A singur, silvery tendril shot forwards, snaking through the rushing wind atop the speeding vehicle as it careened towards its target, the mass of warped flesh and sharpened bone raising to meet it partways as the two oversized limbs cracked against one another with the snapping and rending and cracking sounds of metal striking against meat.

  The sword of twisting skin and sinew scraped loudly against the metallic whip, only managing to deflect the weapon rather than sever it outright, leaving Alice stumbling to the side with it, off-bance and wholly unaccustomed to the sheer weight of her overgrown limb.

  She managed to peer over the edge of the truck at the speeding highway below them, forcing herself backwards with a start, not particurly interested in being ground into paste against the sun-bleached road below.

  “I’m gonna have to have the stains of… whatever it is you’re leaking out scraped off my legs now, ick…”

  The other woman standing atop the moving trailer cked her loss of bance, her remaining limbs securely fastening her to the roof as her bcoat fluttered in the wind, staring down at Alice as she remained comfortably out of range of her opponent’s newly acquired weapon.

  “Yeah, and they’re gonna need something to scrape your face off the goddamn interstate once I’m done with you…!”

  “Ugh, aren’t you magical girls supposed to be, like… prettier? The whole meat thing isn’t really doing it for me, your friend earlier was much nicer to look at…”

  “Good thing I’m not a fucking magical girl then! And I don’t wanna hear that from some asswipe cospying as a goddamn squid…!”

  Her brow twitched at the test insult, her spindly limb snapping back into position before unching at her target once more with renewed anger, smming hard enough into the raised flesh-bde to shove the imbanced girl several steps back towards the edge of the trailer.

  “I’m not a fucking squid, you blind little shit…! I am a goddamn jellyfish…!!!”

  As the single limb kept shoving backwards against Alice’s exposed bone and muscle, the center of the cwed appendage pressed forward, a tiny pair of prongs previously neatly tucked into the structure of the ‘hand’ now peeking out.

  The moment the prongs made contact with Alice’s bare meat, they sparked a single time, several thousand volts rocketing through her oversensitive nervous system in an instant, her entire body feeling like it was bursting into fmes inside and out as she was violently stung.

  She managed to stumble drunkenly forward and off to the side as her senses were spontaneously deep-fried, her already-compromised vision getting blurry as she could feel her body rebooting as it attempted to completely rewire her nervous system again.

  “Gack… putting things back together in here, give me but a moment…!”

  Alice couldn’t even muster a reply to Sclera’s voice in her head, the sound of both of their thoughts echoing painfully loudly inside of her skull, every ounce of strength she had being diverted to keeping herself standing on top of the rumbling trailer below her feet, the constant vibrations agonizingly painful as they shook her hollowed-out body.

  “…hmmm… not really the unbreakable meatshield I assumed you’d be, huh…? Just one little zap is enough to shut you down entirely…? Kinda pathetic for a magical girl, ain’t ya…?”

  “I… guh…”

  “…mmm, don’t worry, you won’t be feeling much of anything after I let you grind under the tires for a bit… or, hey, maybe you will, and I’ll get to enjoy hearing it all…~”

  Her vision slowly fizzled back in, just in time to see the girl opposite her returned to her half-asleep smirk, her limb already retracted back to her as it once again wound up and propelled itself forwards like a torpedo, locked onto Alice’s burnt-out body as the embedded taser within sparked hungrily.

  All of her focus went to her bloated right arm, working with a mostly-broken nervous system as she forced every muscle that would listen to her to move at once, just barely lifting the towering limb in time to bat the tendril away, the bded edge managing to catch on part of it this time as it dug deep into the side of the chrome limb.

  Even with her ears ringing and the gales howling past them both, she could still clearly hear the pained grunt the other woman let out as her artificial limb was sliced into, only encouraging Alice to bear down harder as she cut down, pushing her own makeshift weapon all the way through the shining tendril, the severed length of the appendage sparking sadly one st time before going limb.

  As Alice’s eye finished being rewired, she could see her opponent opposite her clutching a covered hand over her mouth, her expression clearly pained, traces of blood that was, somehow, not Alice’s staining the sleeve of her massive coat.

  She didn’t take long to recompose herself however, her remaining tendrils reorganizing themselves to stabilize her footing as she began to stumble somewhat, the decapitated limb winding back behind her like a kicked puppy as she gred with renewed, fully-awake hatred at the singed abomination that had damaged her.

  “These tentacles took… months of work to get absolutely perfect… and now, some upstart little bitch thinks she can just break one…?!”

  “Heh, what’s wrong…? Not the scary little squid you assumed you were? Why don’t you let me get the other ones all matching, yeah?”

  Alice bounced from foot to foot, testing her own muscles for responsiveness more than anything else, returning that infuriating little smirk as she pulled her sword-arm behind her, preparing for the next barrage of limbs as her adversary shone red in seething, unrestrained anger.

  “I reeeeally did wanna drag just your twitching little carcass back to my workshop to poke and prod at, but now? Now I’m just gonna enjoy killing you a couple thousand more times before I let anyone else even think about taking a look at whatever rotten, maggot-ridden pile of unidentifiable, decaying shit I decide to leave you as…!!”

  “Aww, c’mon now, don’t go threatening a girl with a good time~”

  With a screeching, howling outburst, she couldn’t hold herself back a millisecond longer, two of her remaining clustered appendages winding back before swinging down from above like paired hammers, Alice already rushing forward towards her opponent, loudly scraping her unduting and oversized arm along the aluminum roof as it carved a path behind her.

  The twin limbs smmed down hard, beating against the trailer, Alice, and anything else they could find as they rained down relentlessly, leaving massive craters in the metallic footing as they assaulted the blood-drenched magical girl caught below them.

  Every clean strike was hard enough to crush right through bone like it was old cardboard, cracking and snapping and breaking anything unfortunate enough to get caught in the path of one of their filing swings, Alice being battered left and right as she forced herself to keep struggling forwards, aching wounds that had barely closed being ripped back open alongside brand new ones, nearly every inch of her having been broken at some point as clung unfalteringly to the shreds of her barely-maintained consciousness.

  Her own weaponized limb swung up to meet the tenderizing hammers overhead, swinging it like a machete through tight-knit vines as she hacked away, occasionally managing to nd a solid hit against the writhing metal and leaving as deep slice through the tentacle before it snaked away, finding a new angle to strike away from the sharpened scalpel of organic mass.

  For every step forward she managed, it felt like she was shoved twice as far back, the onsught of tendrils breaking her as fast as she could heal herself, the exposed muscles of her bded arm being torn loose as new growth of tissue rushed to fill in the gaps left behind.

  And before her, the one beating her wholly senseless atop their moving battlefield watched her struggle with manic glee, only pressing her attack that much harder as she watched her prey writhe in stubborn, helpless agony.

  “Where’s that horrible little smug look you had earlier, ehhhhhh…? ‘Beaten into submission’ is a good look on you, maybe I should take my time and reeeeeally savor watching you getting torn apart like this…~”

  The paired appendages kept up their unending assault, now swinging in at Alice from either side as well, batting her back and forth, almost tipping her over the side of the trailer’s roof and onto the speeding asphalt below, before just as quickly smming her back the other way, expertly keeping her from getting any kind of bance to reorient herself and her clumsy, oversized biological armament.

  “Why don’t you-- gnnngh --come over here already, and I’ll show you-- augh --a face you can really remember, huh…?!”

  “Hmmm… sorry love, I don’t think you’re really my type, and the view from over here is much nicer to look at…~”

  “Oh, sorry, I-- guh --I wasn’t really asking…!”

  As one of the filing tendrils swung back in from her right side yet again, she leaned in towards the heavy blow, pulling her neck up and to the side with a sudden, jerking motion, ripping free a particurly sore spot on her colrbone, an entire length of her writhing meat tearing open as the glistening tentacle’s momentum carried it right into the newly formed opening, already winding itself back together around it as their limbs were messily fused together into a singur unholy mass.

  “What the hell are you-- gaagh?!”

  The other woman tried to pull her appendage back for another swing, instead pulling herself forwards a short ways as she noticed entirely too te what had happened, Alice spiraling her shredded muscles around her trapped limb, yanking backwards on it like a leash as she finally managed to reel the other girl closer to her, sliding towards her as her other still-freed limbs attempted to pull her back away from her assaint.

  “You stupid little shit…! I’m gonna rip both of your goddamn arms off when I get my fucking hands on you, you little--”

  Alice rushed forwards to meet her rapidly approaching catch, her only weapon now tangled up and nearly impossible to move freely as the tentacle inside of it filed wildly, leaving her only her notably unaltered and equally bruised left arm to work with.

  The other of the paired limbs that had been assaulting her earlier shot forwards in the confusion, snaking itself around on of her legs before pulling hard to the side, breaking the barely-maintained bance Alice had managed to keep as she at least attempted to throw herself forwards as she fell.

  She barely managed to direct herself in the direction of the rapidly approaching mechanical jellyfish, her other leg kicking off the ground as she tackled her with a complete ck of sense or grace, like a starving animal pouncing at a fresh carcass, her own face twisted in a mix of mind-melting pain and adrenaline-soaked fury.

  “There’s not going to be enough of you left to fucking grow back after I--”

  “Don’t you ever fucking shut up…!!”

  As she smmed hard into the other woman, the both of them were knocked hard to the floor below them, the wind knocked out of the bottom girl’s lungs as Alice wasted no time whatsoever.

  Before either of them could manage a single coherent thought in their mutually colpsed, entangled, and exhausted state, Alice’s good hand had already wadded itself around a fistful of the other girl’s loose clothes, rearing back before unching herself forward again, pulling her restrained opponent up to meet her by her colr as the two of them cracked skulls together as hard as Alice could possibly muster.

  The impact was hard enough to send her ears ringing, feeling the bone beneath her skin throbbing as her vision went bnk once more, the desperate attack once again disabling her sensory functions.

  Even that, however, was not enough to overcome the raw, animalistic drive to kill the horrid little creature below her, still gripping down on the cloth clutched tightly in her hand before headbutting her yet again, the sound of wet, bloodied flesh and bone smacking together like music to her deafened ears.

  She reared back yet again before any part of her had managed to finish healing, going in for yet another meeting of skulls as she felt something else strike down first, the back of a cold, metal fist smming into the side of her head hard, knocking her aside and off of her bloodied target.

  Her eye managed once more managed to regrow itself, vision melting back in just in time to see her adversary clutching her eye with one hand, blood pouring from above and behind it as she gred at Alice with pure, unchecked bloodlust.

  Every part of Alice’s aching form was finally beginning to slow down more and more as she struggled to move at all, gasping for air as she tried to push herself upright again, not finished with beating some sense into that cocky little tentacled shit.

  But as she attempted to force her broken body to move, another tentacle swung in hard from her blind side, having neither the time or energy to try and dodge it as it decked her across the jaw, ying her out entirely as her head dangled off the edge of the speeding truck.

  “I’m… I’m not… done with you… asshole…”

  She could feel her body twitching and throbbing as she tried to remember how to force her limbs to move, her bloated right arm no longer moving at all as she cked strength to even lift it anymore.

  As she did her best to recover from her overwhelming injuries, both self-inflicted and otherwise, she felt a heavy weight press down on top of her sore midriff, the other girl having managed to crawl over to her as she now straddled her, pinning her down against the cold aluminum roof as she stared down at her with bloodied, hate-filled eyes.

  A metallic fist smmed, clumsily into Alice’s cheek, snapping her head to the side before it was grabbed and pulled back into position, a backhand strike snapping it the other direction this time, alternating blows cracking her head back and forth and back and forth, unable to clearly focus on anything at all through the assault snapping her stiff neck to either side over and over again.

  Both of them were left gasping and panting for air, wholly worn down and barely able to move at all, the girl seated atop Alice weakly ripping off the end of one of her long sleeves to reveal the shining steel structure below, her metal hand below featuring an opening in the middle of the palm that she pressed ft against Alice’s head as she wrapped her cold fingers around her skull painfully tight.

  Alice tried her best to keep fighting, trying to swing her left arm up at the fuzzy image of the woman atop her, the blow wholly devoid of strength as it was easily batted aside by one of the tendrils hanging over her like vultures, the one still ensnaring her leg pressing familiar prongs into her thigh before sending another burst of several thousand volts through her body, forcing her to writhe and howl in blinding pain as she was held down.

  She could barely make out a twisted, victorious smirk pstered across her captor’s lips, her vision almost entirely covered by the steel fingers clutching her head, the woman clearly enjoying tormenting the one responsible for turning her entire operation into an unmitigated disaster.

  Alice opened her mouth to try and spit out some manner of swear or curse or even just scream her sore lungs out as she attempted to stir the depressingly scant remainder of her energy into moving from where she’d been shoved down, only to have whatever sound she was about to emit drowned out by sound of a gunshot, the other woman’s arm bucking up and back as another massive round rocketed out from her palm, and straight through the skull the barrel was pressed ft against.

  It tore clean through her skull this time, a flood of viscera pouring out as it exited the back of her head, Alice’s entire body convulsing violently as whatever thoughts she’d been trying to form were rent into meaty shrapnel coating the side of the trailer below them both.

  There was a click, the girl only squeezing her iron grip down harder before firing off a second round immediately, another clump of Alice’s cerebrum reduced to red paste.

  “I’ll… teach you… NOT… TO FUCK… WITH. MARI. GOD. DAMN. PROSMEK…!!!”

  Her every screeching word was punctuated by the click of reloading and the boom of firing, round after round after round tearing through Alice’s flesh like a shovel through wet mud, her body writhing blindly as she couldn’t even manage to defend herself anymore, the entire top half of her head cleaved entirely off by the time she ran out of ammunition, jaw hanging limply as she stopping being able to even twitch any longer.

  Mari kept trying to keep firing even then, only the constant click click click of her impnted firearm’s empty cartridge managing to finally break her out of her rage-drunk stupor enough to witness the lifeless carcass below her, panting heavily as she finally came back to her senses somewhat.

  Weakly shoving herself off to the side, she y sprawled out on her back, gasping in lungfuls of cold air as she regained her strength, staring upwards at the cloudy sky overhead as the sound of rushing traffic all around drowned out everything else.

  “…eugh… little… irritating... shit…”

  One of her eyes was still basically unusable, dried blood sticking her eyelids together as it coated her bruised face, finally recognizing how much being headbutted twice had actually hurt as she nursed her throbbing skull, tapping at the side of her head weakly as her earpiece lit up in response.

  “Maintain… maintain route back to recovery site… got a nice little trophy to turn in to… to… eh…?”

  As she tried to mumble out instructions to the truck’s automated driver, a slight bang drew her attention, letting her head fall to the side to stare in the direction the noise had come from.

  Lying there, still mostly decapitated, was Alice’s body, her sword arm melted into a gory puddle of unidentifiable meat as she lost the ability to maintain it, her still-human arm reaching out at nothing as it banged against the edge of the metal trailer.

  “…how are you… still moving…?!”

  Mari slowly managed to get her spiraling tendrils back beneath her, the cws clutching tightly against the floor below to keep her banced as she watched her seemingly immortal opponent wriggle about in front of her, a hand finally managing to grab down on something as she clutched at a torn scrap of aluminum on the edge of the cargo trailer.

  With no eyes or ears to determine what was around her, Alice’s beaten corpse yanked itself towards that grappled point, leaving a trail of sticky red fluid as she dragged herself further to the edge of their perch, more and more of her body hanging off the side.

  “Hey… hey, what do you think you’re doing now…?!”

  With almost half of her torn body hanging over the side now, her jaw moved slowly as it clicked itself back into pce, mouth opening as a raspy, exhausted voice managed to speak up.

  “Fuck… you…”

  And without further ado, Alice pulled once more, sending her weight over the side as she fell to the speeding road below.

  Mari swore under her breath as her bloody trophy threw itself off, stumbling closer to where she fell, looking for her on the road behind them as they kept speeding onwards, her body already lost among the ocean of automobiles all around.

  “Shit…! Get retrieval units ready, we’re going back to… to…?”

  She was cut off yet again as she tried to catch herself, the previously perfectly smooth ride hitting a particurly bad bump in the road as the entire vehicle lurched drunkenly to the side.

  “The hell…? Drive smoother you useless tin can, I don’t wanna fall off after her!!”

  “Apologies. Unexpected debris has been detected in the left wheels, attempting to recalibrate to adjust for compromised functions.”

  “Did you hit a car or something?! The hell is gonna be… blocking a…”

  Slow realization dawned on her bruised face as she turned her gaze slowly to the right, away from the road behind them and towards the wheels directly below.

  Sure enough, the entire structure was in fact very compromised, a massive wad of biological matter tangled around the several of their wheels, the tires below the meat failing to turn as they were swallowed into a singur disgusting mass.

  “Oh, you’ve got to be fucking with me…!”

  “Error, motor functions of this vehicle are becoming further compromised, unable to accurately adjust for unidentified blockage.”

  The trailer’s violent shaking only grew worse, swerving from side to side, smming into the walls of the interstate as well as numerous other cars around them, Mari barely managing to keep herself atop it as she scuttled slowly towards the front, having to punch her cwed limbs through the roof of the trailer to find enough purchase to stay standing.

  “Ghhh… release those blocked wheel already or something, get us… get us stable again…!”

  “Negative, the blocked section is no longer responding to automated attempts at dislodging the offending item.”

  She growled with nothing but hate filling her angry little heart, almost threatening to crush her earpiece in her hand if she’d had enough strength to squeeze it any harder.

  “Then… then…!”

  “Warning, new blockage detected in the right wheels now.”

  The entire trailer lurched hard once more, tires screeching against asphalt before their cries eventually turned more fleshy, machinery attempting to tear free of rapidly expanding meat as it was slowly engulfed by the horrific amalgamation under her feet.

  “Warning, blockage is developing further, all rear wheel now unresponsive.”

  “…fine, shit, cut the fucking trailers!”

  “Warning, if trailers are cut, all resources within will be lost. Please attempt to first move all--”

  “I know that already! Cut the goddamn trailers before it all spreads to the main cab and breaks that down too!!”

  “…affirmative. Releasing cargo trailers now.”

  There was a loud snap and hiss as the front end of the trailer popped upwards, rapidly losing speed as soon as it did, Mari throwing herself from them to nd clumsily atop the truck’s main body, eyes boiling over as she watched her precious haul grow further and further away, the mass of meat tangled into the wheels no longer even recognizable as a living thing.

  Mari sped away atop her sad, lonely getaway vehicle, the tiny girl left alone in the painfully silent evening light, eyes fixed on Alice’s torn and malformed body, newfound determination burning like unchecked hellfire inside both of their hearts.