Sidestory 14 - Change Our Way Of Caring
At exactly 13:45:17:11:42, an Incubator unit appeared at the edge of the territory surrounding the residence of Madoka Kaname. The distance and darkness would impair the vision of any native life forms, but the Incubator was fully capable of observing their objective regardless. While stealth was of some consideration, remaining unseen was generally of not concern to the Incubators. Selective observation cancellation fields had reached near perfect energy efficiency far in the past, to the point that leaving it on constantly was a worthwhile exchange for eliminating any possibility of being discovered by an interfering factor. As a trade-off, the field was easily circumvented by most individuals of consequence, but such a disadvantage was deemed irrelevant and not likely to result in a net loss of energy. Presently, the Incubator was utilizing a different form of obfuscation to conceal their location.
This distance from the Kaname Household has been calculated as safe for observation. So long as the Incubator remained at this distance, their body would not be damaged. Several proxies had been lost in determining the exact measurement, destroyed by the anomaly designated as Homura Akemi.
Recent information has mostly cleared up the questions regarding Homura Akemi, though present conclusions remain unconfirmed and new factors have been introduced since the introduction of the anomalous element.
Time-manipulating abilities of a previously unrecorded level were displayed in the battle between the various individuals of interest inhabiting Mitakihara City and the Abnormality designated as Nothing There. Complete internal observation was not possibility at the time, and due to Akemi's disposition towards the Incubators is unlikely to ever be possible, but external analysis in combination with data from some temporal measurement devices suggested an ability to control the flow of time. Such an ability would be prohibitively expensive for most present technologies, but the large supply of Grief Seeds provided by Akemi's allies had allowed for a liberal use of the ability. The exact extent of this manipulation was unknown, though projections of a larger range of control would offer explanations for several questions that the Magical Girl's presence had raised.
If Homura Akemi truly did have the hypothesized capabilities, it would allow for simple explanations regarding both the origin of her Contract and her attachment to Madoka Kaname. While the Incubators lacked any records of Contracting Homura Akemi, that would be the most natural result of making a Contract followed by the newly-formed Magical Girl forcing time back to an earlier point. There were many possible reasons she may have made such a decision, but determining the true purpose was unimportant. Further analysis was now impossible due to exposure to א's abilities. Homura Akemi's reasoning and abilities were both notably altered, to the extent that she was no longer a Magical Girl. Such a transformation was previously considered impossible, but foreign elements often necessitated readjustment of even the most basic of parameters. Regardless of the reason, the result was the same. Similarly, the exact nature of Homura Akemi's attachment to Madoka Kaname was unimportant. While probable that the two had grown close in a previous time that was later undone, the important detail was the consequence their relationship would have on Madoka Kaname's Karmic Potential.
Homura Akemi was relevant only in how her presence interfered with the ability to convince Madoka Kaname to Contract. Madoka Kaname was another, far more relevant anomaly. Her level of Karmic Potential was impossible by any conventional means, easily fulfilling the quota of energy expected to be harvested from the entire human race throughout its existence. This inflated energy level was most likely caused by Homura Akemi's manipulation of the timeline. An act of that scale, potentially performed more than once, would be a plausible explanation for the unusual Karmic Potential.
These projections were only hypotheticals, however their probability of accuracy was high enough to use to determine the future course of action.
Homura Akemi's constant presence prevented the Incubator from further leading Madoka Kaname towards Contracting, but this was of little consequence. The future Magical Girl's disposition towards the Incubators was overwhelmingly negative as a result of learning more about the system of energy harvesting that had led to the creation of Magical Girls. There was very little chance of convincing her to Contract outside of dire circumstances, especially when being actively encouraged not to do so by א. The foreign entity's influence over the children she had chosen to look after had successfully turned them off from becoming Magical Girls for the more basic reasons, but this was not an obstacle that could not be worked around.
The initial plan had simply been to facilitate a situation where one of the children would be killed. Homura Akemi did not leave herself vulnerable for long enough periods of time, and Mami Tomoe, Kyoko Sakura, and Chitose Yuma were all too well-defended both by each other and by their proximityto א, but Sayaka Miki was both untalented enough and isolated enough to die in combat with aparticularly powerful Witch. Either one would be placed in her path when she was alone, counting on the girl's desire to prove herself as a Magical Girl to convince her to engage it alone, or the Incubator could simply release one in her house while she slept. She would either die or become a Witch, both of which would accomplish the same result.
Madoka Kaname and א may have been unwilling to Contract under traditional circumstances, but their care for others provided a different avenue to coerce them. Were an individual they care deeply for to die, either one would likely be willing to Contract in order to bring their fellow back. Whether they would be successful is unclear to the Incubator; such wishes had been attempted in the past and failed. When forming a Contract, an individual's Karmic Potential is applied to fulfill that wish according to the subject's desires in the most energy-efficient manner. Wishes to bring a person back from the dead most often create a replica of the person, which sometimes provides satisfaction and sometimes does not. It is unlikely such a route would be accepted by א, and in turn by Madoka. There is the real possibility that their wish could result in true, unrestricted resurrection, which would provide valuable data were the Incubators to observe it. Even if it did not, the energy harvested from Madoka or the information received from a Contract with א would be valuable enough.
That was the plan before א's full capabilities were revealed.
When the foreign entity's container was breached, the request to activate an isolation field had been delayed intentionally. In part it was out of curiosity, in part a desire to conserve energy in case the results were not worth the expenditure. This risk was a horrible miscalculation.
The Incubators had been forced to cull four percent of their population. Outbursts of mania, delusions, and irrationality had become increasingly common. Three had informed potential Magical Girls of the full details of the energy harvesting system and of which of their friends were likely to be approached. Only a rapid response had prevented the situation from reaching a point of irrecoverable failure.
Reexamination found that Incubators who had suffered episodes had displayed small signs that could be interpreted as early warnings of developing emotionality. As such, it had been concluded that א's presence did not cause the development of emotions, but instead caused further development of partially-developed senses such as empathy or guilt. More detailed reviewing of the population had uncovered more of such individuals, ensuring that the Incubators as a whole would be prepared were such an event to occur a second time.
Even with preparations in place, avoiding direct confrontation with א would be necessary to progress further. At their estimated level of ability, they would be able to cause considerable damage to the species as a whole before being defeated were they to dedicate themselves to warfare against theIncubators. As such, any plans involving direct action against א or their children would have to be eliminated. The Incubators had maintained an alliance with א, and their children by proxy, which is what would allow them to offer a Contract in the first place. Were that alliance to end, any opportunity to gather energy from א or Madoka Kaname would be lost.
That will delay the acquisition of a Contract with either of the two, but not prevent it. Assessing all factors present to the best of the Incubators' abilities, the chances of all of the major players of Mitakihara surviving the next week were near zero, and only declined further in the long term. The Abnormality in Kamihama was another unknown factor, but from what the Incubators could gather of them, their tactics, and their resources, they would prove a suitable danger. Both Homura Akemi and Kyoko Sakura were unstable and would likely become liabilities in the near future once the correct leverage was applied. And in the future, there was the explosive growth experienced by Walpurgisnacht due to the accelerated migration of Witches.
The Incubators would receive their harvest in the end. It was only a matter of time.
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It was the dead of night in the Library, or at least some time close to it. Tiphereth couldn't tell, not from her Floor right in the middle of the structure without any good windows to the outside. More than that, time was weird in the Library. At one point, they'd received three sets of guests from a span of either ten seconds or thousands of years depending on the perspective, interspaced by gaps of a few weeks. Keeping a sense of time was hard.
That was only part of the reason Tiphereth was still awake. The blonde Patron Librarian scowled at the book in their hands, then tossed it into the pile atop a professionally-carved desk. Gentle light filtered into the study through the immense stained glass window covering the back wall, insisting to her body that it was clearly not time to sleep just yet. She could've probably just grabbed any Page with half-decent anti-exhaustion mods, but that just felt a bit cheap. Besides, Tiphereth could stake awake on her own just fine. She didn't need any help from the Library for this.
Of course, while Tiphereth wasn't anywhere near falling asleep, being awake so late into the night was taking a toll on her focus. She had hoped to read a few of the larger books that were still kept in reserve, but picking anything up was getting difficult. Hell, she could barely even remember what the book she had just tossed aside was called! Maybe she should have just gone to sleep.
But if she did, she might…
Tiphereth had never really liked Ayin. She hadn't liked Carmen much either, but that had been built on an actual relationship. With Ayin, there had just been a vague dislike fueled by the occasional interactions they happened to have whenever they ran into each other and didn't have a reason to be somewhere else. That was all their relationship had been, and Tiphereth didn't have much baggage around it.
The Manager had been different. Tiphereth had had issues with them at first, mostly regarding their competence, but they had pulled through when it counted. They'd had a mostly happy relationship, even if Tiphereth had a lot to deal with at the time and the Manager occasionally looked like they were one bad day away from throwing themself into one of the Containment Cells. They had respected her as a competent Sephirah, joked with her about her colleagues, mourned with her. They'd felt like a wholly different person than Ayin, the absent supposed father-figure who had been too busy to ever spare a second for anyone but Carmen. Then they'd disappeared, and Tiphereth had just… not known what to think about it.
Except, as it turned out, they were back. They had gone in and out of the Light, coming back as an Abnormality and stumbling into an entire other world on accident. Tiphereth didn't even know where to start with that! People coming back from the Light? It happened with Angela, so apparently more possible than people had initially thought. Turning into an Abnormality? Abnormalities were all made out of people from the start, so maybe it was less of a surprise than it should've been that X had managed to become one while keeping their mind intact. They'd always had a thing for doing stupid and overly complicated things and getting away with it. Accessing other universes? Sure, why not. What's eating at Tiphereth now is something much more simple than any of those things.
They haven't gotten to talk.
It's stupid, but the most vexing thing about this whole situation is that X has always shown up while Tiphereth was asleep or doing something else. They were busy being a mother now (and that's one more surprise added to the list) and couldn't visit whenever they wanted, so their schedule was occupied for most of the day. That's how she ended up sitting in her study, reading about nothing to pass the time until their next visit.
This was a stupid decision.
What were the chances that X showed up the one night when Tiphereth decided to wait for them? She couldn't keep this up forever, clearly. It would probably have just been a better idea to ask Angela to tell her the next time they arrived. She could do that right now, but then rating up so far in the first place would feel like a waste. Not that it wasn't probably a waste already, but one can always hope.
"Hey Tiph. How's life been treating you?"
And sometimes that hope would be rewarded, apparently.
Tiphereth scrambled to correct her slumped, exhausted posture and threw the pile of half-read books off to the floor.
"I've been doing good. Things are better here than they were in the Facility, at least." Tiphereth said with as much composure as she could manage, before hastily adding on "Not that that's a reflection on you. It's just that there's less obstructive regulations here."
X just laughed. "I wasn't gonna be offended, Tiph. I know exactly how the Facility was made, and Angela's been trying pretty hard to make this place better. Glad to hear it got your seal of approval, though." Her mirth softens, and she grabs the chair opposite Tiphereth and takes a seat at the head of the table. "It looks like you wanna ask something. Or I misreading things? It has been a while since we talked."
"No, you're right." Tiphereth sighed. "It's… you look different."
X raised an eyebrow. "I'm not exactly the only one. You look like you're sixteen instead of ten now, so that's something."
"Hey!" Tiphereth yelled indignantly, though there wasn't any real irritation behind it. This song and dance was normal by now. "I'm older than you are! And that's not the point anyways!"
"Older than me? By what logic is that correct?"
"Well, you're not Ayin." Tiphereth said bluntly. "So you weren't really born until the corporation started going. And I was already around before then, so I'm older than you."
"Ehhh, sort of." X responded. "Time was hard to keep track of down there. It's hard to tell what passes and what doesn't. So there's no real, chronological way of telling how old any of us are. Thus, I turn to the simplest method of deciding relative ages."
"And that would be?" Tiphereth asked skeptically.
"Height."
Tiphereth made an indignant noise, and X exploded into laughter. It subsided slowly, leaving the larger woman with a huge grin on her face. "No, really, it makes sense. I'm the tallest, so that makes me the older sister. Angela's shorter than me, so she's the middle child. And then you're the youngest sister. It fits perfectly."
Again, Tiphereth sputtered. "Wait, sisters? How'd that come into this?"
"Well, we're all Ayin's kids one way or another." X says, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. To her, it probably is. Tiphereth frowns.
"I don't know. It still feels weird."
"What, do you not love me?" X jokes, voice full of blatantly fake hurt as she drapes herself theatrically over her chair. "That cuts deep, Tiph. That cuts deep."
"I do!" Tiphereth insists before she realized what she said. She and X both freeze, equally surprised by the sudden outburst. "You… you respected me when everyone else treated me like a kid. You were there for me when I felt alone." She helped give Enoch peace after years and years of rotting. "That's what being family is supposed to mean."
There is silence in the floor of Natural Sciences for some time. The two sisters stare at one another, illuminated by the golden light trickling in through the window.
"Well." X says at last, breaking the spell. "That was heavier than I think either of us expected. But that wasn't really your original question, was I?"
Right. The original question. Tiphereth had planned on approaching the point slowly, carefully, in a mature fashion, but that seemed meaningless now. It wasn't like anything said past this point could be more embarrassing than that had been.
"You're a woman now."
X nodded sagely, as if this were some great wisdom. "Yup. Y'know, aside from Angela and Gebura herself, you're the first person to actually comment on that so blatantly."
"Really?" It had stuck out to Tiphereth pretty prominently when she had first been told. "Maybe it's about expectations."
"Expectations?"
"You used to look like Ayin," Tiphereth began, "and everyone else knew Ayin, so they associated that look more with him than you. When they separated your identity from his, they expected you to look different from how you used to because that's what Ayin looked like, and you aren't him."
"That… actually makes some sense." X said slowly, prompting a sudden shout from the shorter girl.
"Hey! Of course it made sense! I know what I'm doing here!" Tiphereth pouted while X smiled at the outburst.
"Anyways, the choice was mostly an identity thing for me." X said, waving her hand as if to dismiss the previous digression. "As you do eloquently put, I'm not Ayin. I didn't want to go around looking like him any longer, so I picked something new."
Tiphereth nodded. "Yeah. I don't think I'd want to go around looking like him either."
A moment passed, and X spoke again. "So, any other personal questions you want to ask?"
Tiphereth stopped, and considered for a moment which questions were most important to ask first. The answer surprised her a bit. "You have kids?"
Again, X laughed. "That's not really a question, but I can answer anyways. I've got three, possibly four children to look after. Yuma, who's the youngest, is…"
And so they talked until the morning came, around which time Tiphereth fell asleep and had to be carried to bed.
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In a time that never was, in a place that did not exist, a man looked down upon what was and felt regret.
This was no new sensation to the man. He was a man of great knowledge and power, who had used those gifts to try and shape the world. For such an act, regret is inevitable. No sole person can change the state of existence. He certainly couldn't. Not just out of inability, for ability had never been his place of fault, but in direction.
Once, he had been aimless. When he found his light, his guidance, he had followed it unceasingly. Perhaps that was his first mistake. To not question, to silence his own faint wishes. But no, that would have been a far greater regret. He had chosen his path, and reached its conclusion. Now, all that was left was the aftermath.
How surprising it had been for Ayin, for another to appear and claim to be his child. And quite blatantly, too. X showed more familial care and affection in a single word than Ayin had ever given to either of his progeny. Of course, when he had the chance, he had not considered either of them his children. Angela was a failure, a mistake repurposed for a task only she could perform. That had been one of his greatest mistakes. His blindness had very nearly cost him everything in the end. Angela would not forgive him for what he did to her. Of that, Ayin was certain. He had been wrong before, certainly, but it felt arrogant to assume any differently. His apology was for her sake, a hope that she may have some peace of mind and forget her creator entirely, not a vain plea of absolution.
It did not seem that his other child harbored such resentment, deserved as it may have been. Ayin may have seen Angela as a machine and nothing more, but X had been even less than that. They were a tool, a vessel by which Ayin could reach enlightenment and receive his penance all at once. A tool that had become a person. It was far less surprising the second time.
Now, both his children were out in the world, and Ayin was here. Angela would do well, he was sure. There was much of him in her, he could see it. She was driven, curious, and perhaps a bit too prideful for her own good sometimes. But she had people to stand by her, while Ayin had always been alone when it had mattered most. Benjamin had supported him, yes, but Ayin would never have listened to him. Had he, Angela may not have gone unloved and unnoticed for so long. Another regret.
But Angela was focused in a way Ayin had never been. No, she resembled her mother so much more each time she spoke of changing the City. Of toppling the Head out of no volition but her own. She would do well, just as she always had.
X was much the same, having inherited from him and Carmen both. But while Angela's path ahead was clear, the other child still had not quite decided who they were.
This, too, was Ayin's fault.
Had he anticipated the Manager becoming a person separate from him, Ayin might have tried to lessen the impact the role would have on a person's mind. The lessons of ten thousand years of suffering were always meant to cut deep and root themselves in a person, for there was no other way for Ayin to change his own mind. But they had been intended for him, and how they would shape somebody else was never considered. It was fortunate indeed that X was as much alike Ayin as their purpose demanded, and so they had taken a form not too dissimilar to him in the end. This is not where his true failing laid.
That would be in the facility itself. Ayin had seen it, how that underworld of steel and wires had become a part of the person who called herself his daughter. It had become a context, a postulate, an absolute lens through which the world would be seen. A flexible, workable lens, but absolute all the same. In time, the discrepancies between the world within and the world without would tear her apart. She would have to choose, and in choosing die in one way or another. Either reject all that she had learned, and perish without its support, or embrace that torment and live as a twisted parody of existence.
A horrible choice indeed when one still has reason to live.
For a moment, Ayin shifted in the infinite. He was separated from the world, yes, but not truly apart from it. Just as Carmen could reach down and shape new existences into being, so to could his voice carry through the endlessness and into the world of shapes. He could support one of his children after all his failures.
And yet…
He hesitated.
His failures. The cost of his mistakes had always been lain upon others, the innocent who happened to walk the same road as he, but none felt the weight so heavily as those who he loved. It had been his words, then his silence, which had allowed Carmen to follow the path riddled with thorns to its conclusion. She had become something other, a parody of the woman he loved, at it was his fault for allowing it. Angela, too, had suffered for his ignorance. He had sharpened the spines of spite and vengeance within her, and disappeared just in time to evade their release. She had nearly been killed for this, for the actions he had incited in his blind grief. Would this be any different? Would this next choice damn another innocent, as they always had?
Was that not why he had fallen silent for so long, having accepted that his long life of failures had at last ended?
But…
It had been inaction, not action, that had truly damned what could have been Ayin's family. He had turned away, second-guessed, and the that had been a choice of its own.
He was the same man Carmen had once found, so broken that he looked at all his potential, all his talents, and did nothing with them until somebody else told him the way. But that man was older, and theoretically wiser now, and so just this once he would not walk away.
And so the man in the infinite light reached down into a doomed city in a foreign land, and whispered to a blonde-haired girl filled with doubt.
"I know a way you can help your mother."
