Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2013-02-05 12:48 pm
ptahrrific) wrote2013-02-05 12:48 pm
Entry tags:
Madoka Magica | MadoSaya, Homura, others | PG-13 | Persephone's Waltz (19)
Title: Persephone's Waltz, Chapter 19: Just another form of insanity
Characters/Pairings: Madoka/Sayaka, Homura, Walpurgis Night, Kyuubei, (skip) Kyoko, cheer up /u/ there's MadoHomu coming
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer/Warnings: See table of contents.
It gets worse. And our heroines, even Homura, are running out of time to whip out the last-minute save that will turn it around for good.
(This part is back on the every-three-days update schedule, and the next one should be too.)
***
May 1
Walpurgisnacht
There were many things Madoka had learned while on the run with Sayaka, and one of these was that the Heinrich Plaza had terrible security. You could get to any floor, even out onto the roof, with no key or special authorization necessary.
A stolen bicycle and a well-ingrained habit of keeping to the shadows had gotten her across the city, covering most of the distance in the bleak grey light before the cackling, spinning apparition manifested in front of the clouds. Now she knew, without fully understanding how, that what she needed was height.
The main doors were all locked during the evacuation, of course, but a couple of solid rocks through the window got her in.
She ran up.
***
Sayaka lay flattened on a stretch of sidewalk, too numb to know if she'd broken anything, too drained to move and find out.
Her legs and half her left side were in a puddle, quietly soaking. The water was flowing, a rush of it just audible, somewhere close: an exploded fire hydrant, maybe. In her curled hand was the gold-set egg of her Soul Gem, its depths a sickening black with only the barest flecks of blue. For a second she thought it flickered brighter...but no, that was the neon sign of the club across the street, trying to turn itself on with whatever backup generator was limping along at its back.
Was the witch still cackling? She couldn't tell. The water, the fizzling of the neon, the nearby flames and citywide crumbling, it all blended together into meaningless white noise. And over it layered echoes of sounds that couldn't be happening, not right now. Madoka's precious laugh. Hitomi's shriek of scandalized delight. The firecracker explosion of Mami firing a hundred muskets in quick succession. Kyousuke's violin, hitting the most exquisite notes, before collapsing into a dissonant screech like the wail of a tortured cat.
Mami, the senpai you abandoned to die. Hitomi and Kyousuke, the friends you gave a special warning when almost no one else you knew got one. Madoka, the girl whose happiness you're paying for with how many lives?
No. She wouldn't listen. She knew she'd done the best she could.
And this is really the best of a hero of justice?
Sayaka dropped the soul gem (it slid from her palm to the sidewalk, and spun in a little circle before rolling to a stop) and conjured one last sword as her vision blurred. A short one. A dagger, really.
She knew what was happening. Her last duty, then, was to keep the city safe from herself.
How is that fair? Why protect a world... "...that's forced you to become like this?"
The figure that had appeared was ghostly, unreal, but amazingly clear compared to the haze that surrounded it. A girl. A strange little girl who moved with all the natural grace of a video-game zombie, wearing a ragged cape and an adult-sized knight's helmet with the visor up to reveal her blue-eyed face. She smiled. Her hands dripped red.
"But you don't have to put up with it," said the witch Sayaka would become. "Isn't that exciting? You can create your own perfect world, where there's none of this messiness...no hard choices to make...nothing to make you feel guilty. A simple castle just like in fairy tales, with a beautiful girl inside that you can protect forever."
No, thought Sayaka, and dragged her knife, mostly by feel, toward her own throat.
***
Madoka was lucky. The Plaza still had its full height.
Or at least, part of it did.
She rattled open the door to stumble out onto the roof, and had to skid to a stop: a few meters from her shoes, half of the top floor had been ripped away. Through the gaping hole she could see the outlines of a luxury suite, a twisted pipe spewing water in a graceful arc over the enormous raised bathtub, a torn curtain clinging to what was left of one wall as its ends flapped in the breeze. She didn't dare look close enough to tell whether any of the occupants had stayed.
And overhead floated Walpurgis Night itself, the monster of gears and lace straight out of her nightmares, its shrill laughter rattling a cityful of broken windows.
It would be attacked soon. It had to be. Any minute now she would see the glitter of distant swords, and be able to trace their path to find out where Sayaka was aiming from.
And even if she's...gone...then maybe I'll see explosions instead. Maybe I can find Homura.
***
which way which way WHICH WAY
—And why should I tell you that, Akemi Homura?—
because
(the Incubator's throat is in her hands now, not like he cares)
because if you do
(there's nothing she can threaten him with, there never is)
and I find her
(but bribery...)
then I'll have no choice but to lose the rest of my mind and become a witch
that's what you believe, isn't it
that what we call love is just another form of insanity
—You are certainly not doing much to disprove the theory.—
***
Her vision was telescoping, the edges swallowed up by blackness. The witch's pout was going to be the last thing Sayaka saw.
Gruoch ingen Boite, the bloodstained witch. Her nature is to fall in love. The witch continues to dream of a waltz resounding in the middle of a wide-open ballroom, a feeling that moved her deeply in past days. Her fortune only turns under the weight of memories and no longer moves toward the future. Nothing will reach her any longer. Her minions are Holger, whose duty is to perform, and Persephone, whose duty is to dance endlessly.
But she could feel the cold steel, the first scrape of its edge...
...and then...
...the darkness began to melt away.
No more apparition. No more static. The world unblurred and resolved slowly back into focus.
The first thing Sayaka saw was her soul gem, swirling with brightest sky-blue. Tapped gently against its surface was a grief seed, with the same emblem outlined in iron on its point and on its body: a five-petaled flower.
And the first thing she heard was, "Come on, rookie, get up! You think your girlfriend wants you to die here?"
***
Scaffolding from a construction site drifted through the air, not directly above Madoka's head, but close. If it fell, it would tear a hole out of the building across the road. Farther away she could see cars, the tops of towers with antennae and satellite dishes still perched on their heads, chunks of debris too small and irregular to pin down.
There were pale midair flashes of light, too, baffling until she realized the source. Individual panes and shards of glass were among the wreckage, gently turning, every so often hitting the right angle to reflect a fire on the ground or the unearthly glow the witch carried around.
You can stop this, a voice in her dreams had said. You have the power to change destiny.
No, not a voice. The direct-to-mind telepathy of Kyuubei. Which meant unknown layers of misdirection and withheld information and secret motives. What were its motives, anyway? Where had it even come from? How was this much pain and death and destruction useful to it at all?
The breeze was gentler than it had been. Madoka shivered anyway.
One of the tallest chunks of building, its whole side briefly brilliant from reflecting glass, plummeted down to slam at an angle into the roof of a skyscraper made largely of concrete. For once it was the missile itself that crumbled on impact, ugly brown smoke rolling out from all sides and enveloping the crash site, the rumbling and shattering distant but close enough to make Madoka stumble backward.
It had been stupid of her to come here. Stupid to think some ordinary girl could find a mahou shoujo in a war zone. If Sayaka used her powers, Sayaka could come to Madoka easily; but she was either dead or not looking. And why should she? There was no reason to for her to believe Madoka hadn't listened.
(That had been in the nightmare too, she remembered now. From Homura, this time. You don't listen!)
Walpurgis was moving away from the building Madoka was on...for now. If it came back this way, the Plaza could easily be the next thing ripped from its foundations....
But no, now the laughing spectre had stopped, its gears still tilting forward while its head stayed in one place. Either it was turning itself over, or something was holding it by the neck.
***
"Can you still do 'Rosso Fantasma'?" asked Sayaka, as Kyoko yanked back on the seemingly infinite links of her spear-chain, pulling it taut. "What about 'Heretic Inquisition'?"
"Never thought I'd be glad for Mami's stupid attack names," muttered Kyoko on the balcony beside her. "In a situation like this? Doesn't look like I have a choice, do I?"
"Because there's an ability I've been practicing, it's basically 'Unlimited Magic Bullet Works' with swords, and if you can provide the same kind of support as in Attack Plan—"
"Get going, already!" barked Kyoko. "You just worry about getting yourself into formation, and I'll take care of the rest!"
Sayaka nodded, and without further hesitation sprinted up the links like a tightrope toward the giant faceless head.
A new set of familiars was already zooming down toward her — she had a rapier in hand, the offense part would be easy, the danger was in hitting the limits of her magical balancing abilities. When they were less than a hundred meters from her, bone-white grins the only feature on their giggling not-faces, Kyoko came through — a dozen illusory Sayakas broke off from her position to run alongside, or in front of, or presumably behind her — and while most of the silhouettes were confused and fighting phantoms, they were lanced through with spears from below.
Walpurgis was tilting sickeningly above her. Its head twisted, its painted mouth gaping — Sayaka flung her cape in front of her face before she could think about it, just in time to shield from a close-range blast of fire.
The next leap had her hanging on to its eternally outstretched sleeve.
The chain started retracting, not to pull the witch down but to hoist Kyoko up, while for lack of any better plan Sayaka started trying to hack off its arm. She kept an eye on Kyoko, ready to take her turn stabbing familiars if they got in the way of Kyoko's ascent.
This time Walpurgis skipped the familiars and went straight for making one of the floating chunks of rubble burst into flame, then hurling it downward.
Its aim was perfect.
Seconds later, the stone crumbled and fell away against a shield-wall of diamond-shaped links, with a singed but intact Kyoko holding steadfast on its far side.
***
—Three blocks down, take a left, the building on the corner with the front windows broken.—
Did you trick her into making a contract
—Your human concept of "trick" means nothing to—
DID SHE MAKE A CONTRACT
—Not yet.—
(there's hope)
you stay the hell away from her you hear me
—She ordered me away herself some time ago. I have not approached her since.—
(fuck yeah, Madoka!)
and don't you keep following me either
—There is no longer any reason to. I've said what I came to say.—
(don't think about why he's doing this, how he must believe there's something in it for him, just think about how maybe, maybe, maybe this can be the time you thwart him)
(just GO)
***
Turned out Walpurgis had no qualms about spitting fire at its own limbs.
Kyoko, on one arm, still hadn't finished healing from the last set of burns when it started. Sayaka leaped over and drew her cape in front of both of them just in time. "I can't sense a main part to it!" she shouted over the roar. "Where are we supposed to shoot?"
"I don't know!" cried Kyoko. The ends of her hair were smoking, one of her shoulder-length gloves in charred tatters where she'd flung that arm over her face, the skin underneath renewing fast, but not fast enough. "You get rid of the head, I'll go for the gears!"
Sayaka took aim at the neck, wider across than either girl was tall, and started working on turning it into a pincushion. Kyoko summoned a spear, expanded the head to the size of a tank, and fired it at the junction between the widest gear and the slower one that turned inside it.
The gears caught. Clicked. Their teeth creaked in protest.
Then they lifted up apart and crunched back down, cuing new fires to spring up on all sides, and snapping the spearhead like a matchstick into so many splinters.
***
Madoka had gotten the scale all wrong.
She never would have been able to see swords at this distance. She could barely see Sayaka, a tiny figure who had somehow made it to the body of the witch, only identifiable by the blue aura that sometimes flashed when she attacked.
At least Sayaka wasn't alone. The figure with her didn't give off Homura's violet, but bursts of an intense red. Kyoko? Or some other puella magi, a stranger, maybe even someone whose contract was new?
And if she's new enough, maybe Sayaka's search couldn't find her before. Maybe she...or the two of them working together...can win after all.
***
(she runs and runs and runs
a mercy: the familiars smell retreat and let her go)
***
An illusory brigade of extra Kyokos distracted most of the final swarm of creepy starry cutout silhouettes, while the real one concentrated on swelling the current spearhead larger than ever. The strategy was holding them, but she was already feeling the strain.
The moment after she launched it upward, one of the familiars bounded up toward the real Sayaka's back.
Kyoko dug her heels into the eerie fabric-covered surface, raised a normal spear, opened her mouth to shout "Behind you!" —
— and froze, because this one had the outlines of a feathered cap, a rippling box-pleated skirt, and gorgeous spiral curls.
It drove its heels into Sayaka's spine with the same canned giggle of all its fellows, knocking her over the side of the arm with a scream. Kyoko pulled herself together and hurled her spear right through it, then grabbed for another to unlink and send flying after Sayaka —
— but she was nowhere to be seen —
***
Madoka's attention was entirely fixated on the distant battle.
When a figure dropped out of nowhere to land right in front of her face, she nearly had a heart attack.
"What are you what are you doing here?!" demanded a hoarse, battered, wide-eyed Akemi Homura.
***
— or rather, she hadn't fallen, but had driven a sword hilt-deep into the blue-violet sleeve and was clinging to the very last of its curve, legs hanging off into space.
She was sweating as Kyoko pulled her up, all her movements gone weak and fragile, though she gritted her teeth and tried not to show it. "Do you," she panted, "do you have a...another grief seed?"
That was the question Kyoko had been afraid of.
***
"I'm sorry!" cried Madoka. "I came looking for Sayaka!"
Homura looked awful. Her hair was a mess, her pallid-at-best skin marred with scrapes and soot, her uniform torn and wet and covered with smears of dust or grit. Every breath heaved her whole body; her hands clawed at the air as if she couldn't decide whether to hug Madoka or throttle her. "She's dead!"
Madoka's heart turned to ice. "She's—? But she can't — she's fighting right now—!"
"She's dead she can't be saved she always dies!" cried Homura. "Being a puella magi is the same as being dead. Especially for her! The others, they can make it sometimes, but when that girl makes a contract she has weeks at most —"
She broke off as the city was bathed in light. Bright as lightning, so bright it made the shadows razor-sharp, but for several long seconds and in a brilliant shade of ruby. Madoka could see the source of it past Homura's head like a new star.
Walpurgis shrieked. Madoka cringed. Homura barely twitched.
A second star appeared in the wake of the fading first. This one lit up the night with a pure, intense sapphire.
Then Homura was grabbing her shoulders hard enough to bruise. "And there she went," choked Homura, on the verge of furious tears. "You didn't save her couldn't save her all you did was put yourself at stupid risk for nothing—!"
"I'm sorry," repeated Madoka. "I'm so sorry...I've caused you a lot of trouble, haven't I, Homura-chan?"
"Yes!" screamed Homura, threw herself over Madoka's shoulders, and began to sob.
Madoka wrapped her arms around Homura's battered body and let her.
(There was, somehow, no other noise. And no more jewel-toned light. The whole world had been sapped of hue, everything beyond their feet gone from the normal dullness of night to an almost pure grey...including the arc of the water from the broken pipe, frozen in midair, droplets suspended like beads.)
"How many times have you done this?" asked Madoka softly.
It took a few wracking breaths for Homura to get out the answer. "Don't know I don't know lost count back in the four eighties."
Madoka caressed her tangled hair. "And how long are they? Is it always the same?"
This time the words came more quickly. "March sixteenth to now."
Weeks of meticulously tracking a neatly gridded calender had left their mark on Madoka. She knew without having to think about it that it was early Sunday morning, five weeks and two days after her abduction, and that the 16th had been the week before that.
A month and a half. Hundreds of hundreds of month-and-a-halfs.
"Homura-chan," murmured Madoka, blinking hard. She had to hold back her own crying for later. "I bet you were the sweetest, kindest, most wonderful ordinary girl before you had to go through all this."
Homura choked out something incoherent.
"Sorry, I...I didn't hear...."
"I wasn't!" wailed Homura. "Was weak and shy and stupid — useless — an embarrassment — never any good for anyone — the day it always starts is the day I get out of the hospital — I don't know how they let me back in school they should have kept me home and held me back a year I was pathetic —"
"I'm sure you weren't!" said Madoka. "O-of course I didn't know you then, but —"
"— the you who did, you said the same thing then."
Her tears were soaking through the fabric of Madoka's dress. Madoka held her tighter.
"I could have would have killed myself you saved me," she sobbed. "In cycle after cycle you still save me over and over in so many different places and even in the timelines where you never get a chance you're still the same Madoka who would and I love you so much —"
Madoka slipped one hand up under Homura's tangled locks and cradled the back of her neck. "Shhh. I'm here now, okay? I'm right here. Tell me what you need me to do."
Homura shivered against her. "...don't I don't understand."
"I haven't become a magical girl. And I haven't died as a normal girl, either. That was what you've been fighting for, right? Is there anything else, or do I just have to get safely away from here?"
Homura's breath was picking up again. Not with crying this time, but with what felt like the early stages of a panic attack. "This doesn't happen!"
"I know. I know." Madoka didn't, of course — could barely imagine the kind of grooves that had been carved in Homura's mind by now — but as a meaningless noise of comfort it seemed to be helping. "We're going to make it happen now, though. Okay? I promise."
***
(it isn't much but it's enough to cling to)
the designated Mitakihara flood shelter the gym up on the hill you know it
"Yes! I know where it is."
you go directly there you go be with your family
"H-Homura-chan...my family is...."
in every OTHER now your family is there
(or else something has gone horribly hellishly wrong but she won't think about that)
you have to hurry Walpurgis Night does not come back this way but still you have to get across the bridge before the flooding starts
"And you. You'll come with me?"
don't worry I'll be here but I can still make sure that no familiars follow you
"I didn't mean...well, what about after the battle? What are you going to do?"
(oh god she doesn't know she's going to hyperventilate again there is no pathway in her brain that still remembers how to plan for "after")
"It's okay, Homura-chan! You don't have to worry about it! When it's over, you'll come and find me. Got it? We'll be at the shelter together, and we'll call my parents, and whatever gets planned then, I'll take you with me."
you can't be serious
(has there ever been a timeline in which this was a worse idea?)
"They don't know it was you. I never told them. Neither did...Sayaka."
(she's speechless)
"I wish we hadn't met this way, Homura-chan. But I think it can still be okay. If you stay with me, if you can always see for yourself that I'm safe, that should help you get better, right? And I...if I can be spending time with you indoors somewhere, but we can both get up and walk together out into the sun...I think that'll help me, too."
I
I don't
okay
"You will?"
I
(it's not like she has any better plans)
will
"You promise?"
promise I
I promise.
***
In the space of a breath all the color snapped back into the world. The sound, too, of rumbles and explosions and flowing water and unknown things snapping. There was another pained inhuman screech as the last of the blue light faded away.
Madoka was clinging to Homura too by this point, with her own fair share of desperation. It might have been crazy — no, on second thought, there was no "might" about it — but now that she was going to have to live without Sayaka, she didn't want to have to live without Homura too.
A single raindrop hit her bare arm. Moments later, another, on her cheek. She raised her head to take the measure of the clouds, and....
"Homura-chan...? Does that 'happen'?"
Homura drew reluctantly out of her embrace just far enough to turn and see.
The doll of Walpurgis Night was shredded to bits. The gears, no longer turning, were starting to crack. And the largest of the floating objects, a hunk of building with carved granite koi decorating the top, had begun a slow but sure descent.
"This happens," whispered Homura. "This happens when it dies."
The other, smaller buildings were starting to sink as well. The eldritch glow that marked the witch's body was fading. Soon its remains would be just like any other debris...maybe even less than, if the pieces really were doing what it looked like they were doing, breaking apart only to a point and then dissolving into thin air.
"They did it?" asked Madoka, starting to tear up again. This would make it easier too, she knew, knowing that her precious Sayaka wouldn't have regretted an outcome like this. "Sayaka and...."
"Her name is Sakura Kyoko."
"Kyoko-chan came back," breathed Madoka, actually smiling. This must have been what Sayaka found. She knew it would take her and Kyoko working as a team, and came to the city hoping Kyoko would change her mind and come here too.
Homura was staring distantly at the sight, as if she didn't know what to make of it. "She often when she isn't dead already she does that."
The larger stray lumps of concrete were falling now, more quickly, though still not at the kind of speed physics would have liked. Madoka double-checked the sky directly above them. Empty. Nothing falling here except the beginnings of a drizzle.
With the arm still around Homura's waist, Madoka gave her a tight squeeze. "So you'll come with me."
"There are still some stray familiars," said Homura in an automatic monotone. "I have to get the grief seed then I have to track them down."
"But after that."
"...but after that I promise."
Nodding, fighting down a sniffle, Madoka stepped back and let her go.
"The bridge. Before the flood," added Homura. "The hill. The gym. You remember."
"Uh-huh. I know."
Homura took a step forward, her long heel clicking on the flat roof. Another step. She turned to look back, her slim figure framed by what had become a cascade of falling debris in the background.
Waiting in front of the doorway that would lead her to the stairs, Madoka rubbed her eyes and tried to give an encouraging smile. "This is happening."
Homura nodded. Still, with every few steps as she approached the recently-altered edge of the roof, she checked again.
It was such a small thing, for a whole and living Madoka to still be visible, but it was all she had to offer. It would have to be enough. She could get a move on as soon as Homura was gone.
At last Homura was at her jumping-off point. She bent her knees to launch into the air.
There was a pale flash in the sky above.
For a second Madoka didn't recognize it. Didn't put anything together. Didn't give it a thought.
A second later, she did. But by that point Homura had already leaped forward, just in time for the falling pane of glass to slice her neatly in two.
Characters/Pairings: Madoka/Sayaka, Homura, Walpurgis Night, Kyuubei, (skip) Kyoko, cheer up /u/ there's MadoHomu coming
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer/Warnings: See table of contents.
It gets worse. And our heroines, even Homura, are running out of time to whip out the last-minute save that will turn it around for good.
(This part is back on the every-three-days update schedule, and the next one should be too.)
***
May 1
Walpurgisnacht
There were many things Madoka had learned while on the run with Sayaka, and one of these was that the Heinrich Plaza had terrible security. You could get to any floor, even out onto the roof, with no key or special authorization necessary.
A stolen bicycle and a well-ingrained habit of keeping to the shadows had gotten her across the city, covering most of the distance in the bleak grey light before the cackling, spinning apparition manifested in front of the clouds. Now she knew, without fully understanding how, that what she needed was height.
The main doors were all locked during the evacuation, of course, but a couple of solid rocks through the window got her in.
She ran up.
***
Sayaka lay flattened on a stretch of sidewalk, too numb to know if she'd broken anything, too drained to move and find out.
Her legs and half her left side were in a puddle, quietly soaking. The water was flowing, a rush of it just audible, somewhere close: an exploded fire hydrant, maybe. In her curled hand was the gold-set egg of her Soul Gem, its depths a sickening black with only the barest flecks of blue. For a second she thought it flickered brighter...but no, that was the neon sign of the club across the street, trying to turn itself on with whatever backup generator was limping along at its back.
Was the witch still cackling? She couldn't tell. The water, the fizzling of the neon, the nearby flames and citywide crumbling, it all blended together into meaningless white noise. And over it layered echoes of sounds that couldn't be happening, not right now. Madoka's precious laugh. Hitomi's shriek of scandalized delight. The firecracker explosion of Mami firing a hundred muskets in quick succession. Kyousuke's violin, hitting the most exquisite notes, before collapsing into a dissonant screech like the wail of a tortured cat.
Mami, the senpai you abandoned to die. Hitomi and Kyousuke, the friends you gave a special warning when almost no one else you knew got one. Madoka, the girl whose happiness you're paying for with how many lives?
No. She wouldn't listen. She knew she'd done the best she could.
And this is really the best of a hero of justice?
Sayaka dropped the soul gem (it slid from her palm to the sidewalk, and spun in a little circle before rolling to a stop) and conjured one last sword as her vision blurred. A short one. A dagger, really.
She knew what was happening. Her last duty, then, was to keep the city safe from herself.
How is that fair? Why protect a world... "...that's forced you to become like this?"
The figure that had appeared was ghostly, unreal, but amazingly clear compared to the haze that surrounded it. A girl. A strange little girl who moved with all the natural grace of a video-game zombie, wearing a ragged cape and an adult-sized knight's helmet with the visor up to reveal her blue-eyed face. She smiled. Her hands dripped red.
"But you don't have to put up with it," said the witch Sayaka would become. "Isn't that exciting? You can create your own perfect world, where there's none of this messiness...no hard choices to make...nothing to make you feel guilty. A simple castle just like in fairy tales, with a beautiful girl inside that you can protect forever."
No, thought Sayaka, and dragged her knife, mostly by feel, toward her own throat.
***
Madoka was lucky. The Plaza still had its full height.
Or at least, part of it did.
She rattled open the door to stumble out onto the roof, and had to skid to a stop: a few meters from her shoes, half of the top floor had been ripped away. Through the gaping hole she could see the outlines of a luxury suite, a twisted pipe spewing water in a graceful arc over the enormous raised bathtub, a torn curtain clinging to what was left of one wall as its ends flapped in the breeze. She didn't dare look close enough to tell whether any of the occupants had stayed.
And overhead floated Walpurgis Night itself, the monster of gears and lace straight out of her nightmares, its shrill laughter rattling a cityful of broken windows.
It would be attacked soon. It had to be. Any minute now she would see the glitter of distant swords, and be able to trace their path to find out where Sayaka was aiming from.
And even if she's...gone...then maybe I'll see explosions instead. Maybe I can find Homura.
***
which way which way WHICH WAY
—And why should I tell you that, Akemi Homura?—
because
(the Incubator's throat is in her hands now, not like he cares)
because if you do
(there's nothing she can threaten him with, there never is)
and I find her
(but bribery...)
then I'll have no choice but to lose the rest of my mind and become a witch
that's what you believe, isn't it
that what we call love is just another form of insanity
—You are certainly not doing much to disprove the theory.—
***
Her vision was telescoping, the edges swallowed up by blackness. The witch's pout was going to be the last thing Sayaka saw.
Gruoch ingen Boite, the bloodstained witch. Her nature is to fall in love. The witch continues to dream of a waltz resounding in the middle of a wide-open ballroom, a feeling that moved her deeply in past days. Her fortune only turns under the weight of memories and no longer moves toward the future. Nothing will reach her any longer. Her minions are Holger, whose duty is to perform, and Persephone, whose duty is to dance endlessly.
But she could feel the cold steel, the first scrape of its edge...
...and then...
...the darkness began to melt away.
No more apparition. No more static. The world unblurred and resolved slowly back into focus.
The first thing Sayaka saw was her soul gem, swirling with brightest sky-blue. Tapped gently against its surface was a grief seed, with the same emblem outlined in iron on its point and on its body: a five-petaled flower.
And the first thing she heard was, "Come on, rookie, get up! You think your girlfriend wants you to die here?"
***
Scaffolding from a construction site drifted through the air, not directly above Madoka's head, but close. If it fell, it would tear a hole out of the building across the road. Farther away she could see cars, the tops of towers with antennae and satellite dishes still perched on their heads, chunks of debris too small and irregular to pin down.
There were pale midair flashes of light, too, baffling until she realized the source. Individual panes and shards of glass were among the wreckage, gently turning, every so often hitting the right angle to reflect a fire on the ground or the unearthly glow the witch carried around.
You can stop this, a voice in her dreams had said. You have the power to change destiny.
No, not a voice. The direct-to-mind telepathy of Kyuubei. Which meant unknown layers of misdirection and withheld information and secret motives. What were its motives, anyway? Where had it even come from? How was this much pain and death and destruction useful to it at all?
The breeze was gentler than it had been. Madoka shivered anyway.
One of the tallest chunks of building, its whole side briefly brilliant from reflecting glass, plummeted down to slam at an angle into the roof of a skyscraper made largely of concrete. For once it was the missile itself that crumbled on impact, ugly brown smoke rolling out from all sides and enveloping the crash site, the rumbling and shattering distant but close enough to make Madoka stumble backward.
It had been stupid of her to come here. Stupid to think some ordinary girl could find a mahou shoujo in a war zone. If Sayaka used her powers, Sayaka could come to Madoka easily; but she was either dead or not looking. And why should she? There was no reason to for her to believe Madoka hadn't listened.
(That had been in the nightmare too, she remembered now. From Homura, this time. You don't listen!)
Walpurgis was moving away from the building Madoka was on...for now. If it came back this way, the Plaza could easily be the next thing ripped from its foundations....
But no, now the laughing spectre had stopped, its gears still tilting forward while its head stayed in one place. Either it was turning itself over, or something was holding it by the neck.
***
"Can you still do 'Rosso Fantasma'?" asked Sayaka, as Kyoko yanked back on the seemingly infinite links of her spear-chain, pulling it taut. "What about 'Heretic Inquisition'?"
"Never thought I'd be glad for Mami's stupid attack names," muttered Kyoko on the balcony beside her. "In a situation like this? Doesn't look like I have a choice, do I?"
"Because there's an ability I've been practicing, it's basically 'Unlimited Magic Bullet Works' with swords, and if you can provide the same kind of support as in Attack Plan—"
"Get going, already!" barked Kyoko. "You just worry about getting yourself into formation, and I'll take care of the rest!"
Sayaka nodded, and without further hesitation sprinted up the links like a tightrope toward the giant faceless head.
A new set of familiars was already zooming down toward her — she had a rapier in hand, the offense part would be easy, the danger was in hitting the limits of her magical balancing abilities. When they were less than a hundred meters from her, bone-white grins the only feature on their giggling not-faces, Kyoko came through — a dozen illusory Sayakas broke off from her position to run alongside, or in front of, or presumably behind her — and while most of the silhouettes were confused and fighting phantoms, they were lanced through with spears from below.
Walpurgis was tilting sickeningly above her. Its head twisted, its painted mouth gaping — Sayaka flung her cape in front of her face before she could think about it, just in time to shield from a close-range blast of fire.
The next leap had her hanging on to its eternally outstretched sleeve.
The chain started retracting, not to pull the witch down but to hoist Kyoko up, while for lack of any better plan Sayaka started trying to hack off its arm. She kept an eye on Kyoko, ready to take her turn stabbing familiars if they got in the way of Kyoko's ascent.
This time Walpurgis skipped the familiars and went straight for making one of the floating chunks of rubble burst into flame, then hurling it downward.
Its aim was perfect.
Seconds later, the stone crumbled and fell away against a shield-wall of diamond-shaped links, with a singed but intact Kyoko holding steadfast on its far side.
***
—Three blocks down, take a left, the building on the corner with the front windows broken.—
Did you trick her into making a contract
—Your human concept of "trick" means nothing to—
DID SHE MAKE A CONTRACT
—Not yet.—
(there's hope)
you stay the hell away from her you hear me
—She ordered me away herself some time ago. I have not approached her since.—
(fuck yeah, Madoka!)
and don't you keep following me either
—There is no longer any reason to. I've said what I came to say.—
(don't think about why he's doing this, how he must believe there's something in it for him, just think about how maybe, maybe, maybe this can be the time you thwart him)
(just GO)
***
Turned out Walpurgis had no qualms about spitting fire at its own limbs.
Kyoko, on one arm, still hadn't finished healing from the last set of burns when it started. Sayaka leaped over and drew her cape in front of both of them just in time. "I can't sense a main part to it!" she shouted over the roar. "Where are we supposed to shoot?"
"I don't know!" cried Kyoko. The ends of her hair were smoking, one of her shoulder-length gloves in charred tatters where she'd flung that arm over her face, the skin underneath renewing fast, but not fast enough. "You get rid of the head, I'll go for the gears!"
Sayaka took aim at the neck, wider across than either girl was tall, and started working on turning it into a pincushion. Kyoko summoned a spear, expanded the head to the size of a tank, and fired it at the junction between the widest gear and the slower one that turned inside it.
The gears caught. Clicked. Their teeth creaked in protest.
Then they lifted up apart and crunched back down, cuing new fires to spring up on all sides, and snapping the spearhead like a matchstick into so many splinters.
***
Madoka had gotten the scale all wrong.
She never would have been able to see swords at this distance. She could barely see Sayaka, a tiny figure who had somehow made it to the body of the witch, only identifiable by the blue aura that sometimes flashed when she attacked.
At least Sayaka wasn't alone. The figure with her didn't give off Homura's violet, but bursts of an intense red. Kyoko? Or some other puella magi, a stranger, maybe even someone whose contract was new?
And if she's new enough, maybe Sayaka's search couldn't find her before. Maybe she...or the two of them working together...can win after all.
***
(she runs and runs and runs
a mercy: the familiars smell retreat and let her go)
***
An illusory brigade of extra Kyokos distracted most of the final swarm of creepy starry cutout silhouettes, while the real one concentrated on swelling the current spearhead larger than ever. The strategy was holding them, but she was already feeling the strain.
The moment after she launched it upward, one of the familiars bounded up toward the real Sayaka's back.
Kyoko dug her heels into the eerie fabric-covered surface, raised a normal spear, opened her mouth to shout "Behind you!" —
— and froze, because this one had the outlines of a feathered cap, a rippling box-pleated skirt, and gorgeous spiral curls.
It drove its heels into Sayaka's spine with the same canned giggle of all its fellows, knocking her over the side of the arm with a scream. Kyoko pulled herself together and hurled her spear right through it, then grabbed for another to unlink and send flying after Sayaka —
— but she was nowhere to be seen —
***
Madoka's attention was entirely fixated on the distant battle.
When a figure dropped out of nowhere to land right in front of her face, she nearly had a heart attack.
"What are you what are you doing here?!" demanded a hoarse, battered, wide-eyed Akemi Homura.
***
— or rather, she hadn't fallen, but had driven a sword hilt-deep into the blue-violet sleeve and was clinging to the very last of its curve, legs hanging off into space.
She was sweating as Kyoko pulled her up, all her movements gone weak and fragile, though she gritted her teeth and tried not to show it. "Do you," she panted, "do you have a...another grief seed?"
That was the question Kyoko had been afraid of.
***
"I'm sorry!" cried Madoka. "I came looking for Sayaka!"
Homura looked awful. Her hair was a mess, her pallid-at-best skin marred with scrapes and soot, her uniform torn and wet and covered with smears of dust or grit. Every breath heaved her whole body; her hands clawed at the air as if she couldn't decide whether to hug Madoka or throttle her. "She's dead!"
Madoka's heart turned to ice. "She's—? But she can't — she's fighting right now—!"
"She's dead she can't be saved she always dies!" cried Homura. "Being a puella magi is the same as being dead. Especially for her! The others, they can make it sometimes, but when that girl makes a contract she has weeks at most —"
She broke off as the city was bathed in light. Bright as lightning, so bright it made the shadows razor-sharp, but for several long seconds and in a brilliant shade of ruby. Madoka could see the source of it past Homura's head like a new star.
Walpurgis shrieked. Madoka cringed. Homura barely twitched.
A second star appeared in the wake of the fading first. This one lit up the night with a pure, intense sapphire.
Then Homura was grabbing her shoulders hard enough to bruise. "And there she went," choked Homura, on the verge of furious tears. "You didn't save her couldn't save her all you did was put yourself at stupid risk for nothing—!"
"I'm sorry," repeated Madoka. "I'm so sorry...I've caused you a lot of trouble, haven't I, Homura-chan?"
"Yes!" screamed Homura, threw herself over Madoka's shoulders, and began to sob.
Madoka wrapped her arms around Homura's battered body and let her.
(There was, somehow, no other noise. And no more jewel-toned light. The whole world had been sapped of hue, everything beyond their feet gone from the normal dullness of night to an almost pure grey...including the arc of the water from the broken pipe, frozen in midair, droplets suspended like beads.)
"How many times have you done this?" asked Madoka softly.
It took a few wracking breaths for Homura to get out the answer. "Don't know I don't know lost count back in the four eighties."
Madoka caressed her tangled hair. "And how long are they? Is it always the same?"
This time the words came more quickly. "March sixteenth to now."
Weeks of meticulously tracking a neatly gridded calender had left their mark on Madoka. She knew without having to think about it that it was early Sunday morning, five weeks and two days after her abduction, and that the 16th had been the week before that.
A month and a half. Hundreds of hundreds of month-and-a-halfs.
"Homura-chan," murmured Madoka, blinking hard. She had to hold back her own crying for later. "I bet you were the sweetest, kindest, most wonderful ordinary girl before you had to go through all this."
Homura choked out something incoherent.
"Sorry, I...I didn't hear...."
"I wasn't!" wailed Homura. "Was weak and shy and stupid — useless — an embarrassment — never any good for anyone — the day it always starts is the day I get out of the hospital — I don't know how they let me back in school they should have kept me home and held me back a year I was pathetic —"
"I'm sure you weren't!" said Madoka. "O-of course I didn't know you then, but —"
"— the you who did, you said the same thing then."
Her tears were soaking through the fabric of Madoka's dress. Madoka held her tighter.
"I could have would have killed myself you saved me," she sobbed. "In cycle after cycle you still save me over and over in so many different places and even in the timelines where you never get a chance you're still the same Madoka who would and I love you so much —"
Madoka slipped one hand up under Homura's tangled locks and cradled the back of her neck. "Shhh. I'm here now, okay? I'm right here. Tell me what you need me to do."
Homura shivered against her. "...don't I don't understand."
"I haven't become a magical girl. And I haven't died as a normal girl, either. That was what you've been fighting for, right? Is there anything else, or do I just have to get safely away from here?"
Homura's breath was picking up again. Not with crying this time, but with what felt like the early stages of a panic attack. "This doesn't happen!"
"I know. I know." Madoka didn't, of course — could barely imagine the kind of grooves that had been carved in Homura's mind by now — but as a meaningless noise of comfort it seemed to be helping. "We're going to make it happen now, though. Okay? I promise."
***
(it isn't much but it's enough to cling to)
the designated Mitakihara flood shelter the gym up on the hill you know it
"Yes! I know where it is."
you go directly there you go be with your family
"H-Homura-chan...my family is...."
in every OTHER now your family is there
(or else something has gone horribly hellishly wrong but she won't think about that)
you have to hurry Walpurgis Night does not come back this way but still you have to get across the bridge before the flooding starts
"And you. You'll come with me?"
don't worry I'll be here but I can still make sure that no familiars follow you
"I didn't mean...well, what about after the battle? What are you going to do?"
(oh god she doesn't know she's going to hyperventilate again there is no pathway in her brain that still remembers how to plan for "after")
"It's okay, Homura-chan! You don't have to worry about it! When it's over, you'll come and find me. Got it? We'll be at the shelter together, and we'll call my parents, and whatever gets planned then, I'll take you with me."
you can't be serious
(has there ever been a timeline in which this was a worse idea?)
"They don't know it was you. I never told them. Neither did...Sayaka."
(she's speechless)
"I wish we hadn't met this way, Homura-chan. But I think it can still be okay. If you stay with me, if you can always see for yourself that I'm safe, that should help you get better, right? And I...if I can be spending time with you indoors somewhere, but we can both get up and walk together out into the sun...I think that'll help me, too."
I
I don't
okay
"You will?"
I
(it's not like she has any better plans)
will
"You promise?"
promise I
I promise.
***
In the space of a breath all the color snapped back into the world. The sound, too, of rumbles and explosions and flowing water and unknown things snapping. There was another pained inhuman screech as the last of the blue light faded away.
Madoka was clinging to Homura too by this point, with her own fair share of desperation. It might have been crazy — no, on second thought, there was no "might" about it — but now that she was going to have to live without Sayaka, she didn't want to have to live without Homura too.
A single raindrop hit her bare arm. Moments later, another, on her cheek. She raised her head to take the measure of the clouds, and....
"Homura-chan...? Does that 'happen'?"
Homura drew reluctantly out of her embrace just far enough to turn and see.
The doll of Walpurgis Night was shredded to bits. The gears, no longer turning, were starting to crack. And the largest of the floating objects, a hunk of building with carved granite koi decorating the top, had begun a slow but sure descent.
"This happens," whispered Homura. "This happens when it dies."
The other, smaller buildings were starting to sink as well. The eldritch glow that marked the witch's body was fading. Soon its remains would be just like any other debris...maybe even less than, if the pieces really were doing what it looked like they were doing, breaking apart only to a point and then dissolving into thin air.
"They did it?" asked Madoka, starting to tear up again. This would make it easier too, she knew, knowing that her precious Sayaka wouldn't have regretted an outcome like this. "Sayaka and...."
"Her name is Sakura Kyoko."
"Kyoko-chan came back," breathed Madoka, actually smiling. This must have been what Sayaka found. She knew it would take her and Kyoko working as a team, and came to the city hoping Kyoko would change her mind and come here too.
Homura was staring distantly at the sight, as if she didn't know what to make of it. "She often when she isn't dead already she does that."
The larger stray lumps of concrete were falling now, more quickly, though still not at the kind of speed physics would have liked. Madoka double-checked the sky directly above them. Empty. Nothing falling here except the beginnings of a drizzle.
With the arm still around Homura's waist, Madoka gave her a tight squeeze. "So you'll come with me."
"There are still some stray familiars," said Homura in an automatic monotone. "I have to get the grief seed then I have to track them down."
"But after that."
"...but after that I promise."
Nodding, fighting down a sniffle, Madoka stepped back and let her go.
"The bridge. Before the flood," added Homura. "The hill. The gym. You remember."
"Uh-huh. I know."
Homura took a step forward, her long heel clicking on the flat roof. Another step. She turned to look back, her slim figure framed by what had become a cascade of falling debris in the background.
Waiting in front of the doorway that would lead her to the stairs, Madoka rubbed her eyes and tried to give an encouraging smile. "This is happening."
Homura nodded. Still, with every few steps as she approached the recently-altered edge of the roof, she checked again.
It was such a small thing, for a whole and living Madoka to still be visible, but it was all she had to offer. It would have to be enough. She could get a move on as soon as Homura was gone.
At last Homura was at her jumping-off point. She bent her knees to launch into the air.
There was a pale flash in the sky above.
For a second Madoka didn't recognize it. Didn't put anything together. Didn't give it a thought.
A second later, she did. But by that point Homura had already leaped forward, just in time for the falling pane of glass to slice her neatly in two.
no subject
First off, nice fight scenes, it captures the chaos of Walpurgis well, tho it kinda seems....muted, somehow, like we're viewing all of Homura's standstills rather than Sayaka in action. Not quite sure if that describes it right.
Homura's interal monologue with the incubator is pretty good, I laughed at the love is insanity bit, and the response.
Kyoko coming back is win, but sad times if they really just both ate it, tho it did get the witch to start the death throes, so I guess Sayaka can at least rest knowing she saved Madoka and the town.
Yay for Madoka finally figuring out how messed up and how long Homura's been doing this. I kind of suspected it with Sayaka's note and how she's setting Madoka up indirectly for someone else, but I dunno how well that'll work, especially if Homura really just got sliced in half by a piece of glass.
I guess it's ironic that it's another of those times where Homura succeeds only to finally bite it herself, only to have Madoka make a wish afterwards (at least, I'm guessing that's what'll happen). Perhaps even Madoka wishing to "heal" Homura which helps alleviate some of her depressive/manic tendencies and stabilizes her while sending her on towards the eventual God-oka timeline? I suppose we'll have to wait and see, something about that feels kinda fishy to me. IIRC, canon says that as long as the soul gem isn't broken, the body is largely irrelevant, but could be me mixing fanon in there.
And finally, yay for the return of the 3 day update! I'm sad to see this wind its way down, but it's been a blast reading thus far.
Until next.
no subject
Sassy Kyuubei was entertaining. I wasn't sure it completely fit the mood of the chapter, but on the other hand...he would.
Kyoko and Sayaka did in fact just do the suicide attacks we see Kyoko use in canon, and Homura is indeed now in pieces.
Madoka finally put it all together, at least facts-wise. Sayaka's note opened the door for her feelings to get complicated. No promises on what she'll do next =)
Thank you, and see you then!