…and the world was engulfed in a dull light. Ritsuka felt a tear rip through her body before it was supplanted by a numb hollowness. But she was familiar with agony. Thus, she looked up at Mash’s shocked expression. The emotions running through her countenance were obfuscated by the dull evening light. In the periphery of Ritsuka’s vision, she saw Yu Mei-ren’s toes instinctively near her now freed body. 

It was an action that was made without thought by the True Ancestor once she felt the prey escape the hold of her foot’s skin. One that she had stopped herself from completing, since it was obvious from where Mash’s eyes were directed, that she had seen the master. Yu Mei-ren doubted that she could fool the pink-haired kouhai. And if the older woman made attempts to lay claim on the defeated master, then the Shielder would undoubtedly fight tooth and nail to protect her.

“Yu Mei-ren…”

Aya~ Just great. Oh…I’m so sorry Xiang yu.

“…I think there was a bug…or a sea animal trapped under your foot.”

Yu Mei-ren’s eyebrow raised in surprise. Ritsuka felt her heart plummet. The lips of Mash’s beautiful visage were turned downward in a frown.

“Really…”

Yu Mei-ren inquired as she pulled her legs away and looked down at Ritsuka. The shrunken woman truly looked like a cung zai at this point. Maybe even less. 

The bottom half of her body was torn away. And the arms that it once had looked more like podocytes. The foot processes that one would see on a micro-organism. The young woman’s body had loss any semblance of human form or coloration. She was just a red and white blob now. A moving wet tissue paper painted red.

“I don’t know why…but I think that it’s in a lot of pain.”

Mash saw the trail of red fluid in between the sea organism and Yu Mei-ren’s foot. The way that the organism near her foot floundered, not in a manner that a mobile creature should behave, convinced Mash that it was dying.

“I think that it’s about to die. Poor thing.”

Ritsuka tried so hard to yell Mash’s name. To evoke any noise out of her body that would confer upon the pink-haired kouhai that she possessed intelligence. But it seemed that the young woman had expended all the energy in her body. The saddened expression on Mash’s face, and the serious expression on Yu Mei-ren’s face. Ritsuka’s life was now in their hands. There was nothing else that she could do.

“I guess that we can just leave it alone. Let nature take its course.”

Yu Mei-ren stood up and looked like she was about to pack up and leave. In reality, the True Ancestor was trying to get Mash to leave with her. So that she could backtrack later and pick up Ritsuka to begin the merging process anew. As the blissful sensation in her sole had now vanished. 

No! Mash! Don’t leave me! Please. I’ll be your pet! Just take me!

Ritsuka internally yelled with all her heart. She trembled at the thought of being left at the mercy of the wilderness. Even the caring comfort of Mash’s presence was preferable to that. Even if she didn’t think of her senpai as nothing more than an insect.

It must be in so much pain. I can’t leave it like this.

Although, the growing frown on Mash’s face upon hearing those words from Yu Mei-ren made such a course of action to be unlikely. The pink-haired kouhai stood up herself, and she felt a little bit of her soul wither.

In Ritsuka’s perspective, she saw the two goddesses rise into the darkening heavens. Their bodies shook her surroundings as the discernible features of their faces became a nondescript blur. The alluring features of their beauty was a sight that the master was no longer permitted to view. Instead, she heard the words that left her caring kouhai’s lips. Words of condemnation.

“No. I’d rather not leave it to suffer.”

Yes!

Ritsuka was sobbing. Exuberant that Mash was the caring girl that she knew. That she would take care of her. And that perhaps Da Vinci and the others would find out the truth.

For a fleeting moment of lucidity, Ritsuka was able to see the faces of the giantesses deciding her fate. Yu Mei-ren bore an annoyed expression, while Mash’s expression was a pitying one.

“Better to put it out of its misery.”

The freshest amounts of despair, emerge when hope is taken away. Ritsuka’s mind went numb. She could only look up as Mash lifted her foot and curled her toes. The muscles in her legs bulged with a girth that Yu Mei-ren could not match. Dense calves and thighs gained from carrying the weight of the world on her back. An impressive feat that was made even more amazing that she kept her kindness as she dirtied her body. 

No…Mash…

It was due to that kindness that a rain of dirt fell from Mash’s foot as it looked overhead. Right over Ritsuka’s blob of a body. A kindness that desired not to prolong the suffering of another life on this Earth, no matter how little, longer than necessary.

“I’M SORRY.”

MASH!!

With an air of proprietary befitting of a goddess, she brought the pillar of muscle down upon the master’s form. The hazy gray surface of her sole blotted out the sun and sky from Ritsuka’s vision. It only took an instant for the slab of soft meat to press down on the young woman. For the pungent and salty brine of the pink kouhai’s sweat to flood the organism’s senses. A deluge of seawater that was tainted by pestiferous grime and gray refuse. The coating on Mash’s soles overloaded Ritsuka’s senses before the greater physical might of the physical combatant continued to press down with an increasing force. 

Muscles tensed over the blob as Ritsuka felt the remaining supporting structures of her body give way. The dough of Mash’s foot became firmer than Yu Mei-ren’s sole ever was. An underside that transformed into a literal car compactor.  The wrinkles of Mash’s skin tore at the outer layer of the young woman’s oblong form. As a result, squeezing the red organs of vitality that kept the master’s life going. The next pulse of Mash’s immense weight, as she lifted her other foot to bring the full brunt of her body’s weight down on the poor organism, smashed Ritsuka into a bloody smear. The organism’s gray matter squirted out and much like the rest of her wet viscera, became a sopping smear on the bottom of Mash’s foot.

“Well…I guess that it was just a cung zai.”

Yu Mei-ren shrugged her shoulders as Mash lifted her foot and inspected the damage. 

“What was that senpai?”

On the bottom of her foot was a bright red mess of guts that was stuffed into the wrinkles of her foot. The pink-haired kouhai completely unaware that the senpai that she cared deeply about was that stain on her foot.

“Ah~ nothing I was just talking to myself.”

Maybe I should go back to the sea to wash this off.

Mash idly thought as she rubbed her thumb back and forth against the bloody smear. Mixing its greasy stain with her body’s own natural oils. Until it became a darker shade of maroon. As the rest of the dirt that Mash had stepped on mixed with it. Thus, even making it difficult for someone to tell that the pink-haired woman had crushed a living being under her foot.

Both senpai and kouhai continued to talk until the sun went down. Then the two went back to Chaldea. Although Yu Mei-ren was wrong. By the end of the day, Ritsuka did want to live…she just never got the chance.