Sometimes, fate never works the way people expect it to.
Sometimes, the dragon does win.
But for someone like Akemi Homura, that just meant that she had to try again. That one battlefield lost to her nemesis and worse nightmares just meant that she had a new battlefield to battle upon. One where she merely had to apply everything that she had learned to it.
Over and over again.
She would no longer cry. She would no longer need the help of others.
This was a road that only she could walk. That she would walk. Over and over 'til she attained what she desired.
It would be... easy to simply give up. To give in and wander off into the woods, most dark, lovely and deep; the wood was made of curses, rage and despair, after all.
Ah, to become a witch was easy. It merely required her to surrender. But she had promises to keep. And miles to go before she could sleep.
Miles upon miles. And months piled upon months. She had all of eternity in the span of a month to traverse.
For her friend. Her only friend. The only one who believed in her. Who had stood by her despite not knowing.
Not remembering what they had done together. Never to remember.
The laughter that they had shared.
The friendship that they had formed once, twice, thrice... and so many more times than she could count.
The freely given kindness over and over.
The tears they had shed.
The agony of being on the edge of descent into witchdom.
For Kaname Madoka, Akemi Homura would do anything and everything.
Would cover her hands with the blood of Incubator, in the blood and shattered soulgems of other magical girls, and in the darkness and grief of slain witches.
This, she had vowed to herself.
Repeated it like a mantra. It was all she had left.
"She was really amazing... when she transformed." The words spoken by the white cat thing washed over her.
"I thought she would become the strongest magical girl, but to defeat the Walpurgis Night in just one hit..." Had Madoka always being that strong or had her wish being somehow sufficient to allow her greater access to what lay within her. Homura remembered fighting Walpurgis Night countless times with Madoka, they had struggled. Paid in blood and tears to bring it down before.
"And how will this end? If she's even stronger than you thought." The raven haired magical girl's voice spoke up in response to the Incubator. She knew it wouldn't lie, misdirect yes, but never an actual lie.
"Either way, her end will be the same. As the strongest magical girl, she defeated her greatest enemy." Homura could hear the whistling wind as she heard the absolute confidence in the other survivor of Walpurgis Night's rampage and subsequent death. It certainly fit the desolate mood and the grief in her heart.
"Now there's nothing left for her but to become the most evil witch ever. As Madoka is now, it will take ten days before she destroys this world." The carefree manner that alien spoke of humanity's extinction and of what Madoka had become certainly fit with the way it didn't seem to care, or feel emotions.
If she could, she would end it.
But killing it hadn't ended the Incubator. It had returned with time, but then she hadn't found anything like a soul-gem in its body or near it... Homura didn't quite shake her head, she should have known. With the way it had spoken of the bodies of magical girls as being 'mere' hardware. One that performed to specifications and could be repaired as easily as machines.
Not untrue to be certain. Hadn't she done just that with her eyes?
"But well, that's not my problem. I gathered alot more energy than our collection quota," Homura would have thought it would have sounded happier or cheerful at that, but that tone of voice... that same carefree manner that it spoke in... emotions truly were something alien to it.
Homura stood up as it spoke. She didn't need to hear more. This was, after all, a lost battlefield. Her goals had been lost when Madoka had been tricked into making a wish.
She would walk to the next one. And if it was lost, there would be another one. There would always be... another battlefield.
An eternity in the span of a month.
"Won't you fight?" No need to waste energy. No need to rage against that puzzled alien. Or the impossible giant witch that had been Madoka.
"No, this is not my battlefield." Indeed, it wasn't hers. Not any more.
And so she walked off once more, transversing the path forged by her spinning shield and the hourglass that lay at its heart, amidst gears and clockwork mechanisms.
Perhaps if she had stayed... she might have seen the departure of QB. And the world attempt to fight back against the encroachment upon its domain.
Perhaps, she might have noted the unseen, unknowable figures lost to time and history. Trapped by their choices, by their own bargains.
Perhaps, she might have cared to watch the futility as those guardians fought for humanity. With weapons beyond compare, with powers that were conceptual and fueled by the magic of the world.
But then... perhaps, she might observe them fall one by one as the encroachment of Kriemhild Gretchen's barrier grew. Their attacks simply striking harmlessly upon its surface.
Their bodies and souls crushed into non-existence as the boundaries of the witch's barrier expanded past their positions. Their very natures spawned from misfortune and the regrets that lay in their soul anathemic to the paradise that was the promise and gift from the witch of salvation.
Perhaps, she might have cared to know that the world would attempt to defend itself.
But such knowledge would have been useless and pointless to her. For her goal wasn't the defense of the world or such conceits that might come of desiring to be a hero.
She was no hero.
Just a friend.
A friend who would break herself for the sake of one who she valued above all else.
Puella Magi Schuetze Aurulent
Prologue : A tragic beginning is like fire for boiling tea.
And then one day, her friend broke the world to save her.
Don't forget.
Always, somewhere,
someone is fighting for you.
As long as you remember her,
you are not alone.