Powerless. I was powerless.
It was frustrating. There she was, sitting four seats in front of me, and there was nothing I could do. Kaname Madoka was watching Akemi Homura introduce herself, that suave and confident time traveler. I couldn't be certain, but odds were that this was the final cycle before Madoka became a god.
Of all the fictional worlds for me to be reborn into it had to be this one, where the only power to impact events at all was restricted to girls. Being a boy, that literally excluded me from the entire plot of the show. It was a magical girl anime, and I did not meet the requirements.
Foreknowledge? Useless. Homura already had it aplenty, and the show had demonstrated exactly how futile it had been for her to share it. Besides, where was my proof? I had no convenient magical powers, nor could I ever. I might as well throw jealousy into the mix.
And the plot was already so fragile anyway. how many iterations did Homura pass through before Madoka found her solution? There was a serious danger of any actions I took interfering with Madoka's wish.
There was only one thing I could change...maybe. It was a long shot. Homura knew enough, and I knew enough about her, that I could maybe share my knowledge with her and have her believe me. That would put the whole timeline at risk though, which led to the same damn problem of possibly throwing off Madoka's wish.
In theory I wouldn't forget about Madoka when she became a god, so I might be able to help Homura after it was all over. Commiserate over our lost and forgotten friend. The problem there was that I would have to reveal my complete and utter lack of action, and I had no idea how Homura would respond to that. Probably not well, given the plot of the whole "rebellion" thing.
I sighed, willing myself to pay attention to the teacher's silly rant about omelets. I had been over this a thousand times since the day I had met Kaname Madoka two years prior. I hated it, but I had to accept the fact that there was nothing I could, or even should, do.
It was a truth I had come face to face with long ago, only to find myself furiously rethinking it now that Homura had arrived. I mean, this was it. She was here. The show's plot was officially begun. Walpurgisnacht was, what, three weeks away? Two? Hard to remember, when it had been all of twelve years since my rebirth, with another sizeable gap between my death and the time I watched the anime in my past life.
I had been so confused being reborn. I had always believed in souls, but that was kind of because I believed in an afterlife. Waking up as a baby in Japan in a near-future version of the world had not matched my expectations. Having to learn Japanese when I already knew English wasn't heaven by any stretch of the imagination, and I discounted hell as an option for the general lack of suffering.
Luckily, I had adapted fairly quickly. I was grateful that the language did come naturally, over time, and I even learned to read all over again. I had no idea of the state of the world, but I had a feeling that leveraging my past life knowledge would not be the best idea, so I had been careful not to stand out as some kind of prodigy.
I still ended up going to the best middle school around though. I was a terrible liar, mainly because I lacked the patience to pretend to be that ignorant. Apparently, Madoka and her friends had been fairly smart, because this school was where I met them.
That had been a shock. I might have thought the name a coincidence, but the pink hair was kind of unique. That and her friends were exactly who I thought they would be, names and all.
It was weird to realize that I wasn't simply reborn, but rather, reborn into a story that I had viewed as fiction. Even weirder to be reborn as another one of those background faces. Seriously, if I was going to be reborn into a story, couldn't it have been somewhere more useful?
At first, I had avoided Madoka. It wasn't conscious, but a part of me was afraid to get too close. She was marked after all. I knew her fate, and I didn't want to get involved with someone who was destined to disappear forever.
The problem, of course, was Madoka herself. She was good hearted and friendly, as well as intelligent. Everyone liked her, and it wasn't possible to avoid interacting with her in such an environment. I'm not sure if she picked up on my reticence about her in particular, or if she was just the kind of person who looked after introverts like me, but she swiftly became one of the people I was more familiar with in the classroom.
Part of me recognized that avoiding her too conspicuously would only serve to draw her attention anyway. It was the rock and the hard place for me apparently.
So having become friends I had tried- so hard- to think of something, anything, I could do. I racked my brain, dredging up details of that show, searching desperately for some kind of solution: and I had come up blank.
Then, for a while, I had convinced myself that this wouldn't be like the show. Even though I had been reborn, and even if she had the name and the friends and the pink hair, that wasn't proof that magical girls could exist, or that this was a universe matching the anime I had seen.
For showing up now and destroying my illusions, a part of me hated Homura.
The worst part was, that despite the tragedy of Madoka's sacrifice, I honestly felt it was better than the alternative: a world of despair and witches. And if I interfered at all, then there was a serious risk I could ruin her wish. Without a viable alternative, I was not going to take that chance. Not with that potential outcome.
So here I was: angry, jealous, and frustrated. Powerless. If only-
"Inamura Keita." A cold voice said beside me, shattering my thoughts like breaking glass. I glanced up and flinched as my eyes met the cool, crisp gaze of someone I hadn't expected. The bell had rung. It was time for lunch. And Akemi Homura had found me.
Disclaimer: I own no part of Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
A/N: As you can see, I have plans to continue this. This is just an introduction/preview of sorts. Please let me know what you think of it!