It is very destructive.

Do you want to help fight it?

I uh.

Yes but.

I still don't have a wish.

This would be a good time to think of something.

I'll. Try. Yeah, I'll. Yeah. I'll think of something.

Swan-san and Yamanaka-san are already fighting.

I'll think of something! I'll do it, I promise! Just, just give me a bit. Just a bit.

What does he want. What does he want. What does he want. Can he want something now? Please?

Kyubey leaves him be. For the time being.

And he goes into the storm shelter. "Storm" shelter.

Inspiration. What he needs is inspiration. He's been thinking inside himself all this time, but he needs to look out. At the people in the shelter, and out the windows, and out. Maybe then he'll find something he really, truly wants.

Well, there's plenty of people to look at in the shelter, it's really crowded.

Out the windows he can see - gingerbread men? Running around in the rain, not getting soggy.

Gingerbread men?????

Gingerbread men. Just a couple of them, and not too close together. Nobody else in the shelter notices.

No, of course they don't, because he can see magic shit, and they can't.

Why him? What did he do to deserve this? Someone else could've figured this out already. Could be out helping fight this witch. Has... how many people has it killed? Could he have saved them, if he'd found his wish? Could they have stopped this witch earlier?

A baby somewhere in the shelter starts crying loudly.

Kyubey is in here somehow. It looks wet and bedraggled. It lopes up to Yutaka and puts its paws on his knee.

They need your help.

...huh?

Swan-san and Yamanaka-san. They're cornered. Swan-san has been healing them both when they are injured but he does not have enough magic to do it much longer.

Fuck. Take me to them. I, if I, if I see, then— Then maybe he'll care enough to wish for it.

Kyubey bobs its head and leads him out of the shelter.

The flooding is pretty bad, but it's still possible to wade, along the route it chooses.

Argh. It's a good thing he likes exercising so much because this is looking like it'll be a hell of a workout.

It's at least not all that far, even if it's a slog.

Haru and Yamanaka are back-to-back on top of a library, which adjoins an office building and an apartment closely enough that there are no alleys for them to hop down into from the roof unless they can fight their way to the street. Yamanaka can cut through a bunch of gingerbread men at once with her sword, and Haru's firing three arrows at a time into the crowd of them, blindingly fast, new arrows materializing as fast as they loose, but there are a lot of gingerbread men and they don't all go down to one or even three arrows. They don't notice Yutaka coming.

oh

oh no

oh no oh no oh no

"These aren't—" The rain's too loud, he can barely hear his own voice. These aren't the witch? These are just familiars? he asks Kyūbey.

That's right. The witch will make landfall soon.

Landfall? Landfall where?

Maybe it's that - red? - No, red and pink and white? - blob in the sky over there? It looks like a scribble, at least through all the rain, there's enough rain to make it pretty hard to distinguish - a roiling ball of spaghetti or hair or something, loops and tendrils and knots everywhere -

Why is it just them? Aren't there—Haru mentioned two other magical girls—people, whatever—