Magical Girl Crusade chapter 3: Lunatic Blue
"This is a good example. The wide variety of her actions could not affect the primary attractor."
"What exactly is their word for it?"
"Fate. Its existence is necessary to keep the universes parallel."
"It serves us this time. The changes they made have not seem to taken effect at this point."
From that time on, Homura had always felt Kyubey's eye on her. This way wasn't at all as easy as she'd hoped. So much for her multiple experience. Sayaka being talked into the contract by Kyouko was something she would have never expected. This was pure madness. It was clear for her that Madoka would lose her friend sooner or later. Her heart sank as she thought back to this fork. Every single time Sayaka joined them it led to a disaster. Sayaka had always been a bad magical girl with suicidal tendencies. If Madoka should realize the only solution... If she asked Kyubey to bring her friend back... That would be the end of everything. It was Homura's last chance to save Madoka. Suddenly she felt so vulnerable.
She knew that Madoka's happiness depended on Sayaka. And that Sayaka's happiness depended on Kamijou Kyousuke - so she made desperate efforts to ensure the happiness of Sayaka. She didn't think highly of the violinist guy, but she tried everything to make them a couple. She and Madoka invited them to the cinema, to the café, to a concert. She hid love letters in their lockers. Nothing seemed to help though, Kyousuke seemed to be immune to Sayaka. What's more, he was definitely annoyed by those letters. The "love potion" Homura mixed had no effect at all. She was desperate enough to warn Hitomi off the boy, but she couldn't obtain anything but the strange looks of the green haired beauty. From that time on Hitomi was sure that Homura had gone crazy and she wasn't alone in her opinion. No matter how her classmates had admired Homura after she transferred, now most of them agreed that she was a weirdo. Sayaka was confident she wanted to trick her. Only Madoka was standing by the raven-haired girl, and, for the first time in her endless sequence of replays, Mami sympathized with her. She was glad for that, Mami had always been a good ally once she overcame the shock of becoming aware of their situation. Though they needed Peter's help to free Homura from the choking ribbon and Olivia to hold Mami until she calmed down, the blonde girl could get over it without killing any of them. Asking the help of the Fringe Division proved to be a good idea for one more reason.
To be on the safe side she followed Sayaka whenever the blue-haired girl went on a hunt. In her pocket she always carried the tiny transmitter that Walter gave her. It was constantly sending data to the basement lab: it measured static charge, gravity, magnetic fields, radiation, and many other possible signs of impending tears in the structure of universe. She helped the old scientist but she was quite sure that he won't be able to help her with her latest problem. How could Sayaka's fall be stopped by science? Because the girl was apparently heading down: she fought carelessly, finished her battles beaten up, and apathetically tossed away the grief seeds she gained. She apparently could not endure drifting away from Kyousuke.
While Homura was tracking the blue-haired girl, she realised she wasn't alone. Sakura Kyouko was worried about Sayaka too, she followed her nervously chewing some taiyaki in the shadows. Homura felt like slapping her face for dragging Sayaka in the game, but she decided to keep hiding.
It was Kyouko who couldn't stand hiding anymore. She came forward and sat next to Sayaka. She was apparently trying to talk some sense into her, but she just made the situation worse. Homura saw the world darkening around them. They were at a subway station where the Sun never shines, and the lights started to dim and flicker. She was pondering if her intervention could help Sayaka or she'd just give her the final blow when she felt vibration in her pocket. Peter Bishop, the display read. She almost turned the phone off, but it was too late: the two other girls had already noticed her. She decided to accept the call. The man sounded upset in the phone.
"Though we received increasingly suspicious data from your sensor, what we see now is really scary! Walter suspects that you're close to a potential vortex. Do you hear us? We know your position, we traced your phone. Stay where you are, we'll be there in a few minutes!" Peter told her.
"Give me some time!" She shouted in the microphone, but the call had already been disrupted. She put the phone away.
"Show me your soul gem!" She scowled at Sayaka.
The blue-haired girl sulkily obeyed. Homura was not surprised by the sight, she had seen it many times, but Kyouko was shocked by the bottomless darkness inside the gem.
"You need a grief seed, now!" Homura asserted. "Kyouko, do you have a spare?" She asked.
Kyouko emptied her pockets without question. She unfolded a crinkly Pocky bag, and shook a little black gem out of it: the remnant of a former witch. She handed it to Sayaka. The blue-haired girl knocked it out of Kyouko's hand. The gem bounced all along the platform and stopped at the edge.
"Stop playing the saint. I know that no one cares about me, there's no need to boost your egos by 'helping' me." Sayaka mocked.
"Kyouko, you feel guilty for roping me in this magical girl game. You're being arrogant. It was my decision, only mine! I regret it, but this is none of your business. Go away, I don't want to see you ever again!"
Her words petrified Kyouko. Now Sayaka turned to her raven-haired classmate.
"Homura, it's not because of me that you're here. You and your promises! You're just a samurai! A mercenary! Madoka's cute little terminator!" She spat. "I know that she's the only reason you want to help me. Spare yourself the trouble, I'll be fine alone, thanks. She had always been my friend but you took her away in a few weeks! Go to hell and take her with you!"
Homura tried to protest, but even she did not believe her own words. Sayaka laughed at her with watery eyes.
Suddenly, the underground structure shook around them. The grief seed rolled over the edge and fell between the rails, but even Kyouko let it go. Sayaka's frantic laughter echoed from the walls, the benches tore off the floor and started to float, the walls began to melt here and there.
"My God, what the hell is this?" Kyouko shouted. The stone tile she was standing on started to rise and lift her up. She jumped off, but her feet did not touch the ground.
"This is what I tried to tell you back then!" Homura answered.
The scenery had changed. They were standing in a concert hall, the seats were occupied by hundreds of cartoony Madokas, Kyoukos and Hitomis. Ghostly violinists played the eerie background music for their rhythmic applause. And something horrible was lying on the stage. It lashed at the orchestra with its fish's tail then it pushed its weight into the air with its two armored arms, and floated toward the two girls.
Kyouko was floating helplessly, mesmerized by the approaching monstrosity. Homura shook her, but she kept on staring at the horror's three empty eye sockets.
"What's this...?" She mumbled. Homura could hardly understand.
"This is Sayaka!" The raven-haired girl shouted at her. At last Kyouko shook her head.
"We must save her! There must be a way to turn her back!" The redhead cried through the insane cacophony. At last she had come around.
An immense sword smashed the floor at their feet. The abomination was rearing over the girls. Kyouko did not give up. She held up her soul gem.
"She's a witch now, isn't she? If you can cleanse your soul gem with a grief seed, why couldn't it work the other way around?" She shouted.
It was a lunatic idea. It never even had come into Homura's mind, but now she was desperate enough to give it a try. Her hands moved by themselves as she grabbed the small gem which contained her real self. They trained their soul gems at the witch and charged at her.
A pitch-black wheel impacted between them. The explosion threw them away like rag dolls. Kyouko dropped her gem, which disappeared amid the debris. She started to dig after it, scared to death, flinging concrete chunks behind her back. A few dozen more wheels targeted her. She was pondering her options. One was to evade the wheels and possibly lose her gem. The other was to keep on digging and probably die. She chose the second. Her own caricatures were laughing at the death-trap she was sitting in.
Nerve-racking buzzing broke the cacophony. Kyouko covered her ears in pain. The approaching wheels exploded into thousands of splinters and the whole stage shattered. The orchestra and the audience fell silent, or her hearing failed her. But she could still hear that ghastly buzzing with her covered ears... it was climbing to shrieking heights, stayed there for a brief moment then suddenly stopped. A tripod was standing before Homura, holding a longish, rotating... blur. Next to it a knee-high pile of bullet casings.
'Holy God, does a weapon like this exist?' Kyouko shuddered.
Homura took aim again and fired; The weapon's whine climbed to a painful shriek, cruelly indifferent to it's merely human wielders. The stream of bullets traced a line of ruin across the monster's flesh; Bloody gobbets of pulverised meat rained down on the girls as remorseless fire sawed the witch in half. It's severed tail falling to the floor, still twitching to suddenly meaningless impulses.
Homura dashed to Kyouko and grabbed her hand. Suddenly the shreds froze in the air.
"We must run, they've already arrived!" She shouted. "Don't worry about your gem, I've found it! And don't release my hand if you don't want to die!"
Kyouko dazedly staggered behind the raven-haired girl. She did not really care what would happen to her, just took step after step mechanically. The floor she was treading on, the walls that surrounded her, everything had frozen into bizarre waves, just to mock her senses. She could see a group of motionless people in chemical protective suits installing a bomb-like metal cylinder near the escalator. Suddenly they started to move. The spell had broken, they fell back into the flow of time.
"Civilians in the tunnel!" Someone exclaimed.
They were hustled out of the station by uniformed people. As they approached the surface they heard the car-mounted speakers repeating the same message.
"This is an evacuation warning! This is your mayor speaking. 7th Avenue subway station is closing indefinitely. Preventive chemical operation will be commenced at 19:00. Every citizen must leave the area between the street numbers 457 and 686. After 19:00 we can not guarantee your safety! For compensation you can apply to the Mayor's Office. I repeat, this is an evacuation warning..."
They finally got released behind a black van.
"At last we found you!" A woman said from inside the cargo space. Olivia jumped out of the van. She wore a camouflage uniform and something resembling a diving mask.
Homura froze. She gestured silence to the woman, then pointed to Kyubey who was snooping around the cars.
"Don't worry, we can see him too, thanks to Walter." Olivia placed one hand on the girl's shoulder while she waved with the other. The little creature tumbled over, bounced a few meters then did not move anymore. A few drops of some red liquid oozed out of the gaping hole in his head.
"The snipers have these too." The woman pointed at her diving mask.
"We must get out of sight, he'll be here again soon!" Homura exclaimed while running. She was still dragging Kyouko by her hand. "We'll all be at the lab tomorrow!"
Olivia nodded.
The girls stopped in an alley a few blocks away.
"What the hell is going on?" Kyouko panted.
"Quarantine." Homura moaned. "That's done it..."
"You know them." Kyouko stated.
"I wanted you to meet them." The raven-haired girl answered.
"And they gave you that... what was that? OK, I don't want to know."
"I haven't the foggiest. Some Massive Dynamic invention."
They kept standing with their eyes cast down. Both girls were blinking and wiping their eyes. It took a while to compose themselves, but... someone just had to utter the words. They raised their eyes at once and exchanged a look.
"How can we tell Madoka about this?"