Light.

It's not a bad thing to wake up to. And it certainly shouldn't have been harming anyone. Unless you had been very recently in the gargantuan, pitch black shadow of a Walpurgisnacht.

Then your eyes -along with your mind- might need a few seconds to adjust to the sudden lack of unspeakable horrors. Though the slight pain was much preferable to the alternative.

This new timeline... this will be it.

Of course, that's what I had said everytime. I had said it so often it should have lost any possible meaning. But I always meant it. And I always acted on it. And it never is.

The chance of this timeline succeeding is one in some amount of thousands that I can no longer count, a number I doubt I could recall without falling into despair immediately.

That is, of course, of no matter now. Repeats of the same dark thoughts. They could wait. What couldn't wait, however, is Madoka.

A new timeline, that will bring new challenges and variables to the tables, that I will need to account for if I actually plan to succeed. So I will need to get out of bed soon to adjust.

Fighting a Walpurgisnacht is (un)surprisingly tiring, and my leg felt like death. I hadn't expected anything new, and my eyes were shutting themselves before I could process it.

And... That was a huge mistake. At first, I couldn't see anything. I had initially panicked, that I had slept until night, losing an entire day to establish myself. And then my vision had crept back in, and I could tell what woke me up. Shouting and chaos, on this floor and the floor below. Even still, I could tell I had overslept.

I had not been expecting to be asleep for as long as I had. According to the tiny bedside analog clock that I could barely see, it had been five hours. And I could barely see the clock because the power had gone out.

This changes just about everything. I knew some nice people on the floor below, where I used to stay, on life support now. But I'm sure they have backup generators or something. They're all fine, I think. But it was time to get to work. I could feel bad for people later.

It should be easier to slip out now. With a lot of the inner sections near my room shrouded in darkness, no one would see the 'poor heart disease girl' running around.

Getting out was surprisingly easy in the dark. A well worn path, in memory lane. I didn't see many people on the way out. Mostly young nurses running around, and apparently a few doctors were in the basement searching for the backup generator. You'd think this place would be a bit more organized. I don't really know what happened, and I didn't get the chance to find out.

I was split between finding out what caused this completely new variation, and checking on the Kaname's when I heard someone shout behind me.

"Homura!?"

I froze in the middle of the road I'd been walking across when I was enveloped from behind in a hug that took me off my feet. I had never really been in this situation, and didn't know how to react at all. I went limp and almost capsized both of us.

It was then that I was able to meet the assaulter. According to the comically large ID on her hospital lanyard, her name was Sanae Orihara, and was (apparently) an interim nurse 'I' had befriended in the hospital, who was now tasked with helping me adjust to my new school life.

"You know you weren't supposed to leave without me!", she chastised "Especially in an emergency like this power outage!" Sanae pulled me in closer, "Besides, I'm the one who knows the way to your apartment." I grimaced a bit at the audible smirk in her voice. I guess I'm not getting out of this, then.

"Yes ma'am."

"Now c'mon, the bus stop's this way," she lead me away from the hospital and to a bench with a small overhang, where we sat for the next 5 or so minutes. If we had looked behind us at all, or sat a small bit more to the right, we would have seen the familiar symbols spray painted on the walls of all the nearby buildings, or maybe we could have looked up a bit higher, and seen all the birds move to the roof of the one unmarked building- the hospital. I doubt Sanae would make anything of it, of course, but if I had known back then, this would be a completely different story.

It didn't take long for the bus to arrive, but the time was spent in an uncomfortable silence after about a minute of talking. "Finally! My back was starting to hurt on these metal seats," she broke the silence, "You comin'?"

She extended her hand to help me up, seeming to notice how different I had been acting today. She helped me out of the seat, and we got on the bus. Sanae fiddled with her lanyard for a bit, and put it bus route was the same, through the market district, and to the older district of town, with more stone architecture and less stores, the few there were much more specific.

Cobblestone paths and walkways replaced sidewalks, and the roads were better maintained than the newer city in places. Cars were less common here. Sanae and I got off at the second to last stop, the apartment complex where I'd spend the next month- no. The rest of the school year. This timeline was it. It had to be.

"Hmph!", she huffed, breaking me from my thoughts, "I've never been over here before. It's pretty nice here! I was always nervous around all that glass."

"Wow, Homura. Your place is pretty nice." Sanae plopped down onto one of the long red couches in the living room, after having checked all the other rooms. The fridge wasn't stocked, but we were going shopping soon. Same model of computer in the bedroom. The same house, with the same pendulum swinging above us as we sat and talked.

Of this whole day, this was the first time I had really seen Sanae. She had short her hair, light and bright, tied back into a braided bun. Her eyes were both a striking cloudberry and deep ming, with red glasses, a bit like the ones I used to was alot taller than me, even sitting, and wore a dark blue windbreaker jacket with an orange jewel on the lapel over jeans and a shirt that identified her as nursing staff. Her postures were very overtly friendly and relaxed all the time, but her head seemed to be on a swivel in public, and you could see her eyes screen everyone she passed. Interesting, at the least.

"Hey, Homura, want to get the food now, so you can really get settled in? I don't think either of us have eaten all day."

"Oh, uh... sure." On cue, my stomach growled and reminded me of how badly I'd overslept compared to normal. Maybe that's a sign though. This won't be a normal timeline.

"Great! I make a killer omurice, you know." She called back, already en route to the door.