A/N: Thank you for reviewing!
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DREIZEHN
TIMELINE X + N
The twins sat quietly for several minutes, allowing Homura to digest all they had told her. Homura frowned down at the tabletop, mind whirling.
The Incubator had done a masterful job of luring the girls in. It had danced around the atrocious drawbacks to the contract and made the twins feel empowered while waxing philosophical about the human race in ways designed to confuse tweens. It was oddly forthcoming on the subject of wishes, though. What did it hope to accomplish by divulging so much information? Whatever it was, Homura was furious. At this point she was so cynical about the Incubator that she wouldn't put it past the monster to have another magical girl herd a Witch toward Karakura just to push the Kurosaki girls into a corner. Homura had seen how dogged it was in trying to convince Madoka to contract once it noticed her great potential. It wouldn't surprise her in the least to find out that it had gone to great lengths to get the twins to sign away their souls.
The twins had contracted too long ago for Homura to be able to save them in the next timeline. Even though the prospect of allying with them was promising, it made her feel powerless. How many girls had sold their souls to protect the people they loved over the course of millennia? It disgusted her that the Incubator preyed upon that selflessness. Her powerlessness to stop the cycle was frustrating beyond words.
Homura didn't know what to think about the Incubator's stated origins. The Incubator had told her in multiple timelines that its race was alien. She now questioned her own interpretation. It could have been one of its many misleading statements— a spiritual race from another dimension would be alien to most magical girls, she supposed. Would have been alien to Homura herself even a few days ago. Had she fallen into a deliberate trap of misinterpreting "alien" as "extraterrestrial"? And while it still spoke of energy to the Kurosaki girls, it had apparently not mentioned countering entropy or preventing the heat death of the universe among its motives. Were the two angles mutually exclusive or did they overlap in ways she couldn't understand?
Also, this was the first she heard of an outside force hunting magical girls— if that assertion could be believed at all. One thing was certain: The Incubator's sheer distaste and wariness of shinigami to the point of villainizing them made her very, very interested in them. Call it a forbidden fruit reflex, but she found her curiosity piqued. No matter what it said to turn their attention aside, the Incubator had asked the sisters to spy on the shinigami while taking pains to ensure they wouldn't turn around and tell the shinigami information about its system. Whether the shinigami actually posed a threat to magical girls was something Homura would have to investigate. A deep, quiet part of her mind wondered if shinigami were actually a threat to the Incubators themselves. She wasn't sure what to do with that thought.
Homura also found the Kurosaki girls' wish interesting. "To be strong enough to protect the people of Karakura from Witches and Hollows." She wanted to know how broadly or narrowly their magic had interpreted it. Were they literally unable to be overpowered by a Witch? Or did they just get heightened defensive abilities? How was "strength" defined? Physical? Magical? Psychological? Did any advantage granted by the wish only apply in Karakura or while protecting someone from Karakura?
So much new information. So many new questions.
"Um, Homura?" Yuzu fidgeted. "Do you have any questions?"
Homura looked up, blinked owlishly, and tilted her head slightly. She ran through the history they had given her. It was probably nitpicking, but... "Yes. Your brother. You said he was a powerful shinigami. How did the Witch ensnare him?"
The sisters winced. Karin cleared her throat. "Well, you see... You know the big war from a couple years ago we mentioned? With the shinigami trying to keep some nutjob from sacrificing all of us?" When Homura nodded, Karin continued, "Our brother fought in that war."
Homura frowned. "How old was your brother, then?"
"Only sixteen," Yuzu said quietly. "He shouldn't have had to fight, but things were... complicated."
"See, the traitor— something-or-other Aizen— had this trick he could do with his zanpakutō where, if you saw his shikai once, he could make you see detailed illusions whenever he wanted," explained Karin. "It made him tough to beat— he'd figured out how to show the trick to a lot of the strong leaders of the shinigami over the course of decades before they knew he was rotten to the core. So they'd try to attack him and he'd not really be there, or they'd attack an ally, or they'd get attacked and block wrong because they saw his sword in a different place than it was. It was a mess."
"But Onii-chan was young and had only visited Soul Society once," continued Yuzu. "He never saw Aizen's shikai, and he was as strong as the captains of the shinigami. Onii-chan was the only one who could really trust what he was seeing when he fought. So he had to fight. He wouldn't let Karakura be destroyed. He protected us."
Karin scowled down at her empty soda can. "But Aizen had this weird thing that made him keep getting stronger. Ichi-nii knew that if he wanted to beat Aizen, he'd have to use all his power. So he did. Literally. He sucked at explaining it, but he and his zanpakutō did some weird finishing move that sacrificed all his reiatsu. Other things happened, but basically Ichi-nii gave up all his power to protect us." Her lips drew into an angry line. "So he was defenseless."
Ah. That clarified things. Reciprocal sacrifice. Homura wondered if the twins knew they had set themselves up for a similar end. But... "Was? Not is?"
Yuzu smiled. "It took a long time, but Mr. Urahara— um, that really smart shinigami we mentioned who lives in Karakura instead of Soul Society— he invented something to help give Onii-chan his powers back."
"Couldn't be a pill or something. Nooo, had to be a sword. That's Urahara for you," Karin added darkly.
"All the captains and lieutenants of the shinigami helped by putting some of their power into the sword and gave the power to Onii-chan to... kinda wake up his reiatsu. Like, if his reiatsu was cold coals, they sparked it back into a bonfire."
Karin snorted. "By stabbing him. From behind. With no advance warning. That's Urahara for you."
Homura eyed the girls. "This Urahara sounds... ominous."
The twins looked at each other and laughed shortly. Karin smirked. "Oh, I'm sure he can be terrifying when he wants to be. I haven't seen it myself, but Tōshirō says Urahara used to be a captain. That's enough to be wary around him. Ichi-nii says he is a cheerfully sadistic trainer. He puts up a goofy front kind of like our dad does. I think a lot of it is real, though. But when he starts waving his fan and going all 'oh, whatever do you mean, I am merely an innocent shopkeeper,' he's totally trolling. And if he can find a way to startle you out of your skin while helping you, he'll do it for kicks. But he's not vicious about it and actually knows when to pitch the goofy act."
"Stabbing someone from behind is not being vicious about it?" Homura deadpanned.
"Since it was immediately obvious what was going on, nope, not for Urahara," said Karin. "I don't think he had planned for Ichi-nii to be in a bad situation when they gave him back his powers, so yeah, it probably wasn't in the best of taste considering the circumstances. But shinigami transfer powers to humans by stabbing them through the heart anyway so maybe he couldn't avoid being all stabby."
Yuzu smiled wanly. "Onii-chan calls Mr. Urahara a mad scientist with a conscience. He says Urahara has done some, um..."
"Morally questionable."
"Yeah, morally questionable things, but things Onii-chan didn't mind because he understood why he did them and would have cooperated if things were explained to him first. And he said Mr. Urahara apologized after."
"What kind of things?" asked Homura.
The twins looked at each other.
"That's... a long story," Karin hedged.
"So give me the short version," Homura said bluntly.
Karin blinked at her. "Okay. Uh." She rolled her eyes skyward in thought. "So, Ichi-nii's first visit to Soul Society was to rescue a shinigami who was in trouble for helping him by sharing her powers. Urahara knew that Aizen was bad before almost anyone else, but he didn't tell Ichi-nii and his friends about him. Or his special ability— which was really stupid, in my opinion. Or that Aizen had made the government get pissed off at his shinigami friend because Urahara had secretly tried to hide something in her soul— the special thingy I mentioned earlier that made Aizen keep getting more powerful. Aizen wanted Ichi-nii's friend Rukia because he wanted that thingy."
Homura stared. "He hid something in her soul. Secretly."
Karin winced. "Yeeeah. That was skeevy. But Ichi-nii and Rukia said they understood when Aizen got his hands on the thing and they saw the terrible things he could do with it. Ichi-nii said it was like Urahara and Aizen were playing chess to prevent or cause an apocalypse. Aizen wanted the thingy to destroy the world and Urahara wanted to destroy the thingy to save the world."
Yuzu pensively played with her sleeve cuff. "I think part of Mr. Urahara's problem is that he thinks so far ahead of everyone else that he loses track of how far behind he's left them."
"Some of the leaving people behind is deliberate, though. Or at least a choice he makes in certain circumstances." Karin made a wry face between a grin and a grimace. "Ha, I can feel for him with Ichi-nii, though. Trying to make a sixteen-year-old boy learn Soul Society politics when he had a single-minded goal of plowing his way through Seireitei, grabbing Rukia, and strolling out would have been like trying to convince a farmer to study astrophysics."
Homura bit her cheek for a moment. "Still."
Karin sighed and shrugged. "Still."
A few moments passed in awkward silence as they set aside the topic of the shinigami scientist.
Homura mulled over the things they had told her and backtracked. "So, you contracted to protect your brother. When did he get his powers back?"
The girls cringed. "A couple months after we contracted," said Karin.
Homura sat back and looked at them in surprise. "So soon?"
"Yeah. He wasn't vulnerable for long. But we managed to protect him from things together for several weeks."
"There was a time a few weeks after we contracted when a Hollow attacked me and my brother." Yuzu looked down in shame. "I was still new and too scared to do anything without Karin there." She looked up fervently. "But I got better after that!" She looked down again. "But by the time I was... confident enough to fight by myself, Onii-chan had his powers back."
Karin slapped her sister's back. "It worked out. And we bagged another Witch in that time, so it was worth it. We kept him safe when he couldn't keep himself safe. That's all that matters."
Yuzu smiled weakly at her sister, then turned to Homura. "Any more questions?"
"Hm. None that I can think of at the moment."
"We should head back, then. I need to start dinner."
"Oh!" Karin interrupted. "Homura, just so you know: Hollows are our excuses for if someone senses us do something with our power. You really obviously feel powerful enough to fight Hollows, so if someone questions you while you're here, talk as though Witches are Hollows."
"That could be a good cover story for Mitakihara," Yuzu suggested. "If anyone here suspects something supernatural where you come from, let them think it's Hollows. Then if they look into it, they won't be able to find the Witches and will think the Hollow moved on or was defeated."
"Hey, great idea, Yuz!" cheered Karin.
The girls set out for the Kurosaki home. Homura let the twins chatter around her as she thought.
What would happen if shinigami investigated Mitakihara?
She wondered what the eccentric shinigami scientist would make of it all if he knew what to look for. From the story she had been told, he seemed to operate independently of the shinigami government. He could be a good place to start figuring out what modern shinigami thought of magical girls. She was wary of tipping her hand so far from her turnback point, though. Maybe she could give him a nudge a day or two before Walpurgisnacht? It was something to consider, anyway.
It had been awhile since she had so many new ideas. It was both heady and frightening.
Soon, Homura quietly helped Karin sweep and tidy the clinic as Isshin made sure the day's charts and paperwork were in order while Yuzu cooked dinner. Observing father and daughter bickering and teasing and laughing was... pleasant. Less lonely. She liked it. They were still confusing, but she liked them.
Dinner was spirited among the Kurosaki family. While Homura still chose not to speak much, she did actively pay attention to the conversation this time. The others noticed and carefully tossed an occasional question her way. Nothing personal; just little offers of involvement like wasn't that stupid? and do you think this sauce would taste good with chicken? Homura always hesitated a moment before answering and her replies were always brief, but it was improvement the Kurosaki family was generally happy with.
After they ate, Isshin cleared his throat to stop Homura and Karin from gathering the dishes. "Sit back down, girls. I want to talk."
Homura shared a wary glance with Karin and complied.
Isshin settled his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers for a moment as he thought how to begin. He cleared his throat again and began to speak.
"I've been keeping an eye on the news out of Mitakihara on and off through the day. It doesn't look good. Especially the stuff that came out just before you came back."
Homura stiffened and made her face shut down into blankness. She didn't like the way the man frowned at that. It wasn't suspicion, but it was close.
"The police are finding more odd things and disappearances, even in nearby towns. And the media is camped out by your school." Isshin folded his arms on the table and leaned forward. "What I want to say is that I'm concerned for your safety should you go back to your home. If you want to stay here while the police figure things out, you are welcome in our house. At the very least through the weekend. If things don't look safer by Sunday afternoon, you can stay longer. A few days, a week, it doesn't matter. What matters is your safety."
Homura was taken off guard. She had expected an interrogation, not an invitation.
"Now, I would want to speak with your uncle and you will need to contact your school again. Whether you arrange for leave or home study, you need to let the school know where you are. How does that sound?"
Homura opened and closed her mouth a few times before she gathered herself and bowed her head politely. "I would appreciate that very much, Dr. Kurosaki. Thank you."
Isshin grinned slightly and sat back. "Just so you know, the girls' brother will be visiting this weekend. He just started at university a few weeks ago and comes home on weekends. He'll get here tomorrow afternoon and leave Sunday evening. Will that be a problem?"
Homura shook her head. "No, sir."
"Bah, you don't need to sir me," Isshin laughed and waved her off.
Karin was grinning and Yuzu positively beamed. "Thank you so much, Daddy!"
The rest of the evening passed pleasantly. How long had it been since Homura took the time to sit down and just snack and watch anime? The first time Karin tucked a stick of Pocky in the corner of her mouth and held the box out to offer her some, Homura was vividly reminded of Kyōko. When Yuzu sat with her and coaxed her into a halting conversation while Karin enthusiastically battled video game monsters, she thought of Kyōko once again. She suddenly wished she could introduce Karin and Kyōko— sarcastic, blunt, aggressive, tenderhearted beneath the surface, gamers; they'd probably get on like a house on fire. Whether that would be entertaining or terrifying was anyone's guess.
Hypothetical meetings between the two danced at the edge of her mind as she readied herself for bed. Still, from the time Isshin had made his offer of refuge to the moment her eyes slipped shut, her mind buzzed with a steady thrum of possibilities. Isshin had given her the perfect excuse to stay in Karakura and investigate the potential opportunities presented to her. She would be a fool not to seize it with both hands.
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This chapter was replaced with an edited version on November 1, 2019. Reviews with timestamps before that date refer to a slightly different version of the chapter.