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Walpurgisnacht was finally here.
The world was still as Homura pulled out weapons and ordinance from her shield that would make even the U.S. army shudder to a stop. She had tried this before, starting two timelines before, and she knew it wouldn't work. It never worked. But somehow this first move had become a comforting if hopeless tactic, and like the last time and the time before that, a small hope bloomed within - maybe this time. Maybe this time it would work.
She had a circle of RPGs and bazookas surrounding the shadowy form of Walpurgisnacht. A pile of AK-47s, auto shotguns, and magnums laid on the ground to her right. To her left was a heap of grenades. At her feet was something new for this timeline - a chainsaw she modified for easy handling. And like then and even now, her hands carried a rifle. There was something about shooting off a witch's head with a .338 Lapua Magnum after all.
She pulled back the cartridge, and though muffled by the stillness of a frozen space-time continuum, the click was more than satisfying to Homura's ears.
And almost as soon as the cartridge settled, she let fire into the pits that Walpurgisnacht had for eyes.
Pinpricks appeared in its face.
The rifle clattered on the ground. But she was already ready with a shotgun.
As she impassively shot at the witch, her supply of firearms dwindling as the holes in its - if it could even be called that - face grew wider and deeper, she scrolled through the memories of this plan in its other incarnations in other universes in her mind. She was glad she didn't have shrapnel-spraying bullets this time. Walpurgisnacht's location was worse for her aim than the last timeline but better than during the timeline where Mami had tried to kill her. She had brought more bazookas and explosives this time around. Maybe she could kill Walpurgisnacht without Madoka - her face stuck gaping at the creature from an intact balcony - ever having to die.
Eventually she ran out of bullets. By then, all that remained of Walpurgisnacht was a sliver of white framing where its face used to be. Progress, Homura thought. A third of its face was left last time.
There were still the grenades and the circle of rocket launchers and bazookas left, but Homura had wired a series of lines connecting the weapons beforehand to a master launcher. A push of the switch, and a healthy amount of explosions surrounded the witch's body.
Then the world returned to the orange and black of Walpurgisnacht's dimension.
"Homura!" She could hear Madoka suddenly scream. "Homura!"
Through the haze of heat and dark smoke, she saw a claw reach out for her. The witch's battered face was already oozing and reforming into the ghoulish face she had pumped nearly all of Japan's armory at as if everything Homura did and would ever do was absolutely futile.
She was beginning to believe the same thing.
"Homura, you can't fight it alone!"
Wretched Incubator was practically slithering around Madoka's feet. The following was probably coming from him now, "If only you would contract with me, Madoka, then you can help out Homura as a Puella Magi," and at this thought, Homura gritted her teeth and fired into the space between Walpurgisnacht's eyes with an assault rifle.
"Madoka, don't listen to him! I can handle this on my own!"
Ah, she had tempted fate when she had dared say that. And for that, fate in the form of a large claw dripping with shadow stuff punched her as she was mid-leap into the air, and she flew into the side of a building half-buried in water.
"Homura!" Madoka's voice rang inside her ears.
"Contract with me, Madoka, and you can make her pain go away." Incubator's voice seemed to encompass the entire witch-scape. "I can see it in your eyes. You wish to save Homura. Become a Puella Magi, and she would no longer have to suffer."
It paused to let its words dig in. Then, "Madoka, your wish can be the miracle that would heal Homura and defeat Walpurgisnacht."
She wanted to scream. But somehow nothing could come out of her except a harsh and rasping gasp for air. As she raised a trembling arm from a wall to try to signal Madoka that way, the witch all too readily swung its leg and crushed it into the concrete.
"See, at this rate, Madoka, Homura's going to die. Shouldn't you help her out of her misery?"
Madoka, don't!
Please!
You had me promise not to have you become a Puella Magi again!
I promised to protect you!
I promised not to have you die again and again...
She didn't even have the strength to whisper, "Repeat." Her Soul Gem was still safe but who knew how long that would last, with Walpurgisnacht training coals - or what passed for its eyes - on her form and its tail - sharpened to a sickening gleam - whipping toward her abdomen...
"Just say the words, Madoka. The transformation will be quick."
Through the tears building in her eyes, Homura could see Madoka's eyes flicker toward her broken body and then back to Incubator.
What happened next made her heart drop.
Madoka walked toward Incubator.
"So what will it be, Madoka?" Its voice rang across the sky.
Walpurgisnacht's tail chose to strike then. She struggled not to scream even as her stomach became bathed in blood; she couldn't let her pain spur Madoka further onto the path of a Puella Magi. However, her effort was rendered meaningless when that hateful creature's voice echoed the following.
"I see. So your wish is to save Homura by having the power to beat Walpurgisnacht."
NoNoNoNoNoNoNoNo -
In her ears, Incubator's voice was almost deafening when it said, "I will now grant your wish, Madoka!"
Then everything exploded into chaos.
"MARNING RESKEW!"
"Madoka -" Incubator managed to squeak out, before a sound like the hiss of a can of soda being opened permeated the dimension. A high-pitched whine from Walpurgisnacht then lifted Homura's eyes to it, and when she noticed that the witch's eyes had disappeared from its face, she panicked and tried to shake her broken body forward - Madoka! - before she realized that Walpurgisnacht was ignoring both of them in favor of locating the source of the strange yell.
But even with one small part of her mind struggling to cope with this strange event - which had never happened before in all her past time traveling - the other, larger part was desperately trying to figure out what had happened to Madoka - had she successfully contracted with Incubator? - when something bright and defiantly orange appeared in front of her.
"MARNING RESKEW," it screamed.
When Homura's eyes finally adjusted, she found a man beneath the orange, with a large toothy smile, and hands carrying several bottles of orange soda.
She twitched.
Of course, her voice still didn't work.
Not that it would matter much, since the man then decided to twist open the bottles and pour their contents all over her body.
Drenched in soda, Homura wanted nothing more than to blast the strange man out of the way. The situation was growing increasingly ridiculous and all she wanted was to know if Madoka had sealed the contract with Incubator, mysterious hissing noise and all. If so, she would have to somehow strain her body and focus her power into resetting the timeline, injuries and all. If not, she needed to kill Incubator quickly so she could go back to fighting Walpurgisnacht, however much her body ached.
...Except her body wasn't aching anymore.
"What's... going on?" And her voice was back as well.
She raised an arm, the one that had been smashed into the wall beneath her, and it moved as if the witch had never crushed it before.
As she turned to find the strange soda-bearing man, Homura saw Madoka instead, her hands clutching the balcony's railing.
Walpurgisnacht was still distracted, its terrible body twitching to and fro as it sought to find the orange-suited intruder, and Homura used that precious opportunity to freeze time and to run to Madoka's side.
As she jumped from broken building to broken building, she spotted Incubator, half-hidden behind Madoka, but whose body seemed to be resting in a puddle.
As her feet alighted upon the balcony, she restored time to its original state.
"Homura! I'm so glad you're safe," and her legs were suddenly covered in Madoka's tight embrace.
She had never hugged Madoka in this timeline, Homura realized with a start. She had taken Madoka by the arm, she had helped carry her out of Ocktavia's realm, and she had accepted the warmth of Madoka's hands when Madoka had attempted, for the last time, to stop Homura from fighting Walpurgisnacht.
But Homura had never wrapped her arms around Madoka and shown her how important she was to her very existence across five timelines of despair and fleeting moments of happiness.
She was careful not to move too quickly lest Madoka grow alarmed and assume the worst. She had seen her broken too many times, and she didn't want her to be hurt any more.
But at last, Homura knelt down and drew her arms around the pink-haired girl, and pressed her cheek to hers.
"I'm glad you're safe," she whispered into Madoka's collar. After all, Homura did not feel the prickle of warmth against her senses that would accompany the presence of another Puella Magi, and behind Madoka, Incubator's unmoving body laid serenely in a pool of orange tinged with red.
She felt, rather than heard, Madoka's small giggle, before her arms became a vise and she began to cry all over Homura.
Homura let her do so, rubbing circles all over the shaking girl's back. For once, she felt good. Madoka had not contracted after all, and Homura had a feeling that this was the last time Madoka would be seduced by the promise of power to help others.
But there was still the witch in their midst, Homura remembered with a start, and as if on cue, both her head and Madoka's turned to the large abomination that was surely still there...
"MARNING RESKEW!"
Only for their eyes to widen to the size of saucers as ropes seemingly fell from the sky, with men clad in the same overpowering orange that Homura saw worn by her helper, clinging to the ropes' ends. Each man also wore large belts containing orange soda bottles.
They surrounded Walpurgisnacht, who had apparently been beaten into the ground while the girls reunited, with one man rappelling further than everybody else to settle onto the witch's back.
Upon landing, the man wobbled - the witch was still writhing beneath, albeit not as much as Homura would have expected it to - but then he seemed to have found a magic spot where he was able to stand upright. He pumped a fist into the air. The men still hanging onto the ropes followed his lead, raising fists all around, while they screamed the nonsensical mantra of "MARNING RESKEW!"
Then they quieted, letting the man on Walpurgisnacht's body yell, "MARNING RESKEW!"
With that, the men all reached for their bottles - bottles of the same orange soda, Homura realized, that one of the men had poured on her before and that had somehow healed her, and that may had also been involved in Incubator's death - and poured the contents all over Walpurgisnacht.
The results were immediate and for Homura, they would have been almost anticlimatic were it not for the supposed sheer impossibility of it all.
Walpurgisnacht shrank - and shrank and shrank, until the massive form that had towered over the broken urban landscape and was easily hundreds of times larger than Homura became the size of a pillow. The orange-clad man that had leapt on the witch's back before and had seemed puny in comparison, was now jumping and screaming, "MARNING RESKEW," on top of it, and after the fourth time he did this, the formerly intimidating witch screeched and popped into black and white confetti. At the same time, a Grief Seed rolled out of the remains and down a torn up street.
The man, who had - for lack of a better word - defeated Walpurgisnacht and who seemed to be the leader of the orange-wearing group, ran gleefully after it, a bottle of soda ready in his hand, while his comrades scattered into different directions. Two followed their leader, while a few others swung toward the edges of the witch's dimension, which had begun to dissipate, and the rest swerved toward Homura and Madoka, still gaping at what had just happened.
"MARNING RESKEW!"
She had the insight to shield Madoka with her body when she spotted the incoming orange spray.
Blinking through the soda dripping down her eyes and face, Homura suddenly gasped.
The sky was blue, and she was expecting that since Walpurgisnacht was now gone.
But that wasn't it.
Everything was blurry.
She rubbed the soda out of her eyes and blinked again.
Everything was still blurry, almost as if her eyes were back to the way they used to be...
"What's wrong, Homura?" Madoka gripped her hand, worry all over her fuzzy features. "What are you seeing?"
She bent her head close to her hand, the one Madoka held, and the one that had held the contract she had made with Incubator too long ago.
Or used to.
There was no longer a purple diamond on her nail. There was also no ring with runes either.
Just a hand that Madoka was holding as gently as possible.
"Madoka," Homura whispered, tears streaming down her face openly for the second time in front of her mentor, her heroine, her love, "I'm no longer a Puella Magi."
Madoka's eyes widened in delight and she tackled her in a hug. "R-really?! That's amazing, Homura!"
Yes, it is.
As she laid a kiss on the pink-haired girl's cheek, Homura silently thanked the orange soda-obsessed men for the miracles they had brought.