Endgame

"FIRE!" Kiara barks.

Chaos erupts. A tremendous scattering of lights, sounds, and explosions populates the sky, turning it into a mimicry of nighttime. Of the Manikins, only The Fool is reckless enough to believe it can evade the salvo, the others break their momentum and hover in midair, just out of reach of the fusillade. Of course, such foolhardiness is rewarded by being shot, electrocuted, and shredded by shrapnel. Needless to say, it dies on the spot, its body dissolving into thin air. The other manikins mourn by screeching out their grief in unnatural shrieking tones.

Rising from the smoke and ash come the magical girls. Nakasuko is first to the fray. She spies a weak-looking manikin with flaming hands, at the same time, The Magician spies a strong-looking magical girl with a metal bat. He conjures a volley of flaming spheres only to have them batted right back at him. He stares down the volley of fire, ready to accept his fate but another manikin, the blindingly fast Chariot, swoops in and moves The Magician out of the way. Nakasuko clicks her tongue in irritation.

"Watch out!" Someone, Nakasuko isn't sure who, calls out to her. She just barely manages to get out of the way of what looks like a shooting star, light condensed into a thin line. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a hooded manikin, The Empress, with her hand outstretched towards Nakasuko. From her fingers, a hundred more of those strands emerge and dart towards the bat-wielding girl.

"I got you!" Kasai blindsides The Empress, enveloping her in a cocoon of slashes, cutting her into ribbons. The strings that were pulled taut just an instant ago fade away into nothing.

"Thanks!" Nakasuko calls out.

"No problem!"

Across the battlefield, yet more battles rage on.

"DIE, DIE, DIE!!!" Oe tears into The Sun, a spherical Manikin, with her chainsaws. Its fiery aura eats away at her, melting her body, cracking her mask, but she continues cutting until the manikin splits into two and its flames die out. "WHO'S NEXT?!"

As if responding, two manikins approach her from opposite flanks. The Emperor zips towards her, propelled by iridescent jets of steam sticking out of its back while Strength, a lion-shaped manikin, pounces onto Oe. Vice-like jaws crush her left arm. Oe looks over her shoulder before plunging her chainsaw into Strength's skull. Though, even in death, it does not relinquish its grip. The Emperor takes advantage of the opportunity, delivering a devastating punch directly into Oe's torso. The force is so great that her arm is wrenched clean off. Bits of metal go flying through the air. A second punch from The Emperor smashes Oe's body into scattered bits.

"Someone trade me!" Oe yells. A flash of steel and The Emperor's head is separated from its body, killing him instantly. An eye for an eye.

"I got you!" Isaka salutes her as she falls, unaware of the reaper behind her. Right as Death swings its scythe, a giant metal feather knocks its weapon out of its hands. Before it even notices it's been disarmed, The Lady of Tokyo's scythe bisects it right down the middle.

"Fall." With a great beat of her mighty wings, two of her wings launch their feathers, creating a squall of metal. The Tower, The Moon, Temperance, The Devil, The Wheel of Fortune, and The Chariot are caught in the vortex. The razor edges cut into their bodies, killing them all save for The Chariot, who manages to overcome the tempest through its sheer speed.

"Hey, watch it!" Ryukko yells, barely managing to dodge out of the way of the storm, her spear dragging along behind her. Taking advantage of her momentary distraction, The Magician approaches her with a flaming fist cocked behind him. He hurls the fireball at Ryukko, threatening to burn her to a crisp. But right before it makes contact, she contorts her body into an angle possible only through a mechanical body. Before The Magician can process what just happened, Ryukko impales him with her spear and flings him over her shoulder. He does his best to break his momentum but as soon as he regains his bearings, Tami is already poised to execute him. With one hand, she quickly levels a musket at his head. But before she pulls the trigger, she spies a shadow moving out of the corner of her eye.

"Don't think I've forgotten about you!" Tami conjures another musket in her offhand and points it in the shadow's path, knowing full well it's going to try and rescue its comrade. She pulls both triggers, opening a hole in The Chariot's and The Magician's heads, killing both instantly.

A staff-wielding manikin, The High Priestess, lashes out against Tami out of sheer grief at her neighbor being killed. She stabs her staff into Tami's side. It pierces true, skewering her thoroughly. But she does not die. Unnaturally, her head twists towards The High Priestess. A grin breaks onto her face, showing just which of them is closer to being human. Tami swings the butt of a musket and smashes it across the manikin's face. She sways from the force of the impact, which is enough to get her to stop moving long enough for Amanda to pierce her with two arrows, killing her.

"Amaru!" Amanda calls out.

"Right!" Launching volleys of bullets and magical bolts, they create two killzones and use it to 'sandwich' a manikin that strayed too far from the pack. The blind Justice is torn to shreds, its balancing scales falling down to the canopy below. But before it can touch the leaves, it suddenly begins to float upwards, magnetized towards Elexi's electromagnetic field. Long, winding tendrils of iron sand rise from the ground to form a dense swarm surrounding Elexi. With a wave of her hand, the swarm condenses into a solid shell, trapping The Hanged Man inside. It struggles to break free but her grip is iron-fisted.

A blue flash whizzes by Elexi before planting its feet on the iron shell. Without missing a beat, Yuki plunges her rapier into the ball, killing the manikin. There's a shriek from above as The Hierophant conjures a sword of light to assault Yuki but she dodges its swings with ease and counters by slashing through the blade, dispelling it. The manikin conjures two more swords. Then three more. Then four more and so on, but Yuki bobs and weaves between their strikes effortlessly, knowing exactly how and when they'll strike. With every batch she dispatches, she gets closer and closer to the manikin until she's close enough to plunge her rapier into The Hierophant's chest. And so she does.

Iko smiles as she watches Yuki dispatch two manikins in rapid succession. Not one to be outdone, she uses two party poppers to propel herself towards a pair of manikins, The Lovers. She blitzes them down, undermining their teamwork through sheer volume of attacks. With a decisive kick, she breaks both of their defenses, grasps both of their heads in her hands, and smashes them together, killing both in one fell swoop. "Dasvidaniya, motherfucker."

"Look ou–" Before Klara can even finish that sentence, Iko whirls around and counters the lightning bolt bearing down on her with a blast from one of her party poppers. The Hermit tilts its head, processing that its attack had just been neutered. "N-nevermind."

"Klara!" Kirika calls out as she casts out a black lightning bolt of her own, piercing through a lion-shaped manikin. It doesn't make a sound as it dies. "Catch!"

Without hesitation, Klara throws herself in the path of the black lightning bolt, activates her transmutation to absorb the lightning, and then redirects the bolt towards a hooded manikin. It shrieks out and is suddenly silenced. Apart from the mountainous Judgment, there's only one manikin left, The Empress. Shields of force surround her, negating the volleys Amaru and Amanda launch at it while also preventing the other close-combat magical girls from getting close. Wordlessly, Daisuko and Oka lock eyes and launch their attack.

Oka maintains a modest amount of distance between her and The Empress as she launches spinning letter openers at her. Naturally, they're deflected with ease. Though, they succeed in their function, that is, concealing their true intentions. Oka hurls one last letter opener, not at The Empress, but above her. At the same time, Daisuko takes out one of her pistols and whispers under her breath:

"「Jujutsu - Cold Star」"

She makes the impossible shot, hitting the letter opener that's traveling at least at mach one. The bullet ricochets off of the projectile, changing its course and hitting the Empress right between the eyes. It lurches backwards before dissolving into thin air.

"That just leaves the big boy." Daisuko looks up at the mountain-sized Judgment. She fires two shots at it, severing two of its many tendrils but the severed strands merely weave back together. "You got a plan?"

"Yeah." Oka points at the dot rushing straight at Judgment. "Leave it to Shosuko."

A rain of Judgment's shadowy strands dart down onto the magical girl. She deflects the first one off of her forearm and runs along the second one's side. She jumps from strand to strand to strand– vertical tightrope to vertical tightrope, deflecting what she can and evading what she can't. As she approaches the summit, the volume of strands increases exponentially as the manikin grows more and more desperate. Back against the wall, it pools as many lines as it can into a single spike that it uses to try and impale Shosuko. It succeeds in that it does manage to skewer the magical girl's arm, but what it didn't count on is Shosuko's sheer grit.

"GRAAAAAGH–!" grabbing onto the spike, Shosuko uses every last ounce of strength she has within her to pull. At first, it seems like the manikin won't budge but then there's a tremendous rumbling as Judgment is forcefully uprooted. It shrieks as the tendrils hooking it to the ground are broken one by one. She lifts the gigantic manikin over her shoulder before slamming it onto the ground. Its vision goes blurry. There's a ringing bouncing around inside its consciousness. It tries to stand back up but something akin to a hybrid between a shooting star and hydrogen bomb falls right on its head. Shosuko drives a punch measurable in the megatons directly into its head. A crater that is almost a hole opens in the ground. Like a lake suddenly evaporating all at once, Judgment's body dissipates into thin air. Shosuko takes a deep breath and wipes the sweat from her forehead. Though, as soon as she begins to lower her guard, she hears a slow clap coming from behind.

"Well, it seems that my precious manikin army has been bested." The Lady of Osaka sips on a juicebox as she floats down from on high. "It's really too bad."

Shosuko slowly turns around to face her. "Go home. There's nothing left for you here."

"Hmph. Bold of you to assume that I've already revealed my trump card." Wisps of smoke swirl around The Lady of Osaka. "All you've accomplished is wasting my time."

"Try it." Shosuko's stare hardens. "Whatever it is you throw at us, we'll protect Ozawa with our lives."

"..." Something flashes across The Lady of Tokyo's face. Not quite irritation, she's too proud to be angry, but something adjacent. She smirks. "Ha! Alright, let's play it your way. You can play the hero and I'll play the villain."

"Why are you doing this? What do you have to gain?"

"You're asking me?! I don't know, I just do! Do you have any idea how long I've been around? You can't expect me to remember every little thing!" The Lady of Osaka stares at her like she just asked her why the sun comes out during the day. "All I know is that every ICMG major in the world wants to be the first 4th stage magical girl."

"You're willing to sacrifice the lives of thousands for something so shallow?"

"I've sacrificed more for less." The Lady of Osaka floats around Shosuko lazily. "Do you mourn for the cow a steak used to be?"

"How the hell did you become Major?"

"Well, it's not like it's a democratic process. The ICMG, at its core, obeys natural selection more than anything." The Lady of Osaka shrugs. "Oh well, it's not like you or I can change anything. If not me, someone else will come for the gate."

"Even so, there will always be people who will stop people like you."

"So I've learned. But eh, I'll come back in a hundred years, after you've all died. I was overconfident today. Pray I make the same mistake."

"..."

With a sonic boom, The Lady of Osaka rises up into the sky and darts away over the horizon. When she disappears from sight, Shosuko exhales, the tension finally leaving her body. She lets herself detransform, the familiar squeezing feeling of her suit provides a modicum of comfort. She was so confident talking big to The Lady of Osaka like that, but in truth, she has no idea how big or how strong of an army she's going to bring the next time. Shosuko clenches her fist as tight as she can. Come what may, she'll definitely defeat it. For the sake of the city that took her in when nowhere else did.

"Yo, Shosuko!" Daisuko casually walks up to her. "Where did The Lady of Osaka go?"

"She's gone. For now."

"Ah, that's not ominous at all," Oka chimes in helpfully.

"I get the feeling it's going to be a while, though." Shosuko scratches the back of her head. "In the meantime, why don't we all go get some lunch?"

"Hey, Shosuko, listen, I–... me and Oka have something we'd like to say," Daisuko starts.

"Yeah, I think it's high time that…"

"It's fine, I'm over it now." Shosuko shakes her head, a shadow of a smile on her face. "Just treat everyone to some ramen and I'm more than happy to put it all behind."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah… I think… I think mama wouldn't want us to fight anymore." Shosuko nods thoughtfully.