Disclaimer: Puella Magi Madoka Magica is owned by its owners, not me.
A/N: Hi.
Stories describing alternative bad endings for "Madoka" seem to be pretty popular, and most of them suck, and this one is no exception. But such stories still have to be written, to highlight and accentuate the quality and ingenuity of the canon ending. So yeah.
Let's begin.
Absolute Despair
Never before Walpurgisnacht had so much fun. For the enormous upside-down witch it was the best day ever, as she was finally able to unleash her full power, and her tiny plaything still managed to survive, entertaining and tickling her with explosives. She laughed, turning and turning, the giant rusty gears in her dress spinning counter to the rotation of her body. Her familiars swarmed around, turning the city into a beautiful ruined landscape with their red energy blasts.
Skyscrapers merrily floated through the air. It was fun.
For Akemi Homura, however, it was no fun at all. Her options were quickly running out, and the witch was nowhere near death. The collapsing bridge has torn the dress of the laughing monster a little, but this was it.
Homura bit her lip. Ok, one more try. It's not over yet. She had to succeed. This time, she had to succeed.
Homura rotated her buckler and the gears inside whirred. The world turned monochrome and the time stopped, just as usual. The girl ran down the river dock, past the giant boulders frozen in air, to a warehouse where her ultimate weapon was hidden.
Her heels clattered on the wooden floor of the storage shack. An amorphous form, covered in military canvas. She pulled the sheet away.
An operational type 45 howitzer, stolen from the history museum. It took almost a week to plan the theft and get the truck to wheel the artillery piece away. It took another week to get the required 240 mm shell from the military base. It took two full days to load it and crank the barrel to a required level.
It took less than a second to pull the trigger rope.
Time resumed its course. An explosive shell shot out, a blast that nearly deafened Homura. The shell hurtled over the river, connecting with the grinning face of Walpurgisnacht and knocking the floating monster off-balance, into an empty building where layers upon layers of satchel charges were placed beforehand. Eight days of grueling, thankless labor.
Homura pulled out a detonator and pressed the button. This time it had to work. It had to…
Half of the skyscraper fell into the river at angle, and the girl was nearly crushed by the water wave, turning her buckler and stopping time just a fraction of second before that. She ran up the angled wall to the top.
Her device clicked and time started again. The explosives accepted the detonation signal and a chain reaction of blasts started around the knocked down witch. Clouds of concrete dust rose in the air.
Homura held her breath. This was it, the result of preparation she spent nearly the whole loop on, instead of keeping Sayaka, Mami, Kyoko alive. Three lives for a howitzer and a building full of explosives. A fair trade for Madoka. A fair trade if it would succeed.
It didn't.
Walpurgisnacht laughed, rising up and spinning, tearing a concrete cloud away. She finished her spin with a throw of a skyscraper.
Homura winced, grabbing her buckler again. She could still fight. She still had a few backup tricks up her sleeve. She still had…
Her sweat-drenched hand slipped, and the time control mechanism failed to turn. The skyscraper connected with her body.
:3
Homura came back to her senses, to the sound of cracking concrete around her. Something wet and warm was on her face, and it took her a few seconds to realize it was her own long hair, slippery and wet with her own blood.
She tried to move her arms, and found out she still could move one. Not bad for somebody whose whole body just turned to paste, she thought bitterly.
She pulled the hair away, and could now see where she was, on a roof of a crumbling office building, more than ten blocks away from a spinning Kaju–sized witch. From a distance, Walpurgisnacht looked absolutely unharmed, laughing happily just like nothing happened.
"Why," Homura whispered. "No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, I still can't defeat her, why? WHY?"
She tried to stand up, but her legs wouldn't move. She didn't feel pain, having learned long ago how to block it, but it still hurt, all the things she worked so hard for, shattered time and time again by the uncaring reality.
She started crying, tears mixing with the blood coming down from her forehead. The witch moved, slowly turning to the rhythm of her gears, leveling the buildings around her and slowly closing in.
"I have to try again," Homura said and despite her broken spine, leaned on the side and reached out to her buckler. Her numb fingers slipped. She tried again, and they slipped again.
"It's no use," she whispered, her tears falling onto the disk and disappearing between gears. "If I do it again, Madoka will only suffer more. Maybe it's time…"
Homura saw small particles of taint taking hold and spreading around her soul gem. It won't be long now, she thought. It wouldn't probably even hurt that much.
She leaned back and closed her eyes.
"Homura-chan…"
Someone gently touched her arm. And Homura didn't have to open her eyes to know who it was.
"You… you came to save me?"
"Yes," Madoka simply said, sitting beside the broken girl. Homura dared to open her eyes and saw Madoka smiling softly, a smile she hasn't seen for a long, long time. The taint in her soul was gone, blown away instantly by that smile.
Then, a gust of wind brought a fragment of insane laughter with it, breaking the reverie. Madoka, still smiling, stood up and to her horror Homura saw Kyubey at her feet, the white weasel bastard looking smug as ever.
"No! Madoka, don't do it!" Homura cried out, but the other girl didn't listen, stepping confidently forward. Then, she turned slightly, her smile now showing determination and strength.
"Homura-chan, I'm sorry. I'll have to become a magical girl to save you. To save everyone. Kyubey, I am ready to make the contract with you."
"Really? That's great!" Kyubey projected, tilting his head sideways, his face frozen as always. "And what is the wish you are going to sacrifice your soul for?"
Homura wanted to protest, but her words stuck in her throat, as a bright pink field appeared around Madoka. It grew brighter and brighter, and she saw Madoka taking a deep breath.
"I wish for every witch in past, present and future to be destroyed even before they are born. I wish for them to be destroyed by my own hand."
The glow spread, and became nearly painful to look at it. It latched into Kyubey, forming a link between him and Madoka. The creature took a step back.
"You can't wish for that! It will break the fundamental laws of the universe! It will break the laws of cause and effect!"
"It is my wish," Madoka said sternly, pointing at Kyubey. "And you must grant it. Now, fulfill my wish, Incubator!"
And then Kyubey projected a single word.
"No."
:3
The glow disappeared, snuffed out instantly. The wind howled, bringing with it laughter of the approaching witch. Madoka still stood, pointing at Kyubey. He tilted his head to the other side.
"W-what?" Madoka stuttered, losing her posture.
"No," Kyubey repeated. "I will not grant you this or any other wish, the potential energy release is too dangerous. You will remain human and die."
"But-but-but you must! You are obliged to! You…"
Homura couldn't see the face of Madoka, but she was absolutely sure the girl just broke into tears. Kyubey didn't seem to care in the slightest.
"I am not obliged to do anything for you. Wishes are just plot devices, to make things more interesting and dramatic for the viewers."
Madoka's hand trembled. Her whole body trembled. Tears fell down from her chin, tiny glistening droplets of suffering. Kyubey stepped closer, opening the flesh hatch on his back and allowing the drops to fall in.
"I… I don't understand…" Madoka said. "What are you talking about? What viewers?"
"The viewers of the reality snuff show "Absolute Despair of Primitive Species". Broadcast every twelfth cycle through kappa and omega planet clusters on third quantum frequency. It's quite popular, you know."
He closed the hatch and stepped back. Around him, strange translucent objects appeared in the air, circling around Madoka. One of the objects silently flew to Homura, and she saw, to her horror and disgust, that it was shaped like a tiny video camera.
"But… the entropy! You told me about the entropy!" Madoka shouted, not giving up yet. "And you told me your species are incapable of telling outright lies!"
"Of course, our advanced civilization is built only on trust and honesty," Kyubey projected, and Homura could swear the emotionless creature was being sarcastic. "Also, an idea of magical girls stopping entropy, how realistic. We build galaxy-sized antimatter quasar accelerators for that, and it is still only barely enough to slow it down to acceptable levels. Truly, your potential power is only surpassed by your naivety."
Madoka dropped on her knees, sobbing quietly. Kyubey scratched behind his ear appendage. Walpurgisnacht advanced another block, and was now only three blocks away.
"You told me Incubators were helping the humanity," Madoka managed to say through her sobs. "You told me I could have any wish. Why did you lie? Why?"
Kyubey didn't have shoulders, but he still managed to shrug somehow. "Why not? I was intrigued by your wish. It's too bad you accumulated critical potential power quantity so soon, I was hoping for a show to last a few more seasons. Maybe we should not have given away such a powerful time-manipulating device and go with simpler models."
"You monster!" Homura screamed, and pulled out a gun from under her buckler. She pointed it right between Kyubey's eyes, but the creature blinked and disappeared.
Something coiled around Homura's arm, a soft and mushy tentacle with a composition of dough. The gun was wrung away and Kyubey jumped over her, landing on the other side. He stepped on her buckler and the metal instantly cracked, gears spilling out like mechanical intestines.
Another blink, and Kyubey was again near the sobbing Madoka. He opened his back, and consumed the gun with a gulp, closing the flesh door behind the weapon.
"This was foolish and emotional," Kyubey stated. "Humans always allowed emotions to rule over them, and it never did your species any good. You were lucky we were around to pull you out of the middle ages and the third world war."
"You are a monster," Homura said again.
"No, I am not," Kyubey projected, waving his tail around. "It's just a job for me. Those who watch and enjoy the show about despair and death of young females of primitive species – those are deviants. And I am just a smooth liar who likes the taste of tears and has lots of cameras for taking good shots. I am not evil."
Walpurgisnacht was now one block away, and her laughter could be heard regardless of wind direction. She pulled another skyscraper out of the ground, and the building floated up, above her cracked and rusted gears, above her torn dress. She prepared to throw it.
"Now, I know you are a bit upset right now, but I'd like to ask you both to act naturally and make an emotional finale for me. We wouldn't want the ratings to suffer."
Homura picked up the largest stone near her and threw it at Kyubey. He didn't move, and the stone hit him in the face, creating a deep bloody gash near his right eye.
There was a pause, and it looked like Kyubey was about to say something, but he never did, just shook his head and jumped down from the roof, spreading his appendages to glide to an adjacent building. The cameras remained, orbiting the still kneeling and sobbing Madoka.
"Madoka…" Homura called out weakly, her own tears choking her. "Madoka, don't cry…"
"Homura-chan!"
Madoka jolted up, and ran to the prone girl, hugging her. The laughter of Walpurgisnacht was nearly unbearable, echoing and rebounding from every surface. She threw the skyscraper forward, and it flew through the air, towards the doomed girls.
"I'm sorry. I failed to protect you and now we are going to die but please, don't cry," Homura whispered, trying in vain to wipe away the tears from Madoka's face. With only one barely functioning hand it was nearly impossible, but still, she tried.
A shadow from the approaching skyscraper covered the stormy sky above. Homura didn't want for that to be the last thing she would ever see, so she instead looked down, at Madoka's teary face. Madoka looked up, and their eyes met.
"I… I will protect you, Homura-chan! No matter what happens, don't lose hope! I will—"
And in a deafening crash and a flash of red, it was over.
:3
That's all, folks! Join us next time on "Absolute Despair of Primitive Species"! The new, edgy, multi-episode story arc will feature:
15 teenagers, fresh out of their summer vacation!
1 Giant, enormous, almost half a mile tall soul sucking robot!
15x15 realities destroyed!
15 detailed and magnificently gruesome deaths for you to enjoy!
With our new host, Dung Beetle!
Absolute Despair of Primitive Species. When happy endings just aren't your thing.
:3