Phantasm Machine

v0.9

[Namibia, Central Plateau, near Hochfeld]

After a long journey the two girls were finally standing at the foot of the thick concrete wall, surrounded by piles of instruments and tufts of colorless, dead grass, uncomfortably exposed to the prying eyes. Fortunately the guards were occupied with running around at the other side of the building, shooting at anything that moved. Before they climbed in Homura carefully shot down every camera, but their darkness was still revealing enough. She hoped that things would go as planned and the security wouldn't find anything a few minutes later but their equipment, fried with overload. Walbey was confident that no one would repair these machines here in the middle of the savanna.

The girls took off their uniforms, hid their braids under the hoods of their skin-tight hydrophobic overalls and took on their full-face respirator masks. They made sure not to show even the tiniest spot of bare skin then activated the resonator. This contraption was the very reason they had had to repeatedly sit through Walbey's performance with a bowl of rice, starring a plastic figurine dressed as a magical girl.

Homura felt a bit uncomfortable as she watched the black haired, armed figurine sinking under the surface of the rice where it had been firmly standing a few seconds before. Beethoven's music made the whole scene even more surrealistic.

"What we perceive as solid matter is mostly empty space. Just like we perceive that a life is full, when it's only filled with daily routine! But the right vibration will upset this life, and you'll find yourself buried under the things you had swept under the carpet."

"Walbey!"

The two girls looked anxiously at the old scientist hidden in the body of a little animal.

"Don't worry, I'm on the surface! But you will sink exactly the same way. Not in life, because you're there for each other to fill the space between atomic nuclei, but in solid concrete, because we'll persuade its particles to get out of your way!"

Homura dipped a twig in the concrete first at the middle of the ring they mounted on the wall. Incredibly, their method seemed to work: the piece of wood easily slipped in the wall, making concentric waves. As she pulled it out it was covered with a thin layer of concrete which solidified before it could have dripped down.

"Of course you can't run into a wall like this, without protective equipment! It would be a terrible waste to ruin your hair with concrete, Homura... it was bad enough to mangle it when I cut you out of the amber!"

The girl was pretty sure that it wasn't their only reason to wear these diving suits but she had rather not inquired. She was already in the concrete with both her arms prodding the edges of the liquid tunnel in the wall. Her fingertips were tingling as they touched the vibrating matter. She had to reach in shoulder deep to hit the other side. According to Walbey they had about one minute to get across, so she shot a quick glance at Madoka and splashed headfirst into the wall. She couldn't see anything but thick darkness through her mask's visor even though she perceived this form of the concrete thinner than water. She felt vibration and warmth throughout her body then she saw the light on the other side of the wall and hopped out. She sprang up quickly and reached for Madoka's hand to help her through. As soon as they both were inside she tore off her mask and gloves which were now covered in concrete. When Madoka got rid of her dirty gear Homura unzipped her overall and pulled out a syringe and an ampule. To her surprise Walbey had advised to increase her dose and now she injected herself with this larger amount of Cortexiphan hoping that the old scientist was right. Perhaps her nervous system did really need this extra help against foreign magic and it would also possibly help her dealing with her own.

She felt Madoka's gaze and she smiled at her before zipping back the overall covering the clearly visible scar the doctors left for her as a reminder of her former cardiac self.

They heard booted feet approaching. It could have been a whole little squad. What they had feared now happened. Just because they had sneaked in an impossible way they didn't disappear from the eyes of the guards. Homura tapped the wall where they had entered and found the concrete rock solid again, only a few rings of slight waves indicated that it wasn't intact. Apparently their instruments had already given up their fight against the laws of physics. The way behind their backs was safely sealed, they didn't have to expect any attack from there. Madoka crouched behind a row of shelves and cocked her pistol while Homura prepared to take out the squad silently, without a single shot. She hoped that the increased dose would be effective enough.

A spray of submachinegun bullets turned the door into Swiss cheese. "These guys aren't joking", Homura noted. She didn't plan to, either. The door slammed open and guns pushed inside to dispatch anyone waiting by the entrance, but Homura had already slipped into a different world by then. It wasn't the frozen gray she used to see as a magical girl, but a reddish, murky one. This world answered her moves, but everything happened slowly, even voices were dull and low-pitched in here. Her body could follow her senses, but every collision and quick turn warned her painfully about the laws of physics her magic couldn't cancel.

She could still impress Madoka as she disarmed and knocked out the four guards in a few seconds. Normally it wasn't her job to fight human opponents but she had more than enough experience from earlier: the girls had often got at each other's throat during that broken month and in these fights Homura couldn't rely on her guns and explosives which were designed to kill. Then in the last few years she had often sparred with Kyouko who was proud of her strength and agility. The redhead taught quite a few things to Madoka too, but she liked the challenge in her matches with the black haired girl the most.

"I don't even know why I'm here, Homura-chan!", Madoka smiled when the other girl flopped down at her side. She knew that Homura was dead beat, gloomy and her limbs ached - it was the side effect of using her magic. Madoka took her into her arms and stroked her face before they both would get up and set off to explore the Power Station. She knew that it wasn't enough to recover Homura but she couldn't do more for her at the moment.

Now that they were inside they could clearly feel Kyuoko's signature. Madoka could even tell that she was somewhere deep underground.

Then, as they stepped into the next corridor, they heard the lock clicking behind their backs. The door ahead locked itself the same way.

"If you want to get something done, never hand it over to idiots!", an unknown female voice spoke from the walls. "They'd have shot you dead if they could, even though they were told that we need you two alive."

This was the moment when Homura realized that she heard something else in the background: a silent, insidious hiss. She cursed their thoughtlessness for throwing away their respirator masks that could still have possibly been used despite being covered in concrete. Then, before she could have said anything she collapsed together with Madoka.

Sakura Kyouko sat down on a crate, as content as she could be in her current situation. Her new 'magically' camouflaged hideout was complete. She disappeared from everyone's eyes, assembled an own terminal to connect the security system and found the most interesting cameras in the building. She even placed new cameras in this new tunnel in the labs' vicinity. She had a plan to get her friends out of the pinch they were in. While preparing she kept an eye on them as they were lying there, strapped on their tables. She watched as Homura, putting every gentleness aside, tried to murder the doctors who tied them down with their own scalpels and needles. Then the chemicals they pumped in her arm took effect and she couldn't even move a speck of dust with her mind anymore.

Kyouko saw some more doctors carrying their injured colleagues out of the small room and a bit later Jones appeared in person. She knew that it was time to take action. She had to secure a few things from the nearby laboratory so she left her display alone and set off through the tunnels. Nyameka followed her until the first fork then they split up to do their own part in the plan.

Homura and Madoka were lying strapped to a pair of tilted operating tables. They were too dangerous to let them move freely in a locked cell or use their abilities. Their captors seemed to exactly know what the girls were capable of, but it wasn't much of a surprise at this place. An insane cocktail was flowing in their veins blocking their drug-inflicted powers so they couldn't even exchange messages through their thoughts. Their tables were turned so they could see the only door in the room. There was a large mirror next to the door – probably transparent from the backside.

A sinister compilation of medical tools laid on a small table before them, now fixed. The scalpels, bone saws and other similar objects were probably there to remind them how helpless and vulnerable they were without their abilities. Even the quiet knocking on the door could serve the same purpose – or it might have been a habitual mannerism of the man who just entered. He just sneered, showing them his incomplete set of teeth. It was an answer to their expression that showed terror and recognition.

"So you recognize me. It has been the same for a while.", he mocked them with pretended sadness in his voice. "I hope you won't say that you saw me die."

David Robert Jones aged remarkably and was in worse shape than on any records they had seen of him. His festering face was mostly covered in bandages, his tawny hair mixed with gray and missing in tufts. He was glaring at them twinkling with one eye, with a trace of a smirk in the corner of his mouth. With calculated steps he walked to the small table and carefully took a needle. The girls kept silent.

"You're right. We can save the introduction. We've met each other many times. However, I probably wouldn't be here if I'd have ever seen you from this close, Kriemhild Gretchen."

This was the moment when their blood ran cold. They had never, ever mentioned this name to anyone. In this last, permanent timeline it didn't even exist outside Homura's nightmares.

Jones tore off the sleeve of Madoka's overall and drew a few drops of blood in a test tube, then he did the same to Homura.

"Ironically, it's impossible for you two to give your blood for each other. So you'll have to bear with me a little longer.", he shared the result of the blood type test with the girls. "It doesn't matter, we can solve it in a minute. We have many other things to do anyway."

And he quickly cut Homura's clothes off her torso and arms. He stuck another needle in her arm to draw much more blood than a minute before. While the blood pack was slowly filling he attached electrodes to all over her skin and connected them to a computer. Homura didn't even flinch at his gloating gaze but Madoka's face distorted with anger as she saw the other girl so naked and vulnerable. The fluorescent lamps started to flicker and one of them exploded into a rain of sparks.

"Congratulations! Under different circumstances I'd be perfectly satisfied with this result.", Jones smirked. "But now it's a simple nuisance, so please stop it. I can assure you that this is the most you can achieve. My colleagues have already blocked the Cortexiphan in your system. But I might draw too much blood from this other lovely young lady if you keep distracting me."

Then he removed the needle from Homura's arm and dripped a little bluish liquid in the blood sample. The blood separated into thin, colorful layers in an instant. Jones slowly sucked up the downmost dark layer with a large syringe then pumped it all in Madoka's arm.

It was Homura's turn to grit her teeth and try to break, tear or burn through her shackles - without any success. Jones glanced at the display with great satisfaction.

"Homulilly, the dependable, beautiful flower of this mortal world. Or I should say calculable instead?"

Homura couldn't take it anymore. She knew that Jones had no scruples and his words terrified her. She couldn't have known yet it wasn't difficult for her to figure out the meaning of the sinister name.

"What do you want from us? Release Madoka, she's not what you think! She has never been a magical girl! If you want Cortexiphan magic I'm here to show you everything!"

Jones simply ignored her. He filled a syringe with dark gray liquid and injected Homura with it, keeping an eye on the display. After several unnerving seconds he finally answered.

"I do exactly know who Kaname Madoka is and I have no intention of releasing her. And I don't care about your magic. I merely want you to work together with an alter ego of yours. Should you resist... I can do anything to your adorable girlfriend. And you'll feel everything accurately because you two are closer than anytime before."

"Don't listen to him, Homura-chan! They won't do anything to me, they need me alive!", Madoka screamed. She began to grasp what was going on.

She earned a slap in the face from Jones.

"Do you think so?", he asked with a wicked, crooked smile. "I'm curious how happy she'd be if she only received little pieces of her very living Madoka."

The hit made Homura see the stars. Then a cut followed, the scalpel tore through Madoka's clothes and skin. Homura felt the blade cutting into her own body, right at her scar above her heart. But knowing that it was Madoka's pain was much worse than the pain itself. She winced trying to slip out of the cuffs, but she felt so weak, so tired. The whole world became a blur.

"Do you understand now?"

Jones took her chin in his hand and looked into her eyes from a few inches. The asymmetric gaze of his bloodshot, cataractic eyes hypnotized the girl, the sight of his purulent boils was choking her. She felt dizzy as her thinned out blood partly let go of her soul. The drug in her system had already started to make everything dreamy and illogical, turning the world into a more hopeless nightmare than her worst battles against Walpurgis. Deep inside she was filled with Madoka's dread. Madoka feared for her. Madoka shouldn't have been here.

The other girl felt what was going on inside her. What Kyouko had only heard about they could experience first hand. This chemical was called 3D for a reason. This deep dark despair would have been a deadly poison to any magical girl that couldn't immediately cut the link to her body. It seemed incredibly efficient at raising witches. "We are worse than Incubators", Madoka thought bitterly. Someone had said to her that science was no more evil than the ends it was used for - but this piece of science looked impossible to use for anything, other than evil purposes.

"Let Madoka go... please...", Homura begged. "I'm the one you need... I don't mind dying in here as long as you let her go!"

The Homura Madoka knew was perfectly aware that it would never work. But now she was in a different world that worked by dream logic. Madoka knew only one thing: she had to call her back from there. But what would she do in such a dream world?

"Never say such things, Homura-chan! I won't go anywhere without you!", she shouted.

Jones ignored her. He eyed the monitor with great satisfaction, and pressed a few buttons on the remote controller he had been hiding in his pocket. The walls folded themselves in a few seconds.

Their small room proved to be a mere corner of a much larger one. Computers covered the walls, lab-coated staff walked among the machines. The center of the hall was dominated by the metal framework of a mysterious contraption which was half standing on the floor, half hanging from the ceiling. Two pairs of metal arms reached for something – or more probably someone – to grab. The girls had never seen anything like this before.

"Commence the synchronization please!", Jones ordered. Two lab assistants removed the electrodes from the dark haired girl's skin, unfastened her straps and lifted her into the machine. The metal arms tightly clamped themselves on her legs and arms. Homura expected pain but she couldn't feel anything but slight tingling. She could hardly focus her eyes, she could only see random details until her gaze fixed on a bald man in a fedora hat. He seemed studying her through his binoculars. So they were here too. The things that happened to her seemed to be interesting to someone. To someone else, because Homura didn't care.

Madoka couldn't see the mysterious Observer. Her table was set up so she and Homura had a clear view on each other. Jones seated himself on a chair between the two girls and began to speak.

"It'll take a while so I tell you a story. Of course I wouldn't make a mistake like sharing my plans with you two if it didn't benefit me. You have probably figured out that I'm not from this world. But you can't possibly know how long I had to travel to get here. You could have heard about me, perhaps you've seen me once... but I've met countless versions of you two. You were the reason I had to leave my world. Kriemhild Gretchen was the best motive to find a new universe because she had simply devoured the one I've come from and innumerable others."

"And you are the reason I'm right here.", he turned to Homura. "I had been following your trace through more than forty timelines before I lost you. But I've found you again! Look, what this repeated crossing between universes has done to me!"

Jones reached into his own mouth and plucked one of his remaining teeth with ease.

"One day I'll literally fall apart! But before that day I'll find what I'm looking for and you're going to help me. I know that you would do anything for Kaname Madoka. I've seen enough, you've already done impressive things. Mitakihara burning in nuclear fire was a perfect memento of your determination."

Jones scanned the display again. The readings earned a head shake from him this time.

"I see a tiny little flaw. A speck of... hope. But life is cruel. I'll crush this last hope of yours!", he taunted the girl. Then he raised his voice. "Meuko, show us the record number 170507-G346!"

The closest display switched to the view of a security camera. They could see the red-haired ex-magical girl on it, sneaking towards a door. Then she tried to tear it open, choking, retching, then falling to the floor. It didn't take more than a few seconds. Two guards entered in gas masks and dragged the motionless body out of the camera's sight. The familiar method was quick and efficient. And indeed, the girls' dulled senses couldn't catch Kyouko's signature anywhere nearby. Had she really been killed just as quickly and cruelly as they were captured?

"Was it worth becoming an ordinary human again for Sakura Kyouko? She caused us some loss, but what did she gain in return? As a magical girl she could have casually walked around in the nerve gas. At least she could have stayed alive.", someone mused. This someone hadn't been in the room before. It was a small, white animal with a black mask around the eyes and dark rings on the tail: a mix of a cat and a raccoon. It had the same ever cheerful 'voice' as Kyubey.

Homura bowed her head in defeat, but Madoka didn't give up. She kept fighting for the both of them against the horror of this abominable alliance between human and Incubator. She thought she knew what was going on but it didn't make her any happier.

"At least she hasn't turned into a witch!", she said through her gritted teeth. She tried to feel out their captors' true intentions. "She won't curse anyone, won't make tears in the universe, and her friends won't have to fight her! She has long thrown away her soul gem, just like Homura-chan! And I have never had one. You're barking up the wrong tree!"

"Are you sure?", the cheerful little creature asked.

She was overwhelmed by cold fear as the Incubator confirmed her suspicion. She prayed that these two had been bluffing. She felt the despair deepening in Homura. She knew that a part of the other girl's soul smeared outside her body as the transfused magnets were drawing it towards Madoka. She realized that it probably wasn't a mere torture: Homura, halfway out of her body, became more similar to the magical girl she used to be.

"Target universe has been locked! Switching to fine tuning.", Meuko reported. The Device began to buzz and covered Homura in bluish light.

Jones wouldn't stop smiling for a second. He and the furry alien fit perfectly, in a horrible way.

"Finally you can see my creation working! Walter Bishop isn't the only one who can build this device.", he boasted. "And even he doesn't know how many ways it can be used. It can even manipulate the Primary Attractor which determines the distance of parallel universes. It can separate or draw worlds closer changing everything in one or both of them. Without it I was doomed to pass from neighbor to neighbor, but these close worlds were too similar so they all have been absorbed by Kriemhild Gretchen. This is the first that gave me enough time to build the Device with the Incubators' help, but this one is gradually disintegrating just like me. But now we have locked this machine on a completely different universe, one that hasn't been destabilized by trespassers or witches.

Madoka looked herself and Homura up and down.

"But if it was your goal why have you gone such length? What was killing Kyouko-chan, tying up and hurting Homura-chan good for?"

The image on the display kept sharpening. It showed an alien structure in a vast desert. It was a tall pillar with a lying figure under a half-open dome on the top.

"A few years ago we received a multiversal distress signal from a dying world where our parallels' energy collection methods failed in a different way. The witches of that universe disappeared like they had never existed.", the Incubator answered in Jones' stead. "Back then it was the least of our concerns, but when Mr. Jones found us we recognized the opportunity. We don't mind if Mr. Jones wishes to spend his short life in a world without witches, our goals are common. We want to study that world so that we can work out an efficient alternative method in the light of the worlds' common characteristics. But universes are like stars. They sparsely fill the imaginary space, condensed into galaxy-like clusters. The one we are looking for is hidden among the trillion other worlds of a distant cluster. We're trying to find a needle in a haystack, as you humans would say. Fortunately the world's description contained Akemi Homura as a key element, so we can use her as a filter. Universes with the right spectrum 'glow' through her, given that she's in the right state."

The displays were closing on the lying figure. Without doubt it was the other world's Homura, clad in her magical girl dress, lying with closed eyes under a lightly rippling force field. A becoming, sleek bow with black roses was lain across her chest and there was a black soul gem floating above her. Like she was lain out on a catafalque, even though the Incubators around her wouldn't probably have done such a thing.

"A few worlds may collide during the synchronization as the clusters are relatively dense. But this risk is worth taking if the result can help a number of universes, isn't it, Akemi Homura?", the alien wagged its tail.

A single, little detail of the other world filled the screens by now: the pitch black, cracked soul gem, obscenely screwed to a pair of floating metal bands. This was the reason for breaking Homura: to make her guide the Device to this gem.

The machine was buzzing louder and louder. Amethyst glow surrounded the girl in the clutch of its arms, her hair fluttered in an invisible storm as it broke loose from the twin braids. Electric sparks sprayed from the tips of her tresses and joined the radiant discharges between the walls, forming a mandala with a glowing number five. This surely didn't belong to the Device's normal operation.

The sight of the lumious number terrified Madoka. She had already seen something like that. Everything made perfect sense now. It couldn't be an ordinary witch. Those karmic threads that made her so incredibly dangerous tied Homura too. How could these two, despite their vast knowledge, have no idea of what they were toying with?

Four.

"Halt!", Jones raised his index finger. "Meuko, cut the connection!"

Nothing happened apart from the countdown reaching three.

"We'll talk about this later. Now I have something more important to do."

And he picked up the Incubator and raised it to eye level.

"You have just said that there are no witches in that universe. How can you explain this countdown apart from opening a gateway to a class seven labyrinth?"

The countdown switched to two, up in the air and down on every screen at once.

"Our species doesn't understand the concept of what you humans call lying. I told you the truth. They really don't have any witches. Some unknown force stops them from being born. This is why the native Incubators created the isolation field that prevents any outside influence. Naturally we are connecting to the closed space as we used Akemi Homura in the tuning process."

A burning number one was floating in the air. Jones threw the alien down and started to punch the buttons on the control panel with maniac speed. The arms of the Device finally let go of the girl who fell on all fours to the floor. But he couldn't achieve anything else.

"Meuko, detach the connection!", he demanded.

"Request denied.", the speaker answered.

"Administrator acc...", Jones began but a sizeable tomato quickly silenced him, splashing on his face.

"Gott ist tot!", the assailant mocked at him. Homura jerked up her head and looked at the child with eyes widened in terror. She recognized her from her nightmares: a red-haired little girl wearing a funeral dress with a tiny hat and veil and a creepy grin full of pointy teeth. The child was dangling her feet from the top of a computer and held a new tomato in her hand.

Dancing runes covered every flat surface: the walls, the displays, the paper sheets, the side of every machine. Witches sent their messages to their lost victims this way and the two girls had seen enough of them to read anything without their helmet computer's subtitling. They knew that soon enough they would see the cruelest live explanation to the name Jones called Homura.

A wave of radiant red spider lilies ran through the floor and the walls and turned the hall into a huge flower bed. In a last effort the dark haired girl forced herself to wade through the flowers to Madoka's table. Someone helped her up and supported her on the way, but being afraid of losing sight of the other girl she didn't even look at her helper. Finally she reached Madoka and their hands intertwined. The shackles disintegrated to a bunch of golden ribbons at the touch of the helping hand.

Homura rested her head against Madoka's shoulder and finally let her tears trickle down her face. She was close to losing consciousness. Now that they were no longer (or, perhaps, not yet) in imminent danger Madoka couldn't help but looked around jealously while trying to wrap Homura back in her torn clothes. The expensive high-tech fabric couldn't even conceal the slight breasts from the public eyes anymore. After a second of hopeless struggle Madoka gave up and with a resigned sigh she took Homura in her arms as ragged as she was. Then she just stayed like that, stroking the other girl's long, flowing tresses along her back.

A/N: ...according to my original plans the story would have finished somewhere around the end of this chapter and it would have happened quite differently. I needed Rebellion as an incentive and source of inspiration to re-shape the whole thing and continue, and I'm much more pleased with the way it turned out. A normal villain isn't fit as the final enemy of a Madoka story, is it? This world is not about such things anyway. The story shouldn't be, either.

Tags: Akemi Homura, Kaname Madoka, Walbey, David Robert Jones, Empty Atoms, Cortexiphan, 3D, Time Manipulation Magic, Parallel Universes, Kyouko Dies for a Short While, Homura Undresses (for Science), Wave Sink Device, Different Blood Types, Rebellion, Cotton Candy with Two Sticks, Lycoris Radiata, Gott ist Tot

The expression Homura didn't look for was red shift.