Margin Note

Although both the median and mean ages for magical girls meet at fourteen years today, this was not always the case. The very first magical girl contracted at the age of six, although in her paltry years she had endured more than Methuselah…or me. Over the years, even as physical maturity came sooner, emotional maturity has become delayed and the 'sweet spot' sought out by the Incubators has occurred later. For example, my near contemporary Isabelle d'Arc's little girl, Jean, was twelve when she contracted. I've never been comfortable with early contracting and have advocated against it with the Incubators - never persuasively. The only thing I detest more than hypocrisy is myself with my current course of action.

~F

Konno Estate
Fujinomiya
Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan

A Mother's Torment

10:00 P.M. local, Sunday, May 8, 2017
Mitakihara, Aichi Prefecture, Japan

(Ten days after Sagitta Luminis,
Cosmos Secundum ad Madoka)

The tightly bound man, curled in restraints and layed out below the kneeling redhead, screamed soundlessly, his vocal cords long since cut, as she idly carved the fingernail from his left ring finger. The woman's grim but determined expression was a sharp contrast to the agony of her victim. Both would have struck a dispassionate third party as ironic and perhaps surreal as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony sang the praises of brotherly love from the tinny speakers of a small clock radio situated on the nearby pressboard nightstand. The knife-wielder's attention seemed elsewhere despite the torture to which she was subjecting the man at her knees.

"Your behavior appears irrational, Fiona, even for a human," Kyubey's calm mental voice entered the woman's mind. "You have refused to explain your actions ever since you arrived in Japan, and I am unable to reconcile your current efforts in terms of what I have learned about human morality. In your own words to describe me when we first persuaded you to support our cause, it appears 'inhuman'."

"Throwing my words back at me, I see," she spoke aloud to her white, cat-like alien colleague. The woman's mouth curved into the barest hint of a smile even as she turned her attention to the man's next finger, trying not to focus on his pleading brown eyes.

She barely restrained her urge to vomit up the contents of her stomach despite the deliberateness of her actions. "Next thing you know, you'll be telling me 'I told you so'."

The man's legs shifted a bit despite the cut ligaments in his knees. The woman's expression turned to a grimace. She halted her delicate effort and rose enough to pull on the rope that bound his lower extremities and kept them wrapped in the bottom half of the non-porous sheet the man lay upon. Her slight weight helped her draw the restraints even tighter.

She clung to the knowledge the man had intended to drug and rape her. The predator couldn't know his victim was immune to awareness inhibiting chemicals, or anything in fact that would interfere with her younger daughter's wish. She must unceasingly experience the trials and tribulations of magical girls everywhere; the youngest daughter's eternal chastening of the mother as reproof for her foolish repudiation of the eldest daughter. She hadn't needed to fake herself imbibing the tainted drink before she had then turned the tables.

"We can't have you getting away before you complete your service as bait, now can we?" she said gruffly, despite his likely being too far lost to his pain and terror to comprehend her words. She pulled on the man's bindings as she continued: "Don't worry. I promise the pain will end as soon as we attract our quarry. Wraiths are nothing if not thorough."

"I was right, then. You are attempting to draw wraiths here."

Green eyes looked askance at Kyubey before the woman replied in words. "You didn't think I'd bring such a slimy character to my new apartment, pretend to be drugged and let him start ravishing me, and then proceed to knock him out and...do all this to him because I enjoyed the experience, did you?"

She stood over the man and examined her handiwork to date, wondering what she'd do next to keep the despair at its peak.

Both her's and her victim's.

Broderick and Jeff, if you ever somehow find out about this, please forgive me for letting this scumbag touch me...

Kyubey's mental voice drew her attention back to her companion. The alien continued on, unaware of Fiona's buried thoughts.

"As you are so fond of pointing out, Fiona, I will never understand the deeper intricacies of human emotions. In order to fully do so, I would likely become as mentally unbalanced as you all seem to be. I depend on you to explain such things to me."

"I should then point out whatever imbalance you detect in me likely stems from our close association." Before the woman could say more, she noted a familiar distortion in her peripheral vision.

It was barely perceptible, easy to miss, but Fiona had many long years practice detecting the subtle perturbations associated with wraith activity that could be noted by humans outside the deeper levels of a wraith grid. More obvious was the sudden difficulty with the digital radio that coincided with the optical effect. "A grid just went up, didn't it Kyubey?"

"Yes," the alien responded in simple acknowledgement.

Fiona bounced back from the terrorized man, dropping the bloody knife which clattered on the sheet-covered wooden floor next to his head. She made her way quickly to the sink of the studio apartment to clean her hands – taking care not to leave blood anywhere on her skin or in the room other than back on the sheet with her victim. She had chosen to wear red knowing her planned actions of the evening, and so any blood on her clothes wasn't easily seen...not that there was much to her clothes given her own efforts as bait for men like the one in her room tonight.

"The wraiths are attracted to this room, not surprisingly. I'd recommend leaving now if you do not wish to be drawn off your normal existence and into their current plane."

She looked anxiously around herself as warm water ran over her hands. She knew the room was likely teeming with the monkish apparitions now, although as a human she had no sense of it. It was only the wrecked person behind her that kept her unharmed...for now.

"Actually Kyubey, I want to slip where they are. I'm depending on it." Yes! She exclaimed internally to herself in the place she maintained for her private thoughts, away from the strange creature's notice. Mami's noticed us!

Relief overtook Fiona as her youngest daughter's wish, and the window it provided into the mind of every Puella Magi, informed her that the rest of her plan, the piece entirely outside her control, had slipped into place.

Kyubey continued, blithely unaware of what was passing through Fiona's mind. "I fail to understand why you are pursuing this course of action, Fiona. While I realize death is a transitory thing for you, and you have already proven that when you die in a grid you reappear later in your plane again, you've always maintained you do not like the experience. Beyond that, it seems no less wasteful than when I lose a body."

"You'll see." The still skittish redhead replied noncommittally as she haphazardly dried her hands on a white washcloth. She slid to the front of the room, waiting beside the door and doing her best to focus on those things that caused her to despair.

Despair, eh? There's so much for Lady MacBeth to choose from, she mused as she examined her technically spotless hands, trying to tamp down the same madness that had taken the woman in question. It was an irony not at all lost on Fiona, a Gaelic noblewoman who dated nearly to the days of the storied Scottish king and his driven queen, and who at birth had hailed from essentially the same social station.

She knew she was walking a fine line between being appealing enough to draw in, and so appealing that the demons of this world would skip the leisurely route and go right to the slaughter part. While she was resistant to wraith-induced despondency, she had no protection at all from their more direct efforts.

Fortunately she didn't have to wait long for the wraiths to choose to toy with their meal. Reality seemed to twist, for lack of a better phrase, as she was pulled into the deeper confines of the wraith grid where she and all the humans within would be consumed, psychically at least, by the ravenous creatures that dwelled inside.

I'm not on the menu. Not today, she thought emphatically to herself and shifted to thinking about hope and the child for whom all her actions since her arrival in Japan had so far been focused. It's time I collected my little new protector. I'll need one given my intentions once I start contacting those I came here to meet. Given what she's going through, it's more like we need each other.

She hoped if she kept telling herself that, then perhaps it might actually be true.

Even with her now unpalatable emotions, she knew she remained an attractive target for the collection of bizarre forms she could only now witness filling the room. Her simple existence as a wish recipient several times over presented a potent distortion in reality, something which had proven painfully inconvenient at times over the years.

She fled through the door and into the hall in in order to put space between herself and the monsters. As she passed the threshold, she threw the door closed behind herself despite the fact she knew full well that it would provide no more of a barrier between her and those to whom she was prey than would the air between them.

Using all the skills she had developed over 400 years to make herself inconspicuous to the bizarre apparitions, she made her way quickly to the door of the apartment that contained her sole reason for being here.

Her parents must be despairing, she reasoned even as doubt nagged at her. Why else would they be abusing their daughter? I've seen more than enough in the past few days to know it's the same as it was the first time. It's the only way I've been able to justify doing all this. Mama Chitose is just as consistent as most of the other moms, it seems. She never improved like mama Akemi did.

Fiona stopped and placed her ear to the door, listening for any indication of commotion within the Chitose residence. Frustrating silence met her efforts to make out any sounds inside. Screams were already carrying from other rooms within the now confined apartment complex, so she knew the devouring had extended beyond her own offering to the demons of this world's night. Her impatience grew as the risk increased.

I saw the scars on her hairline when I gave her some candy in the hallway yesterday and tussled her hair. Her mom is still screwed up enough to burn her own little daughter with cigarettes. And that bruise on her arm didn't come from a fall- it was a man's hand print. Come on! They have to have been pulled into the grid!

I can't have been that wrong, can I?

Fiona's fingernails dug deeply into her palms. She let the pain distract her from the qualms of her conscience. However caring her intentions, she had just summoned monsters to a residential building filled with families in order to manipulate one little girl.

Just as she was about to break down and ask the clearly curious Kyubey now perched on her shoulders whether the occupants of the apartment had, indeed, joined them on their new plane, she heard from behind the door a woman's scream and a man's yelling. Despite the horrifying implications of those cries, Fiona sighed with relief.

I wasn't wrong. That's my cue.

While kicking down a door wasn't something she did every day, she had gained a certain skill for identifying in any given situation the best spot to apply what force her feminine scholar's leg could carry. It was enough: the wooden door jam splintered and the door flung open.

She stopped to listen again and, although the man's voice was now silent, female-toned crying and whimpering could still be heard and she ran in that direction. Turning the corner from the living room to look down the hall that led to the bedrooms, she saw the self-immolated form of a man. A knife protruded from his gut and gore now dripped to the floor under him, but he still was able to menace a woman of similar age with another blade.

The terrified woman, already bleeding from numerous wounds, was curled up against the wall, seemingly trying to push her way through it as the man descended on her. Fiona turned her attention away as the woman reached up to gouge out one of the man's eyes with her fingernails. Two wraiths stood practically on top of the adults, doubtless enjoying the feast.

Ignoring the older Chitose's and their rapidly concluding fate, Fiona scanned for the daughter, her true quarry, and didn't see her.

Come on child, where are you?

Knowing it was a risk, she ran down the hall within easy direct reach of the wraiths, willing and praying the creatures to ignore her as she skirted them and quickly scanned each room. She soon found what she was looking for: a small child staring blankly out from her doorway at the carnage before her, witnessing the violent and rapidly ending life of her parents.

She could quite easily just pick the kid up and run, but she knew a extra few seconds would solidify her influence over the girl. She knelt down to speak to her at her own level and placed a gentle hand on her arm. "Yuma-chan, you need to go. It's too late for mommy and daddy, but I can get you out of here if you follow me now."

Fiona lifted her hand to push back the girl's green hair behind her ear in an effort to draw Yuma's attention away from the horror before her. "I couldn't just leave you when the monsters came, not after you smiled at me yesterday. If we stay any longer, though, the monsters will gobble us both up, honey."

The child's gaze, which had been locked on the slaughter of her mother by her dying father's hand, shifted to look into Fiona's eyes with a haunted face. The guilt over what she had done to exacerbate Yuma's anguish stabbed Fiona's heart like the knife she had recently held in her hands. The knowledge that the girl was being liberated from a toxic existence did little to assuage Fiona's own shame.

She had no time for it though, most especially now, so she again shoved the guilt aside with the knowledge she'd pay for it later...with interest. Instead she drew brazenly on the words of Sakura Kyouko that had once, in a different world but under very similar circumstances, endeared the child to the younger and more fiery redhead.

"No amount of crying will bring your parents back to life, Yuma-chan," Fiona paraphrased the fallen preacher's disillusioned daughter. "You can survive if we run right now. You should give some thanks for your good luck to have that chance."

Fiona watched as Yuma's eyes focused on her face, then rose to look over Fiona's shoulder before her eyes widened.

The expression could only mean one thing. Fiona began moving even before Kyubey's mental voice called "Look out!" in her head. She dove forward and grabbed the child in both hands, throwing her over her shoulder before barreling back out of the room and down the hall.

She felt burning pain lance through her left flank. The girl she was holding yelped as the same attack must have at least grazed her dangling leg as it passed through the woman's body. Fiona gritted her teeth and did her best to ignore the piercing agony from the energy scrambling her guts. Instead, she stumbled with her precious cargo still in her arms out of the apartment and toward where her connection to Mami's team told her protection and safety could now be found.

As Fiona and Yuma approached the lobby, Fiona wasn't surprised that the Kyubey strainmate clinging to her unoccupied shoulder hopped off and disappeared. Can't have two of you in the same place and time, now can we? Not that Homura doesn't already know, silly rat.

Fiona passed the threshold where the two humans could now see three magical girls at work...and the chronicler got her first glimpse of Homura with her own eyes. She's so beautiful, Fiona thought randomly as she made her way to a sofa and sat Yuma down to examine her wound.

"Are you okay, sweetie?" Fiona's examination proved the injury to be superficial, likely less painful than some of the abuse she had incurred from her own parents.

Yuma nodded, distracted; her attention engrossed as she watched the fighting around her. She seemed oblivious to her injured leg or, more importantly, to the abundance of blood that Fiona had deposited on the child as well as the woman's own tattered dress.

I really can't blame her, Fiona thought to herself. Having her see magical girls in action was part of my plan after all. Unfortunately, getting gored and going into shock most definitely wasn't part of the plan.

And she was, indeed, going into shock, with the associated weakness if not the loss of consciousness. She might not stay dead, but she could die like any other human. And she reacted to injury in a very human manner. She'd recover, but it would take time...time she didn't have. Bother! She plopped herself on the couch next to her charge and slid limply down to lean against the child.

"You're hurt." The first words Fiona ever heard from the girl were tinged with muted concern. Her alarm at the obviously serious injury countered by the emotional numbness she had learned during her short and thus far pathetic life. Fiona turned to look into the face of the surprised and suddenly talkative Yuma. This time it was the scholar's turn to simply nod weakly in response.

"You saved Yuma's life from the monsters," the little girl reasoned. "Mommy and Daddy are dead, aren't they?"

Fiona could only nod again as her gaze, and her consciousness, both threatened to lose themselves in the girl's sea green eyes. Her dual curses battled with exsanguination, and for the moment the latter was winning.

"I'm sorry, Yuma-chan," Fiona found herself saying, as tears of both guilt and pain flowed down her cheeks.

Both their attention was briefly drawn back to the fighting by the cry of one of the magical girls. "Tiro Finale!" and a magnificent pistol shot out a bolt of light that took out a group of wraiths foolish enough to have concentrated together.

"It's like a magical girl manga," the child continued in quiet wonderment. Rather than stay fixed on the continuing battle, though, Yuma's gaze settled back to the woman on the couch, and her next words were eerily dispassionate. "You're dying too, aren't you?"

Fiona shook her head as vigorously as she could. "Not exactly, although it may look like it. I'll get better, but I can't promise I'll stay awake much longer. Those magical girls will be able to take care of us if you stay strong and protect us while I sleep."

Fiona lifted a hand and ran her fingers through the child's hair. "Please don't leave me, Yuma-chan. I need Yuma to be brave and protect me." As much as the cynical part of her chided her for laying it on so thick, the circumstances really did warrant the melodrama as Fiona's life hung by the most tenuous of threads.

"What's your name?" The calm of the girl continued to surprise Fiona, although she had known through her memories from Kyouko and Yuma herself to expect it.

"It's Fiona, dear heart."

"It's a pretty name," the girl responded, emotion finally beginning to seep from the girl's eyes and color her voice.

"So's Yuma," Fiona countered, practically as a mumble, as she allowed her arm, which seemingly now weighed a ton, to fall to her side.

Blood loss finally caught up with her. Any other human would long since have lost consciousness, a blessed release forever barred to her. Oblivion, however, was still her friend, however temporary its embrace might be. She surrendered to the inevitable, if just for a short while.

I've done the best I can. Now it's up to fate.

/*/

Fiona'a awareness returned to the sensation of her face resting on its side against something soft and warm. Her eyelids fluttered open to the visage of a young blonde woman with spiral curls and beautiful pale eyes. The pain in her gut was mostly gone, not surprising given she could look down and see Tomoe Mami's hands applying gentle healing magic to the wound.

"You're a remarkably lucky woman, Fiona-san."

Fiona's brow furrowed as she tried to figure out how the magical girl knew her name. The never-ending stream of life experiences were already back, of course, but she was disoriented enough that she couldn't quite sort through the part of her that could reach out and know for certain what was passing through the mind of the particular magical girl in front of her. She knew from experience the echoing complications it would add to normal conversation anyway, so she gave up trying.

Mami smiled, blissfully unaware of her patient's bizarre thoughts and uncanny knowledge. "That's right, you don't know me. My name is Tomoe Mami and you've been through a lot. By rights you should be dead. I wouldn't have even attempted to heal you if this child hadn't demanded that I try. You are very lucky to have such a fierce protector, you know." Mami's eyes glanced upward briefly and the blonde's smile intensified before her gaze dropped again to meet Fiona's. "Your tenacious little friend refused to leave your side even when things got a little rough there."

Fiona turned her head upwards and found it was Yuma's lap she was nestled upon. The little girl's hand was even now stroking Fiona's crimson hair that fell along the side of the child's leg. Although there was no trace of tears in the girl's haunted eyes, the intense worry now clearing from them was unmistakable.

"You're alive, Fiona-okaasama!" Tentative though it was, the abused girl's soft smile that accompanied those words was as unambiguous as her choice of honorifics was surprising to both women present.

I guess that explains how Mami knows my given name, Fiona reasoned as her mind cleared.

Mami arched an eyebrow as she again looked from the very un-Japanese Celtic redhead to the very Japanese little girl.

"We're neighbors," Fiona explained as she reached up a hand to pat Yuma on the temple. "I saved her when her parents were being...um...shredded...by those ghost-like things."

Mami nodded. "I see." The girl's gold-framed face cocked in curious thought for a moment before continuing to address the now healed woman. "You handled yourself remarkably well given how strange all this has to be to you. Most survivors are in hysterics and we're easily able to convince them that the more...exotic...aspects of this was all a bad dream." Mami raised her eyebrow as she spoke her next words: "You're not going to fall for that, are you?"

Fiona shrugged as she considered her words. I'm not responding to her amnesia magic and she's not sure why that is. It would be so easy to reach out now, but it's too soon to connect with Mami's team yet. Yuma's not ready, for one thing. And I haven't dealt with Kyubey, either. "Let's just say I've seen a lot and don't scare easily," she said gravely, maintaining Mami's gaze as she spoke.

Pale eyes searched Fiona's green ones, then she too shrugged. "Fair enough. You have the look of someone who has fought in battle, so I'll just assume you've served in the military of some country that actually fights wars. I'll just warn you that wraiths...the monsters you saw...are attracted to humans who make a fuss over their existence. It has something to do with distortions in reality or some such; at least that's what a friend tells me. If you try and talk about them, they'll generally prevent you from doing so...permanently."

Mami paused as she looked up again at Yuma and then back to Fiona. "Will you two be okay with each other?"

Fiona felt Yuma's hold on her tighten and so the older woman simply smiled back at the blonde girl.

"I guess that's as good an answer as I can expect." Mami stood up and stretched as she looked around herself and surveyed the room. Kyouko and Homura stood near the entrance and the three seemed to be sharing knowing gazes.

They're having a conversation about us, Fiona acknowledged internally, knowing full well what was going on given her past experience having been an integral part of such huddles. As irrational as it was, Fiona felt a little resentment at being left out, but she squelched the feeling; again, now was not the time to connect with Mami's crew. She knew also that when things calmed down she'd know the details of the day from the point of view of all three of them, whether she wanted to or not.

"Well, we have to be going," the young musketeer admitted as she turned back to consider the two on the surprisingly now clean sofa. "I'm sure the distressed survivors will be calling for help now that the grid is down and my friends have attended to them. The authorities will be here soon. You're both as good as new and I think I can safely leave you to each other's care." She finished by flashing her trademark brilliant smile and made her way to her friends and then out the door with the speed and grace possible only for the Puella Magi.

/*/

Fiona arose from the couch as she watched with her own eyes the trio of magical girls leave the building. The girls who, along with Sayaka and Madoka, had been the center of her attention for so very long. As she stood there lost in her thoughts, she felt a tiny hand take her own. For a moment her thoughts wandered back to when that sensation had become so familiar.

"I miss you, Moira, Audrey," she said quietly, then shook her head vigorously as if to clear it and looked down at the little girl now standing beside her.

"You seem sad, Fiona-okaasama. Who are Moira and Ah-du-rei?" The child's lips stumbled over the foreign-sounding names, especially the latter, in the most adorable manner. Lost in the emotion the image drew from her, Fiona knelt down and embraced the rather surprised little girl.

"They were my daughters," Fiona managed to get out through barely controlled sobs.

Little hands reached up and again stroked Fiona's crimson hair. "They're dead now." A statement, not a question, from an insightful little mind.

Fiona nodded into Yuma's shoulder. "They died from the same things that killed your mommy and daddy. I was left all alone."

"Yuma is alone now, too," the child acknowledged, wise beyond her years .

Fiona pulled back to regard the child, her hands on each of the girl's shoulders. They caught themselves both reaching at the same time to wipe away the tears on the other's cheeks, and shared similar shy smiles.

"How about we be alone together?" Fiona asked, smiling genuinely at Yuma's face as it brightened; and the girl nodded with a resounding "Un!"

Once again she found herself countering the cynical part of her mind. I'm not the one who encouraged her to call me Fiona-okaasama. That was her doing. Anyway, no matter what I have planned for the child, I really do care about her and it beats the Hell out of what her parents were doing to her.

Making her fight for you?

Oh shut up.

/*/

"A talking plushie!"

Yuma was petting Kyubey like a cat, even going so far as to scratch the alien creature behind the ears. "He's so cute!"

"I am not a plushie," Kyubey protested, only slightly indignant, to both humans present. "My name is Kyubey. It's nice to meet you, Yuma."

Yuma ignored Kyubey's implied desire to be released, instead hugging the admittedly adorable cat-like being close to herself, in much the manner as she would a stuffed toy.

"You can't exactly blame her," Fiona chided the creature. She leaned back on the wooden park bench, relaxing in the orangish glow of a nighttime streetlight and watching the two interact on the edge of a large fountain. She could easily visualize Madoka sitting in the very spot she occupied, and she ran her left hand idly along the space where Homura had once filled Kyubey full of holes when he had managed to convince Madoka to wish to restore Sayaka's humanity in the last timeline. The one before Homura and Fiona had found themselves here.

Yuma's attention, which had been on poking and swirling the water with her fingers, moved resoundingly to the alien when he had made his unsurprising appearance. "You do look like a stuffed animal. And before you complain about it again, you've taken plenty of advantage of that fact to get close to little girls over the past hundred years. Ever since stuffed animals were dreamed up, really. You're a hypocrite if you don't accept the risks with the benefits."

Sitting to Fiona's right on the bench was a large backpack carrying the entirety of her belongings in Japan, other than some sundry clothes and art supplies tucked away in a storage locker in a subway terminal nearby. Once things in the lobby of the apartment building had settled, the two new companions had rushed upstairs to grab the waiting bag.

As she quickly changed into a set of sweats and stuffed the remains of her dress in a side pocket of the pack, Fiona had asked Yuma if there was anything so valuable to her that she needed to go back to her own apartment, and the associated memories. Perhaps not realizing that the bodies would not be there, the girl had shaken her head.

Looking at the now empty corner where her own victim, along with his clothes and the sheet tied to him, had conveniently vanished into another space, Fiona had nodded and left with Yuma hand-in-hand without another glance back. With all the missing people, including her parents, it was unlikely the now orphaned girl's disappearance would bring any unusual notice if there were no other signs of foul play.

"She has potential," Kyubey acknowledged, as he tolerated his treatment at the girl's hands. "A lot of it, actually. But then I suspect you know that already. Is that why you orchestrated this elaborate scheme? An attempt to gather a new recruit, to make her potential that much greater? You have never before so enthusiastically assisted us in such a manner. In fact, generally the opposite has been true, as you tried vociferously to dissuade girls until we convinced you to stop the practice."

"Convinced? That's what you call what you did to me?" Fiona scowled at the horrifying memory, but calmed herself as she realized the conversation wasn't going in a helpful direction. He did that on purpose, Fiona realized to herself alone. Damn, why does Kyubey have to be so blasted devious? He's always been the best at manipulating human emotions, no matter what he says about not understanding them.

"Yuma-chan," Fiona began aloud again with the girl, "what did you think of Tomoe-san and the two other magical girls who fought for us at the apartments?"

"Can Yuma really become someone like Mami-sama?" Yuma responded; having gleaned the basics from the complex mental conversation she had overheard, she skipped to the core question even as she cuddled Kyubey to death.

"Kyubey here says you can, and he's the one who would know for sure," Fiona explained to the insightful girl. "Still, it's very dangerous and not something you should take on lightly. I want you to really think about it before you make a wish."

"A wish?"

"Yup," the older of the two agreed. "That's what Kyubey trades for girls agreeing to fight wraiths until they're eventually killed by them. You can wish for just about anything. It's a great gift, but an even greater responsibility. You really should save it for when you know with all your heart that you have the right wish. You only get one chance at it, sweetheart."

Something about Fiona's expression must have tipped off the surprisingly perceptive little girl. "Were your daughters magical girls, Fiona-okaasama?"

Fiona's breath caught at the question, but the earnest look in the little girl's eyes helped her quickly control her emotions. "Yes, Yuma. Yes they were."

"They died fighting?"

"Yes they did. That said, they saved a lot of people before that happened and I'm very proud of them."

"Yuma wants you to be proud of her like that," the girl resolved with determination in her eyes. "Yuma also want to be strong so no one hurts her like mama did again. Yuma would like to be a magical girl like your daughters."

Fiona smiled as she shook her head at the poignant irony of the conversation. She then rose and walked to sit on the fountain ledge beside her young new friend. As she crossed the space, she quickly glared in Kyubey's direction. "You'll get her soon enough. For now, not a word, you," she thought clearly at the alien. She turned to address Yuma, hoping the creature would refrain from relaying the thought but unable to guarantee it.

"Yuma-chan," Fiona said as she placed a hand on the child's shoulder, "I think you'll make a splendid magical girl. Right now, though, I'd like to get to know you better as just the girl you are right now. There's no need to rush things. Promise me you'll wait until there's no other choice and it all becomes clear?"

The girl considered Fiona with serious eyes and nodded. Fiona held out her hand and the two pinky swore. "I'll trust you to know when the time is right, okay," Fiona allowed, and Yuma nodded again.

"Okay," Fiona said as she tussled Yuma's hair gently one last time and rose before retrieving her backpack. "Let's go settle in at a hotel and we can figure out our next move. I scoped out a nice little place nearby where we should be good for the night. After that, we're going to go on a trip together. Do you like the ocean, Yuma-chan?"

/*/

A couple of hours later, Fiona and Yuma, both blessedly clean after a hot shared bath, were finally comfortable with Yuma snuggled up against Fiona in the bed of the small room. Fiona marveled once again at the peacefulness with which young children could sleep.

She looks like a sweet little angel, asleep like that. Despite all she's been through. I wonder when the last time was that she slept untroubled like this?

The thought made her recognise the fierce protectiveness the little girl was kindling within her, echoes of what she had felt so very long ago in a castle which was now a tourist attraction in coastal Scotland. She sighed at the irony of the situation given her cynical intentions going into this evening, but she resolved to care for the girl as best she could for as long as she could.

I'm so tired of it all, she thought,the familiar weariness dropping on her as she shifted an errant hair from the sleeping girl's face. If we survive all this she could last hundreds of years and I'll still be here, changeless, when Madoka takes her.

Note to Moira – immortality sucks.

Fiona's private musing were interrupted by the arrival of Kyubey in the dark room. Or perhaps arrival wasn't the right word, since the thing could have been lurking in the darkness for some time. Being just a human, she was unable to tell in the darkness until the alien moved right on top of her, staring down with those luminescent red eyes.

"You indicate you intend for this girl to contract, but maintain that now is not the time," Kyubey said. "I'm confused by your actions, Fiona."

"The energy created when a girl wishes is dependent in part on the emotion the girl places in the wish. I have reason to believe this girl will soon make a passionate wish. I'm simply thinking about the good of the universe, Kyubey," Fiona reasoned with all seriousness at the alien. "After being colleagues for so long, I thought you'd appreciate that."

Although the wordless stare of the alien was as emotionless and indecipherable as ever, Fiona had to believe the creature didn't believe her words for a minute. Not that she cared, so long as the thing's curiosity kept him compliant.

Journal Note
Of immortality and the Fountain of Youth
Dr. Fiona Graham, Ph.D.

Tomoe Mami wasted her wish.

She knows it now, of course, and is flagellating herself with the belief that she could have saved her mother as well as herself. The sad truth is that she is far from alone. As requests of the Incubators go, standing just behind Electra's Bargain, the demand for vengeance, lies the lust for immortal youth, and not far from that in line is the plea for simple survival ("I wish to live!"). Place the two together and they reflect the majority of wishes – and yet they both come with the contract by default. This is yet one more irony heaped on the pyre of magical girl despair. And given such frivolous wishes are among the least destabilizing of all, the Incubators are so happy to oblige.

The wish for eternal youth may not be a uniquely feminine desire, but I daresay it runs far more powerfully on the distaff side of humanity. From childhood, girls watch as their mothers' youth diffuses away, generally to highly vocal lamentation. One of the first truths of the universe a girl learns at the feet of her greatest teacher, her mother's example, is "to love my body now since I'll hate it when I'm forty." The lesson is taken to heart, and when girls are given the opportunity to release their heart's desire into the world, they give it flight.

But as has been noted many times both in my Chronicles and this private journal, the Puella Magi are ageless. They also regenerate reflexively and their magic makes them immune to disease and disfigurement. Unless they wished for or develop the power for altering their visage (one of the more difficult magicks to master and generally only possible through illusion rather than true transformation, both of which requiring continuous magic to maintain), other than for healing or health, their bodies are unchanging from the moment of their wish. Their intrinsic magic resists alteration to their basic form, making even desired developments like elective pregnancy difficult if not impossible. This fact becomes a particular curse for those long-lasting girls who wish before their bodies have reached maturity – these Puella Magi remain eternal children despite their years.

Now don't get me wrong. Wishes for immortality or survival aren't totally worthless. Girls like Mami are notoriously resistant to bodily death or destruction. They regenerate far more quickly with less magic, have a much greater tolerance for injury, and are even generally more resistant to soul-despair. They're the Timex watches or Energizer Bunnies of the Puella Magi. But no matter what they wish for, no matter how powerful their potential at the time of their soul gem's birth and how carefully crafted their wish may be, they still die.

Every one.

The manifest soul of a magical girl presents her vulnerability like the heel of Achilles. Destroy their gem as did Charlotte, Walpurgisnacht or Madoka with Mami in various timelines, or present them with despair overwhelming their hearts, and all magical girls pass on to the arms of Magna Sagittariis. That said, regardless of their wish, they all die with the youthful beauty they possessed at the moment their soul was ripped from them, be it ten minutes ago or, in the case of the Greek bard-mage Nausicaä, twenty centuries.

But what of those like me: regular humans who receive the boon from girls close to us? There have certainly been examples throughout history of humans granted life-long youthful beauty. The much storied Helen, wife of both Menelaus of Sparta and Paris of Troy, is a perfect example. Her tragic boon was the selfless gift of one of her slave girl attendants, a girl who stuck with Helen on her escape with Paris and protected her mistress for some time before meeting her end by another Greek slave, a favored attendant of old Nestor, when the two came to conflict in the Achaean camp.

Youth is one thing, immortality entirely another. With only one exception, there has never been a case of true immortality. Wishes made for the long-life of others have invariably had an implicit or explicit "until" clause, or the spirit of the wish was for the recipient only to not die before the girl making the wish. Like with ultimate power or raising the truly dead, the potential necessary to achieve true immortality is beyond the reach of any one girl in a single lifetime, no matter how much of a nexus in history they present. It took 782 separate potentials strung together like Christmas lights for Madoka to achieve what she did. I daresay she could have raised the dead or granted immortality to everyone in her life had that been her wish.

So what of me? How am I the only one with the curse of the Wandering Jew? Many a morning, as my daughters rested from a long night of hunting, did I puzzle over this question. Even Mentorás professes to be unsure of the answer. Certainly, Moira's wish wording and sentiment presents a major obstacle to my mortality. She wished for my youth, beauty, and vivacious life to never resume their natural fading until such day that her father, my husband Broderick, returns to us. Well, I suspect Broderick was dead to some Frenchman's spear even before the wish was made. Certainly, after nearly 450 years there remains no chance of his return to my arms however much I still pine for his embrace. And then there is Audrey's curse which Mentorás predicts makes me elemental in my existence so long as there remains any human Puella Magi.

But what Mentorás and Kyubey cannot explain with any confidence is how Audrey's wish managed to happen in the first place. Simply put, her wish exists at the level of the impossible for one girl to achieve, even with the enormous potential which I am told Audrey had amassed leading up to her contract. Our best hypothesis is that her wish synergised with that of her sister, was deeply heartfelt, and that her potential somehow managed to draw on mine as well.

According to Kyubey, my potential at the time of Audrey's wish was phenomenal. He had long since given up trying to convince me to contract – my rejection of what I saw as Satan's temptation at the age of thirteen never having wavered. But the potential for me to conceivably contract, despite the poison-pill presented by my 'advanced age' of thirty three years, vanished at the moment of Audrey's wish. All that remains is an eternal and unchanging me and the perplexment of everyone who has since examined me.

***Author's Note***

So, at long last, you all finally get to meet Fiona Graham. The basic form of this chapter was written before most of what has been posted before it. I decided, though, that I wanted to cover Homura and the rest of Team Mami first before I started focusing on characters my readers would be less familiar with. I will be very interested to hear what people think of Fiona and Yuma. My Yuma, while I believe being very true to the Oriko source material, is very different from the Yuma in the other epic 'Madoka-verse' story active these days. Hopefully she's endearing since we'll be seeing a lot more of Yuma going forward. Being a mom, I must admit writing Yuma is a lot of fun. :-)

But Oriko's even more fun... :-D

I wish to thank Gateman for his excellent feedback after the posting of my last chapter. I promise I'll explain more about the Incubators soon. Part of the issue again is that we see them through the lens of Homura's and Fiona's jaded feelings toward them. The rest, well Kyubey has issues he's having to deal with that not even Fiona sees. He has his reasons...

Thank you also to my splendid beta's, Linkhyrule5 and CelticX. Once again, this is a far better chapter for your feedback.

And finally, to several of you who noted the meanings within meanings of the title of the previous mini-arc, yes, 'Unconditional Surrender' was very carefully chosen. Obviously, Japan had to surrender unconditionally to the US. Beyond that, Jessica totally surrendered to Tomiko's mind magic and vice versa her very soul and that of her girlfriend. One could also ponder the surrender of love between Birgit and Tomiko. And, of course, poor Mariko and what will happen to her in five months when her home city meets with the only plutonium bomb ever used in anger. If there's any interest, I could write that as a short story sometime since the events between Jessica and Mariko are very poignant. I've never had a story tell itself to me like this one. It's really fun when it all clicks together. :-)