The smell of smoke was the first thing he noticed. Vaguely wondering what had possessed Rin to try something in the kitchen again, Archer focused his eyes on the screaming figures on the ground below.

Nope. This wasn't home.

Him being conscious though, now that was something.

Might as well make the best of it. He began pooling mana he'd gotten from the world into his eyes. Alaya would probably be in fits by now if she knew he was aware of his surroundings. Not that that mattered, she probably still had him on a leash via some astral plane.

She had also taken his coat.

Fucking bitch.

His eyes came into focus on dark looming shapes within the city. What earlier had passed for skyscrapers panned in to become monstrous looming shapes that actually dwarfed said buildings. He counted sixteen - or more - individual monstrosities, each with a halo of gemstone fragments, opals glistening with a slick, sick black sheen in the night, reflecting the light of a moon that wasn't in the sky. They moved with ethereal grace, seemingly meeting no resistance as they ploughed through the cityscape they sprouted from, yet leaving devastation in their wake.

The worst of all was the screaming. Whatever humans that weren't dead by now would probably have been driven mad by the combined amplification of the nightmare flesh-metal radio towers' inhuman cries. Archer couldn't even tell where wavelengths of sound had marked their end and where that of insanity had taken over. It was so strong that a visible field of cloudlike darkness permeated the atmosphere around the area.

No time to contemplate being conscious though; there was work to be done.

He was about to summon his bow when a magenta bolt materialized not ten feet from him, shooting from the heavens and with a pop, a young girl that looked barely twelve appeared in a burst of light. It was like she'd been plucked from a kid's dollhouse, with her frilly dress adorned with lace, hair in ribbons and a huge bow tied around her waist on her back.

And everything was pink.

He massaged his temples as the phrase "legal age to engage in deadly magecraft battles" flashed through his mind. She must have sensed his stare; turning to face him with an expression that hit (waaay) too close to home for comfort, although the way she blushed and stammered for the right words to say as she noticed his gaze made things easier.

Shyness would hardly be the first emotion you'd feel above a deathscape.

"Ah, you can see me?"

A curt nod.

"Umm but how... ah but before that!"

She waved a hand in the direction of the mayhem below. A luminous pink wave came forth and doused the scene; everything stopped. The destruction. The monsters. The wind.

Suddenly Archer didn't feel like the composed one anymore, as the girl studied him intently, biting her lip and seemingly oblivious to how his brain was now running a mile a minute from her display of power. He instinctively tensed, but didn't gather mana. If she'd wanted him killed (like that was even possible) he probably would have been a long, long time ago. His train of thought was cut short as comprehension dawned across her features.

"You're from Alaya aren't you?"

He pulled his trademark smirk across his face. "Well, who knows?" This day just kept getting better and better.

She ignored the bluff, scrunching up her face again in thought, "Hmm but that signature is clearly..." Her eyes widened: "Ah, you're from the prototype!"

"Prototype?" This was new.

She almost went into a stutter, visibly embarrassed. "Ah, um, it was a guess... " Her face darkened, "That's not good though, if you are, that is. Things might be getting out of hand at this rate. Those," she pointed, Archer's gaze following her direction, "are magical beasts. They're darkness and despair of the world given form. Normally there'd be the incubators, but I don't know what's gone wrong for this to have happened. I know Alaya's always been stingy with her info, so hopefully this helps a little." She gave a slight smile.

If anything, she had only succeeded in making him even more bemused than he currently was. He was starting to see the wisdom of sending Spirits into battle unconscious. "So they're the enemy, right? That's all I need to know," he willed his bow into existence, be damned if he was going to lose to someone who looked half Rin's age, even if she probably was at least the level of a planet class entity.

The girl shook her head, "Let me." He watched as she summoned her own weapon, a rosebud tipped bow (Huh, she was an archer too). As soon as she grasped it, the latent flower bloomed with all the vitality of spring.

Gilgamesh would probably be on the floor by now, dying of laughter.

She tensed and pulled, a giant pink plume of mana that dwarfed the size of one of the magical beasts below exploded above the tip of the bow, coalescing into an bolt. Archer was no expert on magecraft, but he knew when a weapon was invoking the Second Magic when he saw it. Someone was not fucking around. As she released the bolt into the sky, it disappeared from view, as though sliding into a different dimension. A magic circle sketched itself across the sky as countless bolts like the one the girl had just fired streaming down onto the battlefield below, each unerringly hitting their mark. Only the frozen time prevented the monsters from simultaneously vaporizing on the spot.

She sighed as she dismissed her weapon, turning towards Archer with a look of mild concern. "That's settled, but there's you too. You're not doing too well are you?"

He almost failed to repress the snort. "Concerned are we? What's in it for you?"

She smiled that emphatic-bemused smile that Alaya seemed to wear half the time when talking to him. "Hope. Hope is."

He was about to ask her to cut the meaningless answers when he felt the familiar tug behind his navel signalling the call of the world. Master wanted their dog back. With more questions than answers, or even having a chance to ask her name, Archer felt himself being pulled through space-time towards the Throne of Heroes.

He just hoped that the lecture wouldn't last too long. He wanted to try tracing that bow.

Archer and Madoka in killing magical beasts with the power of friendship! Continue Y/N?

Reviews are awesome, as usual :)