[hr][img]https://i.imgur.com/wkXpcp9.png[/img]

[center][color=yellow]"Crestfallen soul, rest for this night. . ."[/color][/center]
[hr]

The burning had reached an agonizing level, but it didn't matter. Black Gate was in her arms. . . and then she wasn't. With a groan and a shriek of metal strained past its limits, the internal mechanisms of her armor gave way, cracking and fragmenting. The suit crashed into the ground in a spray of rubble and scrap, shedding armor plates. Michi tumbled from her grasp, flying out ahead of her. 

It was all okay, though. That maelstrom of anguish was gone. 

The last of her strength left her. The glow of the armor flickered once, twice, then sputtered out entirely. As she slid to a halt, the shoulder cannons tore themselves free, followed by her wings. The head of the mech split apart and fragmented, the shards rolling off the top onto the ground as the suit came to rest. Hizuki slumped inside what remained of the cockpit. [color=yellow]"Everyone's. . . okay."[/color] She cast about with what little power remained to her to confirm. 

The light girl herself flickered, then winked out, replaced with the mundane Haruna. The schoolgirl, still clad in yesterday's shirt and the shorts she'd worn to bed, slumped in the debris left behind by her magical alter ego. She started to lift herself out of the ruined cockpit, only for her physical strength to fail her too. The exhaustion and hurt she'd been pushing back had finally caught up to her, and so she slumped, hanging partway out of the ruins of her armor, sleeping as if it were the comfortable bed of her childhood.