Puella Magi Madoka Magica was presumably created by the four Puella Magi of the Magica Quartet not to be confused with the five Puella Magi of the magical Holy Quintet. All characters and concepts made by them and other such organizations are their own.
So, this idea came to me when I rewatched Rebellion the same day a friend of mine showed me the two classic James Bond movies Moonraker (1979) and Diamonds are Forever (1971). These two movies, what I have been led to believe are the pinnacle of what makes James Bond appealing to viewers and possibly even the best James Bond movies out there (especially Moonraker) now represent the bulk of my exposure to the James Bond franchise, but fear not dear readers, because I can fill in gaps in my knowledge with supplementary material from Spy Hard, Austin Powers, and the animated tv show Archer. If this fails to provide enough ideas, there is adjacent material like Metal Gear Panic, the live action Pink Panther, Phineas and Ferb, and of course Spy X Family. I pray to the muses, and especially Thalia, that I can reach the levels of heart pounding spy thriller embodied by Moonraker. To this end, if it is not already evident, I will be trying to write this story mostly straight faced.
But why would the Madoka Magica movie Rebellion inspire this? At the end of Rebellion, the discerning viewer will recall that Sayaka makes a very specific comment about her being an International Girl of Mystery. I heard that line and decided to run with it. What if Sayaka was actually an International Girl of Mystery while also still being the Sayaka Miki we see in canon complete with her inner Oktavia? Is she the only person who has a secret identity they do not want revealed? I do not just mean poor Homura being Homucifer whose existence like Sayaka's magical girl existence must always be some form of suffering. See if you can guess what each character secretly is. I will try to sprinkle in hints for all the little twist reveals I have planned. I will also try to avoid OCs and OOC interactions as much as possible as long as possible without compromising the story I am telling, but for obvious reasons a character like Spy Sayaka or Spyaka will not always be a 1 to 1 match for canon Sayaka. So, without further ado, strap into your gondola that is actually a submarine and prepare to battle magical girls, assassins, and magical girl assassins, because this is Sayaka Miki: International Girl of Mystery!
Sayaka blinked slowly as she stared at Homura Akemi. She felt angry, scared, confused, and she just knew Akemi was the cause. That damned transfer… something. Sayaka's head hurt and she blinked again. Akemi was gone, almost like magic, but that was not possible. There had to be a rational explanation for what she had just seen. Possibly jet lag or a lack of sleep from the last few weeks. She could also be a little hungover from the bottle of wine she shared with her roommate the night before after they had both gotten in late, a bottle of wine that Sayaka had pilfered from her nemesis, the ever enigmatic Miss White during Sayaka's last mission.
There was also the possibility that she had been drugged, which could be a precursor to an attack.
Heart beating faster, Sayaka blinked again, trying to force herself back to her senses. She took in her surroundings. She was standing on an ornamental bridge over one of the streams that ran by Mitakihara middle school. She could not remember setting foot on the bridge, yet here she was.
A familiar underclass girl with white hair ran past her towards the school. Sayaka was sure she knew the girl from somewhere. Maybe she had read over a file on her at some point? The girl met up with an underclass boy and girl. Sayaka might have followed them with her eyes if she still was not so out of it.
She was so out of it that she almost missed a familiar voice calling "Hey Sayaka," Kyousuke and Hitomi had approached her, reaching barely two meters away and Sayaka had not noticed until one of them had literally called out her name. "How are you doing?" Kyousuke asked.
Sayaka stared at them with wide eyes. Hitomi must have seen something, perhaps dark circles, because she said, "Good morning Sayaka, sleep well?"
No, is what Sayaka thought, but what she said instead after a suspiciously obvious moment's hesitation was "Yeah." There was something overwhelmingly sad about seeing Kyousuke and Hitomi so close together. Sayaka decided, when she noticed tears forming in her eyes, that some of the alcohol from the night before was probably still in her system. She turned away for a moment to hide her expression.
"Sorry," Sayaka tried to cover her slip up. This really was not her best moment, but she did not want to make either of her friends feel bad, especially not this early in the morning. It was already bad enough that Sayaka had to hide so much of her life from her friends already, so what were a few unresolved feelings of shame, unrequited love, and regret.
Hitomi was usually aware enough of other people to pick up on an obvious attempt to change the direction of the conversation, and courteous enough to follow through, so Sayaka decided to use that and bring the discussion to something happier and maybe protect her friends from Sayaka's own emotional issues. "Hey guys, how's it going? What's up?"
"Are you okay Sayaka?" Asked Kyousuke, unfortunately as oblivious as always and as always unable to take a hint. Sayaka wished the best of luck to Hitomi in dealing with him.
"Yeah, I'm fine, it's just, I don't know, I guess when I saw you guys… and heard you both say good morning again, I guess… I got super happy." Tears and similar extreme shows of emotion can come from being happy, so you better not blame yourself, Hitomi, and you better not let my mistake ruin both your days, Kyousuke. "That's all."
Hitomi seemed to relax a little, though there remained a slight tension in her body, "Oh, Sayaka, sometimes you say the most mysterious things."
Sayaka welcomed the conversational segue Hitomi gave her. She could feel her old bravado returning from the strange fugue she was in, and linking her arms behind her head said, "Yep, that's me, the original international girl of mystery." If only the two knew how true that was. If only they knew.
Sayaka paused for a moment. Something was off. She was faintly aware of a strange metal ring on her finger, something that had not been there the day before. She would have to investigate this later. Hopefully she had not gotten so drunk that she proposed to her roommate, or received a proposition from her roommate. That would be awkward in the extreme.
Sayaka tabled the suspicious ring and focused on the day ahead. She even laughed at her own joke, it had been funny, at least to her, and she said, "Come on you two, let's get to class. Today's the day Madoka comes back." And Sayaka would not let an attempted drugging or more likely being a little drunk and hungover stop her from reuniting with her best and oldest friend, especially not when said friend was also her most recent mission.
The Kaname family of four had been gone from Japan for three whole years, leaving under mysterious and improbable circumstances. The situation was exacerbated by Junko Kaname being in upper management for a firm deemed vital for national defense that had three years ago and with little warning opened up a second headquarters in the United States.
Something must have been happening behind the scenes. There was a reason Sayaka had been approached and eventually recruited roughly three years ago by the Public Security Intelligence Agency, Japan's internal intelligence services and there was a reason why now that the Kanames were returning she in particular was tasked to take up this new assignment. Sayaka was not sure if she was more excited about seeing her old friend again or scared of what she might discover.
Spy X Magica X Spy X Magica X Spy
"...that you must never date men who insist they can't eat eggs unless they are half-boiled." said the teacher at the front of the classroom.
Sayaka appeared to be idly doodling in her notebook, but in reality she was decrypting the coded message hidden in her teacher's words. "Eggs" was a reference to rotten eggs as in potential traitors. The words "can't eat" meant that no harm could come to the Kaname family. The words "must never date" was actually meant almost like reverse psychology, indicating to get so close to the target that you could only be closer if you were dating. Lastly, "half-boiled" specified that this job could not be half assed or only half completed.
Each and every member of the Kaname family would either be entirely exonerated or entirely condemned. Any dirt found on the family could only be beneficial. Nothing Sayaka was hearing was any different from what the secret email she received had told her, but in this business there was sometimes a need for redundancy in case one of your modes of communication was ever compromised by the enemy and the higher ups could not afford to reveal that they knew their conversations on that particular channel were being monitored.
Sayaka's homeroom teacher Kazuko Saotome was an undercover agent like Sayaka, but unlike Sayaka, she did not know which of her students was in the nation's service. She did not need to know who was picking up the files and equipment from the dead drops around the school, so she was kept in the dark. Such was the way of espionage professionals.
"And boys," she said seeming to direct her attention to one poor boy in the front of the room, a young man named Nakazawa who Saotome probably thought was the intended recipient of her messages, "you'd better not grow up so petty as to fuss over how your eggs are done, okay?" meaning use whatever methods the agent deems necessary without any limit or restriction other than of course the previously stated avoid outright harming the targets. Sayaka really hoped she would not have to resort to kidnapping to get the answers she needed. She hated the idea of kidnapping her friends and was thankful the plan to kidnap Hitomi to check her family for Yakuza ties never got off the ground.
"Now that that's out of the way, let's welcome our new transfer student! Come on in, Kaname-san!"
Every single head in the class turned towards the door as Madoka Kaname entered the room. The girl had changed quite a lot over the last three years, at least physically, but for some reason, to Sayaka's eyes she seemed to have not changed a day.
Sayaka assumed this was due to the occasional internet calls between the two and the photos of each of the Kanames that had been included in her mission dossier.
Madoka stiffly walked to the front of the class before shyly saying "Urn… It's nice to meet you. My name is Kaname Madoka. Mom's… My mother's company assigned her to work overseas, so my whole family lived in the U.S. for three years. We finally came back to Mitakihara City last week, so I'll be in class with you starting today. I um… it's a pleasure to meet you!" Madoka ended her speech with a slightly awkward bow.
Three years in the United States did not seem to have done much for the girl's already limited confidence. For some reason, something about the entire scene felt off to Sayaka. Something in her gut was screaming at her that something was very wrong and Sayaka had learned to trust her gut. She reached into her bag and pulled out one of the weapons that she kept on her at all times, a gadget disguised as a TI-84 graphing calculator. In reality it was a pocket computer and mobile phone that could also discharge electricity from one end like a taser. The best part about the calculator was that to anyone not familiar with the device they would only see a regular calculator capable of all of the normal functions for the device.
Sayaka held the weapon under her desk and waited for anything to set off her hard earned danger sense.
She did her best to discreetly search the faces of her classmates for any that also seemed on edge, a task made difficult by having to look out the corner of her eye and by her sitting in the third row of five and in the second column from the window out of six. She was in the same row as Kyuske who was on the opposite side of the room, and she could see that he was frowning, but he did not seem tense. The frown was likely due to seeing their old friend as a stuttering mess.
Sayaka looked out of the corner of her eye towards the girl sitting to her left between herself and the window. Kyoko Sakura, Sayaka's roommate and occasional drinking buddy, a girl who had never met Madoka before, had a finger to her chin and a thoughtful expression on her face with her lips in a perfectly flat line and her eyes focused on Madoka. Everyone else that Sayaka could see was either smiling or looking bored. The normally bored and anti-social Kyoko taking an interest like this worried Sayaka. Worse, Sayaka was sure she saw out of the corner of her eye, the girl's shoulders hunched ever so slightly more than usual. Kyoko was tense, her body drawn in as if to make herself a smaller target.
Kyoko Sakura and Sayaka had an understanding. Neither would ask where the other went late at night or why the other might disappear for days on end or where the other's money and occasional injuries were coming from. They both covered for each other. They both offered an ear when the other needed someone to listen who would not ask too many questions or go to the police. They both never actually said what their supposed part time jobs really were.
The Public Security Intelligence Agency had very little information on the other girl, and all of that was only about her family's unusual turn from ill fortune to good fortune. That was unsurprising since Sayaka and her comrades in the agency assumed the girl was just a small-time criminal though probably not Yakuza since Sayaka had seen Kyoko's body when the girl changed and could guarantee there were no tattoos anywhere.
The criminality made sense in context since Kyoko's family had a period where they struggled to put food on the table. It was a period of time where Kyoko readily admitted she had to resort to petty theft. Then the family started receiving suspicious though small anonymous donations. Sayaka strongly suspected that Kyoko was the source of these donations. There was some kind of estrangement in the family, part of the reason Kyoko was living with Sayaka. From the times Kyoko brought Sayaka to the church where her family lived, Sayaka could clearly see that the girl's family loved her dearly, especially her sister, but they did not seem to love her work and would always get awkward when any reference to her work was made, even when they thought Sayaka was not listening and even if they still kept taking the money.
Sayaka may have longed for justice and righteousness, but she had learned to compromise her morals in the name of protecting her country. She could understand doing the same in the name of protecting one's family. If Sayaka was being honest with herself, she would happily steal from those sufficiently well off if she saw Momo Sakura starving. The little redhead was too sweet and wholesome not to.
Seeing Kyoko tense was not good, because a small-time criminal, former and possibly still active thief could and probably should have a good head on their shoulders for when there was danger nearby. If Kyoko was tense then Sayaka was not imagining things. Something about the situation was very off. She gripped her weapon tighter.
"Since Miss Kaname hasn't gone to school in Japan for a while," said Saotome, "I'm counting on all of you to help her out."
Madoka was assigned the seat in the approximate middle of the room, just beside Hitomi who sat directly behind Sayaka. This would make it a little more difficult for Sayaka to monitor Madoka, but Saotome did not know which of her students was an agent and could not change up the seating of the entire class just for a transfer student without drawing unwanted attention to that student. If the Kanames were involved in something, there was no point in tipping off potential rivals, at least not until the agency knew just what the Kanames were involved in.
There was no guarantee that Sayaka was the only spy in her class. She already knew her roommate led a double life. If there were three people, including the teacher already known to have double lives in the class, there was always the possibility of one or two more. Sayaka was especially suspicious of the weird emo girl Homura Akemi who sat in the back of the room and who may have done something unknown to Sayaka earlier that day. Sayaka hated having her back to a potential rival, but there was nothing she could do without drawing attention to herself.
On the bright side, Madoka would get to sit with their childhood friend Hitomi. Sayaka would just have to settle for casting glances around the classroom making it look like she was eyeing Kyousuke a boy she was known to have a crush on when really she was eyeing the door, and pretending to look out the window or at the clock as if she were bored as a way to gather information on potential threats. No obvious snipers outside the window. That was always good.
Sayaka did not calm down. Madoka had done well in English class. Nobody showed any unusual interest in the girl as far as Sayaka could see, at least nothing that could not be explained with prior connection to the girl from before she went to America or by normal curiosity.
That changed during lunch.
Hope you are enjoying the ride, and let me know your thoughts! I am especially interested in hearing what your expectations are for a Post Rebellion Spy AU