Soliloquy

In the dead of night was a raven-haired girl sitting on the edge of a ginormous skyscraper, her hair flowing with the ice-cold air. She tugged at her dark gray collar as her gaze fell on a detached time shield that laid on her lap. Its sand clock ran empty, withered with cracks that oozed out a special type of despair.

In her right hand was a black-rose bow, filled with a new set of energy and powers. Instead of relying on time travel to redo certain events, Homura now had a smaller, less powerful yet more specific ability - memory rewrite.

When she gazes into a target's eyes for a good five to ten seconds, she can remove and implant memories - to a certain extent. At most, she could go back three days. It was not as reliable as her shield, but it had its perks. Unlike the shield, the memory rewrite had little-to-no charge time.

Homura inspected her barely-functional shield, and couldn't help but feel a sense of nostalgia from it. If anything, the raven-haired girl grew so used to looping time that every night, she would prepare for a time jump out of sheer habit.

One day, her immature curiosity bested her, and she decided to use the time-traveling road to see into the past. What she saw then scarred her.

There was a planet completely shrouded in shadows, with its features warping into a face Homura knew very well - Kriemhild Gretchen.

Without hesitation, Homura backed out of the time-traveling road and summoned a magnum, destroying the shield. She had no seconds thoughts about the matter.

At least, that's what she made herself believe.

The distressed raven-haired girl opened up a mirror from her new hotel room, and gazed into her own desperate and exhausted amethyst eyes, and rewrote her memories of that time. The raven-haired girl didn't have the strength to destroy her own shield, the one thing that allowed her to save Madoka...but...

Homura knew that if she kept the shield, she'd be tempted to go back in time. It was like a habit to her - like a drug. The raven-haired girl needed to cull herself from the drug known as time-travel.

After that, Homura needed a sure-fire way to keep the incubator away from Madoka.

And thus, she was grateful for her sudden new set of powers as she hovered over the unsuspecting Kyubey, and implanted the memory of Madoka's death in its mind.

It was a distasteful method, even to Homura, but it was a necessity.

For her, the slightest chance of Madoka turning into a magical girl even after Walpurgisnacht would be the epitome of failure. She won't allow her aspirations to fall out of simple relief at her victory over the Queen Witch.

Homura couldn't relax, as her muscles, nerves, and very mental state had been cultivated to be lethally sharp over ten whole years. For Homura Akemi, one victory simply meant the advancement to another war.

She analyzed her own situation and realized she was in a rather grave part of her life.

She had no territory.

She had no monetary funds.

She had no allies.

She no longer had access to her private weapons arsenal.

She had no specific place to live.

Was this how Kyouko Sakura lived most of her life? Homura thought to herself as she jumped from rooftop to rooftop, sporadically summoning her wings a quarter of the time.

The raven-haired girl still hadn't gotten used to her new flight ability and had a tough time controlling her energy-based wings. She remembered the day she first sprouted her wings.

Within ten seconds of her first flight, Homura Akemi crashed into an abandoned skyscraper window, the momentum bringing her down a few floors across the stairs. It was almost too comical.

Shards of glass pierced through her once-flawless skin, blood dripped and tainted her gray-themed uniform.

"Hey, the fuck're you doin' in my territory, you twit?!" A girl slightly younger than the raven-haired girl jumped off of a dozen stacked up chairs. Her mannerisms were identical to Kyouko's, but had a slightly more brazen look to her, with her muscles more prominent than Homura's.

The stranger had a magical white staff that was clearly too large and too heavy to be carried by regular humans. Its top point had an "X" symbol clad in a strange shadow-like substance too impure to be a part of the clean staff itself.

She pointed the weapon against a bruised Homura, who in turn locked eyes against the green-eyed girl. "Hey girl, what's yer name?"

"Homu-" The ex-time traveler withheld, and changed her phrasing, "Kito. Just call me Kito."

"What a stupid-sounding name. Mine's Kira, better not forget it as I kick your ass."

Homura couldn't help but chuckle at Kira's declaration. "What...a rather stupid-sounding declaration." Reminds me of Kyouko...way too much like Kyouko.

"Ain't a declaration, it's the truth."

"Hah!" An uncharacteristic laugh jumped straight out of Homura's lungs. Something inside her broke in that moment, and she laughed and laughed and laughed. She laughed like nothing else mattered anymore.

"The hell's so funny?" Kira's eyes widened with the slightest bit of irritation and dangerousness.

With one word that escaped Homura's lips, Kira flinched. "The truth," she said. Adjusting herself as she held her balance together with her energized bow, the raven-haired girl glared straight into Kira's eyes. "I don't want to go into a bout with you, Kira. I will only be here for a few days, then I'll be out of your hair and out of your territory."

"Hell, isn't that just mighty convenient?" Kira burrowed her eyebrows in anger, "You come here crashing through my territory, crashing through my home, laugh in my face, and say 'Don't worry, I'll leave' like you ain't gonna' pay compensation?"

Immediately, Kira's feet pushed themselves off the well of stairs, landing directly on top of the weakened Homura, and raised her staff to pummel the raven-haired girl's head in. But right before that happened, a sharp pain crossed Kira's cheek.

"Ugh!" Her whole body flinched back, feeling the blood drip out of her left cheek. Homura had raised her leg up and smashed her black boot into Kira's face.

Before Kira could rebel, Homura dropped her own bow and wrapped her own arms behind Kira, locking her in an inescapable neckhold. The more Kira tried to escape, the tighter Homura's hold grew.

Kira's body was naturally larger and more muscular than the thin-framed Homura's, but somehow the thin-framed girl wasn't losing in a battle of muscle, firmly holding Kira in place, until she felt a sudden weight push her head down into the metal-plated floor.

The green-haired magical girl felt her teeth sink into the barren floor, blood spilled out of her gums. Homura Akemi was brutal when she wanted to be.

"Are you done yet?" Her cold voice sent shivers down Kira's spine. It was an emotion she hadn't felt in a long time.

After struggling in vain, Kira's muscles relaxed, and let out a sigh of defeat. "A-alright...I get it...you win. I won't attack anymore." She sounded humiliated. Drool and blood dripped down to the dusty floor as Kira's strangler let go.

With Kira on the ground, the raven-haired puella magi ran her hand through the flocks of her hair proudly, "I will be three days at most. Then I'm out of your hair." As she flipped to turn away from the girl, Homura felt a tug at her lower leg. Looking down, Homura noticed a desperate Kira.

"...me…" Kira muttered quietly.

"What?"

"T-teach me! Be my sensei!"

Speechless, only the dumbest of answers floored out of the raven-haired girl's mouth. "What?!"