She coughed up blood violently. Not enough to merely leave specks on a handkerchief, but violent, hacking, burbling coughs, vomiting up masses of sticky, red matter onto the cracked road beneath her.

  Everything ached and throbbed and stung and hurt, all in ways she’d never felt pain before, like her entire body had been left in a particurly rusty wood chipper overnight.

  “Ah, you’re awake.”

  The voice echoed in her head, too tangible to be her own thoughts as she struggled to focus any of her senses at all.

  “Wh-- ghhhhhgh-- where are…”

  “Currently, we seem to be lying in the middle of a mostly-destroyed intersection, though I confess I cannot quite read the street signs in their current state, so our exact locale is a bit beyond-”

  She shook her head, the motion alone agonizing to perform, the sound of metal scraping along the ground on every motion almost deafening.

  “…ah, yes, my apologies. The two you returned for should be… down this road to your left, I believe. Currently still both alive as well, I might add.”

  “...g-g-good. Enough.”

  Her voice came out like the sound of ripping wrapping paper, more of her own blood staining the ground below her as her arms struggled to find purchase, shoving her limp body upwards.

  Neither leg seemed interested in cooperation with her struggle, both of them loudly reminding her of her own broken bones as they buckled under her own weight.

  And yet nonetheless, as bloodied and battered as she had been left, she stood.

  “Faster than expected. Most humans seem to be quite happy to give up under sensations of extreme pain immediately, but your determination is quite admirable. Well done.”

  That voice grated directly on her nerves, the way it echoed behind her eye like…

  Her eye… right.

  Her sight remained fuzzy and unfocused, and the right side of her vision was almost entirely blocked off. It only took a few moments to remember the manner of her death, and about the several feet of rebar currently punched through her skull.

  “That’s going to cause issues for your already unimpressive mobility if we leave it like that. If you’ll give me a moment, I’ll try to find something we can use to-”

  She did not feel particurly inclined to give them any number of precious moments. Instead, both of her hands clenched tightly around the length of the metal emerging from her eye socket, squeezing with all the strength she could muster.

  It was difficult to determine which parts of the sound that emerged from her next were from metal grinding against bone and flesh, and which parts were from her screaming in unmitigated anguish, as she forcibly pulled the winding steel rod out from her brain case by hand.

  The metal cttered to the ground loudly, along with a considerable amount of her grey matter, blood, and the vomit that emerged from her as she completed her gruesome wound-tending.

  “…not the most glorious of solutions, but I admire your… bullheadedness.”

  “Shhhu… shut up… christ, why does everything have to hurt…?!”

  She stumbled forwards, each step slow and bored as her legs cracked with each time weight pressed on them, each eliciting more compining groans of pain.

  “W-Won’t… won’t reach them… l-like this…”

  “You won’t be reaching anything by being so determined to ignore me like this.”

  Her body locked up, limbs straightening against her orders, her form locking into a perfect upright position as each part of her tried to put itself back into a more correct arrangement.

  “There, now you’ll hold still and let me bloody well help you.”

  A feeling like pure adrenaline shot through every nerve ending in her body, bones shifting back into pce and flesh stitching itself back together, her eyesight clearing up almost entirely as the world came back into focus.

  “What the… what the fuck did you do?”

  “I did what our pact was meant to offer you. I gave you life. And so long as our pact is held, it is life you shall receive, over and over again, until there is no more life that needs be given.”

  Their voice no longer echoed inside her thoughts, instead coming from actual spoken words from her still-blinded right side.

  “So, what, I just… can’t die?”

  “You can die just as easily as anyone else. You will simply stand up once more afterwards. A btant refusal of death’s embrace.”

  “Great… Great, that’s uh… where are you, actually?”

  She spun in pce on newly-whole legs that nevertheless still ached with all the pain of still-broken limbs, unable to find the source of her pact-bearing entity.

  “Where…? Ah, my apologies. As we are now one single entity, I was forced to take some… creative liberties with my physical manifestation.”

  Her right hand moved without her orders, fingers running up her jaw and over her cheek, before finding her right eye socket, newly freed from the rebar impaling it.

  And rather than find an eye occupying that socket, she found so no such thing.

  Rather, what she felt was cold, smooth and sharp.

  She turned to the remains of a nearby car side view mirror, wrenching it to the side to find her face inside the polished surface.

  Occupying her right eye socket were a pair of teeth, polished white fangs glistening as her eyelids fluttered like lips as the mouth spoke.

  “A pleasure to meet in person. I do hope we can have a mutually agreeable existence together.”

  “Fuck--!!”

  She leapt backwards in shock as her own eye socket spoke to her, bearing that same voice that had offered her life moments earlier.

  The sudden jolt backwards had her foot find her own pooled blood behind her, losing purchase as it slipped forwards, Alice falling backwards hard, cracking her skull against the curb below and bouncing off of it with another sptter of blood.

  “Shit—”

  The brain-shaking impact left her vision fading once more… only to snap back into focus moments ter, the pain remaining but her body remaining intact.

  “Goodness… be a little careful, won’t you? Being able to heal your body doesn’t mean you should go breaking it more often just because you can.”

  “I… y-you’re in my eye… my eye that…”

  Her gaze spun back to the puddle she’d returned to live in, to the rebar rod she’d pulled from her skull, and to the sheer volume of what must have been bits of her own brain still clinging to it.

  Alice threw up violently yet again.

  “You signed the pact to receive life. In spite of whatever injuries and wounds may be inflicted upon you, in spite of how many times you may be id low, you will live. Need I make this any more clear than I already have several times now?”

  “I… shit, I really can’t die, huh…?”

  “The difference between unable to die and living past death seems to be lost on you currently, so yes, let’s agree to say that you, as you currently stand, cannot die in any permanent way.”

  She stood up slowly, hand going to the back of her head. The wound from smashing into the curb and from the rebar stabbing through her were both easily found just by touch alone, dry blood matting her hair down around both injuries. And yet, both had already closed themselves back up entirely, her flesh still wriggling slightly as it finished its patch-up job.

  “…fuck.”

  “You have quite the preference for vulgar nguage, do you not? You could certainly stand to improve your vocabury some-”

  “Fuck your vocabury, we’re supposed to be busy, yeah?”

  “Ah, you did remember after all. I wondered if you shredded your own memories with that stunt earlier pulling most of your brain out of your head.”

  “Which way were they again?”

  “Once again, the road to your left, notable for the trail of destruction marking it as our assaint’s path.”

  “Yeah well maybe if I still had two eyes I could’ve seen that one myself, asshole.”

  Already running as fast as their legs would take them, Alice and her judgmental eye socket sprinted down the already-cleared road, crouching down to scoop up and disgustingly-stained length of broken rebar out of their own blood as they moved.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Brick and mortar crashed inwards as a cwed limb swung down full force towards the trapped pair in front of it, narrowly missing them both as the pinned magical girl dove out of the way, still carrying the child from before tightly in her arms, one of their legs injured by debris and preventing them for running to safety themselves.

  “I-It’ll be okay, I promise. S-S-So no need to cry, alright? I’ll take care of everything, trust me…!”

  The child wept harder, promises of salvation falling on deaf ears, not even believing herself a she spoke them, just desperately clinging to any kind of hope for them.

  Shuffling through one of the wholes punched in the side of the building, she returned to her feet, rushing through the remains of a storefront as the insect-shaped machine tried to follow behind them, having to duck through the small hole as it pursued them, the truck wrapped around a leg finally being pulled free alongside the rest of the leg itself, the construct hobbling in pursuit with single-minded determination.

  Out the front door, the bell ringing daintily before it was crushed by another swing of a cw, yet another impossibly narrow escape, rubble firing forward from the wave of destruction and peppering her back before a particurly rge piece struck hard into her lower back, eliciting a grunt of pain as she and the child in her arms were knocked ft.

  Coughing, she cleared the dust from her eyes, checking on the kid she was trying to rescue still. As injured as they were, they still seemed fine, whimpering and looking up at her hopefully.

  “Right… n-no problem, right? Hehe, takes more than that to… to stop a magical girl…! Now let’s… let’s just… get going again…!”

  She struggled as she spoke, trying to stand up again to continue looking for safety. Her gaze went backwards she she failed to move, finding the source of the issue quite quickly: the remains of the store’s automatic door frame was rest squarely on top of one of her legs, locking it solidly in pce despite her wriggling.

  Even as she tried to pull away to no avail, the beast chasing her pulled free of the remains of the building, already closing in on them both again.

  “…c-can you walk at all?”

  The child shook their head up at her, her heart sinking deeper and deeper into her chest, struggling to slow her own panicked breathing, not wanting to scare them any more that they already were.

  “…right. R-Right then. Okay, just close your eyes then, okay? Just close your eyes, and big sister will… will take care of everything, hehe, okay?”

  Her voice shook, no facade of bravery strong enough to hide behind right now. Her arms wrapped tighter around them, shielding them with her entire body.

  She let this child die. She let that driver from before die. And now, she was going to die.

  She closed her eyes, breathed in, and waited for what came next--

  CRUNCH

  The sound was ear-shatteringly loud, splitting through her own thoughts, jerking her attention backwards towards the source.

  The machine was still there, towering and horrifying, monolithic and impassable.

  And atop it, swinging a length of bloodstained steel clear through the top half of its head, was the woman from before, arms erupting blood and bone fragments from the sheer force of the impact they’d just delivered to that thing, screaming a list of obscenities she’d never be able to bring herself to repeat in a mix of blistering pain and sheer unchecked anger.

  She stared, dumbfounded, at the girl she’d watched die just moments earlier cave part of the machine in before the mantis finally noticed them, one arm spinning back around to knock them away as its sensory machinery was heavily damaged.

  The girl tumbled across the pavement like a discarded doll, smming into a parked car hard enough to fully colpse one side of it as the arm bred loudly.

  Yet even then, pulling themselves up from the crater made for them, she spat out a mouthful of shattered window, one good eye turning to look at her, the other filled with what could only have been teeth almost seeming to say something, though she spoke over it without paying it any mind.

  “You able to walk still?”

  “…u-um, I…”

  She’d only just noticed she’d finally pulled her leg free again, the rubble cleared by the machine filing earlier.

  “…I-I can, yes.”

  “Good. Then get up and run.”

  She flexed her shattered arms, grimacing audibly as the bones poking through the skin seemingly pulled themselves back into pce, ripped flesh pulling itself back over the wounds like an old, moth-eaten bnket, her fingers tensing and releasing as she tested to be sure her nerves were still connected.

  “I’ve got some steam to let off, and I really don’t want anything here I can’t kill.”

  The magical girl nodded in confusion, gathering the child up securely, once more running for safety as that same girl stayed behind to help her.

  Brandishing a brain-stained rebar club, Alice Decaras pointed the steel implement at the heavily damaged construct in front of her, already readying it’s own cws.

  “I have no idea if you can even feel pain inside all the armor and wiring…”

  She slowly stepped forward, eye burning with wholly unveiled murderous intent.

  “But for my sake? I really hope that you can.”