A million tormented voices cried out at Kari. Their pained screams, ghastly moans, and piercing shrieks only confused her. She heard them, yet she was deaf to their grievances.

It's all your fault!

You killed us.

How can you live with yourself?

They blamed her for many things. Among them, the deaths of their loved ones, a good life cut short… Maybe somewhere in the sea of anguish, someone had thanked her for prematurely ending their miserable life.

One echoing voice, however, which sounded a lot like Makina caught her full attention.

Kari!

Kari wanted to respond, but she couldn't. Something muffled her own voice and kept her from responding.

You killed Minato, didn't you?

No, Kari tried to respond. It wasn't me! I tried to save him!

Two pairs of bloodied, grasping hands reached up at her. The ghoulish visages of Minato and Makina, their jaws torn off and hanging by a thread of flesh, let loose a shrill wail.

You couldn't save any of us!

Kari snapped awake after what felt like an eternity of listening to buzzing static. The world was much smaller and confined than she last remembered. She was naked, still trapped within the metal tomb or capsule filled with light green water. Her wrists, ankles, and neck were shackled by thick cuffs, pressing her to the back of this prison.

This time, it seemed, only one person in a white coat was present in the bleak laboratory in which the only color palette was a pale gray. The only other color was the faint blue light of multiple computer monitors casting onto the backrest of many empty chairs. A woman with dark complexion was fast asleep on a desk, her head buried in both arms.

When Kari put strength into her limbs to try and break free, nothing happened. When she tried to compel a transformation, nothing happened.

Why?

Trying to access the Apocalypse System scalded her mind.

[Apocalypse Sys… ERROR.]

Try to remember what happened… They— Kari and Flare had come to stop a military force from destroying Japan.

That's right! What happened? How long has it been?

"Mm!"

In Kari's struggling panic, bubbles escaped the respirator.

What happened to Japan? Where's Rocky? Was Flare captured, too? Impossible. She was as strong as she was psychotic. No one could have captured her.

However…

Kari glanced down with what little movement was afforded to her. The area where she had been shot was healed, leaving behind a gnarly scar. Most of her wounds had healed, but it looked like she had come out of a car crash.

This wasn't over just yet. If Makina was gone, Kari was going to slaughter everyone and their mothers. She struggled harder against the restraints.

Harder.

Even as the restraints bit into her flesh.

Harder.

Even as the liquid became tinted red from her blood.

A high-pitched alarm sounded in the laboratory and came through to Kari as a dull beat. The first alarm startled the woman awake, who met her gaze and panicked. She started hammering away at the keyboard, eyes wide with fright. By the fifth alarm, two dozen people in lab coats and camo uniforms poured into the room.

Numerous rifles with trembling fingers on the trigger were pointed at her, but they didn't sway her to stop struggling.

Shoot me, Kari dared. Maybe the bullets would damage the container.

A familiar older caucasian man entered the room, the same one she had seen before passing out. His calm demeanor was a stark contrast to the fear in everyone else's eyes. He ordered the guns lowered and walked up to Kari, then picked up a radio attached to the container by a corkscrew wire.

"Good evening, Kari Tachibana."

His deep, raspy voice came through clearly. It was then she realized the strange helmet on her head, including the many cables that traveled underneath whatever this cage was.

"My name is Jacob H.C. Hackman, Rear Admiral of the United States Navy and the commander of this united fleet. Didn't expect to invade Japan a second time, but I assure you we take no pleasure in this," the man said.

Kari glared forward.

"You can speak to us with your thoughts. Technology's come a long way. Just be careful in case you don't want to reveal too much." Hackman nodded for her to try.

"What did you do to me?" Kari asked, surprised that her voice did in fact come through an intercom in the room.

"If it's your powers you're asking about, we have sealed them. You won't have a need for it anymore, and neither do we," the admiral said.

Sealed? Was that even possible?

Kari tried to access the Apocalypse System again.

[Apocalypse Sys… ERROR.]

[Apocalypse Sys… ERROR.]

[Apocalypse Sys… ERROR.]

This somehow set off the ones in lab coats. One of them, a balding man wearing thick glasses, leaned in next to Hackman.

"The inhibitors—"

Hackman put a hand up to stop the scientist and placed the radio back on the tank before allowing him to continue speaking. Unbeknownst to them, Kari had already caught the first part of the sentence. Something about inhibitors. They were able to somehow stop her powers. Was it this tank? The green waters? Or something else entirely.

Their conversation finished and the scientist left the room. Hackman pulled the radio to his mouth again and opened his mouth to speak, but Kari beat him to it.

"When I get out of here," Kari calmly began, her surprise of this technology dampened by simmering rage. "I'll cut your souls out and swallow them like I'm dining on a gourmet entree."

"Okay, you've made your point—"

"It doesn't end there. Before I swallow you, I'll make you watch as I wring your physical body dry of blood like twisting a wet towel. You'll kick and scream, but that's only going to make you taste so much better. Just looking at you all… I'm starving already. Well? Am I revealing too much yet? Or should I explain in detail exactly how I'm going to kill every single one of you?"

Several adams' apples bobbed up and down their respective throats. Someone ran out of the room, pressing a hand to their mouth. One woman outright fainted and was caught by a nearby soldier before their head hit the ground.

"You're an unhinged monster," Hackman said.

"I'm an eighteen year old high school student. That's who you have caged up like a lab rat," Kari replied, successfully causing some people's faces to contort remorsefully of their actions, particularly the woman who she was briefly in the room alone with.

"You certainly don't have Kanae Hashimoto's charisma, but I wonder if you might actually be worse than her." The admiral chuckled.

Kari was taken aback, and the admiral latched onto that.

"You heard right. The magical girl Flare is captured just like you. Of course, we have her in a separate facility, to prevent you two from making contact in any way. We've come too far and lost too much to risk failing now," he said.

"If you think you can end the apocalypse on your own, then you have another thing coming. There are bigger, badder monsters out there, and you're keeping the only ones who can kill them locked up," Kari fired back.

Hackman gestured for two gentlemen to get on the computers. They clacked away at the keyboards and put onto a large digital screen multiple video images from the skies, overlooking a battle that was underway somewhere in the streets of Japan. Similarly-dressed soldiers as the ones in this room were mowing down head hounds and broken ladies with guns. Unlike the ones carried by the police and JSDF, whatever they were firing proved to be more effective.

"We're the tooth and nail, humanity's claws, the final stand against the apocalypse that you magical girls couldn't contain. And If God's willing—"

"God," Kari interrupted sharply, "isn't interested in saving you, not in the same way you think."

Admiral Hackman punched the glass in his first ever display of anger, having lost his composure over what she had said.

"Put her to sleep. We'll continue this tomorrow," Hackman said.

"Wait! How long has it been? How long are you going to keep me here?!" Kari demanded to know. The machine began to hum and her eyes grew heavy.

"It's been a month. Good night, Kari. You have a long day ahead of you tomorrow." He put the radio away and turned his back to leave.

A month…?

Kari awakened much later groggy and disoriented, but not enough to dull her senses from noticing other people in the room. The dark-skinned woman and the balding man were speaking with each other in the lab. Their conversation became a shouting match, and eventually, the man stormed out.

For whatever reason compelled the woman, she glanced up at Kari and gasped in fright. She must not have expected her to be awake yet. Skittishly, she approached the tank and picked up the radio.

"H-Hello," the woman greeted.

Whatever she wanted to say, Kari wasn't interested in humoring her. It was probably just to taunt her again like Hackman did anyway. The woman, however, didn't let up.

"I just wanted to apologize… for what we're doing to you. It's probably not worth much, given that you're locked up in there, but… For what it is worth, I'm sorry." She frowned.

Apologize?

As the woman was about to hang up the radio, Kari called out to her.

"Wait. It's been a while since I talked to anyone. Except for your admiral. But he's kind of an ass," Kari said.

"Admiral Hackman is actually the nicest military person I've ever met. Some on board say he's too nice, but… but I guess the only thing I really disagree with is this." She gestured to the tank that Kari was in.

Erica Thurman was her name. Even behind a tub of water and glass, Kari could see the ID card hanging around her neck. She was a little round, but had an incredibly timid demeanor that hid a warm kind of gentleness, especially in the way she spoke.

"Do you agree with him? About what he and the rest of you are doing to people like me?" Kari asked.

"We're running out of options." Erica sighed. "After South Africa, after the world saw broadcasts of Hurricane and other magical girls fighting each other instead of the monsters, what other choice do we have? I have twins your age, a daughter and a son, and everyday I worry if the next will be our last. I want to be able to see them grow old."

"Lucky them. My parents and school friends were eaten by monsters. I was too weak to save them at the time. All I have left is a cute girlfriend who I don't even know is alive anymore."

"I'm so sorry for your loss, Kari. It must have been tough losing so much," she said in a motherly tone that might have touched Kari a week ago.

Erica became distracted by voices at the door. She hastily put away the radio and returned to her desk. Admiral Hackman and the balding scientist entered the room with four soldiers, this time dressed in tactical gear and black plates like a motorcyclist's body armor.

"You're absolutely sure about bringing her out?" the male scientist asked.

Kari flicked her gaze to the radio which hadn't been properly placed back onto its terminal. Now, she could hear everything that was being said in the room.

"Yesterday, we reported another fifty casualties, Dr. Gene. Some of our scouts have also reported something strange out at sea in the direction of Okinawa, but our radars aren't catching a damn thing. If we don't capture the other four soon, then we're as good as doomed. Now bring Kari out of that chamber, so we can move onto the next phase," Admiral Hackman demanded.

"Yes, sir." The man named Dr. Gene signaled to Erica, who returned to the tank and gasped upon seeing the radio. "What's wrong?"

Kari shook her head at Erica as subtly as possible.

"N-Nothing, Dr. Gene. I just didn't expect Kari to be awake already," Erica said, tapping buttons on the terminal and fixing the radio once the other two went back to speaking to themselves.

Something above Kari depressurized. The liquid that enveloped her began to drain, and the tank which contained her repositioned horizontally. The metal lid lifted, and when Erica removed the respirator, fresh air finally entered Kari's lungs.

Dr. Gene joined Erica on either side of Kari's head to pull away the helmet. They injected a cool liquid into her arm which caused her body to seize and throat to close up. Whatever it was scorched her veins, but the pain quickly subsided. The two moved onto removing the metal restraints.

As soon as the wrist and ankle restraints came off, Kari shoved Dr. Gene and Erica into a glass cabinet. She tried to transform, but the same pain returned with worsening intensity.

[Apocalypse Sys… ERROR.]

"Nng… Fuck you!" Kari growled at Hackman, who was looking at his watch and quietly counting off.

"One… two…"

The four soldiers pushed past their commanding officer to subdue her. Kari threw one into the computers and cracked the helmet of another before the other two stabbed electrified batons into her stomach.

"Five…"

Kari could no longer fight back against two men restraining her and was slammed into the wall. Dr. Gene enclosed on her hands a cube-like box, which were brought together to the front of her chest and connected like shackles. She had suddenly become powerless, unable to fight back against even an adult human.

Hackman reprimanded the scientist. "Looks like you're going to have to add another five seconds, Dr. Gene."

"I'm… well aware now…" Dr. Gene rubbed the back of his head.

"Get her prepped and bring her to the range." The admiral received a unified 'okay' from his subordinates, then exited the room.

Kari was pulled to her feet by the soldiers while Erica helped dress her in what looked like a hospital gown, then proceeded to dry her hair with a towel.

"This is a magical girl? She doesn't look like much." The muffled voice of one soldier came through the helmet.

"Careful," another cautioned. "I saw footage of her just cutting through people like paper."

"Bitch ain't shit anymore. Bet she can't even fight back anymore. Watch." The one Kari had thrown reached out to try and touch her.

"Hey, don't touch her!" Erica shouted.

Kari could still use her leg, and hooked her heel around the back of the man's ankle, twisting it to cause him to trip.

"Dumbass," she taunted.

The other three burst into laughter, but the one who had been made a laughing stock got up to drive a fist into her stomach. The cheap shot winded her and nearly knocked the daylights out of her.

He was about to throw another until Erica stepped in the way. "I said, stop!"

"Admiral Hackman is expecting us at Test Range 1A. Better get a move on," Dr. Gene said.

Kari refused to move, so two men grabbed her by the shoulders to drag her out. She quickly learned that this was no ordinary ship. It probably wasn't the aircraft carrier she was shot at either. The long corridor had just as long windows on either side of the walls, behind which were people in lab coats, peering into a microscope, speaking in front of a whiteboard, or face buried in a computer screen.

They entered a larger laboratory, containing rows upon rows of different monsters held in cylindrical glass containers. The largest container was a massive tank that held the body of a lizard monster, like the one from the malevolent domain. Some weren't even monsters. They looked like lumps of flesh, floating in discolored water. Others appeared almost… like a fetus.

"What the hell is all of this?" Kari uttered.

"You're looking at four years' worth of research and development, funded with enough of a budget to rival Canada's annual GDP, with the sole purpose of understanding monsters and magical girls," Dr. Gene explained.

Four years ago. It keeps leading back to South Africa's apocalypse.

"Please, don't think of us as bad people, Kari. Just desperate to find a solution," Erica said.

"You have a solution, it's called—" Kari choked on her next words, seeing one of the containers. She shook off the two soldiers and ran up to two containers. Floating within the liquid, their bodies in ruin and partially decomposed, were Sniper and Sister Claire.

"Julia Bernard-Tennison and Claire Murphy. Loved them like my own daughters." Admiral Hackman emerged from a door at the end of the room, gazing at the two fondly. "We were aware of the Messiah's existence, but it was just a concept. No true organization or leadership. For all our deep intelligence network, our greatest failure was failing to realize that the orchestrators were magical girls within our own ranks. And the mastermind was Hurricane. We weren't exactly unprepared for this possibility, but their betrayal did force our eyes open. The world can't rely on magical girls. Humanity can only rely on itself."

"So, what? You're going to get rid of us?" she asked.

"We'll do what we've always done. Like with wind, water, the sun, the earth, and nuclear energy, humanity will tame it one way or another." He gestured for them to bring her into the room he had come out of.

It was a shooting range. Down range, two chained up head hounds struggled and repeatedly snapped their jaws at nothing. Hackman, Erica, and Dr. Gene put on earmuffs and goggles.

"Observe," Hackman began. "One gun is loaded with regular ammunition, and the other is loaded with ammunition treated with magical girl blood."

A soldier picked up the first gun and emptied two magazines into one of the head hounds before finally killing it.

"As you can see, fighting these monsters by conventional means is possible, but highly inefficient. The bigger they are, the more punishment they can take. However…" Hackman nodded for his subordinate to use the other gun, who did so, firing only two shots to kill the second head hound.

Something like this existed? Then why the hell wasn't it given to the rest of the world to stop the apocalypse? If city police were equipped with this kind of stuff, then people wouldn't have to fear incursions and stray spawns.

Kari was then brought back to the larger laboratory room and put in front of a wide, digital screen.

Dr. Gene used a remote to show two very different pictures of blood cells, one was of the normal disc-shaped clusters and the others had spikes all over them. "What we have found is that blood cells from magical girls aren't like human blood cells anymore. It's odd. Your physiology and biological processes… it all still is and functions like a human, but also something more."

"And whatever it is," Erica continued after him, "your blood is like poison to monsters, which we find odd. Because those things you kill, from head hounds to bigger monstrosities, their blood cells are exactly the same as humans."

"Which makes magical girls the odd ones out. Why is your blood so different? So alien?" Hackman chimed in.

"Maybe you're the monsters," Kari suggested.

She could tell them that monsters and humans were essentially one and the same, but no one would believe her. In their eyes, magical girls were the monsters now.

None of this science mumbo jumbo were important to Kari, who was already aware that she had become something like a monster already. It was all just noise.

"We have noticed that your blood is a little different from the other magical girls, unique to only you and a lot more deformed," Dr. Gene said. "However, more testing needs to be done."

"Is that where I come in? You're showing me all this, hoping that I'd just let you suck my blood dry like some parasite? Sorry, but I have enough leeches waiting in line," Kari argued.

"The hope was that maybe you can fill in the blanks, but whether or not you're going to help us was never an option for you." Hackman turned to face the containers that held Sniper and Sister Claire.

An alarm sounded across the laboratory, causing the admiral to curse under his breath.

"They must have found one of the five. Put Kari back in the tank. We'll continue when I get back," Hackman ordered, then took off running.

Five?

"Five what?" Kari asked.

"There are five magical girls still alive in Japan," Dr. Gene answered. "The plan is to capture the remaining ones dead or alive before destroying the country, along with the apocalypse."

Who was still alive? Jade, Sachi, Hurricane, Chu Hua… who was the last one? Some no-named Messiah?

"Who are they? Who's still alive?" she pressed them, but a soldier shoved her forward.

"Get walking. We're going back to your room."

As they went back down the corridor, one of the soldiers escorting her needed to use the restroom. Erica and Dr. Gene went ahead first back to the lab.

"I need to take a piss, too," Kari said.

"Fuck off," the cranky one snarled at her.

"If you want me to piss like a dog, I will. Who do you think is going to clean it? Not me." She raised her entombed hands.

They relented and escorted Kari into a bathroom that looked like an industrial kitchen at first glance. Their fourth member had just finished and emerged from a stall. She walked down to the farthest stall, and they followed her all the way.

"Hurry up. We don't have all day."

"I can't go with people watching… Can't you guys wait at the door? Where the hell am I going to go?" Kari asked.

They each rolled their eyes and groaned until one of them whispered something that caught the rests' interest.

"How about this? Three of us will wait by the door, but one of us has to be with you at all times. That's how it works," the larger of the four said.

"If I don't have any other choice…" She sighed.

Snickering, three of them did leave. The big guy who stayed behind waited until his companions were gone, then pushed himself into the stall.

"Hey! What are you doing?" Kari yelled.

"Shut the fuck up, bitch." He covered her mouth with one hand and reached down to unzip his pants with the other. "Cunts like you, like Hurricane, are always looking down on us. I'm gonna teach you a lesson, then my pals are gonna do the same… My lucky day, because I've always wanted to feel how tight a Japanese girl's pussy is."

Oh, Kari thought.

So it was going to be like that. It didn't matter where in the world someone came from, there were always going to be scumbags like Tetsuo and Daisuke.

Kari headbutted the soldier's nose, causing him to recoil in the stall. She spun around and used the cuffs to uppercut him, then swooped his leg out from under like before. He fell hard to the ground. She got on top of his chest to start smashing his face, but he retaliated by wrapping two strong hands around her throat in an attempt to suffocate her.

"Let's see… who can last longer… me… or your face." She flashed a deranged smile.

Every hit started to sound like mashing potatoes. Blood splattered at her gown and face, and even so, Kari laughed on. He eventually gave up trying to choke her in order to shield what was left of his face. She hit him again and again until his fingers were a mangled mess.

Kari was overcome with thrill.

"I recognize your voice. One of the soldiers in the room when I first woke up, right? Remember what I said back then? Don't worry. I won't kill you yet. Your pals are going to bring you to an infirmary, but you're going to lay there, not knowing how long or how soon it's going to take, but just know— I'll come find you like the grim reaper. I'm going to rip your soul out of this sack of flesh, then wring your body dry and see how much shit squeezes out!"

"Hey!" His three other companions came running in and two pushed Kari against the wall. The third pulled his colleague by the shoulders who was choking on his own blood.

"I'm a monster, huh?! If you keep a monster caged, then you better be careful when you bring me out!" Kari laughed uncontrollably.