Author's Notes: Read this fic if...

A. You've watched CB's first episode, at least.

-or-

B. You're just looking for another fanfic to read.

The story's stable enough to support both kinds of readers, so there shouldn't be a problem. I've tried to keep it as faithful to the original as possible, but of course some people will notice there are some differences here and there for the plot's sake and the characters I'm working with. Thematically, it's different from everything I've written so far, so I hope I didn't screw something up somehow. I dunno why I wrote it; I just love how Shinichiro Watanabe makes stories. That, and a change of pace, I suppose. Like I said in the description, the fic was written to practice action scenes, so please check if I did good there too. And this is only an adaptation for CB episode one, so this fic only has two parts, and this first part has 8k words. The second part comes in 3 days, after some finishing edits. I know it's a lot to swallow, but it was needed to keep the plot together. I really hope you guys enjoy, though.

Okay, I think it's time we blow this scene. Get everybody and the stuff together... Okay, 3, 2, 1, LET'S JAM!
**pretends that he's hearing 'Tank!' play off in his head…**


It is raining. The clouds are grey, overcast above the city. Sorrowful beings that weep for the earth with their unrequited tears. A church casts an ominous black silhouette over a lone girl. Water flows down its stained glass walls, muddling its once-bright colors with dirty hues of brown. She walks to the building's grand doors with nothing but her long red hair tied in a drenched ponytail, her dress clinging to her skin, drops of water falling from the tip of an ornate spear in her right hand.

Within the church, the interior is vastly different from what it is on the outside—a grand theater where rows upon rows of audience chairs go up as far as the sky. An orchestra plays a beautiful progression of Bethoven's Symphony no. 8, their azure silhouettes handling their instruments in perfect synchronization. A maestro leads the show, the genius strokes of his baton leading the group through the motions of this mad fortissimo.

Behind them a larger, more impressive being emerges from the darkness: a giant mermaid wearing a bizarre coat of armor. A heart-shaped collar attached to a billowing blue cape is tied with a red ribbon to its neck. Its head, skull-like and disturbing, has a bunch of swords jammed into its top as if to create some sort of regal crown. On its right hand a huge cutlass stands aloft, which it sends crashing down towards the girl. She only has a few moments to dodge it, and the monster crushes the carpeted floor she stands on instead. Having missed its prey, the mermaid sends projectiles—wheels—flying after her.

They come from all directions, hitting the girl with impunity. Some of her bones are shattered, but she still stands. She chooses to hold her ground, purposely absorbing the mermaid's attacks. Like how a man patiently grimaces at the frenzied strikes of his lover.

She bleeds from the side of her head, but despite this she smiles. She knows what the mermaid is doing, and she smiles. The girl undoes the ribbon that holds her hair, releasing a golden pin into her palms. She gets on her knees and clasps her hands, praying to someone unknown, maybe to whatever god she believed in, provided that she still believed in God.

The mermaid raises its cutlass again, preparing for a final strike.

Seeing this, the girl ends her vigil and says something to the mermaid. It seems heartfelt, the real feelings within the depths of her soul.

Never such beautiful words have been said, but we will never hear them, for these are events of a past life.

She kisses the red gem on the pin, and throws it to the air. It breaks. The whole place fills with a white, blinding light.

Unfortunately, we do not know what happens next.

Xxx^.^xxX

To be an effective swordswoman, the wielder must be one with her weapon. It is an extension of her body, an extra limb where energy must flow in order to make a powerful strike. The grip must be firm, the pose right, the feet stable enough to channel both delivered and received energy to and from the ground. Like a current, this energy must flow freely from the legs, up to the waist, to the chest, to the arms and, finally, to the sword itself…

In a small room stood a swordswoman. Before her, a life-sized straw puppet in the darkness. She planted her feet on the ground, the right foot in front of her left foot as in the prescribed order. In her hands was her weapon, a wooden practice sword.

Just outside her room, the swordswoman's roommate was boiling water in an electronic kettle.

The swordswoman channeled her energy into her forearm, and then let it flow into the weapon's span. She could feel it in the tips of her extremities, slowly taking hold of the sword, waiting for the chance to be released in its full potential.

Her straw adversary stood confidently before her bamboo blade, seemingly unaware of the danger she posed.

On the other hand, her roommate, who was boiling water earlier, had now prepared it as a pot of green tea.

Back to the swordswoman. Without giving the straw man a chance to realize her intent, she raised her weapon and struck a violent blow to the puppet's head.

"Men!" ("Head!")

A flash of a second later, she drew her sword back, before smashing it into the puppet's waist.

"Dou!" ("Waist!")

And with a sleight of hand, she held the blade upwards, and then brought it down onto her enemy's wrist in a final, disarming strike.

"Ko-te!" ("Wrist!")

Her adversary was still standing, despite her efforts. But the damage was obvious—the straw had broken in many places, and some of the strings holding them together started to tear. But she did not give him a break. She struck again and again in the same order, hitting the same places as she yelled for her targets, the momentum of her strikes increasing with each blow like the waves of the ocean crashing against a rock cliff.

And while this is all happening, our friend in the kitchen pulled out a box of leftover rice from the fridge.

With every strike came more toil for the swordswoman's muscles. Her arms and wrists became sore from bearing her power's intense load. But pain was only in the mind. It did not exist, and it went away as quickly as it came, leaving the swordswoman more power to alter reality with her blade.

"Men! Dou! KO-TE!"

A final slash cut her enemy's waist in half, turning it into a mess of straw on the ground. Confident that her enemy will not rise up again, she lowered her sword and took quick, measured breaths, beads of sweat forming on her forehead.

She walked to where a small gem glowed on top of a study desk. Its blue aura shined as she held it close to the remains of her sparring partner. Both halves lit up, and they formed one whole straw man again.

Another round? She could use the extra exercise.

Unexpectedly, someone knocked on the door, and before she could even ask who it was, it opened, light flooding into the room so suddenly that her eyes hurt. She squinted to make out the vague silhouette amidst the brightness. It was Kyoko, her red hair undone, a bare shoulder peeking out of a white Red Hot Chili Peppers T-Shirt that went down to her knees.

"Hey Sayaka, breakfast is ready," she said, stifling a yawn.

Sayaka wiped her forehead with a towel on her shoulder, and smiled at her. "I was just about done. What's cooking?"

"Oh, something special," her friend answered.

The living room in their hotel suite was small, just a coffee table in front of a TV and a kitchenette. On the table was a picture of a crowd of people in a nondescript place, probably a city. A red marker had circled out a girl with long black hair, the word 'Akemi' scribbled above her head. The face on the picture was too grainy though. Millions of girls in Japan could look like that.

"Sorry if I couldn't get a better picture," Kyoko started. "She just has long black hair. It goes like, down to her waist. You won't miss it…"

Sayaka contemplated her bowl of breakfast with the air of a food critic. "Hey, Kyoko…"

"She's that super-speedy girl who's been killing witches left and right."

"About this, um… special breakfast of ours…"

"You should probably remember her…" Kyoko grimaced, noticing that she may have been straining her partner's attention. "Hey, are you listening?"

"Why do we have ochazuke for breakfast?" Sayaka spooned herself some of the rice, eyeing how it dripped back into the broth of the bowl amidst the flakes of bonito and seaweed. "Is thiswhat you call 'something special'?"

"Yes, this is what I call something special."

"It's not special. It's… ochazuke."

"It's special because we actually get to eat," Kyoko exclaimed with some pride. "There was still a ton of rice from the bento we shared last night, and with the spare change in my shorts I was able to buy some ochazuke strips and a green tea packet."

Sayaka stared at the bowl with darkened eyes, obviously depressed. "In short, we're broke."

"That's easy; we'll just beat someone up for money later, and everything should be fine. We don't have any food right now, so we'll have to make do with what we have."

The blunette closed her eyes, sipped some air through a hole she made between her lips. "You know… there were three cheeseburgers in the bag yesterday."

When Kyoko heard this, her veins ran ice.

"The day before that," she continued, "there was a week's supply of noodles."

The redhead gulped.

"And the day before that, if I remember correctly, we should still have five days' worth of bread too. If we put all of that together, we shouldn't have any food problems until next week…"

Kyoko rubbed the back of her neck as she veered her eyes away. "Gee, that's kind of weird, huh? If we had that much then we shouldn't have—"

Sayaka pointed at her. "You ate all the food!"

For a few moments, silence hung in the air between them. Kyoko always had a problem when it came to binge eating, but food was easy enough to get anyway. As quickly as the issue rose, they realized that it wasn't that much of a big deal and Sayaka forgave her. Kyoko then promised to replace the food stocks, and continued.

The redhead cleared her throat. "Anyway, as I was saying earlier… Where was I? Oh yeah. Ehem, four days ago Homura Akemi's been reported to steal a huge bunch of Grief Seeds from some magical girl group. They say she managed to off some of them, and now she's hiding out here in Asunaro with her girl. Y'know, that dippy, pink-haired girl you were always with?"

Sayaka looked into her bowl, and her own reflection rippled in the green soup. She tried snatching an image out of her mind, but… nothing came out.

She shook her head. "Sorry, I can't recall."

"Oh, right, your memories." Kyoko checked herself. Maybe she had said something bad. As if for reconciliation, she asked, "How are they?"

She shrugged. "Still the same."

The redhead nodded. "I see… Anyway, she rolls with Akemi, and ever since Akemi's killed that huge Dreadnaught whatever all by herself, there's been a shortage on Grief Seeds. That's why everybody's gunning for the ones she's lugging."

Sayaka downed her bowl of ochazuke and stretched her arms. "And I guess they'll be in better hands with us, is that right?"

Kyoko grinned. "Hah, who else?"

"When are they leaving?"

"Word on the street is that they're leaving today. Nobody knows whether they've already gone or not, though. It's still early. I think we can catch them."

A pink-haired girl, Sayaka wondered. Have I ever met someone like that? Sayaka's memory went as far only a few weeks back, and even those memories were spotty at times. Was she some sort of friend? Someone Sayaka was close to, probably? She tried to make up any sort of mental image, but it was as if she was trying to see something at the bottom of a deep well. Even if something was there, the darkness already ate it away. Whoever that girl was, Sayaka had forgotten all about her.

Kyoko tapped her on the shoulder, asking if Sayaka was still going to eat her food. The blunette let her have it.

After breakfast, Kyoko took a hot shower, and Sayaka donned a yellow shirt and jeans. The Red Hot Chili Peppers were playing on the room's music player, the opening guitar to Can't Stop snapping on the background. Obviously it was Kyoko's choice; Sayaka would have preferred something mellower, but she forgot every other band she would have known. As long as her memory was concerned, the Red Hot Chili Peppers was the only band in existence.

"Where are you going?" Kyoko asked from behind the bathroom door.

"Paying Kyubey a visit."

"You sure you can trust that bastard?"

"You know that Kyubey's got a beat on every magical girl; he's bound to know where this Akemi girl is."

"I still have a bad feeling about that, though."

"And where will you go?"

"I heard that Akemi's been spotted in this neighborhood somewhere, so I'll go scouting around. I can drive you to Kyubey first if you want, though."

"And watch you steal a car again?" Sayaka shook her head. "Nah, I can handle him. He does something funny, I'll cut his head off."

"Yeah, cut his head and the heads of the next twenty with him."

"I can take care of myself, thank you very much."

"If anything happens to you, I'll be all kinds of pissed. So you better make sure of that, got it?"

"Got it."

"You have your phone with you?"

She took out the small phone Kyoko stole for her the other day. "Uh-huh."

"Call me if you find anything out. And make sure you charge the battery on that thing!"

Last time she checked the cellphone, it still had a little juice in it. It should last her for a little bit. "Yes, mom!"

As she heard Sayaka leave the room, Kyoko looked up at the showerhead, letting the water fall onto her body, cleanse her like rain. She was still tense, couldn't calm down. She had no idea how Sayaka was actually doing. Her memories hadn't come back yet, but at least she knew that her name was Sayaka. But really, meet up with Kyubey of all things? Crap, maybe Kyoko should have gone with her…

The redhead shook her head. If Sayaka said she could take care of herself, Kyoko should better take her word for it. She could, right?

As the steam wafted in the bathroom, the Chili Peppers were still singing, telling her that if she wanted any answers, she'd better come back strong with fifty belly dancers.

If you listened to their lyrics closely, Kyoko realized that they could sound pretty ridiculous at times. "Such an easygoing song," she mused.

Such an easygoing girl, she would have connected with that. But the shower water suddenly became cold.

Xxx^.^xxX

Early morning in the city of Asunaro. At a Denny's restaurant somewhere near the commercial district, a couple was seated at the back next to the window. A girl with long black hair calmly sipped a cup of coffee, her elegant fingers touching the mug handle as if it would break at the slightest touch. Her cool, amethyst eyes watched the street outside: Almost empty, with a few old people doing their morning shopping, some students riding a bus, some dandy styling himself on the side mirror of a red Ford Mustang, all of them minding their own lives.

Such a quiet scene. A little too quiet for her tastes, but mornings like this for her were rare nowadays. Better enjoy the moment now while it was still here.

Across the table from her, another girl sat in front of a half-eaten plate of blueberry pancakes. She had pink hair that went down to her shoulders, a slight smile on her face, obviously enjoying the scene outside as well.

A khaki messenger bag sat between them on the table, a sketchpad with a half-drawn scene of a city sunrise, along with a couple of Japan Railways stored value cards stuffed between the pages.

"Kind of reminds you of Mitakihara huh, Homura?" the pinkette asked.

"Yes, kind of." She took another sip of her coffee. Bitter, but not too much. Just right. "It was this quiet in the mornings there too."

The girl with pink hair smiled at her for what she said, and then took another bite out of her food.

Homura watched her eat breakfast slowly, delicately. It was very ladylike, and Homura loved her friend's quality of eating like that. As much as silent mornings, she enjoyed watching this too. "Those pancakes… Are they good, Madoka?"

Madoka nodded. "Uh-huh."

"Looks like I ordered the right kind then."

"Yup. You know, papa always used to make them like this on Sundays."

"Yes, you did mention that he was a good cook."

"That's why I'm excited to see him again after all this time." Whenever she started to talk about her family, Madoka always seemed to brighten up. That was why that particular morning was so special to her. "Once we get on that train, we'll be back in Mitakihara again."

"Yes… Back in Mitakihara."

"I wish we could be there with everybody, though."

Homura knew what she was talking about. At this time, they had known many people, and through their journey, most of them had perished. Madoka was always sentimental about them. Homura understood exactly why: Madoka was all alone in the world, without anything else except the hope that the Kaname family was still alive.

Homura held her hand.

"But you have me. Right, Madoka?" she asked.

After a few moments, Madoka put her own hand on top of it.

"Of course, Homura." She smiled. "Of course."

They had already reserved seats for the 8:00 train, second from the earliest. And once they got back home, Madoka would be able to see her family for the first time in weeks. This was good, Homura told herself. Whatever Madoka wanted, as long as it made her happy, she would make it come true.

But for some reason, the time-stopper felt uneasy. She kept tapping her foot under the table, edgy. She knew that this peaceful scene was not going to last for long. Something bad was going to happen, maybe at that very moment.

She watched Madoka's eyes observe the outside, and then slowly shift to Homura, and then at restaurant's interior. Homura saw how the calm slowly disappeared from her partner's eyes, replaced by a streak of anxiety.

Madoka tugged her hand. "Homura."

She immediately understood what was going on. Homura heard footsteps from behind her shoulder, which stopped to her right. Somebody called her name.

"Homura Akemi," the voice called, a girl. "We came for a little talk."

The apprehension within Madoka's eyes said it all; this girl was definitely one of the Pleiades Saints.

Homura muttered something in her breath, but the girl failed to hear her, begged her pardon. The time-stopper then turned her head to see a girl with brown, poofed-up hair. She wore a white dress and a polite smile on her face, the smile of all the teachers you've had in preschool. Fake, artificial, the type Homura exactly hated. Next to her was a depressing-looking girl with blonde hair tied in two braids, wearing a hoodie and short shorts. In her eyes, it was obvious that she couldn't care less about everything outside of the little world in her head.

Homura intended to give them some mercy for Madoka's sake, but a moment's deliberation made her figure that she didn't like the both of them at all.

"What did you say?" the girl with the poofed brown hair asked.

"…Keep those eyes wide open," Homura repeated.

She raised an eyebrow. "Huh…?"

Suddenly, Akemi disappeared from her chair. No trace of her remained, not even the girl she was with or the messenger bag they carried. It was as if the whole scene was shot on film, where one strip featured Homura at the table, and on the next strip she's gone, abruptly edited out of the picture.

Satomi was shocked. Nobody told her that Akemi could do that. Saki told her that they were after a powerful Puella Magi, but could magical girls disappear just like that? "Nico, where did Akemi go?" she asked the blonde.

Nico was about to shrug. "Beats me—"

Suddenly, a hole appeared in the middle of Satomi's forehead. A clean, bloodless chasm that caused her eyes to widen and the colors inside them to disappear. She crumpled to the ground to reveal Akemi standing directly behind her, a smoking Colt Anaconda Revolver in her hand, and the broken remains of a Soul Gem at her foot.

Nico gasped, but she only let it on for a moment before resuming her stoic expression. She knew that her enemy was no fool; Satomi was. This Akemi girl was not going to be an easy one to beat.

Out of nowhere, four people appeared behind the blonde. Four completely identical copies of her, all of them with the same stoic faces and short shorts, but different kinds of firearms in each one's hand. Without warning, they opened fire, riddling the restaurant full of bullets. The glass windows shattered, the wooden tables got smashed, and all the innocent bystanders ran off for their lives. But Homura disappeared again, popping up behind tables and chairs that in turn got loaded with 7.62 caliber bullets and iron buckshot. One Nico caught a bullet in the stomach, then as she keeled over in pain, she caught another one between her eyes. Homura appeared right in front of another Nico, blowing out her brains with the shotgun she instantly stole from her.

Her enemies whittled down to three, Homura took the two down by diving through the air, shooting both girls with her pistols. Landing unscathed, she managed to end up at the business end of the final Nico's Tokarev Pistol. With no hesitation the blonde pulled the trigger, and the steel round exploded out of the breech, slicing the air in subsonic speed, arriving only a mere 3 centimeters short of Akemi's forehead…

But some unknown twist of fate caused her to disappear again, and she re-appeared exactly in front of Nico's face, the Tokarev now jammed on the blonde's Soul Gem put between her golden eyes.

"I told you two to keep those eyes open," Akemi said, cold. Death personified.

That intense blue stare was the scariest thing Nico had seen in her life. The final thing she saw in her life.

Xxx^.^xxX

"She is… still here in Asunaro," Kyubey told her through telepathy. "That's for certain."

Sayaka brushed some imaginary dust off her shoulder, focused on it too much, pretending not to notice the loathsome creature before her.

"It's quite strange to see you here, Sayaka Miki," it continued. "I'm amazed at how you were able to achieve such a feat."

"I don't need your flattery," she replied coldly, refreshing herself with a can of Dr. Pepper. "I just need to know where Akemi is."

"I apologize; I am afraid that this is only as much as I know."

They were both on the top of a building in Asunaro's financial district, an office rooftop where the wind blew a cool breeze. In the distance, half the sun had already appeared in the horizon, the red ball of light outgrowing the tall skyscrapers. It turned out that looking for the little rodent was a lot easier than Sayaka thought. She simply had to call Kyubey in her mind, and they agreed to see each other at this place.

"I don't believe you," she said. "Do I have to be specific about it before you tell me?"

She was still annoyed at seeing this little white devil, this trickster that caused her to make that contract. She hated everything about him; those red eyes, that fake smile, the twisted deception and that sagacity for ice-cold observations. The type of creature she would never get along with no matter what happened. To think it managed to fool her into believing that it was her friend…

"No Sayaka, I am honest about this now. I really am," it said, seemingly raising an air of empathy to soothe her anger. "I do not know Homura Akemi's exact whereabouts, but I do know that she's here. That should be enough to work with."

"At least tell me what she looks like!"

"So my hypothesis was correct after all. You've forgotten some of your memories, haven't you?"

The blunette shut up.

"No surprise in that, I suppose. The process of becoming a witch split your soul apart. Being put back together so hastily like that, some parts are bound to go missing. To be honest, I am actually a lot more interested in how you have managed to be here, talking to me," it said. "Really, the magical girl system is full of surprises that even my race does not understand."

"Well here's your surprise," she said, walking away. "I'm going now; don't follow me."

But suddenly, another Kyubey appeared on the air-conditioning unit next to her, making Sayaka gasp.

"But as with all surprises, there must be some sort of cause. If you don't mind, Sayaka Miki, would you let us study this anomaly? It could lead to help us create renewable energy sources."

What did he mean by… 'renewable energy sources'?

"If a Witch can turn back into a Magical Girl, and she turns into a Witch again, would that create double the amount of energy in the resulting Grief Seed?"

"You make me sick." Sayaka turned her back on it. "I have no time for your nonsense."

"You already know how it is, Sayaka Miki. Falling back into despair someday is inevitable. It may not be today, it may not be twenty days or twenty years from now, but someday you will finally fall into despair. And then… death."

The blunette closed her eyes. How many times has she thought of that word? "Again, huh?"

The creature cocked his head to one side. "What was that?"

"I've already died once, Kyubey. For a boy," she said, before continuing to go her way.

"You take despair too lightly, Sayaka Miki."

"I'm not afraid of it anymore." She glanced back, barely seeing Kyubey's white silhouette in the corner of her eye. "I'm not afraid of you, either."

"Then those beings you humans believe in… Gods, I think they are. I hope they bless you on your journey. You will need all of the blessings you can get."

"Hah!" She scoffed. What a joke.

"If you ever feel like finally dying for the sake of the universe, call me," it said. "I'll be waiting."

Something in what Kyubey said made her stop. She turned back, wanting to give him a piece of her mind. But the creature was already gone.

Well, so much for that. Wonder what Kyoko turned up in her search. Sayaka was about to dial her number when for some reason the screen on her phone was black. What, did it break? She pressed the power button a few times, but nothing happened.

She remembered something.

Charge the battery on that thing!

Riiight…

"Sonofabitch," she muttered. Sayaka then slapped a palm on her forehead. "Dammit Sayaka; what an idiot…!"

Xxx^.^xxX

When Kyoko heard that there was a Denny's in the neighborhood, she figured that she could steal a few burgers for lunch with Sayaka. Decked out in her usual hoodie and short shorts, she hopped to the restaurant with the intention of declaring a robbery. Walking through the front door though, she did not know that she would come seeing this.

The restaurant was everything short of destroyed. The counters were a mess of wood chips and splinters, tables and chairs were wrecked beyond repair, and bullet holes scattered the once-white plaster walls. The place was devoid of any life. It smelled like something was burning in the kitchen.

An art deco picture of a diner had its frame cracked on the floor. It sat in a puddle of blood belonging to a girl with blonde hair, the upper part of her face rendered a Picasso painting by whatever blew her forehead apart. Somewhere a little farther away from her, another girl was also crumpled on the floor. She had poofed-up brown hair, and half of her white summer dress was dyed carnation pink. The signs of their battle made their occupations obvious; no way could ordinary girls lug so many guns, cause so much damage.

Kyoko raised a brow. Cat fight, huh?

Usually, she would have concluded that they were just two girls who happened to fight over a Grief Seed. She could imagine it already. Girl A was having pancakes when Girl B comes in, saying, 'iz wants ur grif sid.' Girl A glares at her and says, 'no, meguca no give you grif sid.' So Girl B takes out a gun and says, 'then iz shoots ur sool jim,' but apparently Girl A also has a gun and shouts, 'then meguca shoots ur sool jim back!' They shoot each other, destroy the place, and while they're dying on the floor, Girl A sees her own failure and mutters, 'no sool jim… being meguca is suffering,' and dies. The end.

Kyoko shook her head. The fuck was that all about?

There so many things wrong with this scene. If only two people were here, the amount of bullets expended did not match how many guns they could shoot at each other. The ways the bullets went around the place seemed as if they were all focused on one target. Also, how both girls died also had some things to say. The blonde looked as if she was shot point blank in the face, but her friend would have had to come up close and personal to do that. The girl with the dress and poofy hair was face-down, and it was obvious that she was shot in the back of her head. But considering that she shot first and managed to fire point blank into Blondey, how could Blondey shoot back and accurately hit the back of Poof-san's head? If Blondey shot first, how could have Poof-san fired into her face, then?

It would have been easier to say that Girl A or Girl B had some sort of backup against the other and those guys had already run off some time ago. Either that, or Girl A and Girl B were on the same side and they were fighting something totally different: Girl C, maybe.

But…

After a few moments of deep thinking, Kyoko shook her head. Too many hypotheticals to consider. All she had was a ruined Denny's, a crapload of bullet casings, two girls dead on the floor, and lots of questions.

Kyoko sighed. She was never really cut out for this detective shtick.

Then again, if she tried to think of anybody in Asunaro who usually used guns to do business, and if she thought of the scenario where Girl A and Girl B were on the same side, then unless they had a bone to pick with the local Yakuza then all evidence would point to just one person.

Homura Akemi.

Kyoko made a long, shooting whistle. "Well… shit."

She knew that Akemi was a walking disaster area, but damn.

As if on a totally unrelated note, Kyoko noticed something strange about the place. Apparently, there were some dolls on the floor, all looking like miniature versions of Blondey, but with their heads blown off.

Her face twisted at the non sequitir. What were those, Blondey's puppets or something? Well, that could explain why there was so much redecoration done. They must have had guns too. Still, seeing them in a scene like this all bloody and stuff... The thought made Kyoko shudder. Creepy as fuck.

Suddenly, she heard something from the outside. Footsteps. Judging by the voices, there were two of them. Very quickly she vaulted over the counter and hid herself underneath, daring not to make a single sound.

Kyoko felt utterly miserable. She came here for burgers, and now she had to deal with this. Her stomach felt like the rolling insides of a 5.6-magnitude earthquake. She could eat a cartful of taiyaki if God was nice enough to let her steal it. Under the counter there were nothing but glass plates. Glass plates, but no food on them. What a depressing sight.

The footsteps came closer, and she heard the door creak open. They walked in, careful of whatever that could be still waiting for them. They didn't speak a word, no gasps, no yelps, no nothing. They definitely didn't just happen to come across this scene.

Kyoko was tempted to peek over the counter to see what was going on. She might find out whether all of this had something to do with Akemi.

A girl with blue hair and glasses knelt down next to the blonde's corpse. Next to her stood a small girl with long white hair, thick and cloud-like. They didn't look much, but in her years of magical girl experience Kyoko knew that it was the easy-looking ones you had to watch out for.

The white haired girl Kyoko labeled in her brain as 'Cloud-tan' stared for a few moments at Blondey before averting her eyes with a grimace. "She got Nico," she commented coldly, belying her cute façade.

"And Satomi too," said Glasses as she looked at Poof-san, obviously disturbed.

So Blondey's name was Nico, and Poof-san's name was Satomi? Well thanks a lot, Glasses and Cloud-tan. Now Kyoko had two more names to stick on dead faces whenever she closed her eyes.

"Do you think Akemi did this?" Cloud-tan asked.

"Positive," Glasses said. "And we'll make sure she will pay… But with all those Grief Seeds she's packing, it'll be tough to beat her."

"I don't care. She hurt Saki, she destroyed my museum," she muttered with tones of rage. "I won't stop until I get to crush Akemi." That last one, a tone of… pleasure? From what, the act of crushing Akemi, maybe?

They must be the magical girl group Akemi stole Grief Seeds from. Kyoko was on the right track. Wherever these girls would go, she was bound to find Akemi.

But there was something in Cloud-tan's voice that made it obvious to the redhead. She could be dealing with a group of murderous psychopaths here.

Heh, as if Kyoko wasn't any better herself…

"We'd better get back to the others and tell them what happened," Glasses said. "They have to know about this."

Cloud-tan nodded, and was about to follow Glasses when somebody tapped her shoulder from behind. She glanced to see who it was. "Huh…?"

Kyoko smashed a plate into her face, knocking her out cold.

As the fragments clattered on the floor, Glasses was about to turn around when Kyoko wrapped her arm around her neck, pointing the tip of a spear to the girl's mouth. The redhead pulled her blue head close to the chest, the vice-like grip almost impossible to escape from. Glasses panicked and tried to pull out in vain, but her frail body could only do so much.

"Can you give me the specifics?" Kyoko asked.

Xxx^.^xxX

Fifteen minutes later, two figures watched a Denny's explode in a sudden plume of flame. The fire's tongues licked the outside of its melting windows as a red Ford Mustang rolled away from the scene, heading east.

"It's nice that we're not in there," a girl said.

"Good thinking on that plan of yours," another girl said.

Xxx^.^xxX

In a toilet cubicle she couldn't remember where, Homura was curled over like a pocketknife, hugging her knees on the tile floor. Her teeth shook; she was shivering. It was as if she was freezing outside in the harshest winter on record, despite the fact that it was almost 32 degrees Celsius.

The walls melted before her, coalescing, mixing into shapes akin to brushstrokes on an impressionist painting. A mass of bright colors exploded, causing silhouettes of buildings to rise, huge skyscrapers that dazzled the night's sky with the bright yellow lights of their windows.

Standing above her were silhouettes of what seemed to be people, but they were not people. People didn't have bleach-white skin. Nor did they have colored spheres for eyes. And people never had smiles that stretched from one ear to another. Their mouths opened and closed like dolls, and from their voices came singing. Homura wanted to make them stop, but they wouldn't. They didn't care; they only wanted to see her shiver on the floor, suffering, probably die.

There is no escape, said the phantoms in her eyes. No escape at all…

One of the dolls threw a tomato at Homura, and the others followed suit, throwing tomato after tomato, the pulp and guts rendering her a bloody mess as they laughed at her with their shrill, maniacal voices. Slowly, Homura opened her juice-stung eyes and started crawling towards a khaki messenger bag three feet away.

The crawling felt like forever.

Finally, she was able to reach it, and a lone Grief Seed spilled out. She quickly snatched it and held it close to her Soul Gem, by now a torrent of blacks and violets swirling in a vortex of despair. The Seed immediately devoured all the darkness it could, but there was still much of the black left. Homura grabbed the bag and took out another Grief Seed. And then another, and another, and another. When her Soul Gem had become bright again, she found herself back in the ladies' bathroom, sitting on the tile floor. At her feet were 8 Grief Seeds, completely blackened to their cores.

She put a hand into the bag. There was only a handful left.

No…

Homura felt alright. The silhouettes had all faded from her eyes. But she became anxious. At this rate, she wouldn't last a day or two. Without more Seeds, she would eventually turn sooner or later. Breaking into that museum… it was beginning to become more trouble than it was worth.

And to think of what she had to do to get these Grief Seeds. All those girls...

But she had to do it. If she didn't, Homura would end up leaving Madoka alone. She had to get Madoka back to Mitakihara. The Seeds should last that long, at least.

Homura stood up and went out of the cubicle. Still a little weak, she ambled her way to the sink. She plugged the drain and opened the faucet, letting water gather inside, using it to wash her face. She felt a little refreshed, but it did nothing to take her mind off the uncertainty of what would come in the hours ahead.

She leaned her arms on the sink and put her hands over her face. What did she get herself into? What did she get Madoka into? Madoka was going to get hurt. She was going to be left alone, and it was all her fault. She had already beaten Walpurgisnacht, so wasn't everything supposed to get fixed? Nothing got fixed at all! Nothing…

"It just became worse," came out along with her quiet sobs. "It just became worse…!"

She couldn't stop herself. Deep inside, she was still the same old Homura. The sadsack. The whiner. The helpless crybaby who couldn't do anything right. She just had to save Madoka, but she couldn't do even that right!

Homura took her hands off her face and gazed hard at the mirror above the sink. Amidst the splotches of rust and soap scum on its edges, there were tired blue eyes, wrinkles forming underneath them, staggered to near exhaustion, resigned. This is not my face, she concluded. I did not look like this! The reflection belonged to another person, some other Homura who existed beyond the thin glass in some parallel universe. A failure who was solely responsible for making Madoka's life a living hell. It had to be! It had to be…

Otherwise, she might just kill herself.

On the mirror, Homura saw one of the cubicles open. Apparently, another girl was in there. Homura was about to avert her gaze out of embarrassment, partly to hide her face in case it was a Puella Magi. But for some reason, that girl looked oddly familiar. She had short, blue hair that matched her round eyes. Very quickly, the recognition made Homura gasp.

Xxx^.^xxX

After Sayaka relieved herself, she finally felt refreshed for the first time that day. While she was washing her hands though, some girl kept staring at her as if the blunette had something on her face. She didn't even notice that her own sink was overflowing because it was clogged, and Sayaka told her just that. But even when she left the bathroom, Sayaka could still feel that girl's gaze on her back, like a heavy arm on your shoulders that wouldn't let go.

Weird.

The bathroom was in a Lawson's near the office she met Kyubey at. It was one of those convenience stores that sold instant bentos and Pokemon-shaped popsicles. Luckily enough, it also had one of those charging stations. They were kiosks where you could plug your phone on and drop 100 yen coins to charge the battery. Good thing Sayaka still had pocket change. She had another bottle of Dr. Pepper, too. Sayaka forgot a lot of things, but she was certain that she wasn't that much into drinking Dr. Pepper at all. Was drinking the soda some sort of side-effect of turning back from a Witch?

She shrugged. Who knows, maybe she just realized how refreshing it actually tasted.

Waiting for her phone to finish charging up, Sayaka whistled Can't Stop to pass the time. She knew that she was a good whistler, and she definitely had the tune right. But can't she whistle something else? Sayaka tried to think of other tunes: Californication, Under the Bridge, Snow (Hey Oh), but nothing else that didn't have Red Hot Chili Peppers slapped all over it. Seriously, she should listen to other bands sometime…

While she got to the first chorus of Snow though, the sound of something falling behind her cut it off.

Sayaka turned around, and she saw a paper bag of random groceries and things spilled out on the floor. Instinctively, she got on the ground and picked them up.

"Gee, miss, you should be a lot more careful where you drop these," she said. "Something might break."

Handing them over, Sayaka looked up and saw the girl who dropped them. She had pink hair that went down to her shoulders, but her pretty face had a blank stare. Completely blank, lost and confused.

Sayaka then noticed that something else besides groceries had fallen—a sketchpad of sorts. It was open, and it had a drawing of a city. Though not masterfully drawn and only half-done, it had a certain kindness to it. The lines were soft, evocative of warmth that glowed on the paper whenever you looked. At first glance, it may have looked flat and dead, but there was an inherent honesty in whatever was drawn. According to this, style and elegance were only unnecessary hubris. It was honesty that was going to save the world, save it from the wretchedness of being human and let everybody finally understand that they could all completely love each other if only they were willing to say the truth.

In other words, it was a nice drawing. And Sayaka liked nice drawings.

"Hey, did you make this?" she asked, holding the pad with both hands.

"Um… Yes," the girl answered.

"They're awesome." Sayaka flipped the pages, and was delighted to see even more sketches. Most of them were of simple landscapes and buildings, but there were some people too. They were all drawn with the same clean, soft penciling, and some were even colored lightly.

So these are what good drawings look like, she told herself.

"Haven't you… seen drawings before?" the girl asked Sayaka.

"Nope, never. This is my first time. Did you study art or something?"

The girl glanced away, a little embarrassed. "Um, not really…"

"Come on!" Sayaka looked at her and smiled. The girl didn't look much, but the fact that a person like her could have so much talent amazed Sayaka even more. "I bet you took classes or something; this stuff's nice enough to look professional."

"That's a little too much… I was self-taught."

"And even better!" she exclaimed. Sayaka had a tendency to get excited over new things. "What's your name?"

"Um…" The girl couldn't look her in the eye for some reason.

Why was that?

"Strange, I haven't met anybody named 'Um' before," Sayaka teased, before thinking of something smart. "Wait, I think I know what your real name is."

She leaned forward expectantly. "You do?"

"You're 'Alice', right? That girl from Wonderland? Or went to Wonderland, rather." Kyoko always told Sayaka fairy tales her father used to tell her at bedtime. Thanks to her, the blunette knew all of these stories by heart. For a moment, she wondered what Kyoko's dad was like, and wished that one day she would get to meet the guy. "It's funny because Alice called herself Um when she had to say her name to the Queen of Hearts…"

'Um' was completely lost on Sayaka's joke.

"You know, that sounded funnier in my head…" She dropped her shoulders, making a dejected sigh. "I'm so corny. Oh well. You can't win them all, I guess. Anyway, my name's Sayaka Miki. What's yours?"

It seemed as if the girl gasped. "Sayaka…"

"Yup, that's my name. Don't tell me the jokes though; I've heard them all." Sayaka then wondered if she really did hear any jokes about her name.

For a few moments, the girl stared at her, again a little confused. As if Sayaka being named Sayaka and not another name was part of some awful truth. The girl looked like she was expecting the blunette to say something, anything. But what? She was acting like one of those anime characters who would stare hard at you, hold both your shoulders and say, 'Don't you remember, Sayaka? I'm from the future!' or something like that.

Don't tell me she thinks acting like that is cool, Sayaka thought. It was so moe that it was going to make her sick.

"My name is… Madoka," she said after a few tense minutes. "Madoka Kaname."

"Madoka…" She thought about it for a while. "Well, that's a nice name." She held a hand out. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

Madoka hesitated, but accepted it in the end. "It's… nice to meet you too."

"This morning, I've met an artist who randomly drops her groceries on the floor," Sayaka said. "Not every day that kind of stuff happens."

"I was surprised. I just thought that you were… somebody I knew."

"Then that somebody must be quite beautiful then if you thought I was her." She eventually found that drawing again within the sketchpad. "This city… where is it?"

Madoka told her it was Mitakihara. Instantly, the name struck a chord in her mind.

"Hey, I live there. Funny, I didn't know that it could look like this. It rains there a lot you see, so it's kinda rare to see it this sunny."

"Yeah, it does. Doesn't it? Especially in July."

"Yeah, totally in July. You can't say rain in Mitakihara without thinking of July—It's as if all the floodgates above Japan opened on July and somebody said, 'Well, where are we gonna drop all of this water on? Mitakihara, of course!' The heavens are practically conspiring against us at that city."

Madoka chuckled. Finally, somebody got one of Sayaka's jokes.

"You live there too, I take it?" She asked.

"Yes," Madoka simply said.

"Then how come we haven't met each other before?"

"We... I travel a lot."

"Really now? That's awesome. What, roadtrip? Planes? Boats?"

"Trains, mostly."

"We travel a lot by train too." Kyoko told Sayaka once that they should always take trains between cities because a cramped train car always gave the opportunity to lift an easy wallet, or a cellphone to pawn off. Riiight… "It would have been pretty awesome if we somehow got on the same train together."

Madoka's pink hair obscured her face as she spoke. "…I don't know."

"Hey, that would have been awesome. You'd be drawing the view, and my friend would probably ask you to draw a portrait of her and pay you; it'd be a nice business to live off of, you know?" Kyoko might steal the money she would pay her with from someone else, though.

Madoka wasn't talking anymore.

Sayaka remembered that there was a Denny's somewhere near the hotel she was staying at with Kyoko. The blunette would have loved to find out more about Madoka's drawings. "Hey, are you busy today? Why don't we go out for lunch or something? I'll introduce you to a friend of mine; Kyoko. She'll be pretty stoked when she finds out that you draw a lot." Well, Kyoko wouldn't really be all that thrilled about a bunch of drawings, but she'll probably like the idea of having another friend not named Sayaka, right?

But Madoka started sobbing for some reason. Then the sobs became full-blown wails, and Sayaka found herself suddenly faced with a crying wreck of a teenage girl in a convenience store filled with salarymen and highschoolers eating breakfast.

If she had any memory of calming a girl down, let it come to her mind that very second. "Ah… Wh-Why are you crying, Madoka?" Alas, still nothing!

But she wouldn't explain any of it, and it seemed that Sayaka's insistence at finding out made her crying worse. No matter what she did made her calm down. Amidst the stares they got from the other shoppers, Sayaka thought of bringing Madoka outside.

She was going to hold the pinkette's shoulder. "Hey Madoka, why don't we—"

God knows how it got there, but a pistol was suddenly jammed between Sayaka's eyes. Her vision followed the chrome barrel, then the arm, up to the face of that weird girl who was staring at her in the bathroom earlier.

"What the hell?" the blunette muttered.

She let go of the sketchpad, and it clattered on the floor, drawings, pencils and all. On the charging kiosk, Sayaka's phone started ringing.

"Sayaka Miki, why are you alive?" the girl asked coldly.

Behind her shoulder, Madoka's crying had given way to a gasp in shock. "Ho-Homura!"

"Wait. Homura…?" Sayaka's chin dropped. "You're Homura Akemi?!"

"Answer my question, Sayaka Miki; why are you alive?"

"What kind of question is that? I'm alive because I am!"

Sayaka then felt her own pockets for her Soul Gem, but it was not there. Where did it go?!

"Looking for this?"

In Homura's left hand something glowed. A deep blue gem that had cracks here and there, as if somebody took a tube of superglue to it and stuck it together in a violent frenzy. But it was Sayaka's Gem, nonetheless.

How did she get it? Kyoko was right; she was super-fast.

"How did you come back?" Akemi kept asking. She tried to make her voice calm, but it was obvious that she was nervous.

Why?

Wait, did she know something about Sayaka's past?

"If you're not going to answer, then I'll kill you."

Within a second, the Soul Gem was between the blunette's eyes on the pistol's business end.

"Homura, stop!" Madoka cried. "Don't hurt her!"

But before Sayaka heard anything else, a shot rang in the air. Suddenly, her head felt heavy, and she could hear something falling. After a few moments, she realized that it was her.

When she finally hit the floor, red liquid started to trail off to the side. Something clinked, and then black.