Class has just let out, and you have places to be. Your mind is full of today’s logistics as you speed walk towards the alley you favor for after school transformations.
Not full enough to miss the blue haired shadow tailing you.
Miki Sayaka is moving towards you with the same single minded determination that has driven her to every death. You imagine if there were a crowd between you two, it would part in her wake like a school of fish around the keel of a ship.
You don’t alter your course; the alleyway is a fine enough place as any to hold whatever confrontation will inevitably transpire.
What you do not expect is for her to have already transformed behind you by the time you reach it, and move quickly enough to pin you against the wall.
Miki’s arm is pressed against your windpipe, free hand holding a cutlass loosely in preparation for a counterattack. She has always been much more dangerous in worlds where Tomoe Mami had the opportunity to train her.
Still, you are not afraid - the Soul Gem on her stomach is not dark enough to impel a murder in near-broad daylight. Instead, you are dully curious what has driven her to such actions, what narrative she has constructed that is causing her breaths to come so heavy.
“I know what you did.” Miki Sayaka hisses, voice dark with accusation. Her face is drawn up like it revolts her to even touch you. Sunlight catches her blade and reflects it into your eyes - unintentional, you think, but annoying.
“And what could it be that you are accusing me of?” You intone, tilting your head slightly. Your response is not intended to provoke her, though you know it will anyway. You genuinely have no idea what it is she’s talking about.
“Don’t play dumb you fucking-” Miki visibly struggles to select a word that accurately portrays her loathing. “-fucking monster.”
A rather subpar choice, but then, the girl in front of you has never been known for being particularly bright.
“I have done many things, Miki Sayaka,” So many, more than she or anyone else knows. Your desperation and sin have been cataloged only in the place that spawned them: your mind. “You are going to have to be more specific.”
Miki drives her fist into the wall centimeters from your head, the impact shattering brick. The blade still held in her grip sinks more than stabs inwards, parting the material like butter.
Your flinch is relegated to a tensing of the fingers, but you immediately berate yourself regardless.
The other girl fails to notice, too busy practically growling her next words. Let it not be said that Sakura Kyouko is the only one among your group who could pass for a feral beast.
“To-” Miki speaks a name you don’t recognize. “What you did to her.”
A civilian, then. You actually take the time to wrack your brain, but the name doesn’t match anybody you remember committing a personal wrong against in this particular world. It’s a short list, considering the most you’ve done is the killing of a couple potential contractees - ones you knew with certainty would’ve become problems later.
It doesn’t matter. You’ve indulged this girl long enough. The pressure she is exerting on your throat would have caused a lesser Puella Magi to panic by now (And caused any human’s neck to snap less than a minute in) but you remain dispassionate.
“Whatever it was,” you say, preparing for your exit. Setting off a flash grenade in a residential area isn’t ideal, but it is quick. “I assure you, it was necessar-”
The fist doesn’t miss this time.
Your vision goes black as the back of your head cracks against the wall. You're dimly aware of an echoing crunch that’s probably the sound of your nose caving.
Ow.
The concussion you’ve just been granted likely comes with severe brain damage, but that’s mostly meaningless. As long as it can connect to your neurons, the ability of the shiny rock you are to think is barely affected by their state.
That’s probably the reason Miki doesn’t expect your leg sweep until she’s already on her back. Her blade catches you on the way down, and you make a displeased noise as red blooms from your side. She’s just ruined your school uniform.
You don’t waste time transforming - simply pull the Beretta M9 you keep in your bag and press it against her Soul Gem.
“I have no quarrel with you, Miki Sayaka.” You say, broken nose forcing your voice into something even less human than usual. “I suggest you stop whatever it is you think you are doing before you get hurt.”
To this, Miki cackles, making no attempt to move. “Or what, you’ll kill me? Will you enjoy it, having my blood staining your hands alongside Mami-san’s?” She babbles, voice wild in contrast to yours. “Of course you will. After all, you do things worse than murder to get off.”
You stay silent. The pieces are coming together, and you methodically choke the emotions trying to claw themselves into existence. Remind yourself that the girl below you is delusional, that she knows nothing, that she has always hated you in every world.
Miki continues, choking on her laughter.
“Even from that first day of school, I knew there was something-” She swallows. “Something fucking wrong with you. Then I saw you talking to” That same name again. “And the next day she was - and so I asked him. Asked Kyuubey. And he told me that you, you-”
No.
“Quiet.” You hiss, mention of the Incubator’s alias a physical force on your trigger finger. Miki Sayaka has always hated you. It doesn’t matter what she thinks - her conclusions are always wrong, and you have never bothered to correct them. This is no different.
“The Incubator lies,” You’re speaking anyway. Shut up. “He lies. It’s all he ever does.” Shut up. It doesn’t matter what Miki Sayaka knows. “He lies.” It doesn’t matter what the Incubator knows, what you are realizing it has surely known in every world, disgusting voyeur that it is. “He lies.”
There is one person, one person in the entire fucking universe where it would matter. One person who matters at all.
You are met with silence - it’s worse. Doesn’t matter. She’s always wrong, it always lies. Doesn’t matter. You take a step back before your self control can crumble. Doesn’t matter. Blood caresses its way down your side, your hip, your thigh, your leg. Doesn’t matter.
One step turns to two, to three, to making your exit from the alley because it doesn’t matter. Miki Sayaka has never made a correct deduction in her life. This entire exchange is a waste of your time - let her believe what she wants - there are actual important things you have to do today - it doesn’t-
“It’s about Madoka, isn’t it?” Her tone is entirely unreadable.
You-
Miki Sayaka has always been more perceptive than you give her credit for.
“I’m right, aren’t I? That’s pathetic.”
Of course she’s right. Everything is about Madoka.
Your previous panic crests and fades, and you are left feeling something like numb acceptance. When you live in the timespan of exactly six and a half weeks, the vast majority of things you do never have the time to develop repercussions.
Acing every single piece of schoolwork, stealing thousands of pounds of military equipment, deceiving bureaucracy to avoid the concern of adults, picking one random classmate to take advantage of (No, it’s called something else. There’s a different word for it - you’re not stupid), perhaps these would have a monumental impact on your life, if you were anybody else. Instead there is only a checklist of causes and a narrow list of various effects - unfocus your eyes and they have no association with each other.
It’s easy when nobody has ever known the truth, nobody real, who you’ll interact with again in the next world. You are a case study in the dominance of nurture over nature in the manifestation of sociopathy.
Then again, you might actually be proving the opposite is true.
You could jump ship right now. Remove yourself from this world, move on to the next one. You don’t.
You feel a slight pressure in your stomach, and look down hazily. Ah. It appears Miki Sayaka has impaled you. Clean through, too - between ribs number nine and ten. You’re pinned to the wall, something like a taxidermied butterfly.
Action, meet consequences.
The other girl doesn’t say anything, just looks into your eyes, searching for some sort of truth. If she finds any, you do hope she’ll enlighten you.
A minute passes. If you strain your ears, under the silence is the suggestion of a symphony.
“Stop throwing yourself a private pity party. Give me one good reason I shouldn’t hack you to pieces.” She breathes, voice even.
You intend to say something along the lines of how she’s still massively outclassed, but instead what slips out is:
“There will always be people like me. You can’t change that.”
She scoffs.
“Of course you’d say something like that. I don’t see why that should stop me from doing my damn best to cut those people down.” It is dawning on you that Miki’s unique circumstances in the world have affected her more than you thought.
This is unfamiliar, the way her hands are perfectly still. Hers is no longer the rage of a doomed fool, rather the methodical malice of someone who has judged you unworthy.
“Especially when it comes to protecting my best friend.” She says.
“I have no intent to harm Kaname Mado-” The blade is driven deeper, hilt colliding with your abdomen. You make no attempt to struggle.
The symphony rises.
“Wow! you actually believe that.” Miki smiles, a second cutlass appearing in the hand not soaked in crimson. She makes a show of testing its weight, before leaning forward in a mock-conspiratorial whisper. “Tell me, are all Puella Magi like you? Was Mami-san?”
You want to see if she’ll do it. If she even knows how. To prove, right now, that you can be held responsible. That justice really does exist.
So you take a page out of Sakura Kyouko’s book, and command the corners of your lips to rise.
“Why? Are you looking for a more direct way to get some worth out of the newly healed Kamijou Kyousuke?” You reply, matching her tone.
With a roar like a crack of sea-storm lighting, Sayaka Miki swings right for your neck. You tilt your head back, ready.
But the blade stops a perfect hair’s length away from tender flesh.
Miki’s gaze no longer holds cold hatred. It’s blank, staring into the middle distance - a wind-up toy running out of power at the very last moment.
“No. I bet we are all like you.” She murmurs. “When I asked Kyuubey why he didn’t try to interfere, you know what he said?” Her face seems to be struggling, like she’s trying to drop her smile and widen it at the same time. “He said he didn’t see a reason to. That his species isn’t capable of understanding the concept of rape.”
A thought strikes you with urgency, but no matter how you try, Miki is standing too close to you. You cannot see the state of her Soul Gem.
“I really signed a deal with the Devil, didn’t I? You’re right. I can’t change anything. I can’t even act like I haven’t wondered about it before.” The blade slips from her hand and hits the ground. It makes no sound. “Could I even stop myself, if I was given the chance?”
The music - very much real, physical - reaches a fever pitch.
“Tell me, if I really want to protect this world, isn’t there only one place to start?”
You transform immediately, groping inside your shield. Idiot, idiot, idiot where the hell are your Grief Seeds-
As always, you are too slow. Exit stage left Miki Sayaka, enter stage right Oktavia von Seckendorff.
The irony is not lost on you that a girl essentially just killed herself for no reason other than that she believed herself similar to you.
If only it were that easy.
That encounter is washed away eventually, world by world. Time and realities and dead Madokas pass, and your habit gets worse.
You still only fuck them once a world, but at some point in the blur of encounters you pass the line from roughness into sadism. You start innovating, stealing things from stores you would’ve been mortified to step foot in before.
Still, you’re careful not to leave any obvious evidence. No rope-marks, no knife wounds, no burn scars. But as new cruelties begin to become rote, the limitations start to frustrate you to no end; the number of times you nearly break them is innumerable.
Would it even matter? If you marked her, or kept her, or killed her? Are any of them even real?
The thing that holds you back from answering those questions is, ironically, the fantasy itself. They may be completely meaningless any other time, but while they are gagged or handcuffed or drugged, they are Madoka. And those are lines you’d never cross with your beloved.
Right?
And then, of course, comes the second time someone found out.
Sakura Kyouko was crashing at your apartment, as she tends to do across worlds. It seems at some point out on your ‘date’, that fact slipped your mind.
You have the girl restrained, tear tracks running down from under her blindfold, more fingers buried in her cunt than should be able to fit. The whimpers trying to escape her mouth are blocked by the barrel of the Desert Eagle you’re shoving down her throat.
(Despite everything, none of it was making you feel much of anything at all)
It’s then that the other Puella Magi happens to come back from witch hunting. She walks right in on the two of you.
At that point, your memory goes black. It was almost funny, blinking to find yourself weeks into another world’s April. It must’ve been bad.
But it doesn’t matter. It didn’t happen in this world, just like it won’t have happened in the next. There is no past, there is no future. Only the eternal present.
Perhaps, this is hell.