Chapter Three: The Grave of the Roses

By: ZipCode

"Well," Kyouko said watching the shadows squirm through the red chains, spear at the ready, "this is kind of exciting."

"Really?" Sayaka asked, shifting nervously from foot to foot as she watched them, sword slick in her grip.

"No." Kyouko admitted.

The red chains shuddered once and then disintegrated as Kyouko dispelled it.

The creature was past.

Shadows glided towards them, only perceptible because they were darker than the night itself. Kyouko batted the tendrils aside, surprised at the lack of fleshy resistance. Sayaka hadn't been kidding when she said it was weak; there was barely any substance to them at all. She might as well have been cutting air.

Only the air fought back.

Whiplike darkness attacked from impossible angles: above, below, behind; like an army of wasps they surrounded and stung, aiming for blind spots, arteries, nerve clusters – anything that could produce a paralysing amount of pain with as little effort as possible. It didn't feel like a blade – more like hundreds of little points.

"Damn, it's cheeky," Kyouko muttered, spear splitting up into sections as she turned the chain and shaft into a spinning cage, holding the shadows at bay as she whirled it about her.

Some got through. Inevitable. Paper cuts. Think of them like paper cuts.

Really cold paper cuts.

Cheeky. Really cheeky.

"Sayaka, get in here." Kyouko hissed, gesturing towards the chain cage that circled around her.

Sayaka, who was busy with her tried and true method of hitting things until they fell down took one look at Kyouko's makeshift shield and quailed. Cuts opened and bled freely as the shadows attacked her but were just as quickly erased. Clearly she remembered their first duel because she said: "Kyouko, you're going to hit me-"

"I'm not going to hit you," Kyouko snapped, nerves fraying.

Obviously uncertain about the intelligence of the idea, the teal-haired girl took a deep breath, closed her eyes and then rushed forwards blindly. She only stopped when she hit Kyouko's side. The redhead grunted.

"See? I didn't hit you. Now guard my back. We're going on the offensive."

They set up a system. Kyouko took care of nearly everything that wandered in farther than ten feet, while Sayaka hit everything else that made it in, usually from the redhead's blind spots. They thus fought back to back, slowly moving into the mass of shadows. It was slow, ponderous work – no matter how many times they hit it, the creature seemed to just melt away and reform.

"You're doing good," Kyouko said encouragingly one foot heading in front of the other. It was pathetic but she was already tiring.

"You're doing better," Sayaka returned, sounding skittish as she edged backwards.

"Yeah, well, that's because I am better," Kyouko sniffed, batting away a dozen arms.

"Like heck you are."

Kyouko grinned as a spectral limb sliced through her cheek, drawing blood. "Like hell. Say it with me. Like hell you are."

"Buh," Sayaka said, caught off guard, nearly letting a shadow slice across her neck and open up an artery, "– wuh – why?"

Kyouko noticed the near slip despite having her back to the other girl. "Concentrate."

"I – I am. But why are you asking me to say h- h- things like that?"

"It's just a word," Kyouko said, rolling her eyes. "And it'll be terrible if you kicked the bucket – again – without having once said something stronger than 'heck.' I mean I threatened your boy toy and all you did was try to kill me. That's just sad."

"Kyosuke isn't… He's not my… boy toy," Sayaka said, sounding disgruntled.

"Yeah, you're the goody two-shoes sort, I know." Kyouko said, trying to mollify the other girl. "But still! Live a little! Cuss out the damn shadow bastard."

"Um- um-" Sayaka took a deep breath even as she swung her sword in more wild strokes. "D-d-damn you. Uh. Shadow b-b-"

Beat.

"I can't say things like that, it's not, not right."

More eyes were rolled.

"Sad." Kyouko said, shaking her head. "So, so sad."

"Well, I'm sorry I'm not up to your delinquent standards-"

The monster screeched – surprisingly childishly – as Kyouko's spear hit something meatier. "Ah-hah," Kyouko crowed. "Talk's over. It's showtime."

Shadows retreated back, heading off to protect whatever she'd hit. Kyouko's spear joined together back into a proper weapon. "Let's go."

"Wha-"

"Hut hut, time waits for no man… Except Homura, I suppose."

"What?"

But then Kyouko was rushing forwards and Sayaka had no choice but to grit her teeth and follow the insane puella magi straight into the heart of the darkness.

It was only later that Sayaka would realize that Kyouko's attempt at levity was there to calm her down, keep her from panicking or doing something self-sacrificing and 'heroic'. Not that Sayaka would think it heroic - heroic was what Kyouko had done, making herself go boom just to keep a girl that had already turned into a witch from being alone.

But that would only be later. When she had time to think and to wonder why exactly someone would do something like that and then come to some ponderous conclusions.

As of the moment where she was running down the road chasing after living shadows? She was pissed. Why did that little hooligan think that swearing was so important, anyway? They were just words! Just a few unimportant words!

She slashed through offending shadows almost instinctively. She wasn't sure how Kyouko knew how to see them, to her it was like trying to see black on black. Nearly impossible.

"Why are we running?"

"I hit something!" Kyouko said, sounding gleeful. Tired, but gleeful. Total adrenaline junkie. Sayaka wasn't looking forward to having to drag Kyouko back to the apartment, because that sort of intensity after the near exhaustion did not herald good things. "Didn't you hear it scream?"

"Kyouko, your-" Sayaka said, trying to put what she had to say gently. In the end she couldn't quite manage to say that the redhead was a loudmouth. "-weapon makes a lot of noise."

Kyouko flicked her hair negligently as she stabbed into the shadows. "Yeah, well, trust me – monster screamed. We're onto it for sure. Got it on the ropes and everything."

More shadowy tendrils attacked but they seemed like half-hearted attempts at best and Sayaka was forced to acknowledge that Kyouko might have a point. The main trouble was that the shadow seemed to be retreating faster than Kyouko could pursue.

And it could be a trap. Nothing about… well, any of this seemed close to usual.

"It's getting away," Sayaka was forced to point out.

Kyouko growled, hooked her spear into the crook of her elbow and jammed her hands together. "Not if I have a say-"

Red chains burst into existence, covering the street in a maze of fencelike structures.

Sayaka decided that that was something she could stand to learn. Mami had had her golden ribbons. Surely she could do something like that, right? Maybe this really cool wall of blades that would spin in place and-

The shadows screamed again – and this time Sayaka did hear it. It sounded an awful lot like a child, voice warped by terror. One of the fences near the middle shook.

Kyouko smiled nastily. "Gotcha."

Then the redhead swayed and collapsed in the middle of the street, half-smile still on her lips.

There was an old book whose first lesson pretty much amounted to 'don't panic.'

Of course, that not being enough, the second or third book pretty much amounted to the goodly advice of 'alright, now you can panic' and much as she would hate to admit it, Sayaka took option two and actually grabbed Kyouko by her shirt front and shook her around a few times, close to tears.

There might have been a little hysterical screaming involved.

After a few fruitless minutes of… maybe-hysterics, the little voice in the back of her head that kept her calm even after she had been turned into some sort of god-forsaken zombie took over. It wasn't a nice voice – in fact, it was kind of bitter and rather mean-spirited – but it kept her together. She checked the soul gem on Kyouko's neck and after removing it discovered that it shone as brightly as ever.

Pondering to herself over what might have precipitated Kyouko's collapse, Sayaka calmed down, replaced the soul gem and tried to wake her up. Pinched her ears, clapped several times over her head, an attempted tickle-

Nope.

"Great," the swordswoman muttered.

Shouldering the redhead onto her back, Sayaka winced as her muscles complained but then soldiered through the pain. Her muscles would repair themselves near instantaneously.

She gazed at the crisscrossing network of chains separating her from their quarry.

"Great," Sayaka muttered.

The witch screamed again.

Sayaka glanced at Kyouko's head which was lolling against her shoulder and sighed.

Kyouko jerked awake.

Her first impression was that it was really comfortable. Her second impression was that everything hurt.

"Did anyone get the license plate number?" Kyouko croaked, opening her eyes. Sayaka's face a foot away from her own. It took about a minute to realize that she must have been cradled in Sayaka's lap whereupon her cheeks turned cherry red.

"Um-bwuh-hi?"

A gentle snore answered her.

Getting her outrageously high breathing rate under control, Kyouko tried to take stock of the situation. They were still in the street – and since she could make out a lot more details than before, it also appeared as if sometime during her impromptu nap the sun had risen.

…did the two of them fall asleep in the middle of the street?

Why yes. Yes they did.

Fancy that.

Extricating herself from Sayaka's lap, Kyouko got up and winced. She stretched a few times but it still felt like her muscles had been turned into jelly and then lit on fire. And god, she was starving.

…the city was still deserted, though.

"Yeah, that's not right," Kyouko murmured, as she took in the absolute lack of movement. Her red fence still stood but she could tell at a glance that the shadow creature was long gone. A hand motion dispelled the lingering structures.

She blinked. Narrowed her eyes.

What had been obscured by the night and by the fence was…

"Blood." Kyouko murmured, staring at the small dots that littered the ground, like breadcrumbs in a fairy tail of old.

She glanced back at Sayaka who was still snoring away.

"Huh."

It was easier carrying Sayaka on her back than it should have been, what with her muscles barely allowing her to stand let alone carry someone. Sayaka murmured several times while Kyouko hoisted her up but didn't wake.

Following the trail, Kyouko was well aware that this went under the heading of 'probably a really, really bad idea.'

Still. Witches didn't bleed. Not conventionally, anyway. Their blood didn't coagulate and go dark, be barely visible on the asphalt it had landed on.

Then again, witches didn't exactly walk on asphalt period. They had their own little self-contained barrier dimensions.

All of this was too weird.

And Kyouko had the odd feeling that this was…

Well. If her thoughts were right she'd rather not have Sayaka crushing herself in guilt. And it wasn't like she could leave Sayaka alone either – so, carrying it was. If it was an injured witch, well, it was broad daylight now. The advantages of shadows that could barely cut through skin would be few indeed.

She made followed the barely visible trail but it ended up at a manhole cover.

Kyouko stared at it for a few moments before sighing. Right. If it was light, seek shade. Nowhere darker than underground.

Stomach growling, Kyouko trudged off to go look for food, swordswoman hanging on her back.

From up above, a pair of eyes followed her leave.

X X X X X X

Sayaka woke up inside a pharmacy.

This not being where she expected to wake up, she jerked drunkenly to her feet and nearly got into a fight with an aisle of greeting cards. Well wishes tumbled about her before she realized what she was doing.

Ambient light shone through the glass storefront, setting into sharp definition the dust in the air.

Kyouko stepped in from around the corner, munching on a bag of potato chips. "Oi, calm down."

"What – where -" Sayaka inhaled a bunch of dust and started hacking.

"Not a morning person, huh?" Kyouko said sympathetically. She hesitated before offering the bag of chips to Sayaka.

The gears in Sayaka's brain started to turn. Chips, store, lack of people-

"I – Kyouko. What are you doing?" She said, between coughs. She swung her hand, trying to clear the dust.

"Eating?" The redhead asked, looking innocent.

"Put that back." Sayaka growled, getting her breathing under control. She looked around herself, expecting a guard or cashier or someone to spring up behind them and start reading them their rights and asking for their parents' numbers.

Kyouko shrugged. "There's no one to buy it from."

"There's no one… to buy it from?" The teal-haired girl wrinkled her nose in confusion. She suddenly had a bad feeling about all this dust. Just like inside the apartment lobby. "But-"

Kyouko nodded. "Yup. We're all alone. No one else here."

"No one at all."

Sayaka looked down at the manhole.

She felt inexplicably embarrassed. The righteous indignation about Kyouko stealing food had made her forget about the whole falling asleep thing. Now that they were back on the street and the witch had clearly gotten away the righteous indignation had died away near completely and was replaced by a feeling of ice in the pit of her stomach.

"I really meant to stay awake," Sayaka said, the excuse sounding weak even to her own ears.

"Yeah, well, you're lucky nothing else got the drop on us. Two innocent," as if in counterpoint, Kyouko munched on more stolen goods, spraying bits of chip everywhere, "beautiful girls alone at night fall asleep in the middle of the street? All sorts of creepy-crawlies could take interest-"

"Kyouko," Sayaka squeaked, scandalized.

"Yeah, well, I'm just telling it as it is." She bopped Sayaka on the side of the head. "Next time, wake me up."

"I tried-"

"Try harder," Kyouko said gently. "Just be glad nothing worse happened." Melancholically: "Speaking of worse, we better get a grief seed. Or else I'm going to find out what my no doubt terribly Freudian nightmare-self looks-"

"I think that our soul gems aren't dimming."

Kyouko stopped mid-sentence. Blinked several times. "Really?"

Sayaka nodded her head, smiling although looking a trifle uncertain of herself. "I think so."

Taking her soul gem off whereupon it turned back into its egglike form, Kyouko took a sceptical look at it before her face lit into a smirk.

"Ha ha. Even if it just takes longer to dim - awesome. About time something went right." Musingly: "Maybe that's why my stamina's crap. It's conserving power automatically or something like that."

"Could be," Sayaka said, non-committally.

"In any case: great. That's a load off my mind." Kyouko scuffed the ground with her boot. "So, boss, what do we do now?"

Sayaka looked around the dead, quiet city.

"Find out where everyone went, I guess. Start with Madoka-chan and my parents and-" Sayaka sighed, looking up. Getting across the city without access to public transport would take hours.

Kyouko rubbed her hands together, looking surprisingly gleeful.

"I have a great idea how to do just that."

"We're hotwiring a car," Sayaka said disbelievingly as she shoved a pretzel into her mouth. She still had concerns about this pseudo-stealing but without anyone there to pay it seemed like a rather silly concern. It wasn't like people would begrudge them for eating while an entire city had up and vanished.

"We're not just hotwiring a car," Kyouko said, sounding scandalized as she surfaced from beneath the car's dashboard. "We're hotwiring a 1967 Chevrolet Impala. Do you know how rare these things are in Japan?"

Sayaka was still a little concerned about how easily Kyouko had jimmied the lock but decided that now wasn't the time for that particular conversation.

"So it's older than my mom and American." Sayaka said skittishly. Walking into a parking lot with all its cars there but knowing that all the people that drove these cars were missing was… disconcerting. "Do you even know what you're doing?"

"Of course," Kyouko said cheerfully. She patted the car. "Do you think I'd risk my baby?"

"Yes," Sayaka said, without missing a heartbeat.

Kyouko sighed. "You'll see. This'll go-" there was a huge spark from beneath the dashboard and a startled squeak before Kyouko stood up, looking frazzled. "I think I'll start practicing with the other ones. Over there."

Sayaka didn't quite smirk but it was a close thing and nodded. "Of course."

Beat.

A thought occurred to the teal-haired girl and she nearly groaned.

"You learned this watching movies, didn't you?"

Kyouko looked guilty. "I – well – maybe?"

Sayaka covered her face in her hands.

Walking. They were definitely walking.

"It should have worked," Kyouko grumbled from behind the dashboard of a Honda civic. "It's so simple."

Sayaka was currently trying to hold in her lunch. And internal organs. "Kyouko-"

Landscape blurred past them, painfully past. Sayaka wasn't sure how Kyouko could be clocking more than a hundred and seventy-five kilometres an hour in a family car but wasn't sure she wanted to know.

"I mean, it's just a bunch of wires that you fiddle together, right?" The redhead's hand hit the steering wheel, making the car jump and Sayaka go green. "I mean, the key here was still in the ignition! That's just – that's just pathetic! What if we need a quick getaway? What if-"

"Kyouko," Sayaka said, a little desperately, "we should slow-"

Kyouko continued ranting, oblivious about Sayaka's impending motion sickness coupled to hysteria. "And I left behind my baby. What am I-"

A bright yellow car stationed in the middle of the road came towards them with punishing speed. Mostly because they were heading towards it at speeds that were decidedly not safe.

"Kyouko – we're going to crash!"

Kyouko veered out of the way of the parked car and laughed it off. "Ah, don't worry. I practiced loads in the arcade."

Beat.

"You – this is your first time driving?"

"Yeah, but don't worry-"

Sayaka did the logical thing and shut her eyes, pretending very hard that this wasn't happening to her and she wasn't there.

Yup. Not here.

Not here.

Oh god, they were all going to die in a giant explosion, just like in the movies…

"Homura's apartment is missing."

Sayaka cracked open a tentative eye. Since they weren't moving anymore she allowed herself to open the other. They were looking at what appeared to be a shopping mall. The car was idling.

Only… Sayaka didn't remember any shopping malls being here before.

"This isn't right," Sayaka murmured. "There used to be this old, Victorian-looking-"

"Homura's apartment," Kyouko said grimly. "It's where the girl lived. Dunno where she got the money, but she rented out the entire damn thing. Made it pretty fancy on the inside too."

Sayaka felt a spike of irrational anger at the supposed transfer student but choked it down. "Really?"

"Yup." Beat. "Now it's... been replaced."

Kyouko sighed.

"I don't like this." The redhead hit the gas causing Sayaka to squeak in fright. "Now keep your eyes open, I don't know where exactly Madoka lives…"

After another harrowing ride courtesy of Kyouko's rather… interesting idea of what exactly constituted driving, they made it to Madoka's house. Unlike Homura's apartment, it was still intact and visibly the same structure: just dark and empty looking.

Sayaka wondered if it were disloyal of her not to first check up on her own parents but then dismissed the thought. Kyuubey had been… insistent on Madoka becoming a puella magi. Now that she knew what exactly that entailed – making a wish and then paying for it with mind, body and soul and Sayaka was forced to wonder if… perhaps, Madoka had wished them back to life, thinking the cost worth that particular sacrifice.

She wasn't sure if she could take that sort of guilt.

And she wasn't sure if she could stand knowing the answer either because sometimes, sometimes she thought that maybe it was.

Thus it wasn't solely due to Kyouko's questionable driving habits that made her rather green-ish when she got out of the passenger side of the car, taking a look at the Kaname homestead.

"Pretty swanky," Kyouko said admiringly, turning off the ignition and pocketing the key.

"Her mother was a CEO or something like that," Sayaka said, scratching her head in near embarrassment. It was true: Madoka had a ridiculously huge house, especially for Japan. Her bathroom could probably house a family of two and fit in a small kitchenette as well as a doublet of futons. It would probably be a bit of a smack to the face to someone who had grown up hoarding apple cores. "It's-"

Kyouko waved airily. "Pffft, I'm the reformed bad guy, remember? Don't get all worked up on my account." She smacked her hands together and rubbed them gleefully. "Let's go burgle your best friend's place. Bet there's plenty of valuables in there."

Sayaka shot her a look to which Kyouko's reply was laughter. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Let's be upfront about this and knock."

No one replied to the knocks, which was pretty much what they had both been expecting, Kyouko knew.

The redhead was about to force open the locks through sheer force when Sayaka proved that being the best friend had all sort of perks and found the extra key, hidden in the backyard beneath a potted plant. A boost past the gate and they found it together, easily enough.

…and holy crap, this house had its own garden. A house in the city with enough room for a garden. Although it was overgrown with weeds and the like, Kyouko knew more than enough to recognize the supports that would have allowed the crawling vines of peas to grow as well as the plots that would have likely enough had tomatoes or pumpkins or something.

Sayaka caught her staring and had an odd, almost embarrassed look in her eyes. Kyouko shrugged. Sayaka had started acting odd around Madoka's place – probably wondering where her best friend was.

They entered the house by the front door.

Like the rest of the city, Madoka's house was empty and thick with choking dust. The smell that had been present in the apartment was missing though: there was no smell of rot or lingering decay. In fact, there wasn't much of a smell at all, just dust and maybe the scent of something sharp and spicy.

"Mrs. Kaname? Mr. Kaname?" Sayaka called tentatively. After a moment of silence: "Madoka-chan? Tatsuya-kun?"

"Tatsuya-kun?" Kyouko mouthed.

"Her little brother," Sayaka replied, whispering. "Three years old. Cute little guy."

They stood there in the vestibule, ears straining for the slightest sound. Kyouko finally broke it, kicking her boots off and motioned Sayaka in.

"Don't think anyone's home. Maybe they left a note."

As it turned out, there was a note. Right there on the kitchen table, at the far end. It was a good thing that Madoka's house was half glass because without it, they probably wouldn't be able to see anything. As it was, Kyouko nearly missed it.

She picked it up and squinted at the beady characters curiously.

JUNKO.

WAS.

HERE.

"You recognize the writing?" Kyouko asked, biting into one of the chocolate bars she'd taken from the pharmacy. It was a trifle dry.

Sayaka looked it over. "No." She turned it over but the other side of the page was blank. "There wasn't anything else?"

Kyouko shrugged her shoulders. "Not that I could see."

"Huh," Sayaka murmured, looking intently at the paper. "A clue?"

Kyouko mimed taking a pipe out of her mouth. "Why of course, my dear Watson. This paper -"

Sayaka looked at her, almost hopefully.

"-indicates that Junko is almost certainly not here." Beat. "Well, probably, anyway. We should check the closets and such. Just in case this paper is a red herring or something, trying to lull us into a state of complacency." She bit into her chocolate, taking off nearly half of the bar and snapping it into her mouth with a few crunches. "Who is Junko, anyway?"

"Junko is Madoka's mother," Sayaka said, frowning at her. Kyouko shrugged her shoulders as she finished the chocolate bar and gave her a 'what-can-you-do' face.

After a moment, Kyouko did add, contemplatively: "But how did they get in and then out of the house and lock the door behind them? Maybe Madoka left it. Or her parents did."

"That doesn't look like Madoka's writing," Sayaka said. "And this… message is honestly kind of creepy."

"True enough," Kyouko allowed. She snuck glances at the fridge. It stood there invitingly but probably only held spoiled foodstuffs. "We should probably search the rest of the house. I mean, this is definitely a sign, right?"

"It could have just been a game," Sayaka said, sounding dubious even as the words came out of her mouth.

"Yeah, well, game or not, it's the first thing that makes me think that an entire city didn't just vanish overnight. Let's get looking. I'll start with the fridge."

The fridge was dark and empty.

So were most of the cabinets, which Kyouko found a little bizarre. It was like this house had been… emptied, which was definitely not the case for the other places they had seen. Those were stocked with goods as if people had simply stopped coming in.

The oven, however, held a note.

TOMOHISA.

WAS.

HERE.

The inside of the oven.

"Well that's… not exactly reassuring," the redhead muttered. "Found another one," she called, waving to Sayaka who was busy looking through a pile of old newspaper that had been stuffed into the recycling bin.

"Really?" Sayaka asked. "Where'd you-?"

Kyouko pointed wordlessly at the oven and Sayaka grimaced. "Well… that's… yeah. Huh."

"This house is all sorts of creepy," Kyouko muttered.

"It wasn't always," Sayaka said, staring contemplatively at the piece of paper, as if her eyes could pierce past the mystery it represented. She pointed at the stack of newspaper. "Dates until about a week after we went. Nothing unusual in it. No nuclear plant meltdown, no toxic waste spill, nothing."

"Hmmm," Kyouko murmured, thinking about Walpurgis Night. She'd never fought in one but at the same time, a Walpurgis Night had never wiped out a city before.

Or had it? Had it and everyone else just forgotten about it…

"Well," Kyouko decided. "Let's keep looking."

Nothing else showed up on the ground floor except more dust and two forgotten packages of instant noodles. Kyouko grabbed them and at Sayaka's look mouthed: "What?"

Sayaka rolled her eyes. "Nevermind."

On the staircase there was a dark stain. Kyouko bent down but she wasn't a forensics expert. For all she knew it could be paint or old spilt coffee or something.

"Kyouko?" Sayaka asked, pausing near the top.

Kyouko clicked on the flashlight for better lighting. "Was that there before?"

Sayaka came back and looked down. "Not sure. Maybe?"

Kyouko shrugged and clicked the flashlight off. "Oh well."

"Is that written in lipstick?" Kyouko asked, flashlight scanning the ginormous bathroom. Written on the mirror were giant pink words.

TATSUYA.

IS NOT.

HERE.

"I'm not sure," Sayaka murmured. "Doesn't lipstick dry out after a while? This looks fresh." She touched a finger to the mirror, it came away thick with dust and she shook it before nodding. "It's paint. Or ink. Something that stays."

"Well," Kyouko muttered, "it's not quite the same as the messages downstairs. Does that mean we should expect to see Madoka's little brother some time soon? Or would it be the opposite?"

"I don't know," Sayaka murmured. "But this – this all feels wrong somehow."

"Yeah," Kyouko admitted. "That it does."

Sayaka continued staring at the words for a bit and then shook her head. "Let's go see Madoka's room."

"Holy fuck." Kyouko breathed.

Sayaka wasn't sure she agreed with the use of profanity but she agreed with the sentiment.

Unlike the rest of the house, Madoka's room was a disaster. Things had been strewn around without care or concern, dolls lay scattered on the ground while clothes lay just about everywhere. Worse was the brown-red color of old blood that colored everything. Walls, dolls, pillows…

And nailed to the walls were Kyuubeys. Dozens upon dozens of Kyuubeys. All of them covered in blood and gore, made to spell out another message.

MADOKA.

IS NOT.

HERE.

"Well." Kyouko whispered after a moment of awkward silence. "Where is she?"

Author's Note: Should I put this genre into horror? I'm trying very hard to stay closer to suspense than to horror but the line gets kind of blurry sometimes. Right, thanks for reviewing! Seeya next chapter!