Madgie, what did you do? X: Bloody Snow Angel

マッジ、あなたは何をしましたか？ 10：ブラッディ·スノーエンジェル

The air feels cold, very cold. Where am I ? I don't know. My blanket feels frozen. A dream? No, this is real. We have returned to a dreaded future for the tenth time. I awake in my house, freezing . I get out of bed and find myself stumbling back with every step. I had to find a way to get warm and stay that way or else I will succumb to hypothermia.  However, I realized that Madgie had to be freezing, if not dead, that is, if she is alive. Noting this temperature and if her age is to be taken into equation, I find it unlikely she couldn't survive without some sort of heat.

I staggered down the stairs for a spare blanket and I find one, warming myself up instantly. Madgie! I had to find Madge and Toki. I stumble outside and find the world in a blanket of snow but something was strangely different. There were roses, in groups of one or two, growing out of the ground in different spots where a blood drop had fell but, even stranger that the snow seemed to have been converted to crystal where the blood splattered, as evidenced by the red cracks and the roses emitted a faint reddish glow. I lifted my ears straight into the air to listen for a sound. I heard distant voices, each female and varying with age but I also heard crying.

I followed the roses and discovered Toki, lying face down, apparently mourning. I reached out to poke her and she noticed but I had to suppress a scream when I found she was weeping blood tears, thus revealing small roses that were rising up as she sat on her knees.  Even though she was mournful, she appeared to be quite surprised and had notion of embarrassment, as if a man had seen her completely naked. The snow underneath her turned crystal. What kind blood does she have?!

On a side note, Madgie had mentioned what happens if Toki's blood ended up in someone's veins and the result was crystallization, which can carry the effect of death and more often than not it does and the crystallization can be swift or, painful and slow with crystals poking form the skin and/or the person hacking them up. She told me the reason as to why it does that is truly unknown and those who are near genetically identical have no ill effects as her blood is almost similar to theirs, allowing benefit but I always guessed it was because Toki's blood probably contains a large amount of cysteine. Either way, Toki does not like to talk about it.

I wanted to know why Toki was weeping. She had not made any sound as to why, aside from her pained sobs.  She looked quite different. Her hair was white, with stains of red in it, tied back into a bun. Her eyes were a crystal red and her cheeks were pink. Her claws hand grown a few more inches in length and looked like red crystals. She was wearing red lipstick along with a white dress, decorated with red lace and ribbon. Streaks of blood tears had ran down her face as if it were mascara. She was wearing a pearl bracelet on each wrist and a ruby pendant around her neck.

She blinked her wide eyes and stared at me for a bit. I looked at her in return and wondered if she would speak. Obviously, no one saw her weep nor did anyone join her. She mourned her pain alone. "Are you okay?" I asked. Her nose twitched and she recomposed herself. She shook her head. "Alright, then why do you weep?" I asked again.  She moved to get up and walked off, beckoning for me to follow her. I followed her past everything we once knew and then we stopped only for her to point to the sky.   

She was showing me her surroundings and I had quite a heavy assumption of what had happened. "Toki, what did you see?" I asked.  Blood tears welt up in her eyes again and, not too long before she went back to sobbing, she whispered, "Too much, so very much."  Her tears fell to the ground sprouting more roses. "Have you seen Madge?" I asked. She sighed and said "She was gunned down during the Cold Sorrow, when the fighting was happening and when the winter first started, just after her bloodshed. I saw one tear roll down her cheek in her final moment, when her bloody demise could end the bloody and nuclear war."

Naturally, she probably assumed that the snowflakes were Madgie's many tears. From the look in her eyes, she had some regret that someone, regardless of what they did, had died and she could do nothing about it. Knowing Toki's background, this happened so many times that she is utterly broken. Time had beaten her down, leaving her a crumpled wreck that weeps bloody tears. "Oh, Usagi, you have not yet the chance to grieve for your sister, now I shall lead you to her grave." Toki said, quite suddenly. I followed her to a nicely crafted tombstone and a rose on the grave. The tombstone read: Here Lies A Martyred Angel, born in 2000-died unknown, Madgeline, may she rest in peace. The dates on the stone compelled me to ask Toki what year it was. "It's past 2014." she answered. She got up and proceeded to walk off. "I'm going home, I've kept my sister waiting for over an hour. It is warm there." she said, sighing. I was compelled to follow her. I followed her into the dome and found Doki standing on the porch waiting for us.

She looked quite different as well. Her hair was messily pinned back into a bun. She was wearing a long black winter dress trimmed in pink lace and had a white apron over it. She had dark circles under her eyes and seemed to be tired. She had on light pink nail polish and wore quartz pendant around her neck. She was wearing black boots with pink braces fixed on them. She lifted her hand and beckoned for us to come in.

"I seek not to wait any longer." she said We walked in  and I was quite surprised to find the house was warm. "I suppose you are looking for an explanation as to what had happened and where to find the time crystal." Doki said, quite suddenly. Her eyes had narrowed slightly and the corner of her mouth went up, as if she knew a secret about the time crystal she mentioned or, more importantly, how to get there.

The look in her eyes had intimidated me and they seemed to taunt me. Her narrowed eyes went empty and, before I had a chance to say anything, I found myself frozen and whisked to some windy place where the sky was red. It was frightening I watched bit by bit of a shooting or a battle occur with people falling down, shot and I heard a woman's screams. I was seeing what happened some time ago through her eyes and, oh God, was it torture. The screams I heard were hers and, in the delusion, I saw Madgie, shot to death, and the delusion ended at that. I found myself back to reality and the present. Her eyes were back to normal.

She told me how to get there and that Toki's blood tears are the only thing that can activate it. She gave me warning about traps that have not been tripped and gave me adequate clothing. She also told me that Toki knows where it is and that it is a day's worth of journey. We headed out the next morning and Toki silently cried, her tears sprouting roses on the way. However, I kept in kind the warnings about untripped traps but I also had to keep in mind that Toki, in her everlasting deliriums and detachments from reality, usually doesn't see the danger unless it happens so, that being as said, Toki ended up tripping of the dangers we were warned against, staining her white dress with blood. Much to my upset, there was an alternative path but Toki had forgotten it.

We continued onwards. Toki struggled to keep her steps. She was badly injured and most of them was the result of keeping me out of danger, like a guardian angel, as if formed of snow white marble. Her injuries made her bloody. A bloody snow angel she now was and I uninjured, the one to reset the world back to the way it was. By the time we got there, the next day, she was limping. She wept, blood tears activating the crystals. A light flashed and I awoke in my bedroom. Stinky was curled up at the foot. Things were the same but I was worried about Toki. She was alright and had only a band-aid on her cheek.