Once upon a time, Tomoe Mami believed in magic.

Well, she still did. But now she KNEW it existed. And knowledge didn't equal belief, at least not truly.

Once upon a time, Tomoe Mami had a happy family. She had her father, her mother, and the little brat of a younger brother.

A fairy tale existence. One where things were, if not ideal, at least good.

But that was before that day. Where the light of daybreak turned to darkest night as a black sun rose into the heavens, before transforming back into day of a sort by virtue of the light from explosions and fire.

The day that started as a vacation as the Tomoe family prepared to visited Mami's grandmother, to reassure her that despite the... odd happenings in the city, that they were doing fine.

The scream of jets and explosions in the darkness before dawn had awoken everyone.

Which was why they had been driving out of the city when the black sun rose. A circle that radiated not light, nor darkness, but an anti-light that consumed everything in its path as liquid poured from it. Perhaps gushed would have been a better word, gushing as blood congealed to the thickness of black ichor or mud.

A wound in the world. A hole in reality. A schism to that which should never be and which lay outside of all that was sane and human conceptualization.

It was here that Mami remembered things becoming disjointed.

The family car jumping like a cat.

The screeching of metal upon metal, as plastic and synthetic materials gave way.

A truck framed against the light of the fire that spread from the heart of Fuyuki city.

And then there was heat... and a coldness that slowly spread. She didn't feel pain, but then she didn't feel much of anything as she gestured at the light outside, pleading for help.

To be saved. To have her existence continued.

She tried not to look at where her parents had been, seated at the front of the car. Nor the empty seat beside her where her brother had been.

The blonde girl couldn't recall what happened to the brat. She could remember that he had been playing with his lego toys, building some sort of space ship. There had also been hushed voices, filled with fear and concern, from the front as the car headed out of the city and she looked back at the black sun rising.

That was when she met it.

Kyuubey, the messenger of magic, granter of wishes and the maker of magical girls.

Her wish had been simple. She didn't want to die.

She refused to die.

And so, she didn't.

Once upon a time, Tomoe Mami believed in magic.

Now she was magic, it pervaded her existence. It sustained her, as she wielded it to hunt. To fight. To kill.

The world she dwelled in now wasn't one of common sense, or such things as 'logic' that normal humans knew.

But then that was fine, she wasn't human.

Not anymore.

Even the... not quite humans with their magic didn't consider her or her kind human. And she had run into a number of those.

Daemon girl.

Magical girl.

Puella Magi.

It didn't matter what people called her. What mattered was that she existed.

That she lived. Ever unchanging. Ever the same as the world evolved around her.

A pitiful existence such as hers was still better than being dead.

Puella Magi Schuetze Aurulent

Part 1 : Birth by Fire

Then one day, she made a friend...

The friendship didn't lasted. But she did make a friend. That friendship left a taste in her mouth, a desire to no longer be alone.

So, she tried to make more friends. And she did.

But friendship made her careless. And Tomoe Mami fell.

And in falling, died.

Against the Witch of Witches, Walpurgisnacht.

At the hands of her friend, when her world was broken by the maddening light of truth.

Against the Witch of Dessert, Charlotte.

Died in countless myriad ways.

And then... one day, the world broke and... she didn't die when she was killed. Because a friend remembered her, counted on her. Looked up to her.

She died and didn't die, but that was fine by her. For in the new world that she existed in, she could and did make friends.

She was no longer alone.

Now her existence was no longer pitiful as it had been when she struggled alone.

Because for Tomoe Mami, friendship was magic.