Ohhhh so sad!

Mai still remembers staring at those angry kids as they surrounded her. She didn’t take their threat seriously. Because they were babies, just like the one in her swollen stomach.

Now she’s fleeing with Kirishima Touka, and sees the young woman protecting her stomach from the Reaper’s knives.

I used that position, too.

Mai’s eyes fill with tears as she helps the Aogiri children down the hall. 

She still remembers asking the Oggai if they were okay. Because she was stupid and nice.

Her strength has returned now. But she doesn’t want to use it, not even against the investigators, because that will be an acknowledgement that her baby died.

She still remembers doubling over as their kagunes pierced her stomach. She remembers screaming more in horror than pain, and the One-Eyed King swooping in to rescue her.

“Mai, can you bring up the rear?” Touka asks.

“Of course. I’m not important,” Mai snaps.

Touka looks shocked, and a bit furious. Mai feels some shame for her selfishness, but she should be close to giving birth now, not an expendable.

But for these kids, Mai falls back. She uses her koukaku to form a shield to block of the tunnel. The investigators who followed will certainly slice through it, but at least they’ll be slowed.

Babies killing babies. And Touka gets to have her child, but Mai doesn’t. 

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Touka demands when Mai catches back up. “This is a moment I need to count on you!”

“I know your secret,” Mai growls. Shouts ring out down the tunnel. No, they can’t have cut through so fast. She halts.

“So?” Touka fires back. 

“So…I want to be like you,” Mai cries. She knows this isn’t the time or place to fall apart, but she’s facing her child’s murderers and someone else has a living child and it fucking hurts!

Touka’s eyes widen. “I wish you were, too.”

Mai nods, sniffling. 

She’s not mentally up to fighting these investigators. But if she can just slow them down…

“Please live. I need you to live,” Mai pleads, stepping back. 

Touka hesitates. In the midst of their flight, she reaches out and hugs the other woman she barely knows.

And then she has to go. 

And Mai waits for the investigators. She constructs another shield, but stays behind it. She’ll make sure no one hurts any more kids, born or unborn.