The year was 195 A.D. The place was the area that mankind would come to know as China. Technologically speaking, humanity was as far from reaching the level of the Incubators as they always had been, but this was no surprise. It was expected that, unless any unforseen wishes were to interfere, it would be a few millenium yet before humanity would even be able to approach the stars, let alone the Incubator's level of technology. In fact, chances of humanity ever reaching such a level, even with the capability to wish factored in, was a slim billionth of a percent.
This was not a problem for the Incubators, of course. Quite the contrary: the less intelligent the humans were, the more likely it was for them to accept the existence of a small, wish granting creature. What's more, with their empathy towards each other so low, the concequences of wish making was much more easily accepted than the Incubators predicted it would be come the next few centuries.
Truth be told, some Incubators were rather fond of the way things were (as fond as the emotionless race could get at least), though as with all contracts, both sides had to gain - as humanity moved forward, the Incubators would continue their battle against the destruction of the universe. Because time was short, to a species evolved to a level as the Incubators, many had been dispatched to the various areas of the world, collecting the necessary energy for their mission.
Dyubey was one such Incubator. He was not the only Incubator of this country, but he was certainly one of the most successful. He had lost count of how many girls he had contracted, how many he was to be in contact with now, how many were due to hatch into witches soon, and so on. Naturally, the fact that the country was at war certainly helped a great deal, which was just another reason to have more Incubators creating Puella Magi.
Wherever one looked, warriors were getting into grand battles with their armies, tyrants campaigning to conquer the land, rebels looking to battle the corrupt government and those who supported it - all the while, the women of the land, as Puella Magi, fighting their own battles, and supporting each side in ways that would never truly be appreciated. Truth be told, the fall of men like Dong Zhuo had been rather unfortunate - his cruelty towards women of all ages had extended the length of the universe by millions, even trillions of years - but he was but one human and, ultimately, as irrelevant as any one ant in colony of a thousand would be. That said, his granddaughter had made a lovely Puella Magi before she had been executed. Dyubey had made sure to contract four girls that day alone to make up for that child dying before her maturing process had been complete.
Indeed - In short, it was a wonderful time to be an Incubator.
It was said that every so often, a defective Incubator will arrive with the odd emotion or two, despite the fact that they had evolved such mental retardations. Though Dyubey had never met such an anomaly, after a chance encounter with a village girl and a simple question, he had to wonder if he himself was suffering from a temporary case of mental degredation. The probability of such a thing was so low it was impossible, but the fact that he was even questioning himself in the first place, didn't that mean that there was at least some truth to the rumor?
The answer was, ultimately, irrelevant to his mission, so Dyubey chose to simply ignore it and go about business as he normally would. Yet the girl's question continued to be relevant to his mission, making it all the harder to ignore.
It had only been a few weeks ago. To an Incubator, such a short timeframe was meaningless, but with these thoughts weighing down on Dyubey's mind, it seemed that much longer.
Like it had only been yesterday, however, he clearly could recall the incident in question. The village he had been investigating had been attacked by bandits, little more than drunken men pillaging in the name of justice and righteousness. The damage they caused was serious all the same, and with the women and girls being killed, kidnapped, or defiled during the rampage alone, such attacks could potentially lead to dozens of Puella Magi, if an Incubator played its cards right. The fallout, along with Puella Magi fighting each other and even killing each other, or forcing each other to hatching into their true forms, made things progress all the faster.
As Dyubey would find, however, this particular incident would lead to something far different than the usual spike in Puella Magi. Dyubey had made his way through the usual: screaming people, corpses falling left and right, the typical human atrocities of the age; for he could sense the presence of some girls, most of the prime age, hiding from the chaos.
At least, Dyubey had assumed they had been hiding. Imagine his surprise (there was actually very little, being of an advanced, emotionless species and all) when he came upon the girls and discovered that not only had they cornered one of the three ringleaders of the so-called bandits, but...
They had slain him by their own hands.
If nothing else, this set was certainly the proactive type. His curiosity piqued, at least enough to try to attempt to contract them, Dyubey began with the usual approach. He offered them a wish. He told them it could be any wish at all - they could even save the mother of the short girl on the right, who by Dyubey's estimates, had died a few minutes ago anyway. It still wasn't beyond the powers of a wish.
Initially, he was turned down. The girls suspected him of witchcraft, of being some sort of demon. As he continued layering on the appeal, of what being a Puella Magi could do for them - for their war, for their people - eventually, one by one, all but one of the girls gave in and began contemplating their wishes. Soon, they started making their wishes, and Dyubey complied in granting them. It was, to the girls, some sort of miracle, the likes of which should be impossible.
The last girl, however, still wouldn't budge. Dyubey tried to push her, assuming she still believed him to be some sort of demon (he had encountered such religious types before), but the response he got was not one he had ever expected, not in all his years (human and Incubator years alike) of contracting Puella Magi.
"If you can do all of this, why don't you wish for something yourself? Isn't there anything you want?"
Dyubey was speechless. No Incubator, at least none that he knew of, had ever been faced with such a question. The fact was, the idea of them wishing for anything themselves was impossible - they were unable. It was why human girls were needed in the process, after all.
Even so, Incubators were also faced with hypotheticals every day - it was a part of dealing with emotional, often unstable, young girls. Their questions, their feelings, whatever needed to be said or done to get them to contract had to be done, and certainly, considering and answering hypothetical questions had always been included in this.
Yet... Why was it that this hypothetical question, this one that Dyubey knew was an impossibility, this idea that he could never act on- Why had it bothered him so?
In the end, he was unable to form a contract with the final girl. She had politely declined, informing him her father - apparently someone the villagers considered to be a great man, who would be spoken of in legends someday - had taught her that it was more important to do things yourself, to act on your own, rather than to allow everything to be given to you. It was that one girl's mindset that had allowed the group to kill that man that Dyubey had found them with.
Now here he was, weeks later and miles away, still unable to get this silly, insignificant thing out of his mind.
If he could, wouldn't he wish for the problems of the Incubators to be solved? Wouldn't that be the most rational thing? Or to make it so that all human females would submit to their race, no questions asked?
Dyubey understood, in a way, how the human girls felt, but on a much deeper level. He, who had never wanted anything, in this hypothetical world, had the power to have anything he wanted. Despite himself, despite even his very mission, his very purpose, still as unfeeling as ever, his mind began running through various scenarios, trying to come up with an answer. He became lost in this world that didn't exist.
His numbers slipped. An additonal Incubator was sent out to his usual areas in order to make up for his losses.
Dyubey was not a defective Incubator. Quite the opposite, up until this point, he had been extremely effective, one of the best of the age. The other Incubators were not exactly curious, but they were aware of his recent failings and, because of their mission, did not wish to meet the same fate. The Incubators, from wide and far, in the hopes of not losing their universe, sought out Dyubey to discover the cause of all of this.
Needless to say, things snowballed from there.
Before things got completely out of hand, extreme measures were taken. Incubators who had been afflicted with Dyubey's "diseases" were soon put down as rapidly as they could be hunted down, replaced with proper, newly trained Incubators that wouldn't even consider such foolish questions.
Thus, as quickly as it had started, the small spart of Incubator uprising ended.
... Though it is said that, every so often, if you ask your Incubator what they would like as they bring up the metaphorical papers for their contracts, if you try to get them interested in a wish of their own...
Maybe, just maybe, they'll listen.