She activated the engine start within her ship. Her smile was filled with calm.
It was finally time. Time to find Madoka.
T-Minus ten seconds.
She was hailed as the youngest astronaut of their age. That was not strictly true. She had lived about a hundred years. And that was only in this particular reality. She remembered, imperfectly, vaguely, other lives. Many other lives. Lives that, combined with this one, were far longer than any human life. The eldest astronaut, perhaps.
Nine seconds.
She realized that she was still seen, and that they were probably expecting her to be nervous. Expecting her heart to race. She forced a nervous giggle. But she was not afraid.
Eight seconds.
She knew the correct star formation.
Seven seconds.
Time was slow for her. She suspected residual time magic, but she knew that that was gone just as her wish was, that her power had nothing to do with time and everything to do with arrows.
Six seconds.
Her leg twitched in anticipation.
Five seconds.
She remembered the camera again and shot a "V" at it with her fingers. She wondered how people would react to it. If they would find it cute or weird. If it would go viral.
Four seconds.
Would they see each other? Would light pollution render them mutually invisible? Would they be separated by a barrier? Would they be able to comprehend each other?
Three seconds.
She twisted the ribbon in her hand. The "red string of fate," to quote a cliche. Technically, a red string was supposed to connect two. Not connect one to another. But she supposed a goddess couldn't very well have a fate.
Two seconds.
Preparing had not been easy. She'd learned complex math and science, no small feat considering she had always hated math.
One second.
She exhaled.
We have liftoff.
It was fast. She broke through the atmosphere and quickly took manual controls. This was supposed to be a mission to Mars. She veered 15 degrees to her left. The radio spoke up.
Akemi-Sama! You are significantly off course! Please, adjust your trajectory-
She shut off communications.
She traveled forward. She did not keep track of the time she traveled. It seemed very fast that the fuel was depleted. She wasn't even close. This vessel had helped her break through the atmosphere, but it was useless now.
She did not bother with her special suit. She was a magical girl. She could not die of anything besides despair. And, here, she could never despair.
She opened the door. She left the shuttle behind. She felt the vacuum of space and felt slightly as if she was being sucked up in it, pulled apart by infinite greedy vacuums, wishing to become things rather than nothings. Nature abhors a vacuum and, as such, they tried to steal her matter so that nature would love and accept them, and their existence would be loved.
Nature abhors a vacuum. Technically untrue. That was Aristotle's theory. But modern scientists believe that the truth is far more mundane. That, in fact, vacuums are only hard to make because air does not wish to compress. It wishes to fill all of the space of the atmosphere equally, and that vacuums steal air's space. That it is a greedy something rather than a hated nothing that prevents discovery.
She transformed.
She was in nothing. She could see stars from a distance, but light pollution from her soul meant that finding one would be difficult, that it would be faded until she truly reached it. Fortunately, she already knew the direction to take. She knew Madoka's universal coordinates. She had placed together clues. She traveled in the proper direction.
She moved forward, and only paused when she saw something come close to her.
A light? Some sort of light? A moving star? No, that's not right. A rescue ship? No, she had surely been abandoned as dead.
But it was a ship.
And, suddenly, echoing in her mind:
Stop. You must not find what you're looking for.
She flinched. She knew that voice. That was an incubator.
The incubators had found her. And they didn't want her to find Madoka. She accelerated, but the ship was clearly gaining on her. Gaining on her far more quickly than she was approaching Madoka.
She had an idea.
She took her ribbon and laid it flat against her palm, kissing it before pinching it to be thin.
In her other hand, she retrieved her soul gem and held the end of the ribbon up to the tiny hole on the top of it.
It was a tight fit, and she mused that she wished she had a needle. But, even without one, she managed to fit the ribbon through the hole, stringing her soul gem nicely and double-knotting it with care.
She pulled at the two of them to test if they would break apart. This, of course, was purely a formality. The ribbon was unbreakable, and, obviously, her soul gem was not going to break.
She held her stringed soul in one hand as, with the other, she grabbed an arrow. Careful to ensure tightness, she knotted the ribbon to the arrow until it would not slide about the shaft. She grabbed her bow, and carefully placed the nock of her adjusted arrow tightly against the string.
The incubators could catch her body, but they could not catch an arrow, an arrow without air resistance, an arrow shot at maximum velocity, an arrow that was pointed in the direction she had aimed for.
She stretched her arm backwards.
She took aim, directly upward, toward it.
She waited for the energy, all of her energy to insert itself into this shot.
She waited longer than necessary. For once, she wasn't going to get a second chance.
One second.
She could only wait impatiently, wonder whether Madoka's power could restore consciousness or presence to her. Not that it mattered.
Two seconds.
The ship got closer to her.
Three seconds.
She remembered Sayaka. She remembered Kyoko. She remembered Mami. They had died. They had all died of some sort of loneliness. Homura, meanwhile, was never lonely and so she never died. She was never sure if she should be grateful for that.
Four seconds.
She brushed her finger against the ribbon. This would be the last time she would touch it with tactile hands.
Five seconds.
She supposed that she would be presumed tragically dead by her fans on Earth. She distantly hoped they would not blame themselves or try to find glitches in their flawless launching equipment. But it was a bit too late to consider that, to consider them. They would be dead and forgotten soon enough, anyway.
Six seconds.
She thought of those poor vacuums. For about 2000 years, they were blamed for the inconsistencies of the world, when they were just powerlessly being bullied by gas laws.
Seven seconds.
She said goodbye to her human shell. She said goodbye to her hair, always flowing down her back like a cape, regal and dramatic as she liked. She said goodbye to her eternally flat chest. She said goodbye to her artificially healed eyes, eyes which were hardly hers. She said goodbye to the mole on her back, the hands that had served her, the mouth which she had barely used toward the end.
Eight seconds.
She suddenly thought of her parents. They had been dead for a long time now. They never really knew her. The girl that they knew was such a small, insignificant fraction of the girl she became. She envied them.
Nine seconds.
She knew she would not despair. As long as she went in the right direction, as long as she knew her destination, she would truly reach Madoka. And no matter how long that took, no matter how long she flew, soul alone, she could never feel any shade of despair.
Ten seconds.
She inhaled.
Fire.