Please Read: I recommend rereading/skimming all the previous chapters before jumping to this one. I tried to keep everything flowing smoothly from where I left off in chapter eight but I think something in the style and in the characters changed in the ten or so months that I last touched this story. Anyway, that's all; there will be a much longer A/N at the end. Enjoy!

The Bodyguard and the Client

I have pride.

Once upon a time, I fell down. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put me together again.

Plates grated along fault lines with every breath I took.

Then, I fell down again. And again. Ad infinitum.

It is strange.

While in the hospital, I could scarcely remember the care-free days of my infancy. While in middle school, I could scarcely remember the sluggish days of my childhood. While in the company, I could scarcely remember the frenetic days of my early adolescence.

Every era of my life buries the previous one. New ages come about when the last one is unearthed.

Two things remain constant: the cracks in my façades and my pride. I have always been proud of holding on, of surviving, of growing—regardless of where in the cycle I was, I was proud.

Before this, I was growing. I had my pride as a bodyguard. All my charges survived and all my charges continued onward with their lives; there were no do-overs, but no one died on my watch, so I adapted.

Presently, however, I am holding on. I don't think it's working well, for it has been… at least a decade… maybe more?... since the last upheaval. I had forgotten that the cycle would only end upon my death, not a moment before. I was complacent.

Nonetheless I am proud.

During the demise of the old world I have managed to hold onto the edge. There is a ledge beneath me, jagged though it is, that helps me maintain a precarious balance.

Will I reach the next stage of the cycle?

I don't know.

I'm just holding on.

Here, alone, in my mind… fading in and out of consciousness.

／人◕‿‿◕人＼

"Don't ya think it's all happened too fast?"

Mami tilted her head, not quite following Kyouko's train of thought.

Sayaka, on the other hand, nodded in agreement, saying, "That's exactly what I was thinking!" She leapt to her feet, pacing as she continued, "We've been left alone for thirteen years, yet in the span of two weeks everything has devolved into the madness we thought we had left behind."

Kyouko scowled the fire in the fireplace. "Especially Homura. Outta all of us, she's locked up her memories the tightest. When I left she was fine, but she was, like, on a different plane or wavelength or somethin' when she showed up at goddamn one in the morning at—"

"At…?" Mami prompted when Kyouko fell silent.

"That day was really weird," Kyouko mused, "first you came, and then Homura, and right after Homu left, Kyubey showed up for the first time in forever."

"Was she acting strangely before that day?" Mami queried, pulling out a memo book, pen poised above a fresh page.

Shaking her head, Kyouko said, "S'far as I know, no. It was just… just the fact that Kyubey showed up right after that boggled me, I guess…." She shoved her hands into her hair, hunching over the fireplace.

"It's definitely strange," Mami mulled, tapping at her notebook, "that when Kyubey showed up, all the other pieces came together. He approached Madoka first. Then, she went to Security Firm and just happened to get Homura as her bodyguard. Then, I heard the rumors that the Incubators had surfaced again. At approximately the same time I decided to warn Kyouko-san, Homura had the same idea. Immediately afterwards, he came in person."

Nodding, Sayaka picked up, "From what Kyouko says, Homura shoved everything about magical girls and Incubators under the rug in some remote corner of her brain, yet in less than twenty four hours between her visit to Kyouko's place and Kyouko's arrival here, Homura had a complete revelation."

They both turned to Kyouko, who threw her hands up, shrugging.

Continuing regardless, Sayaka said, "Well, the same day Kyouko came into the picture, Mami came back from her previous assignment. Homura had a break down, which led to Madoka bringing Mami over to… re-acknowledge the past, though that got dark fast from what I hear."

"It's strange," Mami murmured, frowning down at her notes. She flipped back a few pages and read aloud, "'I do not trust Akemi Homura. I will keep a close eye on her, for Madoka.' That was the night we settled things between us."

"How's that strange? You've never really liked Homura," Kyouko pointed out.

Mami shook her head. "That may be, but if I give a person an apology, I mean it. I was sincere, I was earnest in accepting what Homura had said," she insisted, eyes blazing at Kyouko, "yet—yet after our solidarity against Kyubey I still wrote in my case notes that I did not trust Homura."

Kyouko furrowed her brow, clarifying, "You mean you contradicted yourself, basically?"

"Yes," Mami nodded.

"We all know Mami doesn't do that, not when it comes to other people," Sayaka said. The others nodded.

Raising her hand, Kyouko hedged, "Was I the only one who had bad dreams about old insecurities? I mean, I was on a pretty shitty case before I was forced into taking leave, but even after I woke up I couldn't get my head back in the game."

"Now that you mention it, my dreams were troubled as well, though I can't speak for Homura." Mami jotted that down as Sayaka continued pacing back in forth.

"That's got to be it!" Sayaka slammed her fist into her palm, exclaiming, "Everything fell into place way too well and quickly to be a coincidence. Kyubey's been manipulating us."

Kyouko frowned but Mami nodded pensively.

"From what you guys said, he was toying with you when he kidnapped Madoka." She paused, qualifying, "That's actually kind of weird, now that I think about it, because it would've been way more efficient to just take her and leave, but still! Maybe he's trying to keep us out of commission so we don't get in the way of anything—if we're hung up on our insecurities and distrust then we can't work as a team to thwart them!"

Shaking her head, Kyouko rebutted, "It's like ya said, though. It's too much work just to take us out of the picture. He should've just killed us and be done with it."

"Not," Mami proposed, "if he wants us alive for something. The magical girl-witch system is based on emotions. The stronger, darker they are, the more energy the Incubators obtain."

Sayaka nodded. "So he's fattening us up, eh? We know he's been making contracts for a while now…."

"But why the fuck would we go back to that if we decided to leave?" Kyouko demanded.

"Emotions aren't rational," Sayaka said.

Mami agreed, "They make us do such strange things sometimes. Give me a moment, we should record this."

She began summarizing in her notebook, saying aloud, "'There are inconsistencies in the situation. Thirteen years passed without any sign of the Incubators. Within two weeks, a former interest, Kaname Madoka, was scouted and kidnapped. Her companions, three former magical girls, were reunited but were unfit for battle because of mental instability. Significant interference from the main antagonist, Kyubey, is suspected but unproven as of yet. Possible, also unproven, motive is the energy gain from second-time magical girls.'" She looked at Sayaka and Kyouko.

"It's kinda weird when ya talk about us like that," was all Kyouko had to say on the matter.

"Usually I intersperse personal observations and thoughts in between the narration of the case. I try to be objective but also true to the events. Sayaka-san?" Mami turned to Sayaka.

The only irrefutable human in the room said, "Sounds good to me. I've taken my own notes, more or less along the same lines."

"So what?" Kyouko posed the question no one had wanted to ask. "None of this gets us any further in gettin' outta this shit."

Glass clinked as Mami avoided answering by refreshing their cups of tea, so Kyouko turned to Sayaka. When no reply other than a troubled frown came, Kyouko threw her hands up, kicking at the fire grate and snarling under her breath.

At the sound of Kyouko's frustration, Sayaka spoke up. "Well, putting aside the mystery of what Kyubey's up to, we've established that we're not taking on the Incubators. Our goal is only to rescue Madoka, nothing else."

"Fat load of good we've been doin' in that department—we haven't been able to pin the bastard down," Kyouko grumbled. "We had a lead, but nothing strange's been going on at that hotel in the past few days, so I guess that means we're back to square one." She snorted and said bitterly, "At least Homura's been asleep through it. If she saw us runnin' around like chickens with their heads cut off, she'd march straight out."

"Regardless of our lack of progress on the Incubator front, we do have some idea of where to proceed in the rescue front," Mami said, turning away from Sayaka's pointed look. "There are some magic hotspots we should stake out." She gestured to the map of the city they had pinned up in Madoka's study.

Red pins dotted the map, marking areas of detected magical residue. Some of the pins formed dense clusters; while none were in the immediate vicinity of the hotel they had been watching, evidence pointed to a high level of activity by the wharf, around Mitakihara Middle School, and around Mitakihara High School.

Sayaka hummed, tapping the neighborhoods of the two schools. "These are going to be hard to monitor, especially since they're most likely just feeding grounds. The docks are a better place to check out."

Kyouko grimaced, disapproving, "Did ya have to say it like that?"

"Like what?" Sayaka asked as she sketched out the streets around the dock in her memo book.

"To be fair," Mami interjected with her own grimace, "the Incubators are feeding off the school girls, essentially."

Everyone collectively paused.

As injured and abused by the Incubators as they were, the fact of the matter was that, at the very moment, other girls were making wishes. Other girls were falling into the cycle. Other girls, from the fresh-faced to the hardened hearts, were suffering.

The thought left them all trembling in impotent anger—Kyouko, who remembered two young girls slighted by fate, Sayaka, who still sought to be the noble knight of fairytales, and Mami, who yearned to cast off the shackles of misfortune.

"But that's only in our dreams now," Sayaka intoned. Her chin jutted out; she challenged Kyouko and Mami.

Kyouko closed her eyes, whispering, "Yeah. We can't do anything for them—not us."

It took longer for Mami to reply, lost in thought as she was. Her hand traced a photograph on Madoka's desk. From behind the glass, the happy faces of the Kaname family beamed up at her.

"Maybe not for them… but I will prove that we are not sacrifices," she declared, crossing her arms.

Shaking her head, Kyouko trudged out of the study. "Let's hope we can back that up," were her parting words.

Following her, Sayaka said, "Let's take a breather, Mami-san. Food's bound to make us less cranky, yeah?"

"Perhaps you're right, Sayaka," Mami sighed and acquiesced. "Biting off more than we can chew won't help anyone."

／人◕‿‿◕人＼

"In this nightmare, how dare you speak of hope!" He ground his hands against his temples; he felt as if, at any moment, the four horsemen would quarter him in the bloodiest of deaths.

Madoka's eyes gazed at him, unrelenting, until he found it in himself to take a gasp of air. Even though they were in completely different locations, connected only by computer screens and cameras, Kyubey fancied that he could feel the sheer willpower of her belief.

How pleased his superiors would be if he could present them her hope on a silver platter.

"If anyone tells me it's wrong to hope," she declared with none of the fear she had had for him the last time, "then I'll prove them otherwise, every single time."

"Brave words, human," Kyubey uttered. He fiddled with his forelocks, jerking them taut; at the roots, grease had already started to form. He had to resist shuddering in front of her, though it took nearly all his control to keep from clawing at his flesh.

Pity flashed across her face; he glowered at her and snapped, "Would you be so idiotic as to show mercy to your enemy?"

The woman shrugged. "I don't know," she admitted. "You've done terrible, unforgivable things to so many people… but doesn't everyone deserve a second chance? Especially since you have feelings now. On the other hand, regret doesn't erase the wrongdoing. Regret doesn't bring those girls back."

"A handful of human females for the life of the universe. Are you so foolish as to deny the greater good?" Kyubey demanded, leaning forward.

Disgust made his mouth sour when she replied, "Humans are selfish and narrow-sighted. The sun will die in five billion years, and by then we'll either be long extinct or long gone to other worlds. The death of the universe… well, I imagine that won't be for trillions, quadrillions of years away—or more!"

"Venal, egocentric creatures," he sneered. "You are the plague—the death of a paradise and the death of the universe."

She sighed, murmuring, "Can you change nature? We are born greedy… we live and die selfishly."

"While your statement that humans are selfish and narrow-sighted is true, it does not excuse the flagrant destruction of the Earth—your own home—much less the destruction of an entire universe!" He longed to reach through the computer screen to shake sense into the foolish woman's head.

"The lives of a few humans, humans who would otherwise grow up to contribute to global warming and population overflow, do not matter in the face of something as overwhelming as the entirety of this dimension."

His chest heaved with every breath he took, for although his logic was irrefutable, the collection of structures nestled in the center of his brain insisted on saturating everything in unnecessary emotions.

Cursed, wretched emotions that tainted his previously-rational mind. He wished he could take a scalpel and carve them out entirely.

"Do you believe in any deity, Kyubey?"

Rolling his eyes, he retorted, "Do you, Kaname Madoka?"

Madoka answered, "Of course."

"Tell me, then, what kind of divine entity would create so flawed a universe as this?" he challenged, steepling his hands together beneath his chin in what he hoped was a cool, indifferent manner.

Had he been in his "toy" form, he would have simply swished his tail or cocked his head. His eyes would have done most of the work.

Now, however….

She dodged his question, countering with, "If you think the world is flawed, then why would you want to save it?"

Of course, he had seen that coming.

"We wish to save the universe because if it ceases to exist, then we cease to exist."

"But it looks to me like your only purpose of being is just to save the universe. That can't be much of an existence," she said, as if she knew anything!

He shook his head. "Humans are unlikely to ever find fulfillment in pursuing a goal that reaches beyond the confines of one sole race. Incubators, such as myself, live without wanting anything other than the continued wellbeing of our home. We have no need for emotions because emotions would fuel all sorts of selfish desires—civilizations far greater than any that Earth has seen have fallen because of emotions. We are above that."

She tilted her head in an expression of puzzlement, drawing her knees to her chest. "Are you saying," she asked slowly, "that you're saving the universe while letting everything else within it do as they please?"

Kyubey snorted.

Leaning forward, he pulled her into his red gaze. Regardless of its many flaws, this body retained the ability to hypnotize its prey. She succumbed, her feeble resistance failing easily.

"From each race of beings across the galaxies, across nebulae and planets that no human shall ever see, we Incubators draw the ingredients necessary to sustain the life force of the universe."

He had to restrain himself from smashing his keyboard and computer screen when she jerked away, out of his influence. Still, he could not keep himself from grinding his teeth in frustration.

Stubborn human.

His jaw would surely ache later.

"Surely if Incubators have been around for so long, they've found a better solution to saving the universe than harvesting emotions—and lives—from humanity," she argued even as she looked doubtful.

At that, he sighed.

"Or do you think that's why humans exist? To be sacrificial lambs for the good of everyone else?"

Now there was a reasonable statement! "Do you not think humanity would be better off dying for the preservation of an entire universe? And we don't even demand so much from you—only a handful of girls from a population that grows nearly exponentially."

"If we were better people," she sighed, "then I think we would willingly give ourselves for the universe. But "the universe" is too vague a concept, and at the same time, it's all-encompassing. There are others, aren't there, who could lay down their lives instead?

"But I know it's the height of selfishness. Selfishness that even you, Kyubey, have."

He stared at her in askance.

"You don't believe me," she said wryly.

Shrugging, he said, "I do not think it is an emotion we willingly possess. Rather, the urge to live is something fundamental, something that even the lowliest virus has. What sets us apart is our desire to see the world live for as long as possible."

Perhaps… did that sound false to his ears?

She shook her head. "All things must die, you know. Otherwise there'd be no meaning to anything."

Apparently she, too, found it lacking.

How strange.

But a being whose lifespan barely encompassed a century would not, of course, see the importance of helping the universe.

Change was difficult to see when it manifested in infinitesimal increments.

"Yes, everything comes to an end. But if we can delay it, then why would we not?" Kyubey replied at last. "In extending the life of the universe, we extend the lives of everything that lives within it."

"Do you believe in any deity?" she repeated.

He frowned. "No."

"Oh. Well, to each their own," was all she said.

"Why do you ask?" He had to know.

She shrugged.

He waited for her to answer, wiping his sweaty fingers on a handkerchief. His lips twisted and he resolved to cleanse the body as soon as he gathered his daily quota.

"It's just," she murmured, and his ears were at least sharp enough to hear her, "these questions seem like too heavy a burden for any living being. Of course we should preserve our home, but save it from itself? How can anyone but a god stop such a force of nature?"

Kyubey typed in a command as he said, "We do not need a god."

Onscreen, one of his bodies entered Madoka Kaname's room.

She gasped, jerking away from him, but did not resist when he pulled her to the door. Still, she glanced back, towards the Kyubey on the screen, who watched her.

"This isn't the right way," Madoka managed to say before the door slammed shut behind her.

Kyubey switched to the camera hovering over the maze.

"You don't get to decide that."

／人◕‿‿◕人＼

Madoka found herself running.

"I don't know where I am."

Every gasp for air burned her throat and lungs.

Her feet throbbed.

Sweat ran down the length of her body.

At least she had managed to keep herself from crashing at sharp turns.

But the hounds were patient.

They knew that eventually her body would give in, even if her mind refused.

Unlike her, they were perfect.

"Quite so. We're far from perfect. One could even say that we're a burden to everyone. Madoka Kaname, the girl who couldn't do anything."

Within this labyrinth she could only go in circles, retracing her steps countless times, until she collapsed. There was no time to look for an exit.

If only she could hide.

Just—hide away from this awful reality—back in the embrace of her family, her friends, or accompanied by her newest friend, Homura.

Homura.

Her friends.

Her family.

Even as her heart beat faster in fear whenever the hounds sounded closer, even as she had to push against a wall upon turning, even as she found herself passing the same painting for the umpteenth time—

Even as she ran, she clung to her hope.

For as cruel as the world could be, it was also full of kindness; it was a choice, and without one or the other option, life would be devoid of meaning.

So she could endure this.

She could give the Incubators all her emotions, from the brightest joy to the blackest despair, if it meant she could continue hoping.

"But that's not all, is it?"

No, that wasn't all.

"We might not be the savior—"

—but she could be the stars that guided and encouraged and gave hope to all.

That she could do.

Because so long as one person hoped, then that hope could spread to everyone else. And together, united, they would be able to make a difference.

"I won't be able to save everyone. I'm not a champion of justice."

"We're not going to save the Earth, nor the universe, nor humanity. We're not going to save the girls from making contracts. We're not going to save their families or their friends."

"All I'm going to do is give hope to magical girls."

She kept running.

Her body wanted to give up, her feet already beginning to stumble, but she kept running.

Not because she feared the slobbering, jagged teeth of the hounds. In fact, thinking about it more, she was decently certain that the hounds were bluffing. After all, if she was caught and shredded to pieces, then the Incubators would no longer have their bait and easy generator.

Certainly, the fear of chased prey rose instinctively in her mind, but she knew better.

This was no longer a game of cat-and-mouse. This was no experiment performed on a trapped rat.

This was the test of her resolve.

It had taken just over half of her life to arrive at this conclusion—yet the question remained:

Could she succeed?

"Of course we can. Good never loses."

Ah, but they were not good. They were selfish, for they sought only the continued suffering of humans who had already suffered enough.

"You know that's what hope does. It keeps you going, it keeps you suffering time after time with the optimism that someday it will be better. When that someday never comes… well, as it's said, the greater the height the harder the fall, and maybe we would've been better off if we had just died in the first place."

"Plus, what Kyubey said remains true."

"Right. The longer humanity exists the more likely it is that we'll end up destroying Earth and everything else that we touch."

"But that's not the point."

"The point isn't that we have all the potential for good and all the potential for evil."

"The point is that we have a choice."

"And we live with it."

Madoka's breath came in stuttered wheezes.

Her legs twinged as she forced them to continue forward. Her vision became blurry; she crashed into a wall.

Behind her, the hounds bayed even louder.

"I'm going to do it. I'm going to give hope to those who have none, and then—and then there will be true change. The change I can't bring because I'm not a hero at all. But with hope anything's possible, isn't it?"

She staggered to her feet, absently wiping away blood from her nose. Her entire body ached and threatened to suffocate her inside a prison of flesh, but she kept running.

A hound's cold nose brushed against her ankle. She could not help but scream.

Another's teeth just barely grazed the skin of her leg.

Fear spiked in her chest and her wheezes became gasps and she had to keep running—fear stained her determination and her heart pounded in her ears and the hounds snapped at her heels until finally—

One tackled her.

She crashed down, but she kicked out against cold noses and cold jaws and cold bodies. Her hands clawed at the ground until she heaved herself up; they snarled at her, and now she could hear the distinct mechanical pitch that wormed into her brain and threatened to send her insane with fear.

"I'm not going to give up."

"Never again."

She nearly fell forward again. Still, she ran down the length of the corridor, and the hounds let her. They nipped at her heals, but they let her drive herself to unconsciousness all by herself.

This I can and will do.

Here is my battle and here I make a stand.

Everyone needs hope.

And then, I will hope that everyone's individual hope will come together and make the choices that are necessary to make sure tomorrow also has a chance to be better.

That is the wish that my soul will fuel.

For all the magical girls who died too early, who died too bitter and too miserable to see that the world and humanity have so much to offer.

Madoka's body gave out.

She fell to the ground.

Unconscious. Yet, she still breathed.

／人◕‿‿◕人＼

"Her emotions are all over the place," he grumbled. "What could she possibly be thinking?"

The chart that plotted negativity and positivity fluctuated between the two. Regardless of the category, however, all output went directly into a series of dull granite canisters cradled in foam supports.

Foregoing the screen that tracked the woman's flight, Kyubey pulled out one of the full canisters.

"Isn't it wonderful, how many paths one can take to the same end?"

And yet.

"And yet there is only one right path. Or is it that for every one hundred paths there is only one that is correct? Or, for every wrong path there is a right one? But does that not depend on the definition of right and wrong?"

He gulped down the remnants of his glass of water, then dumped the contents of the canister into the empty glass.

Like oil and water, cotton-candy pink drifted to the top of the glass while wine-red sunk to the bottom.

"The extremities may be stark in contrast, but notice the gradient. The color darkens so gradually that by the time you arrive at the darkest corners of your soul you do not realize the difference. You forget that you ever knew happiness. You forget that there exists an entire spectrum of emotion beyond the sludge you find yourself in."

Kyubey sunk his forefinger into the shimmery substance.

He shuddered as he tasted the honey in the dregs of the tea and took a deep breath of flowery sweetness as her mother reassured her that she was a good girl, a good daughter who—

The joy in her students' eyes when she announced that the principal would showcase—

Sayaka squished their cheeks together, and really they were too old for picture booths, but laughter bubbled up in her chest and—

Tatsuya bounded into the kitchen, waving around a letter, shouting, "I got accepted!" He shoved it in her face, "Look, nee-chan! Look!" And she took the letter, emblazoned with the school standard, and Papa said—

Kyubey took his finger out.

"She feels with such intensity," he breathed, examining his finger. Reminiscent of a first degree burn, the skin stung and reddened as if he had scalded himself.

Deeper within, however, he knew that the dark would freeze him instead.

For such was Madoka Kaname: white-hot when positive, and paralysis-inducing cold when negative. In between the two extremes were ensconced every other shade and hue that made up the majority of her experiences.

"There is nothing special about Madoka Kaname. Indeed, the most remarkable thing about her is that she has garnered such loyalty and devotion from her friends. How is that possible? An otherwise dull girl should not have been the catalyst for such profound ripples in the fabric of karma."

Glancing at the other canisters, he counted twenty, including the one he had disturbed. Arranged in rows of five, the dappled grey of the stone canisters concealed from the world the life experiences and emotions of the woman currently running for her life.

On screen, she crashed into the wall of the maze. The intensity of her emotions peaked, and one of the sensors showed how emotion billowed from her like steam rising from a warm body on a frozen night.

The walls absorbed the ambient discharge; later, just like water, the woman's emotions would liquefy under certain conditions and trickle into containers to be delivered to the power plant.

From there, he frankly did not know what the upper strata did with the emotions of humans.

"The grief seeds are by far the better method," he complained as he returned the contents of his glass to their proper place. "A compressed soul gives everything a human can possibly offer, without a single iota wasted."

After he returned the canister, he turned his attention to the dregs that remained in his water glass.

"On any given night I had at least two dozen souls with at least ten years' worth of emotions reduced to a single grief seed—a single vessel of pure, condensed emotion with very little effort on my part. No need for the homogenization process or excess storage."

This humanoid body, however, had no mechanism for storing filled grief seeds.

It also made approaching potential magical girls much more difficult. Even the desperate ones were wary of him and his strange albino looks.

Worst of all were the looks his fellow Kyubey gave him.

Kyubey with regular bodies did not feel, but they could imitate human emotions well enough and understood them well enough to display pity and mockery whenever he came into contact with them.

They did not look down at him. The simple truth was that he was indeed inferior to them and the rest of their kind; he could acknowledge that.

But he hated the fact nonetheless—and that hatred went around in circles because he had the misfortune to emote in the first place, which mad e him aware of how degrading his station was.

"As the saying goes," he said, tilting the glass, "ignorance is bliss."

He ran his finger along the inside, collecting the viscous drops left behind.

"My friends," she reiterated over the twisting in her chest. "They're fighting Walpurgisnacht to save the city."

The boy stared at her and she wished—

"We're people." They weren't human, but they were—

She had never worn black. Was that odd? To wear practically every color except this one. She didn't even wear it willingly. She wore it because Papa was dead. Papa was—

Cheers went up all around. In the audience she could see Mami sitting next to Mama and Papa and Takkun, all waving enthusiastically at her. She spotted Sayaka's parents a little farther up, and Hitomi's family, too.

This was it. They had—

"You say Homura pushed you away, that you were mere acquaintances." He shook his head. "Your soul says otherwise. Incubators can only tamper with memories, not with the soul itself."

He glanced at the screen, which had switched to the camera watching the Madoka Kaname's cell. Therein, the woman lay unconscious and ignorant of how little humanity knew.

"Inefficient," he muttered.

He grimaced upon realizing that he had run his hand through his hair again.

"Filthy creatures. Filthy body. How am I supposed to get anything done in a vessel such as this? Why did they not give me something… smaller, unassuming, easier. A child's body would have been more efficient. Better yet, a mechanical body would have saved me from having to provide nourishment, it would have eliminated all the cumbersome demands…."

Kyubey sighed.

If only Homura Akemi had been smart enough to resign herself to fate and be done with it.

Now everything had become needlessly muddled.

"It makes me sick."

／人◕‿‿◕人＼

In the void left behind by Madoka, Sayaka performed damage control. She paid the servants, sent the bills, excused Madoka from her job at the middle school, and fended off questions from Hitomi and Junko—admittedly, Sayaka was pretty sure she had failed to convince the two women that everything was fine.

"I'm a goddamn bodyguard," she grumbled under her breath as she dusted Madoka's shelves. "It's my job to protect—and yet! And yet I let Kyubey get away with this shit."

Her fingers paused over a frame of Madoka and her friends.

Given their chubbier faces and school uniform, this was obviously taken when they were all still in high school.

"Now that was the life." She sighed, turning away from the carefree smiles preserved for years to come.

Right in between middle school and the real world, high school had proved to be the easiest years of Sayaka's life. Of course, she could not speak for the others, but she suspected that they felt similarly.

"But I guess it's no use yearning for the past. A true knight moves onward, regardless of the obstacle!" she psyched herself up, jutting her chin out and planting her fists on her sides.

She could take anything on.

"Talkin' to yourself is the first sign of madness, ya know," Kyouko interrupted Sayaka's moment of confidence.

Deflating, Sayaka retorted, "Says who?"

Kyouko shrugged. "Damn if I know, heh!"

"Man, you're no help," Sayaka groused as she tossed the duster on the desk. She moved around the study, straightening books and tweaking the curtains and poking at the fire in the fireplace, until Kyouko reached out and snagged her arm.

"C'mon," Kyouko said, tugging her out. "We're gonna enjoy the gardens, yeah? Nature's s'posed to be real relaxing, 'cording to all the self-help books."

Eyebrows lifting, Sayaka could not help but ask, "You read self-help books?" She sped up her pace so that they walked side by side.

Kyouko shook her head, saying, "Mami used to, ages 'n' ages ago."

"Oh."

A few corridors, a staircase, and a door later they were outside in the garden.

Despite being neglected for the past week, most of the flowers and plants remained flourishing, though the vegetable beds needed weeding.

"Gardening," Kyouko pronounced, "is also s'posed to help. D'ya know where she keeps gloves? I don't wanna mess up my hands—it takes forever to get dirt out from nails, y'know."

Smiling, Sayaka gestured towards the shed further back. "All the tools and stuff are there. Madoka likes to garden. It reminds her of her dad."

"Does it?" Kyouko murmured, suddenly stopping to look around the backyard again.

"Yeah," Sayaka said, smile dropping.

"Then we'll have to take care of it for her. Mami doesn't need us right now anyway, we'd just get in the way of her strategy planning," Kyouko said, striding forward.

Catching up, Sayaka protested, "We're a team! Both of us are capable adults, not kids who can't tell right from left. She shouldn't be working off on her own and regulating us to just the brawn."

Kyouko glanced sidelong at her fellow bodyguard. "It's better this way. Mami's, like, on edge, y'know? The more she has to keep her occupied the better, I say."

"It sounds like gardening would benefit her more than us," Sayaka said.

"Where've you been these past thirteen years?" Kyouko demanded, rounding on her.

Blinking, Sayaka stopped before the shed, looking back.

"It's like ya don't even know her," Kyouko snapped. Her arms crossed as she continued, "You know she's not going to let anyone else do their job if she isn't in control. An' yeah, we're humoring her, but it's not like she comes up with crazy, shitty plans!"

"Wait, wait," Sayaka said, holding up her hands, "I don't think we're on the same page right now."

Growling, Kyouko retorted, "We're talking 'bout the fact that you don't understand Mami at all. You've gotta trust her or else we're gonna fail like we've been failing this whole time."

"I trust her," Sayaka countered, "but I don't think she's doing things the… the right way. Not with how she's dealt with Homura."

At that, Kyouko hunched forward.

"I know Mami's on a short fuse. I've seen it before, and I'm not about to just let it happen when I can do something about it." Sayaka began walking back to the house.

"Please." Kyouko turned to Sayaka, a worn out expression on her face, and suddenly Sayaka remembered the bags under everyone's eyes.

She tilted her head back, gazing up at the sky.

"Just for a while. We already got them to eat—both Mami and Homura. Let them wallow for an hour or two, then we'll go back for 'em."

Sayaka nodded. "Okay."

Kyouko pushed open the shed doors, saying, "Let's work out some stress. Our shitty lives will still be waitin' for us when we get back."

"A couple of hours won't make a difference anyhow," Sayaka mumbled to herself.

"We'll get a clue. Soon."

/\

A/N: So I'm back! I know it's been a heck of a long time, but I said I wasn't abandoning this story and I'm trying really hard to stick with it.

I tidied up previous chapters, but as I said before, I'm not sure if they all fit together well. Hopefully the chapters henceforward are more continuous. Also, any plot holes that came up in the previous chapters will hopefully be addressed; I think I laid the groundwork for fixing that in this chapter.

Moving on, does anyone recognize where I'm taking the story? I'm not sure on the particulars, but an idea came to me while I was writing and I feel like I can pull it off.

Suggestions, comments, questions, concerns, etc. are always welcome! Frankly I think I need all the help I can get with this project, which is significantly bigger in scope than "Mayn't Change the World." While the latter story is going to end up being longer than "The Bodyguard and the Client," this story is very demanding. I don't think I can even call it a bodyguard AU, so I'm thinking of changing the title...? Unless I can figure out a way to somehow bring the bodyguard bit back into the picture. The poll results told me to keep at it instead of scrapping it for a normal bodyguard AU, so... yeah.

Updates will be far from regular. This month I hope to finally finish that MadoHomu one-shot that's been in the works, and then maybe a chapter for "Mayn't ...," so "Bodyguard ..." won't be updated until sometime in October or even November.

Oh, also! I tweaked the summary a little bit and removed the [Homura, Madoka] pairing. I haven't come up with something more suitable for the summary yet, but the second change is because I'm thinking that in the aftermath there might be a mix of ships going on. I love MadoHomu to death and it will probably be endgame but for now it's mostly friendships.

Please review! I thank everyone who has favorited/followed/reviewed during the hiatus :) Don't hesitate to give your opinion!

~Teddy.