Obligatory Disclaimer: I realize I should have said this last time (oops), but I don't own Pacific Rim or Puella Magi Madoka Magica. This is an entirely not-for-profit work of fiction.

Author's Note: Originally, Precursor had been intended to just be a stand alone story, just a quick little ficlet to get the muse's inspirational juices flowing, again. (You might have noticed the utter lack of details?) And it worked. Well enough, in fact, that it spawned a follow-up sequel. D'oh... ;)

August 15th, 2013

Cold.

Darkness.

What's-?

The world faded away.

Awareness returned slowly, but this time it brought increased clarity.

Where am I? What- Why can't I move?

There was... pressure, as if something was wrong with the air itself. Something was pinning her in place, her eyes wouldn't open, and her head hurt... Yet, even that seemed wrong. As if the pain was a distant thing, something to observe, more than feel. She tried to take a deep breath.

It... didn't work.

Puzzlement forced its way through her disorientation. It was as if her lungs were equalized with the air, nothing coming in or out. She wasn't dead, though, so obviously they must have still been working.

Worry about it later, Brooke. Figure out what happened, first.

Sounded like a plan, alright. What had-

The memory slammed into her with enough force that she would have gasped, had she been able.

The alien. The Monster.

It had destroyed the bridge.

Their car had gone into the ocean.

She was underwater!

It was a good twenty or thirty seconds before she was able to push aside the resulting panic that realization created. At least that explained why she was having trouble moving. Her seatbelt was still on, and who knew what shape the car was in, or how much debris from the bridge might have landed on it.

God, all those people...

Dad...

Her eyes stung. Tears, the ocean... They were both salt water, right? Where did one stop, and the other start? Did it even matter?

Did anything?

Her father was dead, and she was...

She was...

What did that thing DO to me? she wondered with growing horror. She was sitting at the bottom of San Francisco Bay, and had a headache. That was it. The rest of her body didn't even feel sore. She could barely feel it at all. She supposed she was lucky the monster hadn't stepped on her as it passed by-

She would have bolted upright, had she been able.

It was still out there, killing more people!

She had to do something!

She opened her eyes, and immediately regretted it. She'd forgotten, somehow, just how much doing that HURT in the ocean.

She forced it to stop.

She couldn't have explained it any better than that. She simply... willed the pain to stop. There was a warm tingling against her leg, and she could abruptly see just fine underwater.

The gem, she realized. Her Soul Gem, Kyubey had called it. She didn't want to think too much about what that name implied, just then, so she focused on taking stock of her situation.

The car frame was bent and warped, windows mostly shattered. She resolutely avoided looking at the driver's side of the car, instead working on releasing her seat belt clasp. It took a little work, but she managed it. Finding an exit was a bit harder - the windows hadn't completely shattered, and there were still jagged shards of glass that she couldn't dislodge. Her door refused to open - of course it did, she thought bitterly - but she was finally able to pop the sunroof out of its frame, and wriggle out through there.

She swam for land, not looking back.

It took almost three solid minutes to stop vomiting up seawater.

Brooke lay on her back on the beach - she had no idea which one - as far from the salt water and bile as she'd been able to crawl... which was about six feet. In other circumstances, anyone coming across her might have thought that she'd had too much to drink, and wandered into the ocean.

If only. Oh, if only...

Time passed. She had no idea how much, and didn't know where everyone was. Where were all the rescue personnel? The police? The Coast Guard? Surely it had been long enough for someone to notice the Golden Gate Bridge wasn't quite in one piece, anymore.

"Oh, they noticed. But that was five days ago."

That voice... "You... What do you want?" she asked bitterly. It took a worrying amount of effort, but she managed to flop over onto her chest, head resting on her arms so she didn't have to worry about holding it up as she glared at Kyubey, who was sitting wisely out of lunging distance.

"To see how you were doing. I didn't think you'd be able to figure out how to adapt your body to operating underwater on your own. Impressive."

The situation was so fucked up, she didn't even know where to start. Aside from the obvious, of course. "What did you do to me?"

"I turned you into a magical girl," it - he? - replied, as if that should have been obvious.

"What does that mean? What AM I?! I wasn't breathing underwater! It was like I didn't need to, anymore!"

"You don't; your body does. You can use your magic to ignore that for a while, but do it too long, and you run the risk of damaging your body yourself - which would take even more magic to repair - or worse, running out of magic entirely."

"...what?"

She could have sworn the thing sighed. "This would have been so much easier if you hadn't convinced yourself so completely that I was a delusion."

She had no answer for that, beyond 'what was I supposed to think?', and she could tell that would be a pointless question. She managed to push herself up into a sitting position, if only so she didn't fall asleep.

"Your magic will recharge, but if you drain yourself before it has the chance to regenerate, or if you give in to hopelessness and despair, you'll fade out of existence. After large expenditures of magic, you'll need to cleanse your Soul Gem with a Grief Cube. You can only do that once per cube, so you'll want to stock up, when you can. I'll take the used up ones from you."

There was not a single part of that explanation that she understood.

Start with the obvious, she decided. "What's a 'Grief Cube'?" she asked, working her Soul Gem out of her pocket and looking at it. It did seem the tiniest bit... dimmer, than it had before. The silver part, covered with tiny, intricate carvings - containment for the emerald-colored jewel? - seemed unchanged, at least. "And this... This is... me?"

"Wow. Most Magical Girls need to have that part explained to them." The bunny-cat-thing seemed genuinely impressed. She also was getting the idea that 'Magical Girl' was more of a proper noun than she'd thought; she heard the capitalization that time. "Yes, it is, so be very careful not to lose it. As for Grief Cubes, those are what demons drop when you kill them."

She started. "Demons?"

"Or wraiths, if you prefer. The other Magical Girls seem to use the two terms rather interchangeably." This was followed by a long, somewhat metaphysical explanation of just what the demons/wraiths/whatevers were that Brooke... mostly followed. What she took from it was: 'Wraiths feed on the grief, hopelessness, and despair of humanity. They can and will keep humans as prisoners to continue to feed from them, until they inevitably die. Magical Girls exist to destroy those Wraiths, and give Kyubey the Grief Cubes they cleansed their Soul Gems with, so he could collect the energy contained therein to help combat universal entropy.'

For several moments after he finished speaking, she just sat there, trying to absorb it all. "Other Magical Girls?" she finally asked.

If Kyubey was troubled that she was seemingly ignoring its explanation, it didn't show it. (More likely, given that it could evidently read minds, it knew she was trying to keep from being overwhelmed by latching onto something she could deal with.) "Oh, yes. Many. I'll track down some of the closest ones and direct you toward them, so they can help you learn the ropes."

"Right. Okay. That's... That's good," she mumbled. She would not - she could not - thank it. Not after everything that had happened. "Why like this?" she abruptly demanded. "I didn't wish for a city-destroying monster! You are an alien! You couldn't have revealed yourself, instead? Maybe found some nice, friendly Greys, or something?!"

"Wishes don't work on us. And reaching across time and space to divert an entire culture to interact with your planet would require an enormous amount of energy. Every Magical Girl's wish is dependent upon their magical potential. While you are very powerful, you don't have that kind of power. They were already interested in Earth, so that worked out. And the humans will be able to take the Kaiju - I believe they're calling it 'Trespasser' - down soon enough."

"Not soon enough," she disagreed, tears sliding down her cheek. Dad... She didn't want to have to go back to staying with... Wait. Five days, and the monster wasn't dead, yet? "San Francisco?"

"Unfortunately, with every conflict, there's bound to be collateral damage."

Jaw dropping open, she turned back... to find Kyubey was gone. Clearly, the thing wasn't stupid enough to think it could make a statement like that and hang around, as if nothing had happened.

With a groan, she forced herself to her feet, wavering for a second before she recovered her balance. With an assortment of cuts and bruises that she couldn't feel, torn and soaked clothing, and her shoulder-length blonde hair tangled and snarled, she was sure to present quite the picture to anyone she came across. She had no idea how she'd explain her condition, or even if there was anything further wrong with her body that she couldn't outwardly see. Did she even still need food? Sleep? Where was she supposed to get either of those things, if she did? She hated having to rely on Kyubey for anything, but it was looking like she had no choice but to wait for whoever he contacted to show up. Hopefully, once the military finally took Trespasser down, that would be the end of-

Wait.

"They were already interested in Earth"?

They?

THEY?!

Suddenly, she got the feeling that not giving in to despair and hopelessness might be easier said than done.