a/n: So this was originally published a long while back under my collab partner's account, though it was brought to my attention recently that his account no longer exists along with our silly little project that was this fic. So I figured I'd re-publish this classic little gem for the laughs! Along with our original author's notes at the end.
Homura was learning a lot about herself today. She sucked at absolutely everything. And that she couldn't do warm-ups for beans.
It wasn't an easy lesson for her to swallow, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it was hard to deny that she was terrible at warm-ups when doing sit-ups left her winded. The shade was doing little to help as she sat under the shadow of a tree. The towel over her head only served to hide her face from the snickering of her classmates. And it wasn't even doing that good a job, either. The near hyperventilating girl could not hear the sound of approaching footsteps over her own wheezing. When the owner of those footsteps announced themselves she nearly passed out from the surprise.
"Oh, sorry! Did I scare you?" was the sheepish response to her near-death experience.
"N-No!" Homura tried desperately to hide her surprise. She wasn't doing a very good job at it. "I-I was just startled!" Her glasses were skewed a little, probably jumbled a bit when she jumped in surprise.
The girl just kind of laughed in a way the braided girl found vaguely patronizing as she plopped herself next to Homura on the grass. "Having a hard time, huh? You looked like a fish out of water out there!"
Homura paused for a second as she tried to think of what to say next. "I-I'm...a little...I'm not doing well," she said, finally.
The other girl, who had short blue hair and a friendly open smile, waved her words away. "Yeah, everyone got that. I'm Sayaka, by the way," The girl- Sayaka, apparently- grabbed her hand rather abruptly and shook it. "You see, my friend over there," Sayaka pointed towards a group of students over her shoulder, making Homura squint awkwardly as she tried to figure out who was the one being indicated through her bad eyesight. "Yeah, her," Sayaka sounded proud. "She wants me to help you be as cool as your name."
That made Homura blush. "My...my name is cool?" She shook her head. "I mean...her?"
"It is pretty cool! Not as cool as my own name, of course," this Sayaka character sounded rather boastful and vibrant, and Homura felt cowed by the familiarity. "So, I guess I could help you out with the athletics stuff. My other friend Hitomi can cover your academics," Sayaka offered easily enough.
"Eh?" Homura felt a little dazed by the sudden offer. "I... I don't..."
"Well, think it over, okay?" Sayaka stood up, brushing herself off. Her attention seemed to be on the teams forming for a sport over by the track. She turned back to the dark-haired girl and flashed her a quick radiant smile. "Gotta run, but we could meet up tomorrow again and try those warm-ups again. If you want."
Homura smiled. "I'd love to," She said back.
"You can count on Sayaka-chan!" the blunette proclaimed with a confident salute before she ran off. She had left an impression on Homura that day. Odd, but vaguely hopeful. And now...
[=]
What a cruel joke that girl was. Oh, she was hopeful, alright. Odd, a little. Suicidal?
...Actually, according to Homura, that was probably the most accurate term.
And now Homura was the one standing over a weak and pathetic Sayaka. And the only thing she could count Sayaka on was to screw everything up. Another timeline ruined because of her stupidity. The other girl was glowering at her with dull contempt as she rejected Homura's generous offer to share a grief seed. She'd kicked it away like she'd rather die than accept Homura's charity. That was probably the case.
"Why won't you let me help you?" She said it coldly.
Sayaka didn't say anything back. Homura was beginning to wonder if she suddenly lost the ability to speak.
"Do you really want to die?" She asked. "Do you want to make Madoka suffer?"
Sayaka muttered something under her breath.
"Speak up, Miki." She had less and less patience to waste on this girl with every new timeline.
"It's because I know you're a liar." Those blue eyes just watched her knowingly.
Homura's patience snapped. "...What." She forced Sayaka's head up. "What could I possibly have to gain by lying to you, you idiot."
"I don't know," Sayaka's righteous passion flared in her dull eyes for the briefest moment as she met Homura's stare. "But everything you say just feels so fake, like you pretend to care, but you don't. You say you're doing it for my sake, but I know you have some sort of agenda. Don't you?"
Homura paused for a moment. She looked at the ground and grit her teeth before she turned back to Sayaka. "I want Madoka safe. I want her happy."
"What does that have to do with me?" Sayaka asked. "What does Madoka have to do with this anyway?"
"It has everything to do with Madoka." Homura's shield materialized on her arm and her fingers brushed the skin of Sayaka's neck, making the other girl shiver noticeably since she doubtless felt Homura's icy intentions. "And if your existence makes her suffer any longer...Then I'll end you." Homura's hand found it's way around Sayaka's throat. "Right here, right now, Sayaka Miki."
Her purple soul gem flashed violently as she squeezed with every intention to fulfill her promise, reflecting the brief fear in Sayaka's eyes. But then Sayaka's soul gem flashed with a brilliant light as if in response and they were both blindsided by the effect.
In that second it was like a bolt of lightning struck in between them, sending their bodies flying in opposite directions. Sayaka rolled across the ground like a ragdoll, and Homura was sent hurtling into a nearby car and giving it a nice large dent. They both coughed, both pained and somewhat shocked by the sudden backlash.
"What the-" Homura's body murmured before she started looking around. "My back hurts..." She muttered before she slowly forced herself out of the dented steel. She rubbed her back before she noticed something weird. There was hair there. Last time she checked, she didn't have a hairy back...wait. No, she didn't have hair that long. She brought in front of her when she noticed that the hair was black. And that her hands had purple cufflets on them. She looked forward when she noticed the other girl lying on the ground. Her eyes grew wide, and her jaw hung in shock.
Sayaka's body was having its own bit of fun recovering after the tumble. The other girl coughed a little and picked herself off the ground. It was then that she noticed someone standing by a very heavily damaged car. She stared at the other body and she started saying something slowly. "I..."
"Are..." Homura's body stared for several more seconds. "...H-Homura?"
"Y...Sayaka?" A voice not her own.
"We...don't..." Homura's right eye twitched. "Did we..."
"That's stupid," Sayaka said. "That's stupid and impossible and..." She started murmuring to herself.
"Then why am I in your body?!" Sayaka's exclamation flew out of Homura's mouth.
"This can't be happening," Homura whispered from Sayaka's lips. The blue hair hanging in front of her face made Homura's heart rate triple as she tried to make sense of what the hell just happened between their souls.
They had actually switched bodies.
How? Why? This has never happened before. Blindly Homura reached for her shield only to find it wasn't there. Her foreign white-gloved hand groped at air and her head snapped up, looking at the surprised and distressed face of her original body. Then her now blue eyes honed in on her trademark shield that was on her - Sayaka's- arm.
And so, they both screamed, and promptly failed to realize that someone else was walking in on their fantastic little scream-session. "I heard a 'bang'!" Kyouko shouted. "What the hell's going on here?"
The sudden appearance of the red magical girl startled them both and Sayaka hesitated before she turned and ran in the opposite direction. Homura caught a glimpse of the panicked despair washing over the other girl's features and her heart sank.
"Stop!" Homura called out in a voice not her own. She tried to bolt after Sayaka, but she stumbled as her legs failed her. Homura grunted in confusion as a dull throbbing pain stabbed her soul gem and she observed with a curious disgust that she had not only inherited Sayaka's body, but the mucky state of her soul as well.
Kyouko ran over to her, kneeling in concern. "What the hell is going on, Sayaka? Did that crazy bitch do anything to you?"
"I'm not Sayaka, I'm the crazy bitch." Homura spat out in annoyance.
"Huh?"
"She's the crazy b-b-one!" Sayaka shouted from a safe distance. "She tried to kill me!"
Homura turned back to Sayaka with an annoyed face. "You were being irrational!"
"You had your hands around my throat! Because you're crazy!"
"Huh?" Kyouko looked back and forth between them in confusion. "I'm going to kick both of your asses if you two don't start making sense!"
"I'm Sayaka!" Homura's body shouted in a panic. She grabbed at her now long dark hair and started talking to herself. "We're just empty husks, don't you see? Our souls can just be shuffled around like nothing! I bet I can insert my soul into a stuffed animal now like some shonen manga!"
Kyouko turned to Homura, ignoring the now ranting girl. "So... Let me get this straight, you're Homura? In Sayaka's body?" Homura glowered darkly at her and Kyouko pinched the bridge of her nose in exasperation at this new problem. "Jesus fucking christ..."
Homura's eyes found the grief seed that Sayaka had kicked away before and started sluggishly shuffling towards it, teeth grit. "Get Sayaka before she rips out any more of my hair."
"Prove it," Kyouko said seriously. "Say something only Homura would know."
Homura resisted the urge to groan. She did not have time for this. "I wear purple-striped panties."
Kyouko looked like her brain blew a gasket. "I...wha?"
"Check them," Homura said, nonchalantly. "Purple stripes. Exclusively."
Kyouko turned to Sayaka. "I..."
"I am not going to check for that!" Sayaka said. "Just...no. That's...no"
"Well, I'll just have to check for yours, then." Homura grabbed the frills of Sayaka's skirt.
"What?!" Sayaka shouted. "No! Don't you dare-!" It's then that she stopped before she smirked. "...You know what? Go ahead. It's not like you'll see anything."
Homura raised an eyebrow. "Really?"
"I wear shorts under those." She says. "Just try it! My magical girl uniform has short-shorts instead of panties under the skirt!"
At this point, poor, blushing, ignored Kyouko was pinching the bridge of her nose so tightly that she swore that blood was just going to go spurting out of it. "Stop! Okay! Fine! I believe you!" She groaned. "Holy shit, fucking stop."
Homura finally reached the grief seed and put it against her gem. She sighed as the corruption flowed out. She had to fix... whatever happened. She had to fix it. Her mind went through what had occurred before the switch. She had been about to strangle Sayaka. If she replicated the experience, in theory, it might produce results.
Sayaka's eyes widened slightly as if she had picked up Homura's line of thinking. Perhaps she had? Who knew what else they were capable of now that they were in each other's bodies!
"No." Sayaka already had her hands raised. "No, you are not going to-!"
"Hold still for a second." Homura started walking to Sayaka quickly. "I just want to repli-"
"No." Sayaka started shaking her hands.
"It will only take a s-"
"NO." She was waving them wildly now, and Homura was just about to grab Sayaka's throat.
It was then that Kyouko stepped in-between them, arms outstretched with two spears aimed squarely at their heads. "Okay, that's enough of that bullshit!" She turned to Sayaka. "You! Calm down!" And she glared at Homura. "You! Stop trying to strangle yourself!"
Homura's first instinct was to stop time and walk past Kyouko's spear to continue with her plan, but... Since she didn't have her shield, she didn't have access to that power at all. She could not sense it with her. She felt even more frustrated as her concern grew over this predicament. If she didn't have access to her powers it meant that would not be able to reverse time.
And if she could not reverse time, then...
Something inside of her snapped. She looked at Sayaka, then at the spear right in front of her, then at Kyouko, then back at Sayaka, then at Kyouko, then the spear, then Sayaka, then the spear, then Sayaka, then Kyouko then the spear then Kyouko then Sayaka then-
She screamed, shoved the spear out of the way, charged past a surprised Kyouko, and grabbed Sayaka's neck with as much force as she could muster. She could feel Sayaka underneath her hands, trying to wrestle her way out of Homura's vice-like grip. She rammed Sayaka against a concrete pillar and cracked it. Slowly, she dragged her up, lifting Sayaka's feet off the ground as the other girl struggled fruitlessly.
But in her blind rage, she failed to notice Kyouko recovering. In the seconds that it took to get her hands around her own body's neck, Kyouko had grabbed another spear. Kyouko struck Homura in the back of the head hard and knocked her out instantly.
Sayaka dropped to the ground shakily, hurriedly shoving her unconscious body away from herself as she breathed rapidly. She and Kyouko looked at each other for a few silent moments before Kyouko walked over and picked Homura up by the scruff of her cape.
"Well," she said as she started dragging her away. "At least we know that didn't switch you two back."
It took a few seconds before Sayaka's mind caught up to the conversation and she scrambled to her feet. "Hey! Where are you taking my body!"
Kyouko paused for a moment as if in thought. As she did that she bent over to properly pick up the body and sling it over her shoulder. "Homura's secret bat cave, I guess. Or I can take your body back to my hotel!" Kyouko suggested with a waggle of her eyebrows.
"You're not taking my body anywhere!" Sayaka said angrily. Kyouko rolled her eyes and dropped Homura like a sack of potatoes.
"You know what? You're right, it's your body, so it's your problem. Have fun with that." Kyouko said casually as she started walking away, annoyed by Sayaka's attitude as ever. The blue haired girl stumbled on Homura's heels as she hurried over to the unconscious form.
"... Crap," she muttered. She really had no better ideas on where to go from here. Kyouko had said something about... Homura's bat cave? Was she serious, did Homura have a cave? Actually, it wouldn't surprise Sayaka that much. "Kyouko!" she hollered after the redhead after a brief internal debate. Kyouko stopped and looked over her shoulder with a smirk. "...Where is this bat cave?" she asked reluctantly.
Kyouko sighed, but she couldn't wipe that smirk off of her face. "Alright, I'll show you."
[=]
"Oh god, it is a bat cave." Sayaka stared in awe at all the holograms, diagrams, and various kinds of grams scattered around the place, right down to a few graham crackers set up on a saucer, which was set next to a cup of coffee.
Sayaka looked at the cup, noticing that the mix was pitch-black and that the smell was strong. It seemed less like a cup of normal black coffee and much more like a cup full of espresso shot after espresso shot poured repeatedly to make one disgusting cup of godawful "coffee".
"That's what I said." Kyouko huffed as she dumped a groaning Homura onto the nearest flat surface. "You should see her Homura mobile."
Sayaka's eyes bugged out. "Does she really have one?!"
Kyouko looked at her with a slowly growing jackass grin. "... No. Not that I know of, anyway. She hasn't exactly given me the grand tour of the place."
Sayaka's eyes were drawn to one of the holograms that looked like a shot of Madoka's house. Were these some sort of surveillance magic things? Thoroughly creeped out, Sayaka turned away to frown at the stirring form. She lightly touched her neck, still feeling the dull ache. Homura's body didn't heal as fast as she was used to.
"Should we tie her up or something..?"
"Kinky," Kyouko commented, lightly slapping Homura's cheeks. "You wanna tie yourself up?"
"What? No!" Sayaka shook her head. "I just...she...security...strangle-!"
"I know what you were talking about, hotshot." Kyouko deadpanned. "It was just an easy joke."
Sayaka sighed in relief.
"Besides, I doubt that'll be necessary," Kyouko muttered not quite certainly, taking Homura's cheeks and pulling them apart comically. She giggled.
"Stop doing things to my face!" Sayaka stalked over to stop her when Homura beat her to the punch. Literally, she punched Kyouko right in the face. Kyouko's hands flew to her face as she cursed.
"That was for knocking me out earlier," Homura said as she sat up.
Sayaka started sputtering. "B-B-But just a second ago you were out cold!"
"I was faking it for the past five minutes." She said, calmly. "Thank you for bringing me home, by the way."
"What the fuck is your problem?!" Kyouko checked her nose. "...Great. My nose's bleeding."
"Good. You deserved it." Homura brushed off her knuckles. "My punches have a lot more force behind them now," she observed curiously.
"You fucking think?" Kyouko moved her soul gem closer to her face. "Awugh...fuck, it hurts."
"You broke a concrete pillar," Sayaka said, flatly. "And my neck still hurts."
Homura nodded and let her feet touch the floor with a turn. "How long was I out?"
"Well, you missed the Walpurgis attack and we're all that's left, Sunshine. Thanks for that." Kyouko said dead seriously as her nose healed up.
Homura stared in shock and terror. "I...no. N-!"
"I'm joking," Kyouko said, flatly. "It was a fucking joke. Really, it was just over an hour."
Homura nearly strangled her. But strangling people seemed to be the source of her problems today, so she held off. Instead, she counted to a million in her head to calm herself down and took a deep breath. "That wasn't a very funny joke." She said, calmly.
"It was to me," Kyouko said with a shrug. "But then again, I'm kind of a sick puppy." And with that, Sayaka slapped the back of Kyouko's head. "Goddammit, you people need to stop hitting me," Kyouko complained with a glare.
"And you need to stop being a terrible person," Sayaka retorted. "And what did you mean by a walrus attack?"
"Exactly what it sounds like. The walruses are rising up against humanity, and Homura and I are going to take a stand." Kyouko refused to learn her lesson, apparently.
Both Homura and Sayaka just stared at her, with her jaw hanging, her eyes squinted, and her head tilted just slightly to convey the sheer amount of confusion that she was feeling.
When she finally recovered, Homura was the first to do something. She grabbed Kyouko by the face and shoved her to the side with enough force to send her flipping over a nearby chair. "Walpurgis is something that you shouldn't concern yourself with. It's important, but it's none of your business."
Sayaka frowned at that. "If you think you're going to be dealing with it in my body, you're even crazier than I thought."
Homura froze at that before she shook her head. "I'll find a way."
"Great, because I trust you so much!" Sayaka said with her heaviest spiteful sarcasm. There was an awful overbearing silence in the huge room after she said that. The two girls glared scathingly at each other before a small white figure wandered in silently between them.
"My, what a problem you two have encountered," Kyubey commented. Homura felt a chill creep down her spine. Even with his supposed lack of emotion, he still managed to sound like a smug little bastard. "I can't say that I haven't encountered this before, but it's such a rarity that I can't help but notice it!"
"You've encountered this before?" Sayaka sounded confused.
"Oh, yes." He said. "It's rare, but it has happened."
"Then how do we reverse it?" Homura cut straight to the problem. Kyubey turned his head to her, ears flopping as he did.
"Unfortunately, all the cases of this happening have ended in despair, or worse," he said lightly as he sat down on his haunches and rubbed his head against his own fluffy tail. Homura's blood ran cold. "So I am not aware that a way to reverse this condition exists!" Sayaka and Homura stared at him in horror. "It'll be interesting to see if you two fare any better, but I seriously doubt it-" Kyubey was cut off as a spearhead went through his head. Kyouko glared distastefully at the body at the end of her weapon.
"Remind me to never ask this thing anything again."
"Wh-what did he mean by 'despair, or worse'?" Sayaka asked quietly, not sure if she wanted to know the answer. Homura shakily attempted to flip her hair but failed. Both Sayaka and Kyouko were looking at her, and she heaved a deep sigh. Images of Witches sprang to her mind and all her battles against them. Sayaka's eyes widened slowly as she stared at Homura.
Homura's eyes widened as well as she stared back. No, it couldn't be... Not without Kyubey, at least. Right? 'Can... can you hear me?' Homura thought deliberately at Sayaka. There were a few seconds of tense silence until Homura relaxed slightly, breathing an internal sigh of relief. She must have been imagining things-
'Yes.'
She jumped at that with a yelp, with Sayaka following suit. 'You can hear my thoughts?!'
'Y-Yeah! I can see them, too!' It's then that Sayaka pauses. 'Wait...is that...'
'No...no you're not allowed to see that!'
'Oh my god! You want to what? With Madoka?!'
'That's not okay! It is not okay for you to poke around my head like tha-!'
'With Mami?! What is wrong with you?!'
Kyouko stood still, looking at both of them as the clock overhead quietly ticked away. She looked to Sayaka on her left, then Homura on her right, before she shrugged and started walking off. "Welp, that's enough weirdness for me. I'm heading out. Don't fuck each other too hard." She slammed the door and left them both to their mental conversation.
[=]
[MOID A/N]: Well, this is Angel0Wonder's brainchild here, so you can blame her for that. So yeah! Decided to try doing a collab fic. Because, hey, mite b coo. And so far, it is! She's fun to work with and it's just kind of a blast. Look forward to more of this fic...eventually. Hopefully, sooner rather than later. Because fuckin'...stuff and stuff.
[A0W A/N]: I've had this idea forever, and it's finally here because Moid is a cool guy who is ten times more productive than I am! He makes work fun. And fast. And stuff. Good stuff. More good stuff to come!