her, Homura-chan," she deadpans, nodding towards the arm adorned with a golden blade and a gashed silver buckler. "Or, you could take advantage of her *special* relationship with you." One of Pinky's claws traces an imaginary path from one gleaming jewel to the other, and Chiaki twitches as a silver thread pulls at the corner of her mind. "Honestly, I'm jealous, Akemi-san," Pinky twists her face with theatrical tragedy, her black eyes alight with mockery. "Oh well, I suppose this way we can break *her* heart and play with what's left."

Chiaki's eyes land on Midori's face, wide eyed with terror rapidly working its way up to mindless flight, and abruptly she realizes that she's been staring silently, hungrily through her subordinate - her friend - as Pinky stood there and plied her slow corruption. She slowly drops her ostentatious pistol and uses the gold-plated fist that held it to pry another band of gold from her ears and head. Not today, Pinky.

"You'll need me again, Homura." Pinky whispers, letting herself fade away as more and more gold drops to the charred carpet and bounces further indoors. "You still have so many of my toys left to find, and their owners will know about you after today. I can help you, keep you safe, watch over you while you sleep - if you'll just let me?" The words are gentle, caring, almost motherly, but the wicked smile that issues them stretches from ear to ear like a cut throat. Chiaki ignores them. The last part of Faust's avatar to vanish is a red-gleaming crescent of a smile, hanging in the air Cheshire-cat style until the smoke clears enough for the blood-red moonrise behind it to swallow it whole.

Chiaki rasps Midori's name, voice hoarse with smoke and blood and screaming, but not unfriendly. "Matsuda-sempai, oh thank God. I was so worried, I know you told me to go, but I, I..." She starts to reply, and trails off as the moonlight reveals the broken and bloody remains of Chiaki's magical girl costume. Holding herself, she quietly picks her way through the lethal gold scattered around her superior, stopping close enough to touch. As if she has no idea what to do except be there if needed. As if she has no fear, standing next to someone she just watched slaughter friend, foe, and innocent alike by the dozen. By the hundred.

Chiaki says her name again, sounding a little less like someone dead and buried. She tries to say something else and waves vaguely at the destruction behind her, but the words catch in her throat. That's... done, then, she finally manages to bleakly state. Midori, she says yet again. Her life is a shambles. She's off the clock now, probably forever. So, Chiaki says, asking not as her boss, not as her own personal sword of Damocles, just as a sad, broken, miserably alone person with nothing left to lose, could Midori... please... comfort her?

A dozen emotions flicker across the green-headed girl's face as she flows one last step forward and presses Chiaki's head to her chest."Of course, Matsuda. Of course, I will. You only ever had to let me." she purrs consolingly, running a hand over her friend's black hair, crimson eyes glittering with fulfillment and need, mouth curled around granted wishes and broken dreams. They stand there that way for a while, Chiaki shaking with sobs she still suppresses, Midori cooing soothing sounds in her ear, both of them watering the burnt carpeting underfoot with tears. Until finally, Midori works up the courage for the only question she could ask in such a moment, the one thought she held on to ever since the black-haired angel of death she worshiped walked into the Silent Room bearing life and hope instead of oblivion.

"So, Matsuda-chan," she asks breathlessly, "who... do you want me to be?" Chiaki stiffens in her grip, mumbles a dissent, but the emerald figure holds her in place and whispers absolution. "It's okay, it's fine. I can be whoever you want." She says, and gently plucks the shattered eyeglasses from Chiaki's face, "I want to make you happy, if only for a moment. Whoever you want, that's who I want to be for you. That's who I am for you. Okay?"

Too tired to object, too hurt and hollow to resist, too brutally lonely for shame, Chiaki Matsuda whispers a phrase, names her desire. Hanegawa Midori smiles beatifically as she wraps her lips around the words. And, as her costume falls away, her soul burns brilliantly in its prison and colors flow over her, through her hair, like waves on a beach. Like a wildfire across a prairie. Like dawnbreak, moving across the world.

AND THEN THEIR HIPS MOVED ON THEIR OWN :V



(Motherfucking tenses, how do they work?)