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Shards of glass and stone and splinters of wood jabbed me everywhere like a pincushion as I smashed through a roof. Vaguely, I was aware of Kyōko landing in a heap beside me. One moment I had been slashing away at those massive grinding gears of Walpurgis, the next moment I found myself hurtling away. I managed to free myself of the debris, plucking the largest shards and splinters out. Lifting my sabre again, I prepared to charge out of whatever building we had landed in.

"Wait," Kyōko says. I stop to look at her, agitated.

"What are we waiting for?! Mami-san is still back there! That thing's gonna destroy Mitakihara if we don't go now!" I yell. Adrenaline coursed through me.

"A-a little h-help here?"

I bit back my retort. Kyōko never asked for help. She was too proud for that. Then, I noticed it. A long beam of wood impaling her stomach, held still by a pile of debris. Guilt flooded me, even if I didn't agree with the redhead's ideals. I walk over and grip the beam.

"This is gonna hurt," I tell her. She nods, trying to look confident but I can see the fear in her eyes. I pull, then flinch.

A bloodcurdling scream fills the building, a sound I'm sure would haunt me until the end of my days. Blood spurts out of both sides of her wounds, and I scramble to take out my soul gem and heal it. My gem flashes as I violently try to pour magic into Kyōko. It's working. I hope. After what seems like an eternity, the wound is closed and the screams have stopped. She takes a shaky breath, then two. Eyes closed. One breath. Two breaths. Three.

I reach out and shake her on the shoulder.

"You alright?" I ask, genuine concern in my voice.

"Y-yea. Let's go."

I shake my head.

"I'll go. You stay. You're shaking."

Then I'm gone, running as fast as I can back the way we came. But it was too late. By the time I got back, the giant witch was nowhere to be found. Not a single building survived the storm. More importantly, Mami and Homura were missing. I dispel my sword in a burst of blue light, opting to slow down and look around where we had been fighting. Piles of rubble several stories high filled the area. I spend hours looking around, until a glimmer of yellow catches my eye. Then another. And another. Bits of yellow glass surrounded the area I had wandered into. Surrounded the body of the one who mentored me.

I stared. Then I turned. The city was a dead landscape of grey, as if all the colour had been drained from it. I turned the other way. The shelter too, was collapsed. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I realised that Homura was missing. After about ten minutes, Kyōko finds me, still staring at the ruins of the shelter.

"We should go," she says. "Let's go look for your parents."

Dazed, I let her lead me away from Mami's corpse. I wish I hadn't, because inside the ruins of the shelter, we found them. It had taken a few days, at least. My father was folded over, trapped under a large chunk of what was once the roof. Only his head and his feet were visible, along with the insane amount of blood. My mother had her entire lower body crushed. The smell of blood filled my nose, and I retch at the sight. My voice fails me.

"We should bury them. Come on," Kyōko says, breaking the silence. She begins to shove the chunks of roof away, but stops when she realises I haven't moved. I couldn't move. I had barely ever paid any heed to my parents after discovering the existence of Kyuubei and magic, and now they were gone. I was numb.

"How do you do it?" I whisper.

"Come on. We can leave instead if you don't wanna see this."

"How do you do it?" I repeat, slightly louder.

"Do what?"

"H-how do you live without your family, Kyōko?"

"Sayaka, we should really get goi-"

"ANSWER ME!" I scream. "HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO 'GET GOING'? THEY'RE DEAD!"

I continue screaming a tirade of words I'd never say normally. By the time I'm done, I'm drained of every feeling. Every bit of sadness, of grief. Tears are flowing freely, as I slump into a sitting position beside the rubble crushing my parents. Kyōko takes my soul gem at some point, pressing grief seeds against it, but I didn't care. Hours pass, and I'm aware of almost nothing around me. I come to my senses when Kyōko lightly shakes me on the shoulder.

"Hey, come on. We should go look for Homura. Maybe pinkie is with her."

As we walk away, I look back and realise Kyōko buried my parents while I was in a daze.

She did end up answering me later.

"I just stopped caring. I had nothing else besides my family," she said, shrugging. "It hurts at first, but eventually you can detach yourself. But you wouldn't do that. You're not like me."

She was wrong about that. I did end up like her, because I couldn't handle it. I hadn't even felt as much urgency for Madoka as Kyōko had for Homura back when we found them being attacked. And I felt bad for having a lack of concern for Madoka, the last person from my old, normal life. I had no idea why these memories were playing through my head. Then, something occurred to me.

I had been in the witch barrier for hours in a forest, and I had decided to go fishing because I found a river? A vague sense of panic filled me as I realise I had left Madoka with those fish. I wanted to slap myself for not thinking about the possibility that maybe the witch kills people by baiting them into gathering "food". By the time I reach the clearing where I had left Madoka, however, she was nowhere to be found. The fire and the fish lay untouched, so at least she hadn't taken any.

There was just a slight problem. The side of the forest opposite me was no longer there. Instead, it was a vast expanse of black volcanic rocks and ash, creating a hellish landscape. Had she wandered off? That wasn't like Madoka though, not when we're in a situation like this. I hoped nothing bad happened to her. Against my better judgement, I pick up my bag and start traversing the newly-created landscape. The rocks crunched underneath my steps, but I didn't get far until I found a battered circular piece of metal on the ground. Homura's shield. Some grief seeds that were unused were scattered around the shield. Three of them were coated in blood. A small trail of red leads around a hill, and I follow it after picking up the shield and the grief seeds.

As I circled around the base of the hill, my least favourite person came into view. Homura was trudging forward, leaving behind a trail of blood. Sighing, I walked towards her.

"Oi," I call out. She keeps moving forward, ignoring me. "Oi!"

She ignores me, continuing to walk. I jog to catch up, grabbing her arm and forcefully turning her. The sight I'm greeted with makes me recoil a little. On her face was an expression I'd never seen from her before. She gripped her right wrist with her left hand. A bleeding wrist.

"Sit down, transfer student. Let me heal that."

She shakes her head, trying to pull away.

"Fine. At least do it yourself, then."

She's looking at the ground, completely unlike her usual cold and confident self. Well, she's been different ever since Mitakihara. She turns and continues walking.

"You should really heal that. You don't want Madoka seeing you like this, do you?"

At the sound of Madoka's name, she comes to a stop. Her movements are slow, but she eventually does take her soul gem out. It's almost completely black, the usual violet blotted out. She takes a look at her gem, then looks at the sky. I'm debating whether or not she's lost her senses when she answers that question for me. By tossing the gem over her shoulder. My body moves of its own accord, diving to catch the gem before it hits the ground.

"Oi, what the hell are you doing?" I ask angrily. I press a grief seed against it, revealing more purple.

"Idiot," I mutter. What the hell was going on?

She took her soul gem back wordlessly, stoic and cold like her old self once I had finished cleaning her gem and healing her wrist. Yet, something in her demeanour weakened her image. Of all the people I could run into, it had to be Homura. We barely got along, even for Walpurgisnacht. So when we walked, we walked in silence. She took the shield back as well, muttering a "thanks", which is more than I expected. The ash continued to fall around us, and we were nowhere close to the witch.

"Have you seen Madoka?" she asks suddenly, breaking the silence. It takes me a moment to realise she was talking to me.

"Yea. Don't know where. This barrier keeps shifting, I think."

"And Kyōko?"

"Not a single trace. What about you?"

She shakes her head. We keep walking. Strangely, I don't feel as much hostility towards her as I once had; perhaps a side effect of losing everything. Something about her seems broken, however. I couldn't quite pinpoint it, but the way she acts is different from the days leading up to Walpurgis. In those days, she had been a cold sort of determined. Even if I didn't like her, I had no doubts about her ability. Now, though, she seemed more dejected in a way. Lost, almost. Then again, we all were. I remembered when Kyōko had shooed me off back in Tokyo so she could talk to Homura outside. Something was clearly going on, but I figured now wasn't quite the best time to push for answers. Mainly, because of what was up ahead.

"Hey," I say. "W-we might wanna stop."

She follows my gaze to the distance. A large, but vague, shape was lumbering towards us. It was the witch. Numerous times floated around it, forming incomprehensible words in whatever language witches use. Homura just stared at it, while I readied my sabre.

"Homura?"

No response.

"Oi, Homura!"

She was still as a statue. Unblinking.

"Transfer student!"

She started, as if waking from a dream, and whipped her head around to look at me.

"What's the plan? Do we fight it?"

The witch was a monstrosity, even by witch standards. It was huge, almost half the size of Walpurgis. As it approached, I could feel the same tension Kyōko and I had felt in the dark barrier back in Tokyo. I waited for Homura to answer. She stood for a long time, staring at the advancing witch. Finally, she spoke.

"We should run. We can't take that thing alone."

"What if we can't find it again?"

"Would you rather die?"

"...Fair enough," I concede, lowering my sword. "So we go find Kyōko first before fighting?"

"Yes. Let's get out of here."

She turns and starts to walk away briskly, but at that moment an ear-piercing roar fills our ears. It's excruciatingly loud, and I'm sure I got permanent ear damage from it. I make the mistake of looking at the witch, which is now charging at us. Frighteningly quickly too, much faster than most of the witches I've seen. The two of us break out into a full-on sprint, but another glance over my shoulder showed me how fast the monstrosity was catching up. Looks like running wasn't a feasible option.

"I hope you're in fighting condition, transfer student!" I yell, stopping abruptly, turning, and raising my sword. The telltale click of her guns told me everything I needed to know. And for a while, just for a while, we stood together for once.

A/N:

I'm back! :D

Recent events at home and at university have slowed me down and I've been really stressed out for several weeks now. The worst of it is over though so hopefully regular updates can happen again. The next few chapters has been a huge headache for me to map out since there were a few directions I could take this story and I had trouble deciding which to take. Anyways, as usual, I hope you guys enjoy!

Thanks to FoldedHands for pointing out that Sayaka didn't have enough development, since I had completely overlooked that up until now. I'm going to ease in more character into the blueberry gradually.