Majokami (PMMM)

[Tricia]

Way back in the bygone age of 2009, one of my all-time favorite comic authors, Warren Ellis, released "Supergod," a five-issue series that explored the notion of the 20th century arms race with superhumans instead of WMDs.

It didn't quite live up to its potential. Its criticism of humanity's need for things greater than itself was a bit ham-handed and the titular Supergods weren't as developed as they could have been. Still, it's a fun read, especially the narration and the clashes between the Supergods.

The series also, for reasons I couldn't comprehend at the time, popped into my mind when reading about Oriko Magica and the fact that Kirika's Witch would not attack Oriko.

And so, in the spirit of Supergod and with Madoka running rampant through my mind due to an Adfligo Systema binge, I came up with this. In all likelihood, it too falls short of what it could have been, but I needed to get it out of my head.

MAJOKAMI

The last bottle in the safehouse turned out to be bourbon. She had nothing to mix it with, but now was not the time to be complaining about such a thing.

She drank straight from the bottle, though in sips at a time for fear of coughing fits waking the bunker's other inhabitant. She also had to be sure she remembered everything important; she had never tried using her magic to prevent drunkenness before.

She stood, carrying the bottle by the neck as she stepped into an adjacent room and shut the door. The walls were thick enough to survive anything that could reasonably be called small-arms fire; she figured they should be sufficient to keep her from waking the girl curled up on the sofa.

Something she had pondered before was how exactly her abilities worked. She didn't know if she reset time or simply moved into an adjacent reality trailing just behind the current one. She preferred to believe the former; the latter meant that each timeline continued after she left.

That would mean she'd be leaving the most important person in the world to die alone.

The second pull was too much and she hurriedly buried her mouth in the crook of her arm. She froze, carefully nudging the reinforced door open and looking into the living room.

Still asleep, bundled in the pink blanket that matched her hair. It was picked just for her, so many what-ifs ago that the girl looking in could no longer recall where exactly she had found it.

She creaked it shut once again, turning towards the sole table in the room. On it sat a bottle of water and a digital recorder. She took one more pull of bourbon before setting it down next to the water and picking up the recorder.

For a while, she simply stood there, thumb hovering over the Record button. She pushed the door open once again, listening to her breathe softly on the couch.

Goodbye again.

She turned the small device on once the door had closed and silence had reasserted itself. One more deep breath.

"My name is Akemi Homura. It is June 20th, 2017. I fear that one day my memory will no longer be trustworthy or that I may be forced to pass my burden to another magical girl. The chain of events that led to this nightmare can be stopped, but it must be understood in its entirety."

She remembered the silence. They didn't even leave bodies. Walking through cities now, she almost couldn't tell whether time was moving or not.

"The following information was compiled through both first- and secondhand accounts of the significant events. Though there may be minor discrepancies, I am confident in their veracity in all meaningful details.

"Aeris was the first. In April of 2015, the Ibaraki Coalition's Tanaka Emi rescued a classmate named Sakuraba Hisae from a Witch's Barrier. The Incubator, recognizing Sakuraba's potential, offered her a contract.

"The Coalition was in a rebuilding stage at the time, having recently lost a large portion of its members. They had encountered a Witch with a virulent power that they only discovered after one-third of their number had already been infected. Said members were willingly executed en masse after suffering exponential and unstoppable grief development in their Soul Gems.

"As a result of this manpower shortage, Tanaka pressured Sakuraba to accept. Sakuraba, apparently dealing with a difficult home situation and desperate for approval, agreed. Her father was a technician at a local coal plant which was under fire from environmental groups for their lax pollution standards. As a result, her wish, made under pressure, was worded as follows:

'I wish that the air was clean so me and my friends and my dad could breathe more easily.'

"She became a very powerful, though not devastating, air manipulator and, according to surviving members of the team, became very optimistic and emotionally stable once integrated into the Coalition. As far as the consequences of her wish, Mr. Sakuraba and several of his coworkers were struck with a burst of inspiration and, over the course of one night, made changes to the plant's processing system that maintained its output while massively reducing harmful emissions.

"Two days after my most recent…beginning, something anomalous occurred. The plant was looking to expand based on its recent success and had made preparations to increase the scope of its operations. As part of those plans, they hired another technician to support Mr. Sakuraba's efforts to maintain their new systems."

She paused to take a small drink of bourbon, washing it down with water. Her throat was beginning to get dry and she knew she was nowhere near done.

"Said technician was fatally struck by a bus prior to his interview. As far as I can tell, this is the only timeline to date in which this has occurred. The plant elected to continue their expansion efforts, resulting in a massive increase in Mr. Sakuraba's workload. He committed suicide three days later.

"Sakuraba Hisae took the loss extremely poorly. Worse, her mother's efforts to get compensation from the plant seemed doomed to fail. At the same time, the Ibaraki Coalition found itself with a dearth of grief seeds due to its own overexpansion. As a result of this conflux of despair, she became a Witch within twenty-four hours of her father's death.

"Based on the runes present in her Barrier, I determined that the new Witch was named 'Aeris.' Her familiars were chunks of coal wearing what looked like hard hat lights, carting themselves back and forth throughout the Barrier, which itself resembled a coal mine

"Two things made Aeris special, however: her power and her behavior towards her former teammates. She stripped all oxygen from the air surrounding her. Considering the size of her Barrier, any magical girl unaware of the nature of soul gems would asphyxiate and 'die' long before reaching her, after which the familiars would devour them. Just getting to her required incredible force of will and several grief seeds to sustain the magic it took to move a body without the oxygen needed to power its muscles.

"More importantly, Aeris showed no hostility towards her teammates. Her sole method of personal defense was her asphyxiation field, which did not activate in the presence of any members of the Coalition. It was theorized and later confirmed that this was a product of her wish's wording.

"In any case, Aeris proved the solution to the Coalition's issues. With a relatively tame Witch at their disposal, the members began to feed the Familiars, allowing them to become Witches themselves. These Witches shared Aeris's refusal to attack them, allowing them to harvest grief seeds with impunity. I understand that the Incubators had a considerable amount of difficulty covering up the constant disappearances without raising suspicion."

She smiled as she took another drink, enjoying the mental image of Kyubey tugging on its ear tendrils in frustration.

"The Coalition began to aggressively expand its territory, using Aeris as a trap for rival groups overeager in their counterattacks. Some were pushed all the way to Mitakihara, where they petitioned Tomoe Mami for aid. Somewhat reluctantly, she requested my assistance as well, which I agreed to on the condition that some of the displaced girls remain to watch over Madoka and that they provide assistance against Walpurgisnacht. As loathe as I was to leave her, this was such a strange occurrence that I felt it required my attention.

"Thankfully, one of the girls had managed to survive an engagement with the Coalition inside Aeris' Barrier, revealing the vulnerability. Much to Tomoe's disapproval, we managed to capture one of its members and, dragging her into the Barrier with us, successfully killed Aeris with minimal casualties. That we managed to prevent Tomoe from discovering the nature of Witches was nothing short of miraculous.

"Unfortunately, we could not kill the concept Aeris represented. Two months later, Brünnhilde appeared."

Homura dug into her bottomless shield, rummaging for the binder in which she had stored many of her references. She brought it out, dropping it onto the table with a thud that made her cringe. She began flipping through it as she continued to speak.

"Walpurgisnacht herself became something of a footnote. We had a force twenty-strong to face her and, combined with the preparations I made, we managed to dispatch her with ease. I really thought…"

She paused, lowering her face to the table. She didn't want to cry anymore. She took great, shuddering breaths, wiping her eyes before straightening up once more.

"I really thought this would be the last one. That Madoka could finally be happy. Then there was Brünnhilde.

"Tanaka Emi was captured and tortured by a group out of Asunaro City looking to create their own Witch. She revealed Sakuraba Hisae's wish and everything else about the Coalition. When we found her, her condition for speaking to us was that we kill her afterwards.

"We recovered the Asunaro group's notes from the wreckage of the warehouse they used as a base. I was the only one in the small group we assembled who managed to read more than three pages. The majority concerned their experiments regarding Potential and their attempts to maximize it.

"Using the personal information of a massive number of girls, gathered through public records and moles in various groups, the group postulated that Potential had something to do with karmic significance. The more misfortune a girl has, will, or can produce, the more Potential she has and the stronger a magical girl she becomes.

"The stronger the magical girl, the stronger the Witch.

"The group relocated to Fukushima, where they sought out Gomi Megumi, sole daughter of the local nuclear plant's chief engineer. Through careful manipulation, they established themselves as Gomi's closest compatriots, isolating her from her existing social group. They glamorized the life of magical girls until she showed interest in becoming one herself. As they had become her only friends, she discussed her wish with them beforehand and they pushed her towards a precisely-worded request:

'I wish that Dad didn't have to work so much so he could spend more time with me and my friends.'

"The reactor went critical. Total meltdown and an enormous number of casualties, including Mr. Gomi. A huge swath of Fukushima became a wasteland almost overnight and more radiation poured into the ocean by the hour.

"Gomi Megumi was a magical girl for three hours and forty-five minutes."

Homura thumbed through the binder. Despite everything, she did not know what Brünnhilde looked like. The only surviving magical girl to ever see her had had her eyes boiled in their sockets instantly.

"The notes of the Asunaro group were very detailed in terms of 'how.' After Gomi, they were planning on experimenting to determine whether a concerted effort on their part to cause a girl misfortune would affect her karmic weight or if what befell her after her wish had to come exclusively from her own actions."

Another pause, another drink. Still half the bottle of bourbon and most of the water bottle. She walked over to the pantry, removing one of the few remaining loaves of bread. Cutting off a pair of slices with a knife she procured from her shield, she sat back down and resumed speaking between bites.

"The notes never touched on the 'why.' I do not know if they felt threatened by the possibility of a Witch being used against them or if they simply wanted one of their own. They could have just been curious as to what would happen or could have wanted to prove they were capable of such an achievement.

"Whatever drove them, we will never know. Upon Brünnhilde's birth, everything within a mile of her was disintegrated. Only one member of the group survived. With the help of the Incubator, she immediately sent out a telepathic broadcast to every active magical girl on the planet, explaining what had happened before attempting to destroy their creation."

She had seen Brünnhilde's trail before. Nuclear fire left almost nothing in its wake. Even after the Witch had left the mainland, she could still see its glow on the horizon, burning like another sun.

"The survivor, Horiguchi Mizuki, had not considered the ramifications of her statement on those unaware of the true relationship between magical girls and Witches, or she had considered them acceptable risks in the interests of explaining the situation as clearly as possible. A portion committed suicide on the spot, although most, according to the Incubator, recognized the pressing danger.

"Unprecedented alliances were made, with teleporters and other movement-based magical girls ferrying fighters to various locations around Japan. Brünnhilde quickly ravaged most population centers on the island; she was too strong to need a Barrier.

"Legions of magical girls, Tomoe Mami among them, prepared for an all-or-nothing assault on Brünnhilde. At the same time, I moved Madoka to this underground bunker, well away from the combat. At her insistence, I brought her family along as well."

She had taken them to another bunker, one several kilometers away. There was simply not room for all of them in the main safehouse. They visited often, all smiles for Madoka.

They would be running out of food, soon.

"Miki Sayaka and Shizuki Hitomi, upon learning of the situation, contracted against my recommendations and joined the battle. Madoka attempted to as well, but accepted my demands that she not.

"The Incubator, according to its testimony after the fact, conferred with its colleagues to determine whether to continue the masquerade. It, along with around forty percent of its brethren, believed the masquerade should be dropped, in the hopes of getting as many contractees as possible to face the new threat.

"The majority disagreed, fearful of the consequences of their exposure to the world at large. Instead, they sent more of their number to aid in recruitment. Maintaining the illusion would be difficult, they had agreed, but was ultimately the safer option."

She recalled her last meeting with Kyubey. The creature had declared its intention to leave the planet along with the rest of its species and had offered to share the details of the end to "show that it no longer held ill will towards her."

After hearing its story, she had shot it in the head. For old times' sake.

"As the new Coalition gathered its forces, several other groups independently decided that the effort was doomed to fail and, in a desperation effort, attempted to create their own tame Witches to combat Brünnhilde. Some had their strongest members voluntarily become Witches, while others attempted to repeat the efforts of the Asunaro group."

Homura opened the binder again, looking for the details Kyubey had related.

"North America's attempt, Rosie, resulted in severe tectonic activity, including the eruption of Mount St. Helens and the complete destruction of the western seaboard due to an impossibly large earthquake attributed to forced movement of the San Andreas Fault. Rosie wiped out the vast majority of America's infrastructure and effectively its entire population of magical girls before a clash with South America's Bethe destroyed both.

"The damage both inflicted left what few girls remained without enough grief seeds to survive; the Incubators wrote off both continents as lost causes and retracted their presence, resulting in no new contractees. I understand their Witches are still slowly picking off survivors."

Her throat was so dry. Both bottles were empty and she did not dare to take any more water for fear that this world would continue when she left. She considered talking about Ilya, who boiled Siberia, or Kali, who tore India from Asia and feasted on its people.

They were mighty, true. But all roads lead to Brünnhilde and Morrigan.

"A European Coalition brought three girls together, triplets who were friends with members of Ireland and England's elite magical girls. Their wishes, made voluntarily, each read:

'I wish we could bring everyone together to help fight that Witch.'

"When they became Witches, voluntarily and with full knowledge of the potential result, they combined into one: Morrigan.

"Morrigan absorbed any magical being it came into contact with. Each member of the European Coalition, save for two in leadership positions in the vain hope that they could reign Morrigan in after its victory, sacrificed herself to it."

Like Brünnhilde, Homura never had the chance to see Morrigan in person, but Kyubey had given a detailed description. A castle with three great towers, walking on innumerable legs. With every magical girl and Witch it consumed, its walls grew and more and more faces appeared on its walls.

They screamed. They never stopped screaming.

"Morrigan began making its way towards Japan with incredible speed, devouring everything in its path and growing more and more massive. The Incubators made an effort to announce its presence to every potential magical girl in Asia, each one adding to Morrigan's might.

"At the same time, the other major Witches began moving to meet it. Perhaps they were drawn to it as part of Morrigan's power, or perhaps some part of them knew that it would never be sated.

"As they moved to engage in a battle that ended virtually all life in Eurasia, the Japanese Coalition mounted their attack. They knew of Morrigan's coming, but were unconvinced it could be stopped any more than Brünnhilde could even if it managed to win."

Kyubey had been very explicit in its after-action report. The strongest of them had managed to get within a hundred meters of Brünnhilde's body before having her skin flayed from her bones by the heat. Homura had been outside scavenging that day and had seen the glow, bright as a dying star.

No survivors.

"Both Morrigan and Brünnhilde emerged victorious. Morrigan continued its trek eastward, while Brünnhilde turned the Pacific to steam as she moved to meet it.

"By this point, Morrigan had consumed not only a massive quantity of standard magical girls and Witches, but also its fellow weaponized Witches that had come to face it. In effect, it brought the entirety of the Eurasian continent to bear against the impossible power of Brünnhilde.

"There is still no winner. In all likelihood, there never will be.

"Madoka is more important than the world, but she refuses to let me accept this outcome. When I revealed my power to her, she demanded that I go back and fix things, on the threat of making a contract herself. That cannot happen. She deserves more."

She could not speak anymore. She could not remember the last time she had spoken so much; there was nothing worth speaking of anymore.

She saved the recording, placed the recorder inside her shield, and opened the door to the living room. Still asleep.

Homura kissed her on the forehead, grabbed her shield, and the world dissolved into another what-if.