"You're so tired."
"Aren't you tired?"
"Why... your scent is so bitter..."
"Rest, rest, it's so happy here..."
Childlike, tender voices rang out simultaneously from all directions, as if the entire street, every house, every doll were whispering in unison.
At the same time, people holding various dolls, transformers, and tin men poured out from street corners, alley entrances, doorways, and storefronts.
The crowd silently converged, forming an impenetrable, slowly advancing human wall.
"Why be sad..."
"Why not let go..."
The afternoon sunlight was abnormally fierce, pouring unrestrainedly onto the streets of the Western District, illuminating everything with a dazzling, surreal quality.
The street was abnormally wide, with no vehicles in sight, not even abandoned wreckage.
The ground was paved with old cement, covered in crisscrossing cracks.
After the great war, the leaders no longer had the spare money to improve civil infrastructure, so they could only make do with continuing to use the old roads and buildings.
The buildings on both sides of the street were low and crowded, mostly brick structures and simple residences hastily built after the great war. Now, these walls that should have been gray and covered in oil stains were covered with a thick layer of astounding graffiti.
The most luxurious buildings in the entire district were actually those factories and churches.
People worked day after day as cogs to restore the prosperity of the past.
And now, these cogs had gone on strike.
For Pale, annihilating these controlled residents wouldn't be difficult, but how could a magical girl do such a thing?
These people were victims, innocent people whose minds had been twisted and taken by the witch's power.
The crowd silently converged, gradually merging into a huge, constantly writhing whole.
Their steps were completely synchronized, lifting, falling, like a deformed monster with thousands of feet, slowly but with terrifying oppressive force advancing forward, the ground constantly transmitting slight, regular vibrations.
The eyes of the dolls in their arms connected into a sheet of red light, countless red glows gathering on Pale, this uninvited guest.
"Haha... what a warm welcome~"
"Ember... stay..."
"Stay with me..."
The mother who had lost her "child" rushed to the front, her withered fingers curled into claws, her face twisted with hatred, pouncing first. Behind her, the huge deformed whole formed by the merged crowd also quickened its pace, surging toward Pale like a tide!
They had no magic, no energy arrows, just the most primitive, most direct grabbing and pouncing.
Pale's pupils suddenly contracted. She leaped sharply backward, her figure gracefully flipping in the air, continuously dodging people's grabbing and pouncing.
"Hey! Sister, wash your hands often!"
Pale even had the leisure to let out a teasing whistle.
Using the tip of her left foot as an axis, her body extremely lightly spun to the right as if weightless, and that mother, with her cries and hatred, stumbled past her, not even touching the hem of Pale's clothes.
More people pounced.
Their movements were stiff, but their numbers were vast, closing in from all sides.
The girl would sometimes lean back slightly, letting several waving arms cross and miss in front of her chest, sometimes nimbly sidestep, slipping through the gap between two almost touching "embraces," and occasionally would use her fingertips to very lightly guide someone who pounced too hard on their back, helping them "adjust" their direction, making them crash into another companion, causing a brief bit of chaos.
Mmm.
The number of controlled people was indeed vast, but compared to the calamity insect swarms Pale had faced before, it was still far too sparse.
"Oh my, throwing yourselves at me is too enthusiastic, I really can't handle it~" Pale laughed lightly, winked charmingly ✧(◠‿◕) in a certain direction, tapped her toes, and lightly leaped onto a low windowsill, temporarily escaping the ground-level encirclement.
"Does big sister's figure look good? Little darlings~"
"After dealing with the witch, you'd better wash yourselves clean and wait for me~"
Below, the crowd raised their happy yet empty faces, arms reaching upward like a forest, the red light from the dolls' eyes in their arms flashing madly, trying to drag her down.
"Do you want me to stay and keep you company that badly?" Pale crouched on the windowsill, one hand supporting her chin, pretending to be troubled.
Just then, Pale's gaze inadvertently swept across an inconspicuous corner of the street. A small figure curled up beside a pile of discarded cardboard boxes suddenly seized her attention.
"Mmm... looks like I'm not too late?"
"Alright... I'm going to use my strongest ultimate move!"
Pale crouched on the windowsill, the corners of her mouth curving into a teasing arc, one hand forming a blade pointing toward the sky, as if about to execute some world-destroying technique.
"Ultimate skill!"
"Super!"
"Tactical retreat!"
The black cloak fell from the windowsill. The crowd surged forward, and after a bout of tearing and biting...
The cloak was completely torn to shreds, black fabric strips scattered on the ground.
However... underneath was completely empty.
And at the same time...
In a narrow alley shadow dozens of meters away, the girl named Miyana was being carried by Pale like a briefcase, firmly tucked under her armpit. The wind pressure from the high-speed movement made her almost unable to breathe.
"Let go! Who are you?!" Miyana finally caught a breath, letting out a terrified yet angry shriek, her legs kicking wildly in the air. "Put me down! Pervert woman! Kidnapper!"
"What a weird big sister!" Miyana looked at Pale's gray and dark attire that was completely out of place with the sweet atmosphere around them, as well as that charming profile, shouting incoherently.
"Help! Polaris! Help!"
"Hey! Stop groping around!" Pale suddenly barked, her arm tightening sharply. One of Miyana's wildly flailing hands had just happened to grab onto the magic core on her lower abdomen.
"My dog! My doggy!"
Pale was speechless.
What dog?
You want a dog, I want a dog too!
○
Deep beneath the Western District, in a monitoring room filled with cold light screens.
The air was permeated with the low hum of high-efficiency filtration systems. Dozens of screens of various sizes occupied an entire wall, with complex data streams and multi-angle surveillance footage flowing across them. The largest several screens clearly showed Pale's dazzling evasive maneuvers on the streets of the Western District.
"Heh..." A tall girl with long silver hair, wearing a white inner shirt and draped in a black cloak with gold trim, was lazily leaning back in the command chair.
Her long legs wrapped in black pantyhose were crossed and propped on the edge of the control console, the tips of her shiny military boots rhythmically tapping the air.
She was Lan, the commander of this base.
Also a magical girl.
Her ice-blue eyes were half-closed, watching with a mocking smile Pale's almost showy evasive actions on the main screen. A ring inlaid with a deep blue magic stone on her fingertip unconsciously rubbed against itself.
"Same as always, Ember..." Lan's voice carried a trace of lazy mockery, as if evaluating a boring performance. "You could just crush right through, I really don't know what's worth pitying about those humans." She lightly clicked her tongue, "Tsk, boring and weak."
"No magic power fluctuations, this person isn't even using magic."
The girl with light green braided hair and glasses, Su Jin, pushed up her glasses and said incredulously, "Relying purely on technique to evade, I think this can no longer be explained by science."
"Tch~" The red-caped girl Zhu Yan clicked her tongue, holding an exaggerated sniper rifle in her arms, "No matter how agile, it's not as good as this thing!"
On the main screen, Pale, who had just used an extremely flexible backward bend to avoid a grabbing attack, suddenly spun, and seemingly casually, perfectly aligned her stunning curves directly toward one of the hidden cameras.
"!" Su Jin suddenly choked, her data analysis report abruptly stopping. A barely noticeable blush instantly appeared on her fair cheeks, her fingers freezing on the keyboard.
Then came...
The white-haired little girl Bai Meng, who had been sitting in the corner, suddenly let out a short cry of alarm.
"Avert your eyes from impropriety!" Su Jin reacted extremely quickly, pressing Bai Meng's little head into her bosom with one hand, while the other hand swiftly rose up, completely covering her eyes.
"Children can't watch this! Too... too shameless!" Her voice carried a rare trace of panic and reproach.
"Damn it, this person is definitely doing it on purpose! She's discovered us!" Zhu Yan shouted angrily.
On screen, Ember crouched on the windowsill and winked ✧(◠‿◕) at the camera.
Provocative words spilled out.
After speaking, Ember no longer gave the monitoring room any time to react. She suddenly dropped down, a black afterimage flashed, and disappeared from the frame.
In the monitoring room, dead silence.
For a long while.
Lan let out a leisurely sigh.
"Heh... Ember."
Her ice-blue eyes slowly swept across the main screen at those still wandering in confusion, faces wearing happy smiles, the "crowd," and the dolls in their arms whose eyes flickered with ominous red light.
"The Doll Witch..."
"Just a witch formed from the fall of a magical girl eliminated from among us."
"Ember... carrying your ridiculously pitiful compassion, even against her, you cannot win."
"Magical girls will ultimately lead everything."
Zhu Yan, Bai Meng, and Su Jin responded simultaneously.
"Magical girls will ultimately lead everything!"