Day 3
"Mew..."
There's a sudden pressure on Homura's face and soft kitten cries ringing in the air.
"Hmm... oh, good morning Amy."
Homura wakes up in her gloomy dark apartment at the behest of Amy the cat, her new companion. As usual, the little black cat was nearly run over by a car. As usual, Madoka was nearby and so was Kyubey, poised to offer the girl a contract in order to save the life of a common stray cat. As usual, Madoka would have accepted without hesitation had the accident occurred.
Cue Homura, entering from stage left in stopped time, picking Amy up and out of the way.
"Mew!"
The Amy that's now licking her face, having decided to follow her home this time.
Well, now that she's awake, she may as well get out of bed. Homura has another week until she transfers into the school, but that's no excuse to be idle. She has plenty to do until then. The most pressing priorities are two-fold. One – resupply her stashes of Grief Seeds and weapons. Two – determine the best way to use these new abilities Madoka granted her. She expected the first to be straightforward. Even if the Witches weren't all in the same place, the bases and hideouts she raided usually were. The second one, however...
"Mew?"
...well, that will take some time. She found that whatever they do, they can't be used at the same time as her native time-stop, and so she's prioritized that and neglected them so far. But since this morning was a normal morning with no disasters, she could try them all out one by one, here in the safety of her home.
Her stomach growled.
Ah... she could do that after eating breakfast, of course. Something simple, probably just eggs and rice. It doesn't take too long to make or eat, nor does getting dressed or putting out food for Amy. Rather than open the blinds for light, she flips a switch and her apartment transforms into a white negative space, punctuated only by sparse furniture and pictures and a large screen hung up on a single wall. Amy, despite not having been around her long, is unfazed by the change, focused solely on her food. That's cats for you, Homura supposed.
Amy was equally unfazed by Homura's transformation into her Magical Girl outfit of a white shirt, dull purple skirt, and black tights, complete with her small gear-shield on her left arm. It had been unaffected by Madoka's gift, retaining the same cold metal sheen. What had changed was the Soul Gem embedded in her left hand. It was still dominantly purple, but the outer edges were composed of four of the five other colors she'd noted before. The pink was in the center, surrounded by soft purple. Said pink was shining a little brighter now, but nothing else had changed about it or the other colors.
She tapped on the pink spot, only for nothing to happen.
So, she tried pressing down on it and focusing... still nothing? No wait, if she looked at her hands, they now had a soft pink glow to them, one that was spreading around her whole body. Amy perked up and came up to her, mewing and purring. Did Madoka really just give her a power that attracted cats...?
Homura shook her head. No, there had to be something more to it, something that she couldn't grasp at the moment. She gave Amy a little pet, followed by a rub, and then released the power and let her go back to her meal.
Hopefully, the next one would be less underwhelming.
But which one... well, the blue in her Soul Gem had also been glowing when Homura first was blessed with these colors, so she'd try that and the orange one afterwards. When she tapped on the blue corner, things started off the same as with the pink spot where nothing happened at first. But, after only a few moments, a harsh blue glare burst out of her skin. Amy hissed nearby, and Homura shut it off at once.
Homura blinked.
Amy mewed happily and went back to her food.
Homura frowned. Did she really back down because of a cat...?
She shook her head, and then walked away into her bedroom. There, she draped the blue aura over herself once more. Amy's distant cries of displeasure were ignored in favor of figuring out of the aura did anything other than annoy cats.
The answer was apparently no. Other than glowing, Homura felt no different than before.
Hm, well maybe, the two would have similar effects on people. That would allow for some risky plays if so. That blue power could snap someone out of trying to attack her or doing something reckless, but it could also drive someone over the edge. She'd have to be careful about it. Okay, then next was orange... Homura tapped on it and
her shield vani-.
Homura nearly slammed her hand into her Soul Gem and had her shield re-appear.
"Mew?"
She blinked. Oh, she'd flopped over onto the floor. Amy's (curious?) (concerned?) eyes were gazing into her own, and the kitten licked her face once, twice, and then Homura rolled over and sat up. She caught her breath. She hesitated, holding her hand over the orange spot over her Soul Gem once more.
Madoka gave her this gift.
There was no reason to panic.
Madoka wouldn't take her shield away
forever... right?
Tense, Homura tapped the orange color on her Soul Gem once more, and allowed her shield to vanish into a shimmering light. In its place, a hand-sized mirror appeared before her, clutched tightly in her right hand. The mirror was shiny silver but the frame was orange swirls and white tendrils. Tendrils...!? These looked just like the tendrils she'd seen before when she was spiraling out of the future and into the past. But with her body tensing up more and more and breath becoming unsteady, Homura decided not to investigate further and swapped back to her shield.
She shook her head. What was she doing...? Madoka wouldn't sabotage her! That mirror had to do something useful, something to justify swapping it out for her shield.
But...
...was that all truly part of Madoka's wish? Those white strings and that mirror, where they things that Madoka had selected for her? As far as Homura was aware, Madoka had no special connection to either thing, yet they were important enough to be connected directly to Homura's soul.
Then again, she could say the same thing about the other new abilities she's demonstrated so far. Well, she had only just begun to investigate them, so perhaps there was more to discover. The mirror at least was a weapon and probably had some use against Witches, if nothing else.
Yellow would hopefully be the same way.
Her hopes would be fulfilled as tapping on the yellow color on her Soul Gem resulted in her shield being replaced with a weapon that Homura had no familiarity with. It was long charcoal-gray pole weapon, about as tall as she was, with a sharp and bold yellow tip at the end and two half-circle prongs coming out of it near said sharp tip. Said prongs also had similarly colored spikes coming out them, evenly spaced. Homura wasn't sure where Madoka had ever learned about a weapon like this – a man-catcher if the internet could be believed. Surely, this was also more interference – but from who? Or, more likely, what? The Incubator, a new Witch, or something else entirely?
With a sigh, she decided to put that aside for the moment. There was nothing she could now to undo this. All she could do was move forward towards her goal, just as she always had. This was just another complication, but every attempt had those.
She'd take this weapon, though not now. Back to her familiar trusty shield.
That just left the green color, so she tapped that and her shield was replaced with
a crystal ball-!?
Sure enough, even though its green and looks like it's covered in vines, it looks just like the ones used by Oriko Mikuni! If... if she gazed into it, would it also tell her future!?
There was only one way to find out.
"Mew?"
Homura ignored Amy and gazed intently into the green crystal ball, focused entirely on it. Next week, Madoka and Sayaka will have a fateful encounter with the cotton-headed Familiars. The two of them will be saved by none other than Mami Tomoe, the strongest yet most fragile Magical Girl. And they will be ambushed by said Familiars after chasing down an Incubator Unit that was stalking them, one that she herself had ambushed... the orb turned translucent and showed these visions to her with great clarity from an omniscient viewpoint, though she noticed that only scenes involving her directly were shown. Attempts to force it to show Madoka's or Mami's viewpoint failed and only gave her a headache.
But, of course, she'd already experienced this, so she knew what to expect. What about a future vision of another day? Other than keeping tabs on Kyubey and Madoka, nothing much would happen until she joined classes next week. How about she have the orb tell her if anything was to occur in between that time?
The orb turned translucent yet again and this time showed her something new. She sees herself chatting with Natsuki, Meiyui, and Ria, each in turn, after catching them fighting Witches in a healthy city. Here, none of them are alone as they were before. The blue chirpy cheerleader girl Natuski and her orange-haired companion look to be dragging an exasperated Homura away somewhere. Blue-haired and sharp-eyed Meiyui with her three new companions were staring Homura down, all wary of her intentions. Bombastic and blonde Ria was eager and energized, contrasting sharply with her plainer black-haired companion and the seemingly stoic Homura. She cannot tell what's being said in any of these cases, but no encounter ends in a fight, so she can assume they'll go well as long she doesn't antagonize them.
She also can't tell what day it is in these visions, only that it is the daytime. Must be a weekend then. She'll make it this upcoming one. Then, she can...
"...hm?"
She gazes upon the orb as the crystalline depths turn murky and the vision shifts into something new. Something that stuns Homura for a moment before white-hot anger flows through her body. She almost cracks the crystal ball in response.
"Oriko Mikuni. Kirika Kure.
Why are they here!?"
For some odd reason, these two aren't always Magical Girls. Even after they started appearing suddenly, they were not a constant pain in her side – only the occasional sudden and unexpected shock. She had the pleasure of not having to deal with them last time, but this time they had contracted once more. In Homura's vision, the white-clad Oriko and black-clad Kirika had ambushed her! Looks like the two will track her down as she's wandering the city looking for Witches to slay. The Homura in that vision doesn't look surprised by it either, retaliating without any hesitation, shooting down crystal balls from the sky and blinking in and out of sight to evade sharp claws.
The original Homura in her room is only taken out of the vision by the realization that her Soul Gem is almost entirely filled up with a green glow. She puts her desire to know more aside and cuts off the vision and then her green power, swapping back to her familiar shield. But that didn't make the green color retreat. Taking a Soul Gem to it didn't do much of anything either, as she'd already cleansed herself earlier.
No, what did help was swapping back to her orange power and attempting to figure out what the mirror did. As it turned out, this mirror had the ability to connect different spaces together, provided she summoned a second mirror and left that somewhere else. The first to use said power was a curious Amy, following Homura around and falling into the distorted space and out into Homura's arms. As Homura held Amy, she noted that the orange in her Soul Gem was overtaking the green, bit by bit. So then, while these powers weren't subject to cleansing, she could prevent one of them from overtaking her by switching them around. Homura had to wonder how exactly the last Madoka had designed these powers. Perhaps she hadn't, and this was all based her impressions – but impressions of who or what?
"...what am I going to do...?"
The same thing she would always do until this was resolved she supposed.
Deal with it. Adapt to the new circumstances of this new attempt.
At least this time she'd gained something.
"Mew!"
And not just powers either. Information was critical, both in one day defeating Walpurgisnacht and in surviving the gauntlet she'd face on the way there. She knew that Oriko and Kirika were upcoming threats and now she could prepare for them. She knew not from where the special distortion magic arose, but she knew that it had to have some origin, one that she could pinpoint and interrogate. Maybe she'd find a clue in Kamihama.
But first...
those two. She'd have to deal with them before she felt comfortable leaving Madoka alone with only Mami to protect her.
Homura picked up Amy, stepped out of her apartment, and began her search for the black and white duo.
Author's Note: Hello again. I meant to post this last month, but ended up working on other stuff / procrastinating instead. I don't have a regular schedule for this either, but I am going to keep at it.
