A Hero Chapter 2: The looping of time, a Doctor Who + Puella Magi Madoka Magica/魔法少女まどか★マギカ Crossover fanfic

All publically recognizable characters are property of their rightful owners.

This is a work of fan fiction, and seeks to draw no profit from its publication.

Before anyone asks, a "cell" is a Dalek unit of measurement used to measure size, roughly 1.25 meters. Made it up myself!

Had he been capable of such an inferior expression, Dalek Sec might have sighed. He was, once again, stuck.

He glowered at the incubator pod, resisting the urge to blast something to pieces on the pretext that he might actually hit something valuable. There was very little space in this basement, and all the equipment necessary was all clustered together into a few square cells.

So far, progress had been gratingly slow. He had been able to secure a location and some of the equipment, rigging up the hyperspace matter reconstructor on his self-repair system to produce the new casing, since human standards for technology were laughably inappropriate for the task.

Then he ran out of resources halfway through, and it all went downhill from there.

The half-built casing stood there, accusingly. It had almost no internal mechanisms, the life-support systems were an absolute mess, the eye-stalk was nearly blind, the control mechanisms were prone to lighting themselves on fire and the trans-solar disks kept reversing. Putting anything inside would be absolutely cruel.

Still, he was fairly confident in his ability to improvise anything, and since he had recently made a fully-stocked genetic laboratory out of spare parts and technology that humans of this time period would have considered woefully outdated, he hardly felt his confidence was unfounded.

He was partway through figuring out what the Thal kept setting the controls on fire when the ground decided to suddenly throw him into the air.

There was a whine of trans-solar disks, and he easily managed to keep himself upright.

Curious and angry (mostly angry) about what was happening outside, he hovered up the stairs and peered outside.

He stared.

Multiple sensory restarts failed to get rid of the sight of multiple buildings floating in midair. In the distance, a huge, upside-down humanoid wearing a dress whose lower body had been replaced by a stack of huge bronze gears hovered, explosions raging around her.

Dalek Sec recalled something from his meeting with the time traveller Homura Akemi. Walpurgis Nacht, queen of all witches.

He did not envy the Puella Magi, the energy readings were enormous.

Still, the thing wasn't looking his way, so it was probably safe to continue.

He was halfway down the stairs when he stopped.

He had not just thought of that, had he?

He had not just assumed that the universe would be kind to him for once, and he had most definitely not just invoked the law of disproportionate-retribution-for-confidence-he-should-not-have.

With an appropriate amount of dread neatly settled in its usual place, he hovered back to the window, and looked outside.

There was a swarm of familiars in the sky.

They were, more importantly, making a beeline for him.

And thus, Dalek Sec became the first of his species to swear out loud.

"SON-OF-A-THAL!"

Homura Akemi narrowly dodged an incoming building, and blocked a stream of dark purple light with her shield.

She was holding, barely. The witch had already sent her familiars against someone else. She did not envy whoever was on the receiving end of the swarm.

Her ordinance had already been expended against the uber-witch, and Walpurgis didn't even seem to have been scratched by it.

She really should have brought a lot more.

The next blow from the witch sent her flying into one of the buildings.

There was a sick, wet sound as her body slammed into the concrete. She managed to block the most of the pain racing towards her true body.

She saw shapes in the distance. Homura squinted, using her magic to force her eyes into working properly.

…Madoka?

And besides Madoka, she could barely make out a tiny white shape…

Incubator?

…no…

…No!

"No!"

She knew what was going to happen, what always happened. She had seen it a hundred thousand times.

She screamed all the same.

"Madoka!" She cried, Forcing this puppet body to empty its lungs.

"Don't make the contract!"

The distraction cost her dearly. A huge beam of eldritch energy threw her off her perch, and into the distant ground.

She screamed all the way down. At Madoka, at Kyubey, at the world, at everything.

Why couldn't she get it right just once?

She was only vaguely aware of an enormous flash of energy above her, before she hit the ground with a sick crunch.

"EX-TER-MINATE!"