Perestroika: Act 3
Alyona had already tracked and corralled her mother's kidnappers into a the most dangerous area she could think of: an active flooding zone. She stood no chance against Yaroslav and his men unless she told her guards to dig up the guns from the yard.
No: that meant the police looking into it and finding a bunch of foreigners polluting their streets. There was no guarantee the Kageoka police would accept a bribe. The problem had to solved invisibly, yet forcefully. Doing it herself was the only option that made sense. The flooding zone she'd trapped her prey in was a dense jungle that had proven difficult for Renka to navigate and too dangerous to force their way through. It was teeming what seemed like thousands of Nightmare Foundlings and likely greater threats waiting for an easy kill to be identified like hyenas stealing the kill of a leopard. She was the predator here, even if her strength felt diminished since losing to Momo and {Simply Red}. Her prey had found a small clearing to hide in sadly, and the situation had deteriorated to her starting the through the scope of an SVD Draganauv rifle from her nest at one of her fathers rivals, a strongman with lots of tattoos who she shot through the ankle and wrist. She punished anything above slight movement with a near miss as he bleeds. Eventually, some of the monsters of the idea world will make a move.
"BRING LUDMILLA OUT OR YOU'LL ALL GET EATEN BY DEMONS!!" Alyona shouts out in Russian toward Yaroslav's concealed camp where she could only assume her mother was being held.
"DROP THE GUN AND COME HOME WITH US THEN, LITTLE BITCH!" Yaroslav's gruff voice says back: that had been his terms for the past 3 hours. A part of her clung to the hope that she was unviolated and alive, but another part of her wanted to dismiss such wishful thinking. These were animals that stoop so low as to target women and children in pursuit of power against her father, and they all would only learn their place through suffering.
It was her duty to kill them: to make sure her life in Japan would never be challenged. She would kill anyone from the motherland trying to use her or her mother as bargaining chips until nobody in their right mind did anymore. She would stack the bodies until she can live whats left of her dream in peace.
Yet she looks at the man she shot and can't line up a killing blow to end his suffering. Her trigger finger freezes up no matter how hard she wills it to turn this piece of human shit into a corpse. How long could she do this? She'd already missed a day of school, and people would start noticing at some point. She may have to threaten students again to keep them quiet, to stop rumors before they become facts in the common consciousness of Kageoka.
All for her dream. All for a few years of peace before a lifetime of suffering, both felt and inflicted. No animals were going to take what she earned away from her.
She can tell her hostage is barely conscious though, and she was in no position to offer the man aid. She could regenerate his body, but it would only let him fight back and give her position away. He was likely to either bleed out or die of dehydration if this became a multi-day standoff. Either way she'll have been his cause of death. She felt her own dry tongue and rumbling stomach and ignored the pains as she bites lip hard and adjusts her posture, firing off a round just to remind her victim what his situation was, or at least that his supposed allies saw him as disposable.
She hears one of the noisemaker traps she made near the path to her nest go off and immediately turns around, KS-23 in hand as she scrambles to a standing posture to take the gun's recoil effectively. She is milliseconds away from pulling the trigger when she sees Shu approach with his hands up, walking toward her slowly.
She isn't listening as he talks, looking over who else he brought. Renka's eye didn't leave Alyona, as if she was reading her aura to ensure she was the real one. Archie looks beaten up and tired, but glad to see Alyona alive and well as he kept a lookout. Upon seeing her, Momo lets out a sigh of relief, blushing slightly, making a similar heat rise to Alyona's cheeks at the intrusive thought that she was glad to see the sukeban of all people here too. Yaya runs up to hug her, babbling about how she's so glad her sister wasn't hurt. The big shotgun disappears from her hands as Alyona genuinely does not know how to reciprocate her feelings for the moment. Yae took a quick look over Alyona before immediately getting a view of the wider hostage situation.
"Shu, she already tagged one of them" Yae says grimly.
"It's fine, I brought a first aid kit" The boy says as Alyona can't bear to look at him or anyone right now.
"This isn't your problem, these animals won't hesitate to hurt even Yaya. You should just-"
"Shut it, Rodionova" Momo says as she approaches her. "I'm not losing a maid like you because she suddenly wants to play lone wolf. We're helping you out of this whether you like it or not!"
Alyona gives the Sukeban a withering glare that would disuade most grown men from the Motherland: "They have my mother as a hostage! Charging in with Simply Red will simply get her killed and attract all the monsters in here to feed on the misery!"
"Exactly why nobody can be allowed to die in this whole exchange, Rodionova-san" Shu says as Momo looks toward Yae sketching down plans of attack.
"Zennami-san, I need you widen the clearing below us" Shu says, getting a quirked eyebrow from the detective.
"Prez, that would leave you in the open for possibly armed mobsters to shoot at"
"They won't, and even if they do, they'll miss" he insists
Yae looks toward Alyona. "How long has he been bleeding out?"
"...3 hours, I shot his joints so I could keep pinned down and force his boss, Yaroslav to make a trade" Alyona says coldly.
Yaya looks up at Alyona. "But he's... he's not dead yet?"
The Russian shakes her head and pats the top of Yaya's. "Not yet, I couldn't-"
Archie looks toward his boss again: noticing tears forming in her eyes. Nobody here needs to see her like that.
"Oi, Seein' some movement on the other side of the clearing. If we're gonna make a plan we better do it fast"
Alyona snaps out of it, looking toward Shu and Yae. "What's your plan then?" she says as an AK-74 appears in her free arm.
Shu nods and looks over the group with a confident smile. "Florence-san, Momo, stay hidden 'till I give a signal but stay around the clearing. Yae, give me more space and a lot of sunlight in the clearing. Renka, Yaya, and Alyona, find a path to the back of their camp and focus on rescuing Rodionova's mother"
Alyona hesitates to agree: why not have Renka teleport them all inside of their camp and subdue them all with their Idolons? She could easily-
One long look toward Yaya gets Alyona to nod in agreement. This all one big diversion, and she was the cavalry.
Yaroslav thought he had seen it all, being led around by the nose and drugged by a little girl was one thing but seeing some Japanese kid with long brown hair come out into the open (which now seemed a lot more open...) doing first aid on his hired help was something he didn't expect. Surely these idiots heard the gunshots from Rodionova!
"HEY! KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF OF HIM!" Yaroslav says to the boy. He look right back at him with a look sheer determination.
"HELLO!" Shu says back in mangled english: this was not his specialty, but his message would come through. "I AM SAVING HIS LIFE!"
"HE'S NOT YOUR PROBLEM BOY!" Yaroslav shouts back.
"EVERTHING IS MY PROBLEM!" Shu insists with misplaced confidence in his wording.
Yaroslav turns around to his remaning 4 men, all armed with knives, crowbars, and bats. Smuggling guns into the country was an expense he hadn't thought he would need to capture a little girl.
"Sergei! Take the bitch somewhere safe and watch her! God knows what tricks he taught his wife if his daughter can pull this off!" he shouts back in Russian before nodding to his men to scare the kid off. He'd rather the hired hand bleed out than blab to the cops that he was more than a tourist.
Shu holds his ground as he ties up the unconscious man's bleeding joints, happening to find some planks that got swallowed into the flooding zone to be good splints. The large Russian men crowd around him, expecting and easy beatdown to teach the kid a lesson.
"Hit it!" Shu says in Japanse as the men raise their weapons, deaf to the language and blind to the clearing shrinking in real time around them. His hands are still busy cleaning wounds and tying off bandages as a huge pig demon bursts out of the brush and tackles Yaroslav. The big man's blows do nothing to the Ogre smashing his face in until it looks ugly enough, directing his great strength into subduing his hands while the rest of the gang's melee weapons slice and beating his back don't hurt enough to earn the Ogre's attention.
Shu is forgotten in the melee as the remaining 4 Russian's here a husky girl's voice: "HEY!" she shouts with a bokken over her shoulder and a red schoolgirl demon at her side.
The men almost laugh off Momo's presence until the demon dashes up close and slams one of them into the air with an uppercut straight to the chin. Momo has fought men more skilled and better armed before and read their brutish moves like a book, countering with her own brute force as one mobster after the other falls to the Sukeban's holy stick or the fists of her Oni in a blur of street violence that comes naturally to Momo.
Shu gives a sigh of relief as he looks down at his patient. Yae appears over him in the garb Laplace.
"He'll live I guess, Momo, Florence-san, get him-" Yae starts before Momo starts trudging off into the jungle with a bloodthirsty look in her eyes.
"Momo what are you doing?! Not even Onguuchi and Yaya have mapped this place out fully!"
"I'LL FIGURE IT OUT! SHU CAN AND ARCHIE CAN DRAG THEM OUT TO SAFETY!" Momo shouts back.
Yae focuses her power over the Flooding zone to try and bring her back by force, but Shu puts a hand on her shoulder: "Rodionova-san might run into trouble: we should-"
Yae's eyes open wide: "...We need to check on everyone else outside of this zone: Momo will be enough reinforcement"
Archie narrows his eyes as he makes sure each of the Bratva goons are knocked out for the time being: "And what makes ya think that Sherlock Hoe?"
Yae gives a frustrated look toward the new nickname: "A gut feeling: Ran's the best fighter they their counterattack is going to be more viscous than the bait. Your boss isn't defenseless and Renka is as good as I am for making zones work for her too. With Momo added to that-"
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Lets get these buggers moving already!" Archie says in annoyance. It was mostly self-directed, he didn't need to start getting protective of Rodionova just because she was a bit cute.
"Forward till the purple tree: Right after it, then upward" Renka says as her monstrous form leaps from treetop to treetop. Alyona sprints form cover to cover, leaping from branch to branch as she works her way through the jungle with all the focus she can muster. Some lesser nightmares had already attempted to make her, Renka, and Yaya into an easy meal before becoming an example. Yaya's drone fly alongside her as they scan for any threats along the path Renka had divined to reach Alyona's mother.
"Sector 0 is clear: 5 meters to objective" Yaya says as Alyona perches a branch and watches A russian man try and deny the reality of a pack of lesser nightmares that had corner him and her mother against a tree. Ludmilla was passed by this point.
Probably for the best, Alyona thought.
"Mark my targets: I'll fire through the treeline" Alyona says
Yaya nods, drones floating above the goo monsters as Renka gives Alyona final nods of confidence. Alyona leaps upward aims: it was no differant shooting cans in the yard, just in the air and under duress.
1, 2, 3, 4 shots fires, 4 sounds of violent splatting heard before she lands in front of her mother's last conscious kidnapper. She draws a Makarov and points it at him on reflex.
Every instinct she has says to kill him now: her mother was no stranger to murder, even if she always averted her eyes from the gorey ones. She would be cleaning up Russia by making sure this animal never came back to shake more people down for another boss.
"I'll kill her! Give the antidote to whatever this is and I'll let her go!" The man demand as hoists Ludmilla's limp body up and points a knife at her throat.
Alyona's hand doesn't shake for even a moment as she flicks the safety on and throws her gun to hit him on the forehead, forcing his knife-wielding arm to the side and making him drop her mother.
Renka's monstrous form floats down with Yaya's mechanical one. Combat drones draw a bead on the mobster and make look even more desperate.
"Rodionova, I-I never saw you, I never saw any of this! You'll never even see me in Russia again!"
"Nowhere else deserves to keep trash like you" Alyona growls before kicking him between the legs, and makes sure he stays down with a measured pistol whip to the head.
"Target secured, good-" Yaya starts before both her and Renka seem to jolt from something.
"What now!? Report!" Alyona demands
"An interloper has opened a Garganta and quickly concealed their presence. They must be of our ilk to have such power...."
"The presence persisted for 1.3 seconds before observation drone was lost: calculating under assumption of direct routing"
"...30 meters"
"...20 Meters"
Alyona jumps up into the branches of a nearby large tree and draws an AK as Renka and Yaya ascend.
"Sector 0 drone coverage complete: No visual confirmation of intruder"
"We are being stalked: it will wait patiently as a tiger awaits easy prey" Renka says
Alyona notices an odd shadow for a split second, creeping right under them toward the concussed body of the mobster. As it gets up Alyona's eyes go wide: Its gets up with its face stolen and runs deep into the jungle with Ludmilla in tow.
"Yaya! Can you track it!?" Alyona says as she starts chasing.
"Not while keeping pace! Slow down please!"
"Your over-exerting yourself: a slower approach-"
Alyona isn't listening as she runs under the treeline. If she can't save her mother from whatever this monster is, then she isn't a real magical girl. Then all of this pageantry of not crucifying Yaroslav and his gang with barbed wire will be worth nothing. Alyona can feel the darker side of herself scream and thrash like an angry child about carpet bombing the jungle in RPGs until they found a human corpse. She keeps running, tree to tree, refusing to give up her pursuit as the few glimpses of the stolen body she gets, she tries to adjust her aim toward the legs to avoid a fatal wound as best she can. She finally corners the hijacked body in a cave, only to find her mother staring in traumatized horror, her hands tied by rope and mouth taped shut. The mobster groans weakly from the glancing shots on his legs but has his face back.
Alyona rips the tape off of her mother's mouth: "It's okay, It's okay!" she insists in Russian. "We'll get out of here! Yaroslav and his men are dealt with already!"
"RENKA! GARGANTA NOW!" Alyona shouts in Japanse, her strained voice echoing down the cave. All she see's in reply is Yaya fleeing inside. She barely makes it as hungry wall of shadow starts consuming everything in front of the caves mouth, including the last of Yaya's drone. A gatling gun bursts from the android as she flies back to the wall of the cave seems to only slightly abate its advance.
"RENKA!!" Alyona shouts, hesitant to shoot, praying she would teleport in like she usually would.
"Something took her over, she lost her face when we were trying to regroup with you" Yaya says
"She was our way out" Alyona says in blank horror as she unleashes a full magazine of 5.45x39 into the wall, causing it to move back slightly. It is almost on them as Renka's now faceless Idolon steps out, moving entirely unlike it would move under its owner's control.
"Rodio-nova-san!" it chides in a distorted, horrific voice as Alyona sprays a PPSh-41 into the figure while Yaya uses her Idolon form as a shield to protect Ludmilla. The woman's eyes express mute horror and confusion that she lacks words for. The bullets are stopped in the air, the laws of the Idea world working for the hijacked Idolon now.
"Don't fight it: It's time you were properly trampled on like you love doing to others" Not-Renka says. "I'll even make it painless for the three of you if you give up!"
"I'm already atoning, go back to your karmic hole, body snatcher!" Alyona roars as she pours round after round into the faceless monster, none of hit their mark.
"Your sins are already uncountable: your sentance is death!" Not-Renka says, like an angry, uncharitable parody of her Renka herself. The shadow wall pushes further up, englufing the three in complete darkness. Alyona and Yaya pushes against the dark, some spark in the Russian's soul refusing to die.
"Alyona my metrics say you can't keep this up! Its-"
"I KNOW, I FEEL IT KILLING ME!" Alyona growls out. She pushes her aura of light out further, the pressure collapsing her body faster than she can regenerate tissue. She numbs the pain as she pushes forward, trying to carve out as much space as she can before she hits her limit. She steps forward between long, self-destructive breaths. Every movement of a muscle pushes through the necrosis of the last doomed attempt to fix herself. Her heart beats slowly but strongly, every desperate pump of a ventricle making her shudder.
"RENKA HAS A LIMIT TOO, BODY SNATCHER! RACE ME TO DEATH IF YOU MUST!"
Alyona feels her heart slowing, her own limit approaching with the fading of her ability to think properly. She starts to lose her balance as the darkness lets up, the masked face of Renka's idolon appearing in flashes like she is fighting possession.
"Your nature is to hide like a clever, cowardly rat. But the Ox notices. You will not win this race" Renka declares, her voice undistorted with anger uncharacteristic of the girl.
The world fluctuates, like a earthquake shaking the very foundations of the flooding zone as the shadow wall dissipates in strength. Alyona falls to the ground, but not before drawing a Makarov and aiming it upward with shaking hands.
"STOP IT! HOW ARE YOU-" the distorted voice attempts to squeak out.
"I am my own universe: My chakras are luminous stars. Flee up and down the chain, I will find the soul which gives you your way" Renka says
"YOU'RE A TOOL TO HER! ALL YOU FREAKS ARE!"
"Then I have purpose, and peace. I am dissipating your turbulance" Renka calmy states as Alyona catches a momentary glance at a shadow haloed in red before it locks eyes on Ludmilla. Yaya attempts to bring a gun to bear, but she isn't fast enough. A chunk of stone from behind is what stops Ludmilla from being puppeted, and the gruff voice of a Sukeban follows it.
"ANOTHER STEP AND WE SEE HOW MUCH A HOLY SWORD HURTS YOU!"
Momo bellows with desperate, tired fury down the cave as she approaches. The ghost doesn't wait for another moment of mercy, moving through the dark cave and out into the vast jungle before anyone can catch it.
"Yaya... Track it! We're not letting it get away!" Alyona says as she tries stand up.
"I'm trying! You need to rest our your whole body is going to collapse!" Yaya, trying to suck up her tears and focus a new set of drones outward. She sighs in disappointment.
"...Another Garganta, its already gone"
"RENKA, WHERE DID SHE PORTAL TO?!" Alyona says, using a Draganov as a walking stick.
"The connection was shut the moment it opened: The shadow chose its destination without any hesitation and was not intent on being followed."
Alyona quietly grits her teeth, digging her nails into the tatter gloves of her magical form. Momo sighs as she sees Alyona in her ragged state before lifting her up in a princess carry.
"You're in no condition to walk, and I'm not making Cho or Yaya drag you back to the real world" the delinquent insists as Alyona weakly attempts to fight back.
"Y-you don't have to carry me in such an... undignified way!" Alyona protests
Momo just rolls her eyes, amazed at herself for putting up with such a brat.
Yaya unties Alyona's terrified mother: "We need to get her out of her now, Cho-san" she says, trying to keep herself together as Renka blankly nods, creating a portal to the Fujiwara Senki hideout.
"...Thank you, I... I..." Ludmilla attempts to sputter out, still shaking.
"Thank your daughter for having some common sense for once" Momo says as she steps through, laying the bedraggled blonde on a couch as her magical girl costume fades.
Shu looks over Alyona as she rests on her mothers lap, asleep. She brushes her daughter's hair gently. Momo had stepped out with Madoka to get some food for the pair.
Yaya sat in a chair across from them, clearly nervous as Yae talked on the phone with the police.
"Yaya, its okay, nobody died, and Alyona is safe" he says toward her.
"...But will more bad people come after her?" the girl asks, trying to not cry again.
"If they do, we'll send them packing until nobody comes for her" Shu says with assurance in his voice. It seems to help Yaya relax a little.
"The... shadow was saying she was really... really mean, enough that dying is what she deserved and she has a-"
"Nobody deserves to die young" Shu says, kneeling in front of her.
Yaya looks at the president of the student council, the man who can stare Yakuza bosses in the face and make demands, that can have the strangest luck and live in the worst conditions yet still never waver on keeping a smile. She can beleive almost anything he says and trust it to somehow come true. The small girl simply nods before standing up and smoothing out her skirt and mentally switching to Russian.
"Miss Rodionova, is there anything I can do to help Alyona right now?"
The woman looks at the cute little girl and shakes her head: "I... I don't fully understand what happened, but Renka believes she just needs rest and some 'invigorating medicine'. Thank you for... for saving, but I can take her home"
"I've... been too passive of a mother anyways. I looked away whenever...." she trails off choking up in self-loathing.
"Then I will keep being her friend, and her sister. Good night, Miss Rodionova" Yaya says with a polite bow before Fumiko walks her home.
Shu smiles and turns his attention to Yae. "Any trouble with our story to the police?"
The girls shakes her head: "All the Bratva thugs will be treated and extradited to Russia to face trial there. They probably won't end up in prison for too long given, at least not the Leader of this whole kidnapping operation. They're buying the idea that the Fujiwara Senki did all of this" she says with tone mixed with relief and frustration.
"If he comes back, we'll beat him again" Shu responds.
"Theres another thing: Kaoru swears she saw someone trying follow her with a camera. She wasn't able to keep up with them or even get a good look at them besides for the fact they were probably male. Madoka and Ran didn't run into any issues at least" Yae says with a look of deep concern.
"It was probably just someone who was curious what she was doing" Shu says
"...I'll look into it. There's almost nothing to go on with either that or the shadow Idolon that possessed Renka. If it had been anyone else they might not have been able to force it out. Even with how attuned to the mystical that girl is she couldn't give anything actionable on who was behind it"
Shu is more concerned at the topic of the shadow as he sits down: "Do what you can, but hopefully they learned their lesson and won't try it again. Teaching people how to counter a possession may be useful too"
Yae nods in agreement. "I'll see what Renka says. Talking to her gives me a bit of a headache because she uses 5 words where 2 would have sufficed"
"Thank you" Shu says, noticing a car pull up in front of the hideout.
"Rodionova-san, are you sure you're okay?" he asks with genuine, deep concern to the woman.
She shakes her head, summoning up her more awkward Japanese. "You seem like a nice young man: she'll never admit it, but she needs people to protect her from herself. I just... want you to keep helping her"
Shu nods, seeing the woman off as he and Yae finally call it a night.