Albertine Cassandra

I ran as though my life depended on it, scrambling up the stairs and down the hall, getting to my bedroom in our small two-story house located between a near-endless forest and breathtaking sheer cliffs over the Mediterranean ocean as fast as I could possibly manage without alerting anyone to my location. I jumped into my closet, burying myself below dirty clothes and old stuffed animals, making a small hole so I could still see out into my room. I waited, my heart racing, trying to silence my heavy breathing.

Quietly, he crept into my room, first checking inside my hope chest, then under my bed, then beneath my covers. Finally, he made his way over to me. He kicked the pile under which I was hiding, but a large stuffed bear absorbed the blow. Satisfied that I wasn't there, he left, and I let out a soft sigh of relief. "GOTCHA!" he shouted, jumping back into the room. I screamed, and he ran over to me, digging me out of my pile. "Found ya!"

"That's not fair!" I replied. "You know that's not fair!"

"You know I don't play fair," he said, laughing. "Come on, it's my turn to hide."

"Hmpf!" I said. "You know-" The front door opened and slammed shut. "Daddy!" My brother and I ran out of my room and down the stairs as fast as we could.

"Sorry to disappoint you, Cassandra, Michael," the man before us replied.

"Hello, Cardinal Soto," my brother and I said in unison.

"Why don't you kids go play outside?" the cardinal asked us.

We looked to our mom and she nodded. Michael and I quietly slipped outside. "There's nothing to do out here," I complained.

"We could always go play in the forest," my brother teased.

"You know we're not allowed in there!" I replied.

"Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat!" he taunted. "Oh, I know, we could always go watch the boats!"

"Ok," I replied. We walked over to the cliff and stared down as the boats drifted in and out of the harbor below.

We turned around as we heard a car drive up. Seeing our father's car, we ran toward it. Half way between the cliff and our home, he shouted, "Soto, you bastard! Get your hands off my wife!"

A gunshot rang out. It seemed to echo around us. "Go!" Michael shouted, running into the house. "Leave my family alone!"

I ran as fast as I could toward the only place I could find to hide. I ran through the trees until my legs could carry me no more. Stopped by exhaustion, I looked around, trying to catch my bearings. I sat on a fallen tree and began to cry. "How do I get out of here?" I asked myself. "I never should have run into the forest."

"Hello!" I heard a voice say.

I turned around to see who was talking to me. "Who are you?" I asked, my voice shaking, as the strange cat-like creature with long ears came walking toward me through a path of light descending from the trees.

"I'm Kyubey!" it replied. "You wish you could get home?"

"More than anything else!" I replied.

"If you want something enough to risk your soul for it, I can make any wish come true!" it told me. "Any wish, no matter how impossible, can be yours!"

"Really?" I asked, overjoyed.

"Really!" it replied. "But you must be willing to spend your life fighting witches!"

"I get to fight witches?" I asked, surprised. "Father will be so proud!"

"Then say it," it said. "Say you want to become a magical girl!"

"Kyubey, I want more than anything to always be able to find my way home, and for that I will become a magical girl!" I shouted.

Lights shined down from above, and down descended a glowing yellow light. I held out my hands and caught it, and in my hands it became a small yellow crystal surrounded by gold. "Granted," Kyubey said. "You are now a magical girl!"

"Thank you!" I shouted. My glee was cut short by the sound of an explosion. I turned toward it and ran as fast as I could, all exhaustion having been taken from me when I reached toward the descending light. I reached the edge of the forest to see my house smoldering, the front wall all but missing, and four bodies strewn across the lawn by the explosion, charred beyond recognition.

／/人◕ ‿‿ ◕人\＼

"Have you seen Cassandra?" one officer asked another.

"I don't know," another officer replied. "She just disappeared."

"Maybe it's for the best," the first officer replied. "It's been almost a week now, and no matter where we take her, she always finds her way back. I swear, not a night has gone by that she hasn't been sleeping in the burnt-out shell of that house, right where her bed used to be. Maybe she's finally moved on."

"At least she never found out what happened," the second officer said. "Imagine knowing that your father killed your mother, your brother, your cardinal, and finally himself, all in a fit of insanity."

"Yeah, we did the right thing telling her that it was an accidental gas explosion," the first officer said.

／/人◕ ‿‿ ◕人\＼

Author's Note:

Like I said in the description, this is a supplemental piece to my story "Mahou Shoujo Homura Magica: Final Jump", which explains the origins of the witch Albertine, who is defeated in the forthcoming fourth chapter. Hopefully this will help make sense of why she's not malicious like all the other witches; she never experienced the anger because she always thought it was just an accident, so all she knew was the grief of losing her entire family because of an 'accident'.