Fleeting Childhood, Part I
Present
8:00 A.M. local, Monday, May 9, 2017
Mitakihara, Aichi Prefecture, Japan
(Eleven days after Sagitta Luminis,
Cosmos Secundum ad Madoka)
"Yuma can get any book she wants?"
Fiona and Yuma had checked out of the hotel shortly after the crack of dawn. The day had started with them descending together into a subway terminal and to the locker where Fiona had been storing her personal items in two rollerboard suitcases. Along with the contents of Fiona's backpack, it was the extent of both their belongings now.
After returning again to street level with the suitcases trailing behind the encumbered Fiona, still clad in the loose-fitting green sweats from the previous night, they stopped at a small café that specialized in expatriate cuisine and shared a western-style breakfast. Yuma had demanded to taste Fiona's coffee and the older woman got to enjoy the scrunched face that followed.
"Bitter!" Yuma cried and then drank a large swig of her juice to wash down the unpleasant taste.
"I told you it's an acquired taste, Yuma-chan," Fiona chided with an indulgent smile. "Maybe next time you'll listen to me?"
Yuma's looked doubtfully at her from across the table, her adorable green eyes peeking over the rim of the glass she was still drinking from.
From the café, the two had made their way to the shinkansen station where Fiona again made use of the lockers to store all their bags, this time just for a few hours, while they awaited the bullet train that would take them eastward toward Tokyo. In a shop at the station, Fiona bought Yuma her very own backpack, sized for a larger child but Yuma seemed to manage it fine, complete with images of Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo on its sides. Their next mission was to fill the new container.
They stood now in the children's section of a mom-and-pop bookstore not far from the Mitakihara shinkansen station where in a little over an hour the two of them would depart the city of Yuma's birth.
"Yes, Yuma-chan, any book you want. Two or three at most since you'll have to carry them along with the things I choose for you. The only rule is that they must use kanji. No hiragana-only books. You need to be reading things that will challenge you." Fiona thought for a moment longer before adding one more restriction. "And no magical girl manga!"
The girl's face scrunched in distaste again, but instead of arguing, she just nodded with determination and started in on exploring the books.
Fiona marveled at the child's growing confidence since just the previous night. Although she still gravitated to speaking in third person, Yuma was demonstrating the strength she'd shown in the previous timeline where she'd contracted. And unlike Kyouko, her current guardian wasn't trying to ditch the poor thing at every turn. Although Yuma was perhaps a bit clingy, Fiona had to admit it was mutual. It was unlikely in this timeline that there would be a tearful plea from the child to her guardian not to leave her alone.
Fiona could just hope her more mature and maternally responsible methods wouldn't somehow diminish the magical girl Yuma would eventually become. She was betting everything on the girl rising to the phenomenal levels that the cat-ear topped mahou shoujo had reached the last time with her insistence that "someday is not today." Yuma had met the challenge presented not only by Oriko and Kirika, but also by the magical spasm Homura and Sayaka had brought forth in the former girl's grief at losing Madoka when, at long last, she'd finally found a successful timeline.
In the end, it had been the only one she'd ever found, a fact that led directly to their current predicament.
"I like your philosophy about children's books, Miss," a voice addressed her in slow Japanese, as if trying to be considerate of a foreign speaker, "although in defense of the mahou shoujo genre, there are some pretty deep and complex storylines available. It doesn't have to be portrayed as just frilly dresses and candy cane wands," the chiding continued much to Fiona's amusement at the irony of being schooled over this particular topic. "My favorite stories portray the difficulties of holding such great power and responsibility at such a terribly young age." She turned to face the source of her latest education on the subject of magical girls.
An old woman dressed in an apron with the name of the store had slipped up behind her while Fiona had been explaining the rules to her young companion. She'd known all along that the woman was there. The time was long since passed when anything human could so easily saunter up to her unnoticed, but she hadn't wanted to let up with the strong-willed Yuma until she'd won the argument.
"How may I help you today?" the woman finished helpfully with a smile on her thin lips and unmistakable humor in her brown eyes.
"Now that you mention it," Fiona answered the bookstore staffer in flawless and rapid Japanese with a smile in return, sidestepping the complicated topic of magical girls, "I'm looking for tutoring workbooks for Yuma-chan here. She's going to be traveling for an extended period and I want to make sure she continues her studies uninterrupted."
The woman considered Fiona thoughtfully, as if weighing the strange appearance of a westerner in charge of a nihongin child for an 'extended period,' then nodded as she came to a conclusion that somehow made sense to her. Fiona was used to watching the rationalizing happen as it had ever since the wish in December 1941 which had bound her to one frightened Japanese family trapped in war-frenzied America.
"You're going to instruct her in Japanese, I assume then?" As the attendant spoke, normally this time, she motioned Fiona to follow her as they walked to another section of the labyrinthine store.
"Except for foreign language instruction, that would be my plan. She'll eventually slip back into a regular school and I want her to be at least on par with her peers when that happens."
"You've got a good plan, then. I approve. And here we are."
It turned out the woman had been an elementary school teacher herself before she retired to join her husband in tending the store that had been in his family for now three generations. She was a wealth of advice and Fiona wasn't so arrogant as to look a gift horse in the mouth. When Yuma and Fiona left the bookstore it was with Yuma's new backpack filled to capacity with books of both the recreational and school variety, as well as various writing utensils to allow Yuma to make use of her new materials.
The two continued on more briskly now as the time was fast approaching for the departure Fiona intended to catch. They quickly emptied the storage locker and made their way to the eastbound Tōkaidō bullet train terminal.
/*/
"Yuma-chan, focus on your math again sweetheart. I doubt you'll want to try reading in the taxi on curvy roads, and when we get to the house I'm sure you'll have no problem filling the rest of the day with exploring." Seeing the bright-eyed child's eyes still gravitating back out the window of the train, Fiona reached over to tussle the child's green hair and turn her errant gaze back down to the workbook on her lap.
The tiny girl sitting between Fiona and the window of the Kodama train scrunched her face again in the trademark manner of young children not liking what they were hearing. "Why does Yuma have to do this, anyway, okaa-sama? You said Yuma can't go back to school, and if Yuma is a magical girl will she really need to know how to divide decimals?"
Most likely no, her dark thoughts began, but she kicked them aside. She's going to last a good, long time. Please God…
"You never know until you actually wish whether you'll become one," Fiona explained rationally. "Maybe the right wish will never come to you. Anyway, if you do wish it'll be even more important. Lives will depend on your ability to reason, to think of the best way to handle a situation. You know Tomoe Mami-san is still going to school. So is Akemi Homura-san, the dark haired one of the two girls you didn't get a chance to meet."
"They are?" The hero worship behind those bright eyes was unmistakable.
"Yep. They're both very good students, too. Top quarter of their classes at Mitakihara Junior High. They do their homework after school and before it gets dark, then fight wraiths all night."
"When do they sleep?"
Fiona chuckled at the very reasonable question. "They don't, or at least they don't very much. Not unless they want to. Magical girls can use magic to compensate for many things, including sleep."
"What about math?" The girl eyed the book again dubiously.
"Short of wishing to know it, sadly no."
Fiona could see the grin start to form on the precocious girl's lips.
"And before you get any bright ideas, Chitose-san, I wouldn't recommend it. Girls who wish for book knowledge never learn how to find it on their own. They never grow beyond that initial windfall and usually regret it."
The grin shifted to a pout.
"Sweetheart," Fiona urged as she leaned in to hug the frustrated girl around the shoulders, "you can do this, and you can do it all by yourself without any help from a fluffy-tailed plushie."
"Fiona is right, Yuma." Kyubey, who was lounging along the top of the seat above both their heads, finally chose to chime in. "The most successful magical girls are those who are inquisitive and learn to grow beyond their initial granted skills. Your new guardian's daughters are perhaps the best examples of that."
Yuma turned in her seat to look up into the alien's eyes. "What were they like, Kyubey? Fiona-okaasama's daughters, I mean?"
"Yuma-chan, you're changing the subject," Fiona chided with a mixture of sternness and gentleness as she poked her finger several times at the workbook in the child's lap. "Math, young lady."
Yuma pouted a moment more before turning her pencil, and her attention, again to the problems before her.
A few moments of intense monitoring convinced the girl that her new teacher meant business. Fiona could see her concentration coalesce and the girl's wooden pencil started scribbling furiously.
"She's really remarkably bright given the household she grew up in. If she'll stay focused, she should make it through school as successfully as Mami looks to be destined for."
The thoughts passed through the surface of her mind where she knew Kyubey would be able to pick them up. Long ago she had learned the tricks a human could use in order to keep her own thoughts private. At the moment she didn't mind the 'adult company' her alien keeper provided. She trusted the creature to shield Yuma from the conversation so that the child could remain focused on her studies.
"Her reasoning skills are exemplary for a human of her age. I have no doubt under your care that she could indeed follow in your daughters' footsteps. I myself would welcome another Audrey. Still, I remain perplexed about this trip. The child's potential is ebbing, albeit slowly. You appear to have an itinerary filled with pleasant activities. I fail to see how horseback riding or playing on a beach will outweigh the loss of her potency as a magical girl."
"The girl deserves a few days at least of a normal childhood, doesn't she? We'll return to Mitakihara shortly, Kyubey," she silently assured the alien above her head. "I just have to settle some business before things get…sticky. When that happens, I assure you the energy flow will be phenomenal."
She wasn't lying. Lying would have been counterproductive as Kyubey had a way of sensing outright deceit. Regardless of how things turned out over the next few weeks or months in Mitakihara, energy...a LOT of energy…would most certainly flow.
Whether Kyubey would be able to harness it, and what would be left after it flowed, was another matter entirely…
"You've not indicated to me your final destination, but I believe I know where you plan to spend this week. The human capacity for nostalgia never ceases to confound me. You'd think as short-lived as most of you are, that you wouldn't spend so much time lingering on past events. Especially ones you yourself claim to be unpleasant."
Fiona smiled at the indication of Kyubey's ignorance of her underlying plans. Her next words were meant to encourage his thoughts in their current direction. "We humans are more than the sum of our parts. Our souls, our emotions and the energies that come from them – nostalgia is caught up in all of it. We wouldn't be the saviors of the universe if not for our ability to fondly remember the happy times…and yes, the not so happy ones too."
"Perhaps," the creature admitted before adding cryptically, "but lingering on past memories can blind you to current realities. You would be wise to keep that in mind."
"And what's that supposed to mean, Kyubey?"
Fiona was met by blinking red eyes and silence. She didn't bother to ask again. Kyubey had said what he was going to say on the subject, and Fiona was left to puzzle out the meaning. It was the same game she played with him, so she couldn't complain. Still, he had the processing power of the entire Incubator collective. She was just one lonely woman sitting on a bullet train racing across the Kanto plain. Once again she found herself missing Audrey and her uncanny knack for solving riddles, especially those posed by the aliens.
Just what are you planning, Noriko? You proved the last time we saw each other that I can't predict you. You're the only one other than Audrey…well and Kyubey and his ilk…to manage to outwit me. Still, there's no way I could have snuck into Japan without you knowing, so it's best we settle this before you interfere at the wrong moment.
She silently wrestled with the puzzle, ultimately unsuccessfully, for many long minutes as Yuma did the same, much more successfully, with her math and Kyubey did whatever it was that he did, and to whatever degree of success he achieved, during quiet moments like this.
As the train came around a long, gentle bend, she set her troubled thoughts aside. The sight she had been waiting for appeared in dramatic view in the left side window where she had intentionally seated her young charge. Fiona looked down and saw the girl had made remarkable progress in the perhaps twenty minutes Fiona had been conversing with Kyubey and examining her own darker memories rather than those of the assorted Puella Magi.
"Yuma-chan." Fiona slipped her arm around the girl and snuggled up to her, taking strength from the contact with her precocious student.
"Un?" Yumi lifted her face in query. She blinked her green eyes as her mind refocused after such intense studying.
"Look out the window at your heritage, sweetheart."
Yuma's forehead crinkled in confusion. She turned her head to look out the window…and her eyes got wide.
"Fujisan!"
The proud sentinel of Japan rose from the flat, verdant fields around it. It was a bright, clear May morning and the sun shown down from the east, reflecting brilliantly off the neat white cap of spring snowpack which had only recently begun receding with earnest.
And until now, Yuma had never seen it.
"It's beautiful, Fiona-okaasama. It looks just like in the books! Will we get to climb it?"
Fiona shook her head sadly at the excited child who was now straining against the seatbelt in her enthusiasm to plaster herself against the window of the train. "As long as there's snow on the mountain they won't let children climb, and adults need special equipment. It won't be this time, but we promised to be alone together, didn't we?" She smiled reassuringly as she continued more hopefully. "We're not leaving Japan anytime soon. I'm sure we'll have a chance to come back during a better season."
And that assumes you don't just skip up the thing on a lark after you've contracted… She kept that last thought to herself given the mixed feelings it gave her.
Yuma's face scrunched adorably as she processed her disappointment, but the tension quickly vanished as the child remembered Fiona's earlier promise made as they were talking before bed the night before. "And we'll get to ride horses?"
"That assumes you show you're safe on one at the estate, but yes, I believe that would be the plan."
A brilliant smile shining brighter than the snow on the mountain in the distance turned to look up adoringly at Fiona. The girl unbuckled her seatbelt before Fiona could say anything and reached up to hug her guardian tightly around the neck. "Thank you, Fiona-okaasama!"
Fiona reached around the child and returned the embrace, remembering back to two little Japanese girls much like this one who had adored her just as much. One had gone on to live a long and full life after Fiona had managed to redirect her fate, at the terrible cost of lost innocence and countless dead. The other had wished to protect the first and, like all magical girls before her, had died in the line of duty. That girl's wish, and her legacy as with all her kind, lived on in Fiona. It lived too in the now aged woman they were rushing to meet, as did the chronicler's greatest error since repudiating her daughter.
Forgive me, Shimako, for what I allowed to happen. And forgive me Noriko for reopening old wounds. I just have no one else I can turn to. I can't do it without your help, and the stakes have never been higher. Please don't interfere or turn me away…
Fleeting Childhood, Part I
Past
8:00 A.M. local, Sunday, December 7, 1941
Honolulu, Hawaii Territory, USA
(Sixty six years before Sagitta Luminis,
Cosmos Secundum ad Madoka)
"Kasi! Wake up! Something's happening at the base!"
Instantly awake at her brother's excited words from down below in the house proper, Kasumi Sato bounced out of bed and quickly threw on the clothes she'd left lying on the floor nearby. She had been wearing the garments only a few hours before when she had sneaked back into the house through her small attic window and hadn't bothered to put them away given her desire to spend some rare time with her pillow.
Good thing Daddy would never imagine a girl could sneak in and out that way or fighting wraiths would be a whole lot harder.
Kasumi loved sleep more than just about anything…even chocolate. Until recently, she had been a deep sleeper. Sunday mornings had been her one day to sleep in and generally she wasn't fit for human interaction before lunch. That had all changed when a snow white creature looking like a cat with floppy ears had appeared to her as she was wandering aimlessly after her mom's funeral barely two weeks back.
"I wish Daddy would cheer up."
Those words had changed her whole world. Since she uttered them, she had spent her nights fighting strange devils seemingly out of legend and her days trying to maintain a normal life. It was a schedule that left little time for a luxury like sleep.
Knowing to jump out the window like she was now perfectly capable of doing would bring unwanted questions in the light of day, she instead hopped down the opening to the second story living area of her house, completely skipping the steep ladder leading up to her cozy little room in the finished attic space, and then sprang briskly down the stairs to the front door. She wondered what could possibly have resulted in her older brother's excitement this ridiculously early on a Sunday morning.
She stared east towards the harbor as she left the house, and she knew.
Green airplanes buzzed in the sky. Airplanes her enhanced sight could see clearly.
Red circles on the wings.
Japanese planes.
The Japanese are attacking Pearl Harbor?
Transfixed, the young Nisei, or more accurately Sansei, girl stood watching the planes dive and weave like bees as black smoke billowed from the ground. It had been going on for several minutes now, clearly, as the breeze was already carrying the haze into the city.
What should I do?
And if I do act, whose side am I on?
Like all ethnic Japanese in Hawaii, she had been a frequent recipient of prejudice from her native Hawaiian and white peers. It grated at her like it did all her friends, but she took it in stride- always had.
As a magical girl, she had decided right away to treat all victims of wraiths equally, even if said victim had pushed her brother to the ground only three days before as was the case with that jerk Tony Stanza whom she had saved from a nest of demons just last Thursday.
She looked around at her gathering neighbors. Most were clearly stricken. Tears were evident everywhere. She could almost taste the confusion and growing fear. The world they had all known was burning down along with whatever unfortunate targets were on the ground to her east.
Although they don't deserve us, I'm an American. Still, what can I do? If I fight, it'll be obvious. Kyubey has warned me regular humans can't know.
"Don't get involved, Kasumi."
The voice entered her head as if the strange cat-thing had known her thoughts.
Maybe it does.
A huge explosion audible even to the humans around her echoed off the buildings nearby. Windows rattled as a massive cloud the color of night rose ominously from the harbor.
I have to at least go see what's happening.
Acting like the overwhelmed girl child everyone would expect, she turned and ran into the woods behind the collection of homes where her family and several other professional Nisei families had made their community. When she was sure she was out of sight of others, she transformed and made her way carefully to her preferred overlook of the base.
***PGBR***
1:30 P.M. local, Sunday, December 7, 1941
Syracuse, NY, USA
"Gertie, you haven't heard a thing I've said the past five minutes, have you?"
Fiona shook her head to clear the vision streaming from the hapless resident magical girl in Honolulu. Looks like things will be getting exciting here soon. Well, wars are great times to change my identity. Still, couldn't it have waited another ten years? I'm comfortable!
"I'm sorry, Elise," she responded absently, rubbing her eyes as if to make the still vivid imagery go away. She knew she had to focus on the here and now of her Sunday brunch until she could find an excuse to flee down the street to her office at the paper. "I think I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I guess."
"You always say that," the much older-looking brunette across from her complained. "You're so scatterbrained, you know. Sometimes I don't know what Jeffrey saw in you."
Fiona, or more accurately at the moment Gertrude Ainsworth, flashed her brilliant smile and batted her eyelashes coquettishly. Her green eyes set in perfect white skin with just a dusting of freckles and framed by a dense mane of fine red hair were a siren song to any man, and they both knew it.
"Damn you for still being so gorgeous at our age." It was an old complaint, although it was carrying increasing irritation from the women in her life now as the years went by. Fiona knew from long experience there was no sense avoiding that topic. The only way to handle it was to run with it, and in so doing change the subject.
"Jeff certainly didn't mind, and I assure you I made his last decade of life very happy." She wove all her still vibrant passion for her deceased husband into caressing the word, and it had the desired effect as the woman across from her licked her suddenly dry lips at Fiona's shameless display of pure sensuality.
"You make it sound obscene, you know," Elise managed weakly.
"I do know," she purred, her 'vampish' smile turning to a sly smirk.
Elise spent a few moments settling her clothes, and no doubt collecting her wits, before changing the subject. "You realize you're the most eligible girl in Syracuse high society. They even talk about you down in The City."
Fiona smile faded and she sighed as she lost interest in toying with her friend. "I get reminded of that every time I go out, now."
"Is that why you never leave the estate except to go to the office or have brunch with me every Sunday?"
"That and other things," she evaded, picking up her porcelain cup and taking a sip of her coffee. "I enjoy my writing, Elise. Is that so wrong?"
"It wouldn't be if you actually published occasionally."
"Ellie, all the men around me are after my wealth or my body, not me. As much as I joke about it, Jeff and I connected on a level I don't see happening with any of the vapid boys vying for my hand now. I'm almost fifty years old and I'm fine living out the rest of my life alone."
"But you have no heir, Gertie. You never managed to produce a child for Jeffrey and his son from Sarah died in the war."
The reminder of her stepson, on the eve of yet another worldwide war, drained any remaining humor from her. Jeff's only son had been brilliant in the years leading up to the Great War. Side-by-side with his father, she had shared her story with the strapping Cornell junior before she had accepted the Ainsworth widower's proposal for her hand in marriage. Instead of the usual reflexive disbelief, he had been full of questions which she had readily answered in full. That evening had ended with tearful hugs and an unqualified welcome to the family. He had been their best man.
As a young Marine lieutenant, he went to Europe in 1918 knowing all about magical girls, and so he had understood exactly what his platoon was up against that night of June 6th in Belleau Wood. Fiona knew full well the excruciating manner in which the boy had died.
Despite what his death records said, the blistering hadn't been due to mustard gas.
She was blessedly spared from sharing his death in the manner she had been forced to experience that of her older daughter. Instead, she had lived it from the perspective of the predatory and cruel German girl who had cut through the American lines, literally boiling the boys alive, before being distracted and led away by the French girlfriend of another disfigured Marine.
The bitch had actually managed to survive the war after stacking up an impressive kill count of both helpless human soldiers and French magical girls. Fiona herself had seen to it that she didn't last much past the Armistice, though. Frail human she might be, but when truly riled there was no more terrible enemy to have than a mother seeking revenge for her child. It didn't matter that Paul hadn't been hers by birth.
Making it worse for the hapless German girl, this mother knew every…single…little…shame or fear the woman-child had ever experienced since she was weaned from her own mother's breast. It had taken a few weeks, many hours of unceasing torture as the girl descended slowly into sadistic madness, and countless painful deaths (one thousand, two hundred and eighty three, to be precise. Damned eidetic memory…), but Fiona had been the one to spit on the girl's blackened gem just before it and the girl's body faded from the world.
The pink-haired Angel of Death who always appeared at each girl's passing had looked decidedly disappointed that time, although Fiona couldn't be sure whether it had been aimed at her or the drained girl. At the time, she really couldn't have cared less what the Angel of Death thought. It wasn't like Fiona would herself ever meet with death anyway.
Realizing the silence with her friend was getting awkward, Fiona temporized. "Who knows, maybe I'll adopt. Anyway, I'm in no rush to make these decisions right now, especially now."
"Especially now?" Elise's expression showed her confusion. "You've been gathering wool again and you're not making any sense. Is there something I don't know about?"
Fiona saw a commotion forming in the men's lounge of the ridiculously expensive restaurant where the two women were enjoying their weekly Sunday brunch. She thanked whatever providence still clung to her for the deliverance.
Here it comes.
A man with a well-styled mustache, Elise's husband, came to join the two women. "Ellie, it appears Hawaii is under attack. No one knows if it's the Japs or not, but if it's true we may be at war very soon."
The man was an industrialist and his smile of avarice wasn't lost on Fiona. The juxtaposition of the smile and the horrors unfolding before Kasumi in Hawaii, not to mention the still fresh remembrance of her fallen Marine stepson, made her want to vomit.
"If that's the case, then I should be getting on," Fiona stood and excused herself curtly, thankful for the opportunity for escape the selfish man provided. "I'm sure my staff will be starting to gather at the offices. The teletype will be running crazy and we may want to print a special addition."
"A war will mean great business for the Post-Standard," the man suggested, his smile unflagging as if that was good news.
She nodded silently and fled before she decked the thoughtless man as images of bombs falling around the heads of magical girls in Hong Kong and Singapore added to the events Kasumi Sato was now engaging at Pearl Harbor. The girl had chosen to become involved as she strove to save lives where she could without being seen, burning her magic at a terrible rate for men who likely would gladly skewer her for her heritage were they conscious.
***PGBR***
10:30 P.M. local, Thursday, December 11, 1941
Syracuse, NY, USA
"I wish someone could keep my family safe and would get them all back home to Japan when the war is over."
What in the…
The past five days had been hectic and she had stayed in town, sleeping on the couch in her office, unwilling to leave her staff to their own devices during the chaos between the attack and the ensuring declarations of war now spreading across the globe. The distraction of managing the paper she and her late husband and revived during the Depression was welcome as her mind would otherwise be left with nothing to focus on except the jumbled emotions of frightened and confused magical girls all over the world.
This war may be new to Americans, but the Chinese and Koreans have been living it for over a decade. And dear God we won't talk about what is going on in Poland, Russia, and Ukraine right now.
Fiona shivered at the nauseating thought and shoved it from her mind. There was nothing she could do. She was just an observer, destined to record events impassively - never again to get involved.
But…
Fiona had been in reverie, using the silver hair barrette the alien anthropologist Mentorás had given her to facilitate her Chronicles shortly after Audrey's wish. Ever since that wish, she no longer slept so much as she mused. Had it not been for the unobtrusive alien device, there was no human way she would have been able to keep up with the flood of life experience lived by all the Puella Magi alive at any particular time here on Earth and on the seed worlds. It would likely have eventually driven her mad if such a thing were possible. Not that the rats didn't take her there anyway.
With the remarkable ornament, she could Chronicle whenever she had time to let her mind wander. It had given her a reputation as a ditzy wool-gatherer, but there were worse fates.
Like actually giving a damn…
It had been nearly a hundred years since Fiona had last been a direct recipient of a wish, but she still knew it for what it was. Like a hapless genie, she was now ground zero for helping make a girl's most heartfelt desire happen. As if drawn by an irresistible magnet, her attentions were pulled to the mind of the newest Puella Magi…
***PGBR***
4:00 P.M. local, Sunday, December 7, 1941
New York, NY, USA
"Honey, I'm so glad you're safe!"
Konno Shimako's mother, speaking clear English, rushed to the door to embrace her daughter who was standing between two uniformed men. Behind the girl were several more escorts, wearing either Army uniforms or that of the New York City police.
"I'm okay, mother," the fourteen year old Japanese girl assured in the same language, trying to calm her nearly hysterical mother now clinging to her. "Mr. Harris and all my friends were great." While that wasn't exactly true, Shimako said what her mother and the men hovering over her would both want to hear.
She and the other older girls in the children's choir at Saint Patrick's Cathedral had been out enjoying an afternoon together on the town after Mass with a young deacon and his wife as chaperones when everything had fallen apart. Word had traveled fast in the big city and she had stood out like a sore thumb to those who wanted a target, any target, for their anger.
Despite the hurtful words of some of her friends, even her detractors had rallied around her, as had the two adults who became her determined protectors. They had made their way quickly back to the church where Shimako had been brought immediately to Father O'Brien and sanctuary.
A phone call to her house yielded that her father had already been contacted by the Dean to warn him that Columbia was being asked to provide the location of any Japanese nationals, both students and faculty. Several tense hours passed as an Army lieutenant arrived at the house and announced that everyone was under house arrest. Some quick discussions had happened, and it was decided the Konno family would permit the church to release their eldest daughter to the police, who would take her straight home so that the family could be kept together – and confined.
"Dr. Konno," the brash young lieutenant announced once Shimako had been tearfully reunited with her mother, "now that everyone is here I'm going to leave, but you remain under arrest as we sort out what will happen next. As we've discussed," he warned pointedly, looking at each of the three family members present, "if you or anyone leaves this house unescorted, not only will you almost certainly be labeled a spy, but I can't promise your safety even from the people on the street. You people didn't even have the balls to declare war, yellow bastards."
The blond man scowled as he turned and made his way through the door. The others accompanying him followed in turn. One of them, an older member of New York's Finest who, as a deacon himself, had been one of those who had retrieved her from Saint Pat's, mouthed an "I'm sorry" to her and flashed an apologetic expression to her father when his colleagues couldn't see it. Then he, too, made his way out the door leaving the three of them alone.
"Does Noriko-chan know anything?" Shimako asked into the silence, stubbornly maintaining English despite her poor treatment by the Americans. If anyone had bothered to ask her, her sympathies would have been with her host country as opposed to the one on her passport. But no one ever bothered to ask a fourteen year old girl what she thought.
Her mother the English professor shook her head and answered in kind. "We've tried to protect her, to keep things normal around her. She's only four and she wouldn't understand any of this. Anyway, I'm not sure what to tell her. Have you any idea what happened? The first thing they did when they came was remove the radio and take charge of the phone. We just know what Dean Jones told us before everyone arrived; and the lieutenant's vitriol of course."
"I just know what the radios have been saying," Shimako shared. "Japanese planes bombing the warships at Pearl Harbor. Reports of bombings in the British Asian fortress islands. None of it makes any sense, but no one seems to be questioning it." She turned to consider her father who had dropped himself into his favorite chair and was massaging his forehead. "Do you know what will happen to us, Papa?"
The man sighed heavily as he removed his hands from his face and grimaced as he spoke. "Under normal circumstances, we'd be traded for American civilians in Japan."
Shimako was skilled at detecting the undercurrents of her father's words, whether they were said in English, Japanese, or German. There was something the old man wasn't telling. She also knew he wasn't going to share anything else with her at the moment, so she gave her mom one final squeeze and separated from the woman before sidling toward the stairs.
"If you don't mind, I think I'd like to spend the rest of the day playing with Noriko-chan. Anyway, I think you two could use some time together."
Her mother's expression was thankful as she smiled. "I think Noriko would adore a whole evening with you, honey. She worships you, you know."
Shimako did know. Normally she found the clinging of her much younger sister to be intensely annoying. Right now, though, she wanted nothing more than to hug her sister all night.
She smiled back before running up the stairs to see what the little girl who had turned her life upside down five years ago was doing. The door to their shared bedroom was closed. She cracked it open just a bit to peek in and saw short black hair bobbing atop a green dress. It was the same clothes the child had worn that morning to Mass to see her sister sing Christmas Carols with the rest of the girls' choir. Noriko's back was turned, so Shimako couldn't see what the little girl was working on so intently that she hadn't noticed her big sister slip in and close the door again behind her.
"Hey pipsqueak," Shimako announced her presence in English. When speaking just between themselves, the two spoke in a bizarre mixture of English, German, French, and Japanese that generally left those around them, even those fluent in all four languages, at a loss to make out their meaning. That was completely intentional, of course.
"Onee-chan!" the child voice cried out as she spun and darted like an arrow to embrace her older sister. "I was so worried!"
"Why would you be worried?"
"The strange men. And Mama was crying," the girl explained, clearly still distressed.
"Ahhh, well that makes sense," Shimako agreed, running a hand through her sister's short, dark hair in an effort to comfort her. "You shouldn't worry, though. I'll always come back to you, you know that, right?"
Noriko buried her face in Shimako's developing chest and held up an outstretched pinkie. "Promise?"
Shimako used the hand not currently caressing the child's hair to link with Noriko pinkie-to-pinkie. "Promise." As she withdrew her hand she finally saw what Noriko had been working so hard at before she had been interrupted. "So, whatcha doing?"
"Origami Cranes!" Noriko declared, looking up into Shimako's face with the earnest eyes of a small child who believed. "Everyone is so scared and mad right now. I thought if I could fold a thousand cranes I could wish for everyone to be happy again!"
"Wow! That's a very grown up wish for such a little girl!"
"Noriko is a BIG girl!" her sister protested, and Shimako couldn't stop from giggling. Noriko's indignant glare just left her rolling on the floor unable to stop laughing. Even her fourteen year old mind recognised that it was cathartic. She'd needed this release all day, and it felt so very good to finally have it.
"So," Shimako finally continued once she'd gotten her breath again and wiped the tears from her eyes. "I want to make a wish, too! Can we fold together?"
"What's your wish, onee-chan?" Noriko asked as the two moved to kneel beside each other before the big stack of purple paper that the younger sister had somehow managed to get their mother to part with.
"It's a secret, Noriko. I'll share it someday if it comes true, okay?"
***Author's Note***
Well, five days before I see Rebellion and I must admit I'm anxious what the experience will bring. The stories I'm hearing are pretty worrisome. It will be interesting to see what this will mean for my muse. That said, I can't stick my head in the sand and ignore it. I've been holding off writing the Battle of Kasamino City until I see Rebellion and can incorporate whatever is useful. I have it outlined now, but I'm waiting to learn more about the Madoka Quartet's vision for the post-Wish world before I write more combat scenes. I'll then dive in eyes wide open and see where it leads. In the meantime, lets fill in some backstory and give little Yuma a brief taste of a real childhood. :-)