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Why did no one respond to her call? Normally, even when they did not help each other or refused to, there would be something in Shuuko’s skull that she could sense. Yet it was completely empty. So much that if she imagined dropping a pin, then it would result in an echo coming back to her. Which meant she was completely alone for the first time in her life. It should have been as freeing as having this body to herself.

Instead, it drove a spike of terror into her chest. Just in time for the baseball bat to slam into her and send her flying. Normally, an attack like that would not be allowed to hit as Sylvia would have either warned the warrior, or she would have caused Shuuko’s body to take a step back, but without that protection, Hotaru flew through the air like a particularly graceless rock. Her gauntlets dragged her downwards face first, but at least she had the wherewithal to draw her arms in and tuck her head into the envelope she created.

She called out to Sylvia once again as she flew, all but shouting the protector’s name into the void. As expected, she received no answer. It had been a shot in the dark anyways, so the warrior grit her teeth as she tried to pull herself into a ball, knowing that the impact would hurt like hell without her comrade being there to shoulder most of the pain. However, it seemed that the Detention Club’s supervisor had other plans.

Nocnitsa emerged out of nowhere, catching the warrior by the torso, then spinning around to bleed off the momentum before switching to holding her like a saddlebag. The warrior had little time to react and even if she could, her focus completely slipped from the fight. Instead of paying attention, the only thing she did was stand, her expression frozen in a mixture of shock and betrayal.

Why….? Why had the others left her? Why did they no longer respond? Sure, she did not treat them exactly right if she was honest with herself, but did she really deserve something like this? Surely, she did not do something that had them disappear without even a word. Ember even tried to talk it out several times! Maybe they got upset she had not listened? But they were not listening either! They knew that light girls would only end up sinking their blades into their backs!

But Sylvia, she found even stranger. The schemer could do awful things for the sake of the greater good, but the protector would never hurt a fly. Or perhaps this is how she started out, abandoning the warrior when she needed the protector the most. The thought sent her into dark places and she barely noticed being set down on her foot, lost as she was in her own world. She barely even sensed Roche reaching out to her as she looked forward, trying to figure out what happened.

Even worse, as she rooted around in her own head, she could no longer sense the other bodies as well as before. Their presence seemed muted, distant and if she attempted to reach out to them, the distance turned effectively infinite. She might have been able to do it if she strained her magic to the limit and expended every mote, but that would leave her vulnerable to attack.

That was what snapped Hotaru out of it at the end. With a twisted expression, she returned to reality and prepared to rip apart the light girls for…

…

[b]Where the hell did they go?![/b]

The traitorous bitches disappeared into the aether as though nothing had happened. Hell, even most of the Detention Club vanished on her! What the fuck!

Hotaru slammed her gauntlet into the ground, creating a new-found crater in the pavement. Debris flew everywhere as she used all of her magic-augmented strength to vent her frustration, turning three or four inches of ground into shrapnel before she literally fell into her own trap, causing her knees to buckle. Then, just to add insult to injury, she hit her head on one of her gauntlets.

[color=#D8CD9F]”Fuck!”[/color] She cried out. [color=#D8CD9F]”I can’t even sense Misera nearby…”[/color] Of course she could not. That was Sylvia’s job for the most part. She never learned how to really tune into her magical senses save for the instinctive understanding that every magical girl had, because she never had to. And now that her comrades were gone, she would be paying the price.

What even happened to them? Could they have been destroyed because of… whatever the hell happened back then? Were they dead? No, she could not think of it that way. She needed to find them somehow!