"Goddamn…that was a Walpurgisnacht?" She turned to gaze out southeast, away from the skyline of her city, as if she would be able to see some sign of the Witch's presence from where she was. The chilling malevolence that had washed over her an hour ago was still noticeable. "No wonder I felt it from here."

"But it's dead, huh? What kind of shape is Mitakihara in?"

'The damage was relatively minor.' The white furred creature made a show of cleaning its paws, but she knew that it was far more alert than it appeared. 'The city will fully recover in time. At the moment, Mitakihara faces a more serious problem.'

The red haired girl standing across from the creature rolled her shoulders, feeling restless. She had an idea of where this was going, but asked anyway. "Yeah? What's that?"

Kyubey raised his head and fixed his inscrutable pink eyes on her. 'Both of the Magical Girls that resided in Mitakihara were killed in the battle. It currently has no defenders.'

"Both?" Kyoko raised an eyebrow in a genuine indication of surprise. "Only two girls went against that beast and they still managed to kill it?"

'Yes. Tomoe Mami and a new girl, one you didn't know. She had only made a contract three weeks ago, but she showed great promise. Her early death is unfortunate.'

Kyoko barely paid attention to what Kyubey said about the new girl. She had already figured as much, but hearing him confirm Mami's death brought a sharp pang of remorse. Sorry I didn't have your back, Mami. Then she buried it deep, pushed down with the other regrets that she never allowed herself to acknowledge.

'The despair of the city's residents in the wake of this destruction will attract Witches, and the city is currently undefended.' If he had noticed her distraction, he hadn't let it stop him from continuing on about his reason for being here.

As far as Kyoko was concerned, she barely had to think about it. Kazamino was a decent territory that had served her well, but it was nothing compared to the rich hunting ground of Mitakihara, and, if she were being completely honest with herself, she was glad for an excuse to get away from this place. She had left Mitakihara alone out of respect for her former partner, but now that that partner was dead—another twinge of guilt, a brief pang in her heart quickly stamped out—she had no reason not to claim it.

"Sounds good to me. Gotta say, though, I'm wondering why you're bringing this to me instead of just duping kids in Mitakihara into becoming new Magical Girls. There have to be a lot of girls with wishes now that their homes are wrecked."

Kyubey's tail swished back and forth, but the eerie smile on his face never faltered. 'Even in a city as large as Mitakihara, there are only a handful of useful prospects. I will likely approach them each in due time, but in the immediate future the city would be better served by a veteran than several untried rookies.'

She fished a box of pocky out of her hoodie and deftly removed a stick with her teeth. "Whatever. Just don't expect me to play nice with the new kids whenever you get around to it." A fierce grin twisted her lips. "Mitakihara is mine now."

An unnatural silence had fallen on Mitakihara after the storm had passed. Nearly all of the residents had evacuated to the many storm shelters placed throughout the city; in the absence of human life, the only sounds were the howls of wind, quieter now than they had been an hour before, and the occasional clatter of rubble as the unstable wreckage continued to shift.

Within the hour, emergency response teams would begin combing the ruined streets and buildings in the hopes of finding survivors, but the expectation of finding only bodies. They are right, for the most part; of the several hundred citizens that were in the affected areas and did not go to the storm shelters, almost none had survived.

The damage will puzzle experts, as the destruction is inconsistent with the behavior of any type of storm. Even stranger is the way in which the damage caused by the storm suddenly stopped right in the middle of the city, leaving more than half of its projected path unscathed.

And, while not a matter of any significance to those experts, the rescue workers that first reach that last devastated region will find a mystery in the form of the bodies of two school aged girls lying in the midst of the rubble, broken and bloodied, but clearly not killed by any of the collapsing structures around them.

While back at the storm shelter, another girl will continue her frantic attempts to locate her best friend.

It will be several days before she receives the news.

Several months before she learns the truth.

A/N: Hello! This is an idea that was inspired by the conclusion of the original timeline, the one that ended with Mami's and Madoka's deaths and caused Homura to make her wish. I have made some changes, but that setup, and musings about what would happen in Mitakihara afterwards, were the basis for this story.

This will be a pretty short story, but while I know where I'm going with it, I don't have the whole thing mapped out yet. The next chapter will probably be out soon, but after that, who knows?