Her feet hurt now. They hadn't before; Mami couldn't even feel them before. But now they hurt as she grips the backseat beside her.

The smoky air burns its way down her throat and stings her eyes as she looks at the rest of the sideways seat towering all the way over her and towards the gaping hole above. A silhouette still sits in that patch of light.

"Careful, Ms. Tomoe." The fairy animal's voice, soft and high like that of boy's, pads softly in Mami's head. "While the modifications made to your body have healed your fatal spinal injuries, you still have minor wounds from your ordeal."

The back of Mami's shirt sticks to a patch of skin that burns.

"Plus, all of your systems were just rebooted, so you must be experiencing sensory overload."

Mami stares at the fairy animal watching over her. Slowly, she turns to where her parents are—gone? The front seats, as compacted as they are, are empty of everything, even the blood.

"My parents, where..."

"The fulfillment of your wish required them to be transported out of the car. There simply is not enough room for a living human being down there, let alone two!"

Mami swallows, shaking. She looks to the fairy.

"Can I..." Her words sizzle in her burning throat. "I need to see...them." She pleads.

"Of course, Ms. Tomoe. However, you'll need to climb out of there first. Don't worry though, but I'll be here every step of the way."

Her legs hurt, but...Mami nods, her golden curls shifting against her shoulders. Moving her feet is possible. Hurts to the point that she has to bite her lip to stop from crying out, but it's possible. See, she's already got her legs tucked under her now.

"Good work, Ms. Tomoe! Now all you have to do is stand!"

No thinking, just stand. And she does, she really does even as the pain crawls out in a sob.

The fairy stays silent and leans down into the hole so that his face nearly touches the top of her head. Mami can see his features properly now. His dark pink eyes gleam, and his little cat ears twitch.

"You're a very strong girl, Mami." His calm words wash over her. "Now," His tail brushes some of the glass shards loose from the window. "Here's a spot to grab onto without cutting yourself."

She makes it over the top, somehow not instantly toppling over the edge as she wobbles on the ledge. There's a smoking pile of cars in the distance. The smoke billows into the air, oozing out to the sides to darken the horizon. Mami coughs softly, the only sound besides...nothing. There's nothing, no one else's sobs or moans of pain. No sirens even, like the world is holding its breath.

"Hmm, this is sooner than expected."

Mami pulls her attention from the cars and back to the fairy animal. "Um, Mr.?" The hair on the back of her neck bristles.

"Oh, I forgot to introduce myself! You can call me Kyubey."

"Kyubey," It's too quiet. As Mami balances on the wreckage of her car, she can't hear the flames she sees from one of the nearby vehicles. "What's happening?" Her voice trembles at the end.

The fairy animal, Kyubey, stares at her. His dark pink eyes glimmer.

"Well, the Wraiths are coming."

The car pile explodes without sound. The vehicles fly into the air, only to drift down like dandelion fluff in the lazy breeze.

Mami stands up. She still hurts, but the pulsating around her finger grips her attention. She lifts her hand up, expecting an injury; but instead a glimpse of glinting silver catches her eye. A small ring wraps around her finger. She can't see it pulsate, but for a second, the inscription etched across its surface seems to writher with the rhythmic beating against her skin.

"It appears that we don't have as much time as I would like to explain everything. Well, I'll start with the most important things first." Kyubey's quick words draw Mami's attention away from her hand. Beneath her, the fairy's foxtail flicks back and forth.

"The visual and auditory oddities that you are currently experiencing are caused by Wraiths. In large enough numbers, they are capable of summoning miasmas that distort the rules of reality so that heavy objects such as cars can float like they are now."

A chill crawls over Mami's skin and she quickly looks back up at the wreckage ahead.

"Ordinarily, everyone here would be doomed to die today or to live out a severely shortened lifespan. Due to the fact that they feed on human life energies, Wraiths are attracted to the despair and suffering of humanity since that is usually when humans possess the weakest will over their own life source."

Something moves behind one of the drifting cars.

"However, your presence here as a Magical Girl has greatly increased everyone's chances of survival! Magical Girls such as yourself are humans given the opportunity to fight back the destruction of Wraiths. There's obviously more to it than that, but we'll need to go into that later."

From behind the floating car steps a bald man in a tattered cloak. Except, he's taller than the car he just walked around.

"Now, while many veterans can fight in their 'civilian clothes' as they state, I highly recommend transforming. You'll be far more durable in that state, and it will be easier to access the basic techniques that I've wired into your soul gem."

The billowing smoke bulges like jello, only to peel apart as more men with tattered cloaks shuffle to the vehicles in-between Mami and the dandelion cars.

"While you can acquire your own techniques, as a new recruit you should just follow your 'gut instincts' for this battle. After all, you are facing several wraiths right now. It would be foolish to experiment when these are the odds you are facing in your first fight!"

Four yards away from her, one of the wraiths leans down to the cracked window of an SUV. It's hand reaches through the glass, passing through it like mist. A scream tears its way past the glass and drags sound back into the world, only for the brief cry to cut off when the wraith moans.

Mami whimpers and steps back. One of the not-men shuffles closer until she sees its face—there's no eyes. Where its eyes should be, a band of static ripples across its face like a broken TV.

Faces should have eyes, not just moaning mouths. Where are their eyes?!

Mami scampers back, air flooding her lungs and then rushing back up her throat in a scream that crashes back down when she slips off the car. The silver ring glows, slipping off her finger as it expands into a cloud of light. It rushes to the side of her head and touches the top of one of her curls before crystalizing. A solid topaz gemstone gleams from a golden flower ornament pinned to her hair.

Before Mam hits the ground, light encases her whole body. The dirty, torn clothing vanishes into shimmering golden dust. In its place, Mami feels a skirt fold around her thighs as she lands on her feet. White shirtless sleeves wrap around her arms, and a dark corset hugs her abdomen. The gold-rimmed collar of a white tunic tickles her neck while she wobbles in the boots that shielded her from the shattered glass crackling under her feet.

From her crouch, Mami rises. It feels natural to stand up after she fell off a car. And it shouldn't, her legs should be shaking and trembling from weakness. Even if she had managed to get her feet under her before hitting the ground, she should have crumbled to her side instantly, not...Mami Tomoe feels no fatigue, only a sort of energy coursing through her and chasing away the trembles that she had before.

A shadow flies above her. Mami raises her hand, and gold specks coalesce off of the tips of her fingers and float up into a winding stream of light. As the form of Kyubey finishes its leap off of the car and onto the ground beside her, the light solidifies into a golden ribbon that drifts in a lazy spiral around Mami's body.

The girl turns towards Kyubey. Unlike everything else around her, the ribbon radiates security. It is a barrier around her and the rest of this strange world and she knows that anything that tries to cross it will be hurt.

"What's..." The question trails off and dies on her lips when she catches sight of the two bodies besides Kyubey. Her parents lie flat on the asphalt of the freeway. They are still except for the faintest of movements as they breathe shallow breaths. As Kyubey sits between them, his thick foxtail flicks against her mother's arm and then her father's.

A chill crawls up Mami's arms. They're both so pale.

"Kyubey," Another dying cry from out of sight passes through her ears. "If I don't fight, those wraiths are going to kill them." The trembling of before rushes back in.

"Most likely. Wraiths do have a limit as to how much each one can consume at a time; however, they are simply not enough survivors for them to be satisfied before they find your parents."

Mami can't carry them. She's not strong enough. She can't leave her parents, and that thought—that singular realization—swallows her up. Like she should have when she first fell, Mami stumbles against the car. Her chest heaves as the corset presses tight against her stomach.

"You would be safe if you ran now. There are other Magical Girls who could kill these wraiths before they got too far from this accident, and we could choose a smaller and wreaker pack of wraiths for your first fight."

"But my parents!!" Mami cries out just as another scream echoes out. "If I leave they're going to die!" Her own words course through her, once again chasing away the trembles of her terror. Mami can't leave, to do so would be worse than if she had died in the tipped over car beside her.

Kyubey regards her for a moment before his thoughts once again pad softly through her mind.

"In order to save them, you would have to fight. Are you capable of doing that, Mami Tomoe?"

With tears slipping down her face, the child stares at Kyubey. She doesn't say anything at all as she straightens away from the car. Mami has to be capable of fighting. To not be means...

In silence, Mami turns away from Kyubey. Her boots click against the ground as she walks around the car and faces the wraiths creeping towards her. They moan when they see her, shuffling faster as if she's more delicious than the dying humans in the cars around them.

Without any hesitation, Mami clutches the glowing ribbon and throws it forward, letting the golden thread shoot from one of her hands while still clutching more of the ribbon tightly behind her.

Like a bullet, the golden thread zips ahead far too fast to see. As if her own hands are wrapping around the monster, Mami feels the ribbon dance in a spiral around the wraith, only to tighten until the crunch of the monster's insides tear into her ears.

The other wraiths moan louder, teeth gnashing as if in anger. Instead of falling back, Mami runs forward, letting the instincts that Kyubey mentioned swallow her up. Her hand whips forward and the wraith still caught in her thread slams into two others until the three of them are smashed into the front of an SUV.

Without hesitation, Mami throws the ribbon behind her forward and at the creatures ahead of her.