Puella Magica Somniabunt Sanguinis [PMMM/Bloodborne]

[Origami Clock]

You are beginning to suspect that you can't simply solve this problem by eating lots of white puffballs.

Not that it wouldn't be fun, guilt-free and a great way to pass the time, since even Homura, who's power had almost lead you to have an unfortunate accident just by thinking too hard about it, had not been able to find an end to them.

For a very brief moment, you make yourself giggle internally as you imagined an infinite number of vermin falling into you to be devoured, in much the same way that someone without your advantages might fantasise about swimming in a sea of chocolate.

Then you remember Her hard, glassy eyes when she first met you, all softness sapped from them by the demands of a war that seemed without end. Your daydream about an infinite number of vermin was no longer quite as appealing as it had been.

"I-If that's true…then how can we be sure that one of them doesn't get through?"

"Keep watch. Always. With two of us, and your clones, it shouldn't be too hard."

"I…I can't make too many of them, Homura. Bad things happen if I do…even worse than what happened with your s-shield."

She slumps a little, the news deflating some of the hope that she had thought she had finally found. You lean against her, the closest you could really come to a hug without toppling the both of you onto the lawn below.

"Sorry…if I could make an army of me to protect her, I would. She would be worth it…but I could be worse than the vermin, if I did that…"

Her eyes go flinty, an almost instinctive reaction to the revelation of a new threat to her precious unborn sun.

"How much worse?"

"The only other Great One who tried to do that…he scares Great Ones…"

You shiver as you recall the terrible rage that swept across the great pale face of your Papa, the shrieking as Uncle Spider squirmed his way out through impossible angles to devour you in your crib. Uncle Spider could find a way into anywhere, and where there was one of him, soon enough there would be an infestation, like leeches swarming a bleeding swimmer.

"Uncle Spider tried to eat me when I was a baby…because he thought it would be funny. So please, when I say I shouldn't, please trust me."

Homura is quiet for a little after that, her eyes distant and thoughtful, widened just a little at the revelation that the adorable snuggle-fiend leaning against her could very well become some sort of insane horror.

Well, being strictly technical about it, by the standards of humans, you might be considered a little unhinged, and at your most inhuman, more than a little disconcerting in appearance. Then again, what did humans know? They thought two limbs was a perfectly sufficient number for hugging, and it was self-evident how utterly wrong that was.

"Alright…you know I'd have to stop you, if that ever happened."

"If that ever happened, I'd want you to."

The pair of you lapsed into quiet again, the sombre turn your conversation making it a lot easier to let fade into companionable silence. The sun was overhead, and briefly, you could bask in the warmth of the light dappling through the surrounding cocoon of leaves.

She gives you a warning poke with an elbow, and reaches for her shield while you avert your senses. When you look back, she has a glossy cylinder in her hand that she unscrews to unleash a puff of fragrant steam. She has two cups of the same shiny red material hanging off her fingers by their handles, and She passes one to you.

"Tea?"

You nod, the tendrils in your tongue shivering at the thought of more delicious moisture. She pours for both of you, and after warning you to look away again, deposits the flask back to wherever it came from.

You lap gently at the hot fluid, thoughts spinning themselves gently through your head as you watch for any sign of the void that signified the vermin was attempting a second attempt.

"I-I could try showing you my type of magic, if you want?"

"What could you teach?"

"There's a few things that wouldn't be that hard. If I gave you a focus, you could probably learn how to make tendrils of your own, though they wouldn't last long. You don't have the right Eyes yet for the fancier things though, but I suppose I could lend you one."

"Right Eyes?"

"They're too…what's the word…ah, empty. Once we get you nice and filled up with Insight, you might be better than me at some things."

"You…don't have to actually put things in me, do you?"

You try very hard not to blush at that mental image. You fail. Badly. It was your Mama giving you the Talk about what to do when you find a nice boy to pollinate you all over again, except somehow worse for the accidental nature of it.

"Nononono, it just means how much you're used to looking at how things really are, rather than how they look. Like the vermin. They might look all snuggly and cute…"

"I get it."

You give her a proud, beaming smile, which she replies with an almost invisible upward twitch to the corner of her lips. It fills you with a lovely warm feeling of satisfaction.

"…Could you show me how to make clones? I…I'm going to have to spend most of the day at school, making sure It doesn't go anywhere near them then, but…"

You can't fail to feel a little smug as she acknowledges the inherent superiority of having a few more bodies to walk around it, if only because they meant that you could give exponentially more hugs than you could than if you only had one adorable body to wander around in.

"Erm…I could, I think, buuut…"

"What?"

"I can only do it because I'm me. You'd…need to be more like me for that…more Eyes, more…planty. It could work, but you wouldn't be all you anymore."

It was a testament to Her devotion to Her mission that She did not immediately reject it. Thematic similarities were alright, even expected if you were related to other Great Ones, but…becoming like another one…it wasn't something you would have done unless you had no choice.

"Not now then, but later…could you show me how you'd do it…just in case."

You lean your head on her shoulder for a moment, mouth positioned just close enough to her ear that she could hear as you breathed a quiet confession to her.

"You're very brave, Homura. I don't know anyone else that would be willing to do that for someone else."

She goes still and quiet, and for a moment, you thought you'd done something very wrong, but it only lasts a moment, and for a moment, she allows herself to lean on you, a silent, warm thanks where words would not come.

"I should probably warn you, some Magical Girls listen to K-the Incubator. He's very good at making them do what he wants. I can't risk not trying to stop him…but, you could be in much more danger than I am from him. If he learns about you, and tells others…"

A vision flashes across your vision, the raven-pecked carcass that was Grandpa looking down from a blood-red moon, singing songs of bloodlust and madness, as he urged on Hunters with whispers in their blood to seek out and slay every trace of the Great Ones that lingered on the world.

"I'd be hunted."

"Yes, and one of the strongest Magical Girls in this city thinks that It is her only friend."

You are torn between a need to vomit from the sheer repulsiveness of that mental image and weep with pity for that poor manipulated child.

"We can tell her right, show her just what her 'friend' really is, right?"

"Remember what I said about Witches?"

Your sap turns to ice within you. Only something that felt nothing could construct a trap of that monstrosity. You resolve inwardly that you were going to save this person, even if it was only to spite It.

Just how you were going to do it, when you had to be on your best behaviour at all times to keep a Hunt being called for you, was something you were going to have to work out.

"Does she go to this school as well? If they're all clustered together, then I could show them I'm really cute and theydon'tneedtocutmeintolittlebitsand-"

You were overthinking again, only this time, it was being the subject of a Hunt. You knew the story of Papa's Hunt off by heart, and how he had brought down things that made you look like the child you were with nothing more than persistence and lots and lots of weaponry.

Homura poked your shoulder, reminding you that you were not being Hunted like a Beast through the streets by a bloodthirsty mob of cute girls in frilly dresses.

"Yes, she does. It would be hard to organise though. You just…appeared, and you need all sorts of paperwork just so the school knows you exist to let you in."

You ponder, the beginnings of a cunning plan in your mind.

"I can be really sneaky when I want to…all I need is for them to think I'm cute and friendly and not a horrible Beast that needs to be chopped into little pieces. If…if you talk to them then I find you, then they don't really need to know who I am because I'm your friend, so I can talk to them and show them I'm really cute and nice and things."

"I-I could try. Some of them don't get on with me though."

"How could they not like you? You're clever and dedicated and forgiving and you have really nice hair and are comfy to snuggle, so what's there not to like?"

She just looks at you with her now familiar expression of 'Ruby is being confusing again'. She opens her mouth to reply, then closes it again, and returns to sipping her way efficiently through her cup of tea.

She seems to have accepted that some things just aren't worth arguing over.

 

[Origami Clock]

Spoiler: What happens when I'm not being careful not to be too melodramatic.

Nothing made sense.

That was the conclusion you had reached, after spending five minutes staring through a bedroom window at a young girl, though not the one you'd expect to be doing this to.

For tonight, for some reason, you had trusted Ruby...that frustrating, hyperactive, hug-addicted ball of enigmas, to watch over Madoka for a night.

You had watched her from a rooftop vantage for half an hour before you went off on your own task for tonight, the compromise you had made with your almost instinctive paranoia.

To your great relief, besides somehow unfolding that sword of hers into a compound bow and stapling a few Incubator bodies to the lawn, she had done nothing unexpected, nothing that might squash the fragile flicker of trust that you had for her.

Another thing that didn't make sense, that. Something about her...perhaps the fact that she seemed to have no emotional walls between her and the world...it made her...

Reliable wasn't the word. In your experience, the wildly over-affectionate were those burying the deepest dysfunction.

A momentary vision of curled golden hair flickers through your mind at that thought, and you discard it. It was something that you could not afford to care about. Had not for longer than you wanted to recall.

If you had learned anything at all since you made your wish, is that you can't save everyone.

You can't save anyone.

You close your eyes and focus on the sound of your own breathing, determinedly thinking of nothing at all until you could trust your mind to stop yearning for its own destruction.

Sometimes, Magic was more trouble than it was worth.

On that thought, you flex your hand, and with the momentary sensation of running your hand through fine sand, you pluck from your shield a flower-head that Ruby had given you before you left her.

It was white, with streaks of pink and red worming their way though the petals like veins beneath pale skin. It was like no flower you had ever seen before.

You suspected it was like no flower that had ever been seen on this earth. It was a rose and an orchid and many others that she couldn't even name, brought together into a single spiralling blossom. It seemed to squirm beneath your gaze, as if it was still alive, or more animal than plant.

She had said that all that you would need to do was push your magic into it, and the flower would do the rest of the work, transforming it into an echo of her own power.

It was something that you intended to test before the night was over. Not now though. Now, you were straining every sense you had, trying to see what Ruby saw in the green-haired girl currently getting ready for bed on the other side of the glass.

She had said it was subtle, like her magic was almost made for going undetected. Presuming that the over-affectionate houseplant was correct, Hitomi seemed to be tailor-made to keep the Incubators from interfering with her mission, as she was sure they did once they realised who the cause of their inability to manipulate Madoka into forfeiting her soul.

It was convenient. As convenient as this reset seemingly breaking reality to give you a devoted minor deity as a minion.

You didn't like it. Now if only you knew what it was that you didn't like. Ruby herself was...tolerable, even if she seemed as clingy as a puppy at times.

Not that you could really blame her, by all appearances, whatever happened during the reset snatched her out of whatever inter-dimensional plant monsters used as a bed and dumped her next to you.

You knew that you hadn't broken the world, not yet, at least. Time still worked, up was still up and the sky was still blue. And yet...

What would happen if this loop failed?

What happened if you was the one who ended dropping through realities next time?

What if this was your last chance?

You knew that your thoughts were being bent towards the morbid and the terrifying, but as any Magical Girl of experience knew, knowing what was happening to you was no help at all.

It just meant that the jaws of the trap you had put unknowingly put yourself in were finally snapping shut.

That was one thing that Ruby was good for, you suppose. It had been...a long time, since you had someone as relentlessly cheerful as her in your life.

It had been...was it Sayaka that loop? Determined to ensure her limited time was spent burning as bright as she could, or was that the one where Kyoko had adopted that tiny runaway...Yuma, that had been her name.

The faces bleed together, after long enough. You try to remember the smiles, though, even if you can't remember what face wore them.

It was that, or be left with only the screams.

You were procrastinating, you knew. It was one of the few vices you could still afford. You had forever to waste, after all; the only thing there was never enough time for was things that mattered.

You had a decision to make, after all. If Hitomi was as useful as Ruby had told you...

You were going to have to decide whether to do something more than a little monstrous.

You knew what Ruby would say if she knew. Perhaps that was one of the only things you could do that would drive her from you, if she knew.

If she knew.

What was one more life, if it could end this miserable cycle once and for all?

She only needed to last for a few months, after all. Enough to stand on Walpurgisnacht.

You had done it before, with every girl she knew with more than a flicker of potential and enough stability to keep it together until the end.

You had been worse than Mami, and you had seen the expression that had swept across Ruby's face when she mentioned that particular can of snakes.

Do you do it, or do you trust that Ruby would be strong enough? You could think of worse thi-people to have on your side, however perplexing she might be.

What was it that drove you, now that you and time had both been worn so terribly thin?

Hope or Desperation?

You feel the faintest suggestion of Magic from her, oily and barely there, just as Ruby described.

There was no more time for prevarication.

Time to make a choice.

Non-canon, because I shouldn't need to drag Hitomi into this to make 'being Homura is Suffering' poigniant. For the new version, go to the next threadmark named Eternity is Over.

 

[Origami Clock]

Eternity is Over
​

If you were feeling nostalgic about your human limitations, you're pretty sure that your joints would be complaining quite loudly right now.

As it was, all you really felt was numb, and not just because you'd been lying on bare concrete for half an hour, straining your eyes squinting down a high-powered scope in the waning light of evening.

You remember how sensible this idea had seemed, when Ruby offered to spend the night keeping watch over Madoka while you went home to rest.

You had explained of course, how you'd managed to train yourself to get by on 4 hours a day, broken up into eight half-hour chunks. That you'd be fine to stay overnight, even if it took a little time for this body to get used to your routine again.

You now know that beneath that shell of almost pathological cheerfulness, along with all the other facets of her bizarre panoply of characteristics, resided the beating heart of a mother hen…or whatever Ruby had instead of a heart. She practically clucked in outraged concern, insisting that you go back home, climb into bed and remain in there for at least eight hours.

When you had objected to the fact that she might let an Incubator past without a spotter, she unfolded her sword into a bow, then proceeded to nail the next of Kyubey's bodies to approach to the Kaname's lawn with an arrow longer than your forearm with her eyes closed.

Was that it? Was it that that had seemed so suspicious in that moment?

That someone could be so powerful and yet so…

You shake your head, scattering the thoughts away as you pack your rifle back into your shield and do what you should have done when you left that tree. Not waste your time trying to pre-emptively decide whether Ruby should be added to the List.

You go home.

You get roughly half way there before your mind starts to trouble you again, like a tongue probing the sore gum where a tooth had been.

Ruby had called you a friend…no, she had called you friends.

Time may have worn more away from you than you ever dreamed it could have done, all that time ago, but you still remembered the general shape of friendship.

Friends supported each other.

Friends liked each other.

Friends trusted each other.

The first two, you can't help but admit apply here. Going against every Magical Girl instinct, you remember the night when you returned, how, even with her loss still cutting so sharp, she tried to comfort you.

You remember how you offered, in a momentary fit of insanity you still weren't sure what prompted, a place for her to go when she seemed so lost.

How you had whiled the afternoon away with her, listening to her chatter away happily about nothing in particular, how even the silences had been comfortable to slip into, with none of the painful awkwardness that would normally expect such a collection of mutual ignorance.

How you had stared down on her with the scope of a rifle large enough to pop her head like a overripe melon, waiting for the first sign of her sudden, inevitable betrayal.

You had disliked doing it, but it had seemed so reasonable, like you were just exercising due caution. You were verifying your trust…that was it, to make sure she didn't…

What were you worried she would do?

When you told her that you had never found an end to the number of bodies Kyubey could call on, for a moment, she looked like Kyoko might if you handed her a list of Japan's best restaurants and an unlimited expense account.

She might possibly be the one person on the planet who loathed it more than you, if how she reacted in the hospital was any guide.

She literally said that the only thing that she knew that was worse than them was the Great One equivalent of a cannibalistic serial killer. One who apparently had taken the Kyubey path to immortality and could find ways around any defence to get to his prey.

Not to mention that he was her Uncle, though you suspect if you ever looked at Ruby's family tree it would do something similar to what your shield did to her.

So what were you worried about?

You didn't find an answer to that question before you made it back home, and you were successful in distracting yourself with little domestic tasks for almost an hour more before those thoughts came creeping back again.

You were sitting on the side of your bed, your pyjamas beside you in a neatly folded square as you stared into nowhere, eyes focused on a place that would never exist, so very, very long ago.

"If it's for you, I have no problem being trapped eternally in this maze."

Only eternity is over now. You'd taken too long, hadn't been good enough to shift the wheel of fate from its rut, and now everything is falling apart.

Nothing can stop you this time, or else it will have all been for nothing.

All those mercies.

All those times when she had looked at what had once been her only friends and decided they were expendable.

"Can I really change how it ends?"

You can't remember who said those words, but they float up from somewhere dark inside you. It sounds like the sort of thing that you would have said at the beginning, when you still thought that you could save everybody.

Now?

Now what wouldn't you give up, just to make sure that this world can finally be the one that works?

You don't know the answer, and it scares you.

What is even left of you, beyond this mission?

You realise that your hands are shaking where they sit clutched in your lap, and you reflexively fish out a grief seed.

You just need to make it to the end. You have enough grief seeds for that, you know. Best not to think about what comes afterwards, the same way that you don't think about what happens if this last chance fails.

You allow yourself to topple, suddenly exhausted, down onto your bed, letting your pyjamas fall into a heap on the floor.

Your eyes close, and for one, horrible, traitorous moment before the blackness of sleep drags you down, you wish that you had Ruby with you, rather than having her watch Madoka.

 

[Origami Clock]

Chapter 1: Transcend the Hunt
​

It was the twenty-fifth of March, according to the calendar of this world.

Today was the day that the plan that the pair of you had been working on for the last week, in between keeping a watchful vigil over the girl you know now as Madoka Kaname and attending to the myriad other tasks that Homura's insight discerns as vital to your cause.

In not entirely unrelated news, your home now has another, albeit intermittent inhabitant. You have no idea why taking care of some sleek-furred feline was so crucial, but you assume She has a good reason for it.

It was cute though, and it gave your Bud something to keep itself busy with on the rare occasions when you weren't required to be many places all at once.

Right now was not one of those moments, as you walked side by side with Homura, wearing what you had been informed was an acceptable facsimile of a senior at Mitakihara Middle School.

Wrapped up as tightly as you could comfortably bear, and with a bitter breakfast of astringent humanity to quell your less…socially acceptable passions, you did cut quite an acceptable figure, if you did say so yourself.

Homura was of course, Herself, even the most thorough of cleansings not quite enough to rid her of her coil-spring intensity and tendency to curl in on herself as you moved through the crowds like a blossom against the icy blast of night.

What did help, you found, was pestering her into a few practice drills where you walked the distance between home and the school deliberately adopting a façade of harmless normality.

You weren't entirely happy that staging this as a campaign of deception and deceit was more comforting for her than just imitating normality, but it wasn't your place to judge.

Your place was to attempt to gently prise Her out of the shell she seemed to accrete around Herself every time you turned your back, while simultaneously shadowing the eclectic collection of hair-colours that you were going to 'accidentally' intercept on the way from the rooftops.

Sometimes you wished that you had a few more eyes to spare, if only because attempting all of this with only two bodies to work with was exhausting, but you quelled those thoughts as quickly as they arrived.

You knew where that train of logic eventually came to, and you had no wish at all to go there. So you bore with it, and tried not to get a headache as you simultaneously hopped over roofs, bow readied for any sign of interference, and tried to give Homura some last minute advice on how to appear only okay at speaking a language that she fluent in.

"Das einzig wirklich wichtige is der Rythmus. Die richtigen Wörter zu kennen spielt nur eine Rolle wenn du weißt was die... Zeit... das Tempo... oh, die Sprachdynamik ist. Red etwas zu schnell wenn du was einfaches sagst, und langsamer wenn es ausschaun soll, als ob du dir nicht sicher bist, ob es richtig ist."

Spoiler: (Google) Translation

"The only really important thing is timing. Knowing the right words only matters if you know what the...time…tempo…oh, dynamics of using them are. So speak just a bit too fast when you're saying easy things, slow when you need to look like you aren't sure if you're right."

"…Do you really have to give advice in German as well?"

You smile and bump her playfully with your elbow, which is as physical as you can really get when you are both in public and walking as quickly as you can to get yourselves into the right position.

"It's good practice, that's how I learned True Speech, even if it gave me headaches like you wouldn't believe."

"Please don't remind me about that, I was seeing flowers on everything for days after last time."

You pout, a slightly playful glint in your eye despite the feigned affront.

"You did ask what my name really sounded like. It isn't my fault that you haven't been practicing enough to hear it properly."

"Not everyone can cheat like you do, Ruby. That reminds me, how near are we?"

Your cheeks pink faintly from the praise, backhanded as it might be, before you close your eyes for a second, letting your other senses steer your main body through the crowd as you focus on the viewpoint of your Bud.

The building that marked where you had planned the accidental collision that was to provide your crucial first impression with the adorable clutch of potentials was getting closer. You had probably only a few more minutes before you needed to be in position.

You had poked Homura into seeing that it was easier this way than attempting to conspire some interaction within the school, where her actions would be under scrutiny and you would be hard-pressed to provide assistance to her.

This way you could establish introductions, form a tie of obligation between your two groups, and thirdly, and privately, you could try and prompt Homura to do something different and spontaneous, rather than act like the marionette tugged this way and that by the demands of the future that she had been intermittently resembling this last week.

You knew they were necessary, or at least trusted her that they were, but there was a difference between things that were necessary and things that were good, and in your opinion, humble as it might be, Homura needed far more of the latter within her existence.

You reached the point where you would make your final, faux-oblivious approach, your Bud informing you that the others were fast approaching. You give Homura a little nudge to inform her, and she nods back, though she still seemed to be almost thrumming with tension next to you.

You personally hope that the others will accept that it is shyness and worry for her first day that are the causes behind this, because there will be only so much you can do to draw attention away from her.

She has told you why she is afraid, that in all the futures she could recall, not once had she taken this path. You attempted to hug away her fears, reminding her that none of those futures contained you either, but if anything, that just seemed to make things worse.

You hope that the others will be able to do something, have some understanding that will allow them to unpick the knot that is your friend that you lack.

Though given what Homura has told you of the unborn ones, what you are really hoping is that this Sayaka will forgive you for walking right into her. At worst, it was better that she hated you rather than Homura, which she has informed you is a regrettably common occurrence.

Not to mention that you weren't sure whether or not you'd burst into flames if you happened to collide with Madoka. Another benefit of being an Exalted One, you suppose. As diminished as she is, you aren't the only one who knows how to cheat.

The time for worries and doubts is nearly over though.

You start to walk a little slower, and you and Homura segue into the banal chatter of two perfectly normal teenage girls walking to school, or at least the closest approximation that you can think of.

At last, it was time for them to meet their protectors.

---
Any final words, SV?
More importantly, what do you plan on doing when you do (literally) bump into them?​

Adhoc vote count started by Origami Clock on Oct 30, 2017 at 4:14 PM, finished with 38 posts and 11 votes.

• ---

  6 people have voted

  [X] Walk backwards in front of Homura, reassuring her that she will do fine and that we believe in her.
  -[X] Bump into Sayaka in such a way that you fall on top of each other.
  --[X] Apologize profusely, in a very polite manner just like mom taught you.
  ---[X] Once the apologies are out the way introduce yourself and Homura to the girls.
  ----[X] Be disgustingly cheerful about it

  • Archeo Lumiere
  • Stranger1950
  • King Tharassian
  • LostDeviljho
  • redf1ve
  • Scramm

  4 people have voted

  [X] Walk backwards in front of Homura, reassuring her that she will do fine and that we believe in her.
  -[X] Bump into Sayaka in such a way that you fall on top of each other.
  --[X] Apologize profusely, in a very polite manner just like mom taught you.
  ---[X] Once the apologies are out the way introduce yourself and Homura to the girls.

  • Sinsystems
  • MilitaryAaa
  • kinigget
  • Reinholdt

  1 people have voted

  [x] Debate the use of artificial fertilizers when tending to flowers. Homura just doesn't understand them like you do!

  • Redshirt Army

 

[Origami Clock]

The pair of you make it almost to the point of collision before Homura's replies to your fully automatic chattering seem to trail away. Her eyes start to flicker between the faces before you, her face stiffening as the anxiety that you could feel practically boiling off her started to make itself known to your more primitive senses.

You hadn't thought Her the sort of person to come down with stage fright, but even now, your friend was still full of surprises. It might not be the best timing, but you're sure that the pair of you'll muddle through somehow.

In a flash of something that lay somewhere in the wild hinterland between frantic improvisation and sudden insight, you flip yourself around so that you're facing Homura, a brief empty stretch of pavement behind you giving you a few moments to focus on Her, to try and blow away some of the doubts that seemed to gather in your friends head like cobwebs in a dark room.

"Don't worry like that, Homura-chan."

The honorific still felt strange in your mouth, but it was one of those 'when-in-public' things that Homura, who could be surprisingly helpful when she wasn't determined to be grumpy and stressed, had told her would help her imitate the inhabitants of this place.

Right now was one of those moments when she was not feeling helpful, with her eyes set in an almost defiant angle, as if she was daring you to try and make her feel better about all of this.

That was one dare of hers that you were always glad to take, because it meant that somewhere deep inside her, maybe next to a kidney or hidden behind her bile duct, was a bit of her that wanted you to come and cheer her up.

"Everything's going to be fine, really. I mean, who wouldn't want to be your friend?"

"…"

The glare intensified, though it scattered off your expression of determined affection like a shower of raindrops.

"Don't be like that, this is supposed to be your chance to show everyone that you're the wonderful, adorable person that I know you are, Homura-chan-"

You would have kept on speaking on that theme of Her innate amazingness, if you hadn't seen her eyes widen, a warning not managing to escape her lips before you instinctively looked behind yourself and accidentally blinded the vast majority of your senses.

You still possess enough of them to know in the next few disorienting seconds that you backed into a slightly smaller person who seems to have become entangled with you on the way down.

For the moment before you can poke your senses into working again, you can only see from the perspective of your Bud overlooking the scene. You are entangled with a squirming girl with blue hair, and you have to fight to keep your laughter contained within your Bud at the wonder of serendipity that had just occurred.

Somehow you manage to keep your reserve as you pull yourself up from the ground, keeping a face of apologetic concern plastered across your face rather than the jaw-aching smile that you want to be wearing.

"I'm so, so sorry, I really should have been looking where I was going, are you alright?"

You extend a pale, willowy arm down to help the blue-haired girl to her feet, showing none of the amusement you feel as you feel the conflicted wash of her emotions thrum against you.

She was very close to indignant with rage, the proud fierceness that had caused so many with problem as it sparked against the aloofness that you knew that Homura was prone to sliding into when she had far too many things on her mind. Close too, because your apology and offer of assistance required her to swallow down her fire just when she wanted to spit it at you.

"…I'm fine. What did you think you were doing, not looking where you were going?"

"Sayaka-chan…"

Even her voice thrummed with power as she helped her friend to her feet, almost drowning out any hint of the exasperated fondness in her tone as she gave her a gentle verbal poke to remind her that you did just apologise to her.

"I'm really sorry, I was just trying to cheer my friend up a little, she's-"

You turn around, finding Homura standing still, her expression more than a little pale as she stared at the three girls facing you. You snare her with an arm and pull her beside you. She doesn't say anything, and you feel the sharp, sour note of fear emanating from her.

You wrap an arm around her shoulder, and you're aware of how she turns subtly into you like a flower bending towards the sun, even if she isn't. Neither of you thought it would have turned out like this, but it seems that her supernal insight predisposes her to be rather more adverse to the unexpected than you.

It seems that if you wanted to make the most of this happy accident, you'd be doing it alone.

No pressure then.

"It's her first day at MMS, so she's a bit worried about meeting new people. Sorry, where are my manners? I'm Ruby, and this adorable little limpet is Homura-chan."

It was a wonder what a few words could do. It had taken just three, for instance, to transform Homura's expression from one of mild-to-moderate panic to exasperation with a very faint hint of embarrassed blush.

It was when she rolled her eyes that you knew everything was going to be ok. Please-ignore-my-ditz-of-a-Senpai was a much more pleasant, not to mention eloquent set for her eyes to be in than the previous look, which had held something of the hopeless fear of being marched to your execution about it.

"She's the transfer student?"

Hitomi speaks at last, having sensibly stepped back to let Madoka help up Sayaka and to evacuate the blast-radius of an enraged Sayaka. You suppose it would be in keeping with her nature to notice these sorts of things. You couldn't blend into the background without an eye for detail, after all.

"Yes, that's me."

She wasn't entirely back on firm footing, or she'd have shrugged your arm off already, but her voice was steadier than you thought it would be, and you give her shoulder a subtle little squeeze of reassurance that you were fairly sure the others wouldn't notice.

"How did you pick up a Senpai already? You haven't even started your first day."

You taste Sayaka's words, and you find nothing substantial beyond bemusement and curiosity. Not terribly warm, but then again, she's only just met you. You were happy, more than happy with an absence of coldness.

It meant that this time, there was a worse-case scenario that you knew for a fact had been dodged, and from the single bright mote of hope that you saw in Homura before it fell back into the melange of mixed feelings she had about this whole endeavour, you knew that She knew as well.

You give each other a look, a conversation flashing between you without a single word being spoken. Metaphorically at least, you didn't want to give the impression that staring into each other's eyes for the duration of your mental conversation would provide.

No matter just how cute Homura could be, there were rules about that sort of thing. Besides, it would make snuggling her awkward.

Just how much truth do you dare divulge?

--
What do you say, SV?
​

 

[Origami Clock]

Long were the arguments between the two of you on this particular subject.

You yourself didn't see much of a reason not to try to cleave as much to the truth as you could. A little sanitising may be necessary, but that it hardly new to you.

You didn't have a lake here to drown all your secrets and shames within, but silence would suffice in a pinch. Only the crudest of liars need untruth to conceal, after all.

In opposition to your mostly remembered lessons in courtly deceit, Homura approached the problem as she seemed to approach all problems, by ensuring that the consequences would be as absolute and final as possible.

She worried you sometimes, and few times more than when she made the argument that you should make your pasts as impenetrable to casual inquiry as possible.

She was...cold, when she proposed that the measure of truth you used was to reveal that you both 'were in a catholic school'.

Those nice, polite, empty words, covering up the wound in your soul that still bled aching heat within you whenever your mind drifted to thoughts of your home.

You are not ashamed to admit that you required several bites of that black, bitter fruit of human misery to purge the wildness such thoughts evoked in you.

You thought you could even see some distant spark of a similar pain in Homura, but it was a scar long faded by time, lost in a patchwork of other, more vicious wounds.

To her credit, she did apologise. It may have been stiff and awkward, her skill with it clearly atrophied, but she was at least sincere in her regret.

She told you some stories then, as you leant against each other, huddled together in the aching white expanse of your home. Of things that never would be, could never be allowed to be.

You are not unfamiliar with the costs of revelation, but even still...

You looked at Homura with a new light after that, your insight blossoming sufficient to reveal the screams frozen within the ice of her eyes.

What a world was this, that you might be called upon to annihilate the souls of those you loved, and be able to think it a mercy?

You cannot disagree with Her that ensuring their ignorance is by far the lesser sin, not any more.

With that agreement, some of Homura's objections are retracted.

There still remained the problem of concealing your true natures until the threat has passed, but you hope that if you are sufficiently vague about the causes and timeframes of your meeting, nothing incriminating should come of it.

If you are depending on one thing, it is that their politeness will act as a dampener towards any exhibition of unseemly curiosity.

Well, politeness and attempting to thoroughly distract them by being as adorable as possible, though that is more of a constant thing at the moment.

You...you much preferred yourself as you were when you were happy and fizzing with energy...when you could be useful, not...not as you might be otherwise.

You know you can't do it all the time, that bending your mind into this shape has a cost, but what else could you do? You have heard Her quiet, terrible words about what might lie ahead, and the things she says in her sleep...

You could not afford to be weak in this. Not now, with so much at stake. Later, you promise yourself, definitely at some point, just not now.

You wonder if this is how Homura feels all the time?

It was very helpful that your thoughts flowed just a little faster than they had any right to under the laws of this world, because all of this flashes through your mind swiftly enough that you merely look thoughtful rather than comatose as you compose your answer to her question.

You mould your face into a half-smile, warm yet with a sharp, bittersweet edge. It was a smile for sad things with happy endings.

You have become very practiced at using it recently.

"We...we met in the hospital. She..."

You look down at Homura, eyes meeting for a moment as you try and push reassurance down into her. One thing that you had kept to yourself about this is that She really, really needed some practice at showing vulnerability.

"We."

Briefly, the Homura that you much preferred surfaced out of the ice-ridden sea of nerves that she had become, the one with sense of humour as black and dry as the blood of a Darkbeast. The others saw Her too, and a faint smirking noise comes from the bluenette opposite.

You are the one that rolls your eyes this time, though you restrain yourself to the more human version of it.

"Fine, we. Anyway, we weren't in a particularly nice place, but I quite like hugs, and it turned out, so did she, so we might have spent the night snuggled together and we've been friends ever since!"

Thankfully, between the conflicted expression of worry and delight from Madoka, the blush spreading across Hitomi's face at the thought of two girls 'snuggling' together in bed for a night, and Sayaka looking at you with an expression of slightly suspicious respect, their thoughts are occupied sufficiently not to ask just what the chronology of this all was.

You suspect that the suspicion might purely be because she's having a small amount of difficulty harmonising your cheerful, slightly airheaded persona with the idea of you being sad enough to need to spend a night hugging someone to feel better.

You see another question begin to form on Sayaka's lips, but this time the elbow prod of reminding came from Hitomi, who had just looked at her watch and seemed to be anxiously drifting between the two ting to get their group moving again before they were at risk of becoming late.

"We should probably get going, don't want the Transfer Student be late on her first day."

Homura rolls her eyes again, but it seems almost...wearily fond this time. You aren' sure entirely what to feel about that.

After the trio seem to have, grudgingly in one case, decided that you are 'good people' and Homura has started to overcome her bought of stage-fright, you start walking together towards the gates of the school.

It didn't take too long for the brownian motion of your pooled group to gently prise her from your side, sending her drifting into the space between the three others.

Given that Her 'shy, nervous girl with few friends' persona seemed to flip all sorts of switches within the minds of the three, conversation tentatively starts to flow between them.

You suspect if it hadn't been for the shock, she'd never have let the ice within Her melt to such an extend, but never let it be said that you weren't willing to make the most of a happy accident.

There are a few stops and starts, when conversation pokes her in particularly sensitive places. It was...nice wasn't the word really, but it wasn't entirely negative...seeing her react to probes about her previous school with something a little more vulnerable than her previous sangfroid.

You don't care to speculate just how much of that had been learning from observing your own responses and how much was her slowly remembering that she was permitted to have an emotional range between icy control and blank-eyed despair.

You allow yourself to drift to the periphery, letting Her take the centre of attention for once. If she needed you, you would be there, but through some wonderful twist of fate, for once you were entirely redundant.

Far too soon, the gates of the school approach. Now, this is the point where you would diverge. You have your excuse ready to deploy, hand wrapped around the slick lump of what looked like pastel coloured nacre.

You may not entirely understand the concept, but you know that needing to take a phone call was sufficient excuse to vanish for a moment, which is all you'd need to be lost in the crowd of girls coming through the entrance while the four of them progressed onwards.

You both had your own duties, after all.

--
Well that didn't go too horribly, did it?
What does Ruby plan to do while Homura is being looked over by Homura, SV?​

 

[Origami Clock]

One brief bout of mimed apologies and farewells later, the newly formed quartet had vanished into the swarm of teenagers flowing through the school gates. Your bud watches them until they pass through the doors while you sidestep out of the press, the glossy lump pressed to your ear, not to mention a fluid speed borne of lacking anything as limiting as joints, or bones for that matter, enabling you to slip out of the herd relatively unnoticed.

Once you were there, the only thing that you had left to do here was to find a suitable alley that you could use to climb up and join your other half upon the rooftops. Though it would probably be a sensible idea to change your outfit to one slightly less likely to draw attention.

Your efforts to raid Homura's wardrobe for insight into the styles of this world had met with…dubious success, but you had better luck with the 'research expedition' that followed, which was partly a piece of devious manipulation to give Homura something to do that wasn't cleaning guns or supervising children all day, and partly you just getting bored having to wear the same things all the time.

You dipped out of sight into the mouth of an empty alley, and with no more dramatic flair than a slight pout of concentration, your outfit shifts from the starched confines of a school uniform to a comfortably shapeless grey hoodie, along with leggings of a similar shade.

Generic clothing of someone being vaguely active, while also being perfect for lazing about vegetating. The only thing that it wasn't good at was being at all noticeable. All in all, it couldn't be better suited to what you had planned for this morning.

Today, you were hunting.

Well, technically.

Almost hunting.

Not that there wasn't a horrible monster or two lurking within the city that Homura wouldn't mind vanishing and you appearing looking quite full afterwards, but that wasn't what you were after today.

What was the word you were looking for? You were trying to track down magical beings, who may or may not be violent, paranoid or so sodden with grief that you didn't really have a suitable frame of reference to describe it other than Double-Homura, but you were hardly going to nibble on their souls once you found them.

Well…not if they didn't ask you to. It wasn't like all that grief tasted very pleasant in any case, and you didn't really want to risk accidentally drinking some bits of them they might still want unless they were about to pop like a horror-filled blister on the skin of reality.

Reverse housewarming?

Since all this thinking about meta-linguistics was starting to make your head throb, you promptly decide to stop pondering yourself inside out and make a start on finding some more cute girls to snuggle and/or recruit to your nascent pogrom of Incubator genocide.

Their magic might be so immature as to be practically stillborn, and unpleasantly focused on negative emotions, but that was the fault of the vermin, not them, and there were a lot more of them than there could ever be of you, provided you liked having a functional mind of course.

Your Bud, now that your four charges would be staying still for some time, unwrapped the grey tarpaulin parcel that you put there yesterday for this very purpose. You still have no idea just why Homura had a deck chair within her spatial vortex, though you suspect it hasn't seen some use for quite a long time.

As you scramble up the walls of the alley like spring ivy to reach that thoroughfare of magical beings, the rooftop, your Bud proceeds to sink into their seat and doze, its eyes useless at this moment, though a good dozen other senses have been honed on the school, and those four precious sparks of magic within them.

You see the signs of other Magical Girls within the school as well. A pair of flames, one golden and steady, shining like a candle on the edge of sleep, the other blue and wild, burning co-

NonONOnoNONONONONONO

Both your bodies sputter and wretch, and if you had stomachs you would have emptied them. Your head pounds with the effort of preventing your comprehension. It had been a close call, far closer than you could ever be comfortable with.
It…it was almost like Homura in some ways, that unknowable flame. Was this what happened when an Exalted One was devoured before even the first stirrings of their power?

You would have to tell Homura about this later. As for now, it isn't just a desire to be about your duties that propels you as you launch yourself from rooftop to rooftop towards the city centre.
​

If you could just find a big monster with too many limbs and razor sharp teeth it would be very much appreciated. You needed something nice and simple to sink your teeth into, rather than need to wander around half-blind just in case you see something that pops your sanity like a soap bubble in the rain.

Letting your Bud diminish in your awareness, you cast your senses outwards as you approach the tall clustered rows of buildings that marked the city centre, all focused around the shopping centre, sitting in the heart of the city, round and glistening as a frog egg.

The more rarefied of your senses pick up a chorus of little sounds, a susurrus of tiny potentials that may grow up one day to something great. If they are allowed the luxury of growing up of course.

As for the beautiful albeit half-blossomed sights of Magical Girls who had had their potentials broken open and supped upon by the vermin, there was but one. One that you could see, at least, at the distances you were feeling across, it would not be beyond belief for a particularly subtle power to slip your notice.

Her power smelt of rain-battered leaves, of the must and musk of a forest's heart. She felt like a flower does when it withers away, purpose unfulfilled. Your tendrils twitched in unhappiness and sympathy, for the suffering of one so like yourself.

You were going to give her so many hugs, that you were certain of.

It isn't so many steps from where you are to where she is, and you practically fly as you take them.
You vault over one rooftop entirely in your haste, dropping down from the sky onto the rooftop inhabited by your…you really need to think of a better word for this that prey, don't you?

Strangely enough, your feet do not make a sound when you land. This is because rather than landing on yet another expanse of concrete, you have found yourself within a garden. The magic is so faint as to be barely there, only enough to sustain the fleeting life of your surroundings a little more. By tomorrow, this would all be dust, but today, the air was sweet with perfume, and heavy rose blooms nodded at you in kinship.

The reason for all of this is lying on what would be the middle of the rooftop, on a soft, springy mattress of grass and moss. Buried within an ornately stitched green robe lay a girl with skin that should not be as pale as it is.

There is a smell of blood in the air, but no sign of it bar a smear adorning a silver sickle that looks like it had been spun of moonlight, glistening like no metal should.

Cupped in her hands was a jewel of the deepest green, wrapped in barbed strands of silver. You can see the darkness rising in it with every moment passing.

Comprehension cut at you as the scene made itself clear. This girl had made herself a beautiful place, sustaining it with the last dregs of her power, then sought an ending therein.

Suicide was a common vice amongst the eldest Great Ones, understandable even, after eons of life and the vicissitudes of fate.

But this…

There was no time to think. She had not known about the unnatural vitality her pact had granted her, and now she was minutes from becoming an abominable, twisted reflection of all that she was.​

--
Her Soul is dying in front of you, SV.
What do you do?​

 

[Origami Clock]

Time was the problem here. More than anything else, you could not spare it.

How fortunate that you had an unending source of it, only the other side of a moment from yourself.

It would hurt, you know. The silence that lay between the heartbeats of creation was a void that would tear your mind apart if you remained there too long. Afterwards too, the barbed and acrid flavour of congealed misery that you would have to choke down, to remind yourself of what you must remain.

It would hurt, but it would be worth it, if only to spite the machinations of the vermin that brought her to this terrible choice.
You unfurl yourself just a little, freeing your form to mould and attune itself to the pulsing cosmic membrane of the supernal.

Then, with more mouths than would be otherwise apparent on your form, you howl into the void.

Only the fact that due to all time you'd spent sharing your mind between bodies you'd learnt to focus yourself more keenly saved every Magical Girl in the city from suffering either headaches or full blown panic attacks, depending on their proximity to you. It was a close thing, mind, and one of the reasons that you tried not to talk to Homura like this for anything but emergencies.

Because until Homura grows into something a little more potent, direct mental contact with a Great One, even as one as human as you are trying to be, is somewhat like being body-slammed into a wall by a bellowing lunatic, only for your brain.

"I'm co-

Tick

"-ming. Oh."

Homura is standing next to you, hand reaching up to rest on your shoulder. As you turn to her, her eyes are distant, as if she was assembling a puzzle rather than acting as witness to the imminent birth of a monster.

"So this is who the Rose Garden Witch was…"

She trails off, and without the sound of her voice, the silence that surrounds cuts into you like a thousand tiny shears. You hate it, you hate the coolness in her voice you hate the vermin you hate her youhateyouhateyou-

NOPLEASEICAN'TNOMORE

"…Sorry…I forget sometimes you aren't as used to this as me."

There are specks of light floating in the Witch-Seed as she pulls it back, like stars in the endless night.
"I'm sorry too…this…"

"I know…I presume you want to save her?"

You turn to face her, no inhuman fires boiling up within you, just common, everyday anger at the idea that you could just let someone die in front of you. All she contained was the inverse, weary cynicism, a coldness that you might even accused of being apathy if you didn't see the sheer exhaustion bubbling far below like some abyssal vent.

"Yes."

You might understand her, but that did not by any means require you to be the same as her.

"…Aright…just…when things turn out like this…it's hard to keep them from trying again. I…I know it's not what you want to hear…but you can't save everyone."

I couldn't.

You do not speak on the words she did not say, but an understanding was reached then.

The pair of you step together through the silent garden, a set of drifting islands of green among the endless grey of this place. Feeling the grass bend beneath your feet, you think that you can withstand the silence a little easier now.

Homura stands behind, out of your sight if she needs to draw anything from her shield, while in your hand sits the seed that she had used to drown your endless, inhuman fury as you kneel by the bloodless, grey husk of a girl caught bare moments before the implosion of her soul.

The first thing that makes contact is the seed to her gem, rapaciously devouring the blackness within. At once, she was drawn into the grey eternity that exists between moments, colour spreading over her…well, mostly just her robe, if you were to be honest.

Another thing that you had learned in the last week was the importance of seeming as well as being comforting. You weren't planning on this being a reprise of the Backwards Hug incident any time soon.

You didn't even have to spare even a mote of concentration for lesser flowers to bloom out of your hair, a floral halo that spoke of your power even in the plain wrappings you were currently adorned with.

With your panoply of hidden voices, you build a song of comfort and sympathy, through sub-harmonic and pheromone, aethereal presence and vegetal instinct, you carve a little world of your own for the pair of you.

You hear Homura inhale from the sensation of being on the periphery of such a choir. You even feel your Eyes burn within from the effort of sustaining it, but it was worth it. It would always be worth it.

However deep within herself she has crawled, your song calls to her.

She opens her eyes. They are as green as the first leaves of spring.

"Is this h-"

Her eyes widen at the sight of her gem, sitting whole and bright upon her breast.

"Nonononono"

She grasps at the front of your hoodie with all the strength of a Magical Girl gone near-blind with terror and fury.

"WHAT DID YOU DO?!"

Outside your world, you hear the sound of metal sliding against metal, but neither of you pay it any mind. Nothing as neat and clinical as an ending was being thought of within, if indeed any thought at all was contained.

"Saved you! I saved you from the role those vermin set you out to fulfil!"

At the mention of those white-furred abominations, the summer of her rage passed, leaving nothing but cooling ashes and a despair so raw you could feel the gem close to your hand burn with the sickness of it.

"Too late. I made my wish, and there's no going back. The only thing that was left to me was my choice of endings, and even that…"

She gave a smile so humourless that it almost physically repulsed you. Even your song faltered for a note, before returning with a vengeance, belligerently peaceful, violently empathetic.

"Everything dies! Does that make your flowers less beautiful?"

"It's no-"

"It Is! You Know It Is! If you didn't, why would you grow this garden of yours?"

You see it them, deep within her eyes. The forest might be blasted and bare, but you could see the seeds of something new now, rather than just the desolation of the old.

"You're barely past blossoming, don't you want to see how beautiful you can be before you fade?"

You say it so only the two of you hear, your faces so close together as for your panting breaths to be mingling, the strength of your passions driving your bodies though entirely unnecessary actions.

She releas-

Tick

Homura, now that her duty of standing by your shoulder with violent intent has seemed to become unnecessary, returned to her previous duty. You do not fault her too much for that. Even with all your gnawing, there is only so long time can be postponed without risking the very thing that this girl so feared. You made a note to have one of your bodies hug her insensate as a thank you for this.

With time restarted, she concludes her backwards flop onto what had so very recently been her deathbed, which despite how morbid the idea seems, does look rather comfortable.

"I can't promise anything…I've had poor luck with my agreements with red-eyed magical beings with white hair…I'll try though."

The only thing that kept you from putting all your effort to waste by devouring the one who would dare to compare your regal presence to IT was the fact that the smile she wore on her face was utterly genuine this time. For that, you were willing to tolerate even her infuriating sense of 'humour'.

--
She's alive, so that's a start.
What now, SV?​

 

[Origami Clock]

You permit one of your arms to buckle and bend, gently tipping yourself from your position above her down onto the springy verdant carpet so you were lying side by side.

It was strange, you really could not smell even a hint of all the blood that must have been spilt here. Her creations must really be thirsty little things, to drink so much and not even leave a trace behind.

It was almost admirable in a fashion, a facet of a broken power reaching up to brush against the nature of higher beings. You wondered what else she might be able to do, with powers that were not so bound within the territory of her form as yours were.

It was at this point that the more sensible aspects of yourself prodded your wandering trains of thought back into some sort of unity, reminding you that just because the girl still struggling to reassume full control over her breathing was no longer demanding her death from you, you probably shouldn't just leave it at that.

"Thank you…if-if you ever need to talk or want to go out and smash incubator bodies around for a bit, just let me know…you know how to speak with your mind, right?"

"Err…"

"Like this?"

"Yes, just like that. I'd reply to you, but I'm not really sure how to make myself not loud enough to give you a headache every time I say something…but I can clone myself a bit so I should just be able to come and speak to you in person."

She was quiet for a moment, before she turned on her side, a spark of curiosity writhing within her eyes.

"…When…when I grabbed you sorryforthatbytheway…you didn't move an inch. I've put a crater in a concrete wall without even scratching my knuckles-"

You raise a single eyebrow at that, wondering just what the circumstances were that she'd be punching holes in entirely…well they were quite ugly, and cold, not to mention not being at all hospitable to plant life…alright, not actively malicious walls.

"That damn bunnycat had ran away, and I needed to hit something."

Your urge to hug, never far from the surface in any case, was being belligerently provoked right now, the only two things acting against it being the comfiness of your current repose and the fact that with the open rents within her body may mean you end up squeezing out the last of her life.

"I'm…very magical, very, very magical; honestly I may just be a big pile of magic with a mind squished in somewhere, and even I don't know how some of it is supposed to work."

She doesn't reply to that immediately, though the curiosity in her eyes has caught light, and now fiercely smouldered within those viridian pools of hers.

She grabs her knee to try and lever herself to a sitting position, but something fragile and sensitive within her complained violently at her movement, and no longer powered with grief and maniacal rage, she flops backwards, a wince souring the soft lines of her face.

"Can you heal yourself? Most magical girls are able to learn how, as far as I know, and if your power has to do with living things you should already have some aptitude for it."

"I'll try…"

She trails off as she presses one hand to the greying, blood smeared furrow in her opposite forearm. Green sparks gathered around her hand like curious fireflies, magic and raw vitality poured without finesse into damaged tissue to urge it to live again.

Given that this was the first time you'd had cause to witness a magical girl healing herself, what with Homura's preference for solitude when Hunting, you hoped that this wasn't the common standard.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you could have done better than she had asleep with a single eye at your disposal. You knew it wasn't her fault that her powers were so stunted, but it was here that you suddenly appreciated just how great the gulf between the two of you was.

"…Like that, right?"

The wounds she had carved into herself were sealed, it was true, but her form was still far too pale, far too cold for anything that should be alive. If she was to get better soon, you would have to do something.

"…Yeah, like that. Just…I can probably do a bit more, if you'd like?"

"If you can spare the magic, I'm not going to say no. It's not like I want to dissolve my soul or anything."

You raise your thumb to your mouth, pressing it against one of your incisors, which had much more in common with your heavier thorns than anything as fundamentally animal as teeth.

There is a faint stinging sensation, and when you sit up, withdrawing your hand from your mouth, there is a tiny hole in the vegetal matter of your thumb, a bead of faintly glowing pinkish fluid sitting on it like some liquid jewel.

"Err…I thought you were just going to heal me? Where does biting yourself fit in with that?"

"I'm basically made of magic, remember. Putting a bit of me into you is much more effective than just pushing magic at you, and it's perfectly safe as long as it's in a small dose."

"What happens if it isn't?"

~
'In Yharnam, they produced more blood than alcohol, as the former is the more intoxicating.'
~​

"…It's like being drunk, only better in every way. I don't even know what the effects it might have on your magic."

All true. You don't mention what it could do to her body, because you would never, ever do that to her, not to mention that she might be unwilling to accept your healing because of it. It was for her own good.

"Ok, well that doesn't sound too bad. Sorry, if I've learned anything from the last day is that it's better to ask these things before anything happens, not that I don't trust you or anything."

She leans her head back, her dull blue lips parting in acquiescence.

You don't feel a single stab of guilt as you tip the shining pink bead from your thumb into her mouth. All you feel is relief as pink warmth blooms across her skin, the faint lines across her face melting away from the verdant, primal heat blooming within her.

There is not a single worried thought cluttering your mind as you lean down so your face is next to hers, as you see a warm flush and dozy smile spread across her face.

"I…"

She covers her mouth with her hand and coughs, clearing away the sudden hoarseness that seems to have gripped her vocal cords.

"…I can see what you mean about too much…that was…I can't even bring myself to joke about that. Wow."

You shrug, a modest smile near-mirroring her own at the complement, not even a shred of worried concern showing.

"It's like synthetic fertiliser. Works really, really well in some cases, but you should never use too much of it, and if you need to, you've clearly made some big mistakes somewhere."

"You like gardening as well? I wouldn't think you'd have time for it. The only reason I'd be able to keep going with all the time we apparently need to spend...hunting, is because my power lets me cheat massively."

You laugh. You honestly can't help it, and the joyful music of it fills the rooftop garden like a low-hanging cloud.

"Hahahaha, sorry, just a joke between me and a friend…let's just say that cheating massively isn't something exclusive to you, though I wish that my gardening efforts were as easy as yours. I just have to make up for it in different ways."

You reach up to your coronet of flowers and pluck one from your head, a white stem spinning itself out of your core, until with a thought you sever its connection with you, leaving a pale, unearthly bloom sitting in your hand.

"I'd be interested to see if you could get that to grow somewhere."

She takes it, tucking it behind her ear like pen.

"Whoever she is, she's right, what I can feel from that makes no sense whatsoever. Then again, nothing that's happened today has, so why should this be any different."

"You…Contracted today then?"

"This morning. When I woke up, that thing was sitting at the foot of my sleeping bag, offering to make all my problems go away. I don't know how I could have been so stupid…"

The happy aura that remained from your healing seemed to be being sapped away fast, so you did as came natural, and engulfed the spindly twig of a girl in your arms.

"It's good at what it does. It's one of the things that make it so evil. If you have to hate something, hate it."

There was a faint sniffling sound coming from your shoulder, and you squeeze tighter.

"It's what I do."

You spend some time like that, together within the garden, before her stomach rumbles and the little atmosphere you had built around her was blown apart like the head of an Incubator that's stood still for a moment within arrow-range.

"You want to go get something to eat?"​

--
Her body is intact. That's something at least.
Feeling hungry, SV?​

Adhoc vote count started by Origami Clock on Nov 12, 2017 at 2:22 PM, finished with 26 posts and 9 votes.

• ---

  7 people have voted

  [X] Go out to eat somewhere, ask what she prefers.
  -[X] Ask for her name, this is becoming somewhat ridiculous

  • Spectral Waltz
  • kinigget
  • King Tharassian
  • HavocKeeper
  • Archeo Lumiere
  • SaltyWaffles
  • karmaoa

  1 people have voted

  [X] Take her out for bar-bey-kyu.

  • elenchus

  1 people have voted

  [X] Go out to eat somewhere, ask what she prefers.

  • HymnOfRagnarok

 

[Origami Clock]

Now, normally if you were sprawled out in a garden bared to the sun, you'd already be feeling comfortably full about now, but what shone down upon you was not your sun. It did little more than warm your exterior, and until that little pink-haired egg hatched and assumed her rightful pace in the world, that was all it would do.

So, all things being equal, seeking out somewhere to eat did sound like a rather good suggestion at this point.

However, that did mean that you would have to get up, meaning that you would no longer be as comfy as you were lying on this springy verdant bed.

"Mmmm"

Your mind currently floating in a warm bath of content and utter idleness, you lack the capacity for a more eloquent reply. You loosen your hold enough for her to wriggle free, the most that your recalcitrant limbs are willing to cooperate with the command to release her.

Of course, all things cannot last forever. When she scrabbles her way to her feet, you watch through half-lidded eyes as with a single inhalation of magical power, her garden, and indeed, her magical costume, return to where they were called from, in the depths of her soul.

You bounced against the bare concrete, your expression switching from dozy bliss to an affronted pout fierce enough to blister paint at twenty yards in an instant. Sadly, that availed you nought, only strengthening the sadistic cheeriness of her expression.

It was only when she leant down to ruffle your hair that your indignation finally burned away the last remnants of your cosiness and you forced yourself to your feet. You have a singularly unimpressed expression on your face, which seems to dent her sudden enthusiasm not a bit.

"What? You were the one behaving like a grumpy cat, it's not my fault if it makes you irresistible to head-pat."

Your scowl is adulterated with a not inconsiderable quantity of bafflement at that, but it doesn't stop you from internally vowing to seek revenge for this at some point. You may be adorable, but there were standards. You will not be treated like an overgrown ball of fluff and narcissistic sociopathy.

"…"

"Come on, don't be like that. As a sign of my remorse, you can pick where we eat."

"…alright, I suppose."

Somewhat mollified, you walk over to the edge of the roof and look down, seeing the alley below was more or less clear.

"Hey, wha-"

The rest of what she has to say is lost in the sound of rushing wind as you drop like a stone down into the alley, a little magic and your own innate preternaturally durable biology ensuring that rather than making a mess on your landing, you return to earth with nothing more than a heavy thump.

You dust your knees off and climb to your feet, craning your neck back to see the fluttering pink outline of her, looking down from the rooftop not so very far above. For a moment, she stood on the edge, hands balled into fists and a faint grimace on her face, before she stepped forward and attempted to do the same as you.

Of course, she was slightly less practiced with her magic than you, as well as being burdened with a needlessly rigid internal structure, so you really should have expected it when the force of her landing bounced her off her feet and straight into you like a turtleneck-clad cruise missile.

The sounds that you made on your collision were less than dignified, though at least you didn't produce anything as nearly as high-pitched as her surprised squeak when you wrapped your arms around her to keep her from ricocheting off of you and onto the rather less yielding surfaces around you.

You released her once you were sure that she wasn't going to fall over as soon as you did so, letting her lean her back against a wall and hold her head until the world stopped spinning quite so fast.

"Um…not to be rude, but how did you manage to get up to the roof? That looked like you'd never done that before."

"I was going up, going down would mean that I was doing it wrong. How'd you do that so easily? It felt like my stomach was going to come out of my nose coming down."

You suspect that now is not the best time to mention that you do not in fact have a stomach, or indeed, any significant internal organs other than your core, but you suspect that the lesson in comparative anatomy could be held at a better time than when you were planning to eat.

So instead, you go back to your rehearsals for your role as 'cool and mysterious sempai', and shrug nonchalantly. Though this bit you'd be cribbing from the parts that Homura had labelled CONTINGENCIES and annotated to almost illegibility with things that either must or must not happen to avoid terrible fates.

For some of them, you struggle to work out which is which, but then again, a not insignificant number of them refer to another document named only as Acc./Inesc. Losses, so you're not entirely sure you want to know, truthfully.

"Practice, mostly. It's sort of the opposite thing, magically, as well. Instead of being fast and light, you want to be slow and heavy, so you don't land as hard or get bounced off your feet."

"Yeah, well one out of two isn't bad I suppose. I think I can walk now, so can we get out of this alley please? Reminds me too much of home."

You walk out of the alleyway, and most likely due to the fact that you happen to be in the city centre and whoever was responsible for planning its layout was one of those sensible, boring sorts who tend not to fill the heart of their metropolis with gothic manses and cathedrals stacked atop each other in an orgy of baroque insanity, you find yourself near some rather useful places containing things people might want.

In this case, what you wanted was food, and the city was perfectly willing to supply it. All you needed were the correct pieces of paper, which Homura was happy to enable you with. You suppose it was handy to have a friend who had managed to accumulate sufficient bits of paper that she has completely lost count of how much she has, and having seen her filing system, you know that must have taken a not-insignificant amount of effort on her part.

A bell rings as you enter, and for a moment, you are utterly paralysed by the choices put in front of you. Not to mention the effect that the fog of scents emanating from the paper packets and hissing machinery behind the counter on you, to wit, bypassing your consciousness entirely and whispering terrible seductive things to your less socially acceptable impulses.

Then a hand grabs your arm and you are mostly returned to the world as you are lead into the queue for the counter.

"You know, when you're asked what you want, it's considered poor manners to shout 'everything!' and dive mouth-first into the cake display."

"I wouldn't."

"I saw that look on your face just then…oh?"

Suddenly, the smug in her expression was substituted with awkwardness and a little embarrassment, though you could still see the smug lurking beneath, specifically beneath two spots of red on her cheeks and a look on her face that looks faintly familiar to that of someone who has just sat down, only to realise that their chair is no longer beneath them.

"Sorry…I have no idea how, especially since…everything…but I don't think I ever got your name."

"Oh, no need to be sorry, it was all a bit of a blur, wasn't it. I'm Ruby."

"So forward. Well I suppose it's fair enough, considering. Name's Rika. Pleasure to meet you, Ruby-chan."

You look up, and find that aside from an old man who seems to be very earnestly ignoring the both of you, you are almost at the front of the queue. Now would probably be a good time to decide on what to get, if only to spare yourself more sarcastic remarks from Rika.

--
Topics of conversation as well as choices of sugary and/or caffinated monstrosities are now open for your preusal, SV.
I suspect that the following scenes will amuse me greatly.​