Apocalypse, then transforming into a magical girl

The two were flying towards the hospital.

As they drew closer, the hospital's outline gradually became clearer in the crimson rain.

On the roof of the inpatient building, the dark red characters "Xinmao City People's Hospital" gradually became barely legible.

"Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!" Xia Zhaozhao suddenly slammed on the brakes without warning, almost causing Xiao Lü to rear-end the car before she could react.

Xia Zhaozhao turned her head, looking at Xiao Lü blankly, her eyes full of confusion: "Xiao Lü, Xiao Lü, how... how did we end up flying this way?"

Little Green hovered in mid-air, frowning slightly: "...You too?"

A sense of unease crept into her mind: "I also feel... there are so many things in my head that are blurry and indistinct."

Her gaze returned to the hospital building.

"...A hospital? Wait a minute," she muttered to herself, "Why are we at a hospital?"

The strong sense of incongruity made her feel somewhat irritable. She tried hard to recall something, but her memories were hazy and indistinct, as if many things had become blank.

"Zhaozhao... what's the last thing you can remember?"

"The previous item?" Xia Zhaozhao asked, trying hard to remember. "I remember we had a huge fight at the mall, and then I packed a bunch of comics to read at home. I fell asleep while reading them..."

"And then I have no recollection of it. How did we suddenly end up at the hospital? What main quest did we pick up? I... have absolutely no memory of it?"

Xiao Lü was silent for a moment: "...I think we should stop and sort out our thoughts first."

The two landed slowly on the roof of a half-submerged bus next to the hospital.

The terrain around here is not high, and rainwater collects, making the entire bottom of the hospital seem to be soaked in diluted blood.

Little Green stared blankly ahead, trying to recall something. Suddenly, she noticed something unusual.

"Have you noticed... it seems to have suddenly gotten cooler?" Her voice carried a hint of uncertainty.

"Now that you mention it, it seems to be true!" Xia Zhaozhao also noticed. "I remember it was unbearably hot before, but now, wearing this thick raincoat, I don't feel much of a difference?"

"The temperature has dropped quite a bit... I feel like it's been raining for a few more days," Xiao Lü said, looking up at the gloomy sky.

Xia Zhaozhao felt even stranger. She subconsciously touched her hair, and when her fingertips touched the ends, she suddenly stopped, as if she had discovered something terrible.

She raised her hand in disbelief and examined it closely.

"Huh? Didn't I just trim my nails? How come they've suddenly grown so much longer?" she said in surprise.

"So...we've forgotten everything that happened these past few days?"

She suddenly looked at Xiao Lü, her voice tinged with nervousness: "Then... what should we do?"

Little Green looked around blankly, trying to find some clues.

Finally, as if remembering something, she reached into the pocket inside her raincoat and began rummaging through it. After a moment, she pulled out several items.

A few sheets of paper, a pen, and a... strange crystal?

"What the heck! When did we kill a Nightmare? I can't remember at all!" Xia Zhaozhao exclaimed, pointing at the crystal.

Xiao Lü had already turned her gaze to the few sheets of paper. The papers listed the names of some supplies, marked with checkmarks and ticks, some already checked off, some not.

There was also a piece of paper with a simple map drawn on it. On one side of the map, the location of Xinmao Hospital was clearly marked.

"It seems... before we forgot about these things, we... have already experienced a lot, and even had a clear goal," Little Green said.

She looked down at the map and continued muttering to herself, "And, this is a place 'we' seem determined to come no matter what?"

The two exchanged a silent glance, and ultimately decided to head towards the hospital.

Before setting off, Xiao Lü picked up a pen and wrote something on it.

"Since we wanted to come here before, there must be a reason, right?" Xia Zhaozhao's tone carried a hint of uncertainty.

"...Perhaps we had already made some preparations or made some kind of awareness before this?" she added.

"Never mind, let's go first," Xiao Lü said.

As soon as the two flew into the hospital, some monsters on the windowsill of the hospital building spotted them, let out unintelligible roars, and viciously pounced on the two.

"Watch out!" Little Green quickly rose higher, calmly observing the suddenly appearing monsters.

The monster is relatively slender and long, with its limbs having evolved into thin, bat-like membrane structures at the ends, though they are quite clumsy.

They clearly hadn't expected their target to be so agile, and all their attacks missed.

Xia Zhaozhao had already circled behind them. With a flash of her blade, one of the monsters' wings was severed at the base, and it spun downwards.

However, soon after, more monsters of the same type flew towards the two from the hospital roof and windows, shrieking as they approached. They could be identified as bats or birds.

"From the bee-like creatures of the past to these bird-like beings now," Xia Zhaozhao couldn't help but complain. "It seems Xiaobai was right, these weird things have evolved really fast."

Fortunately, this evolution was incomplete; flight did not seem to be an easy skill for this cobbled-together creature.

Although they can take off, they cannot perform agile maneuvers in the air, and their movements appear stiff and clumsy.

Two beams of light weaved through the monster horde with a variety of dazzling movements, precisely dodging each monster's attacks with every turn.

Then, at the spot where the two had been standing, the remaining ice crystals exploded like shotgun pellets, riddling the monster with holes.

Then, Xia Zhaozhao went a step further and stood in front of Xiao Lü. With a swift motion, she plunged her longsword into the wing root of a monster that was flying towards Xiao Lü, causing it to spiral down from the sky and splash up muddy water.

Another monster that tried to ambush Xia Zhaozhao was also pierced through by Xiao Lü's ice spear.

The two worked together seamlessly to take down the monsters that threatened them one by one, and finally entered the hospital through a broken window.

As the largest comprehensive hospital in the city, Xinmao City People's Hospital had an extremely large daily flow of patients before the disaster struck.

This also means that, after the apocalypse, this place provided a massive amount of biomass for the birth of monsters.

Fortunately, the monsters inside the hospital did not seem to have undergone significant specialization like the flying monsters outside.

From the outside, most of them are still ordinary aggregates.

……

After all the monsters had disappeared from sight, the two looked at each other and saw a sense of bewilderment in each other's eyes.

The two had been busy fighting monsters and hadn't had much of a chance to talk.

Now that she had a chance to catch her breath, Xia Zhaozhao immediately started making a lot of noise.

"Wait! What's going on?! Why am I here fighting these... monsters I've never seen before?!" Xia Zhaozhao shouted.

In my memory, I always left all these troublesome tasks to my best friend in the next city, but now I'm here... No, no, this isn't the kind of enemy a magical girl would normally face, is it?

"And another thing, hey little green girl, who are you? I don't know you at all... but I feel a strange sense of familiarity with you?" she asked blankly.

There was something else she kept to herself, something she was too embarrassed to say aloud. She had always considered herself a rather weak magical girl, but now she felt a surge of power within her, which made her feel strange.

Could this be a final burst of energy before her magical girl career was about to end? All sorts of strange thoughts involuntarily popped into her mind.

"What did you say? Magical girl?" The voice of the green-clad girl in front of her interrupted Xia Zhaozhao's reverie, her voice filled with confusion.