*Night, Tuesday, 12th of April 2011; Industrial District; Mitakihara, Japan.*

A great shadow loomed above Homura, only vaguely humanoid in shape, with purple eyes gleaming in the darkness. Then a strong hand twisted her hand away from her enchanted buckler while simultaneously some force pushed away from the body of the monster she was trapped under.

Someone pulled her up by her hand, leaving her hanging in the air in the futile fight against gravity pulling her body down and dislocating her shoulder, handling her almost as if she was a broken doll someone wanted to inspect closely before considering its fate. Homura fought back, but the enemy appeared much stronger than her, and a quick punch to Magical Girl’s face along with twisting her still free arm put the end to her resistance - even if her Soul Gem filtered away some if not the most of the pain she experienced, a curse of the blue fires that broke the rules lingered on, and resistance against her assailant still hurt noticeably.

Homura looked at a girlish face, stoic, cold and emotionless, lined with moderately long onyx hair, and it was the only thing that was relatively human about her adversary. Girl’s eyes were solid purple, lacking iris and pupils. Her inhuman look was further accentuated by smooth horns poking from her hair, and sharp teeth with noticeable canines when she grimaced at the struggling Magical Girl. Whoever, or whatever, the enemy was, she gave out this unsettling aura of wrongness Homura felt from the clouded skies above.

Magical Girl didn’t give up and attempted to use her power to stop the time, but it proved to be a mistake as in the blink of an eye she was on the ground. She didn’t remember the shift movement, but her entire body protested as she was slammed mercilessly against the hard surface.

She reached for the weapon into her magical armory behind the buckler...

A blink.

The pistol was gone from her hand.

The gunshot rang and a sharp sensation of the injury pierced her shoulder instead, and the blade pierced her leg at the same time, forcing her to recoil in pain as the curse that overrides her resistance took hold again.

She looked up at the abomination above her. A lower body of the massive, disgusting furry spider, the frontal two from her eight legs transformed into the body scythes now piercing Magical Girl’s tights. An upper body, from the waist up, the abomination was human, female even, but with four arms instead of two. It - she - aimed her own pistol, slightly old-fashioned but still comparable to Homura's lost handgun, and pulled the trigger.

A bullet grazed Homura’s skin and dug into the concrete ground instead.

“Only reason you are still alive is that you are still useful on a greater scale of things.” The abomination said, voice cold and still.

It shocked Homura, despite all the loops she had been through, despite all the variations of the events she witnessed, they still had their basic rhyme or reason attached to them. She didn’t remember Witches talking. She didn’t remember Magical Girl looking like this.

Around them, a few of those winged fox monstrosities surrounded them, waiting to assist the half-spider like attack dogs. Somewhere in the distance came the sound of gunfire.

“What the hell are you?”, Magical Girl growled, more annoyed than confused, but spat a series of questions: “How can you make the monsters? What changed you? You wished for … this?”

And even though Homura genuinely wanted to know the answers, she didn’t plan to have them ever answer, as at this very moment the possible reply was meaningless. It was a fast hatched plan, a diversion, for her to use her power again to gain an advantage while the enemy is distracted. She shivered from the sensation the injuries gave her but watched the eyes of the monster closely, as empty and unreadable they were, there must be a sign.

“You are exactly the kind of person who shouldn’t know the answer.”, the abomination finally answered, an annoyance creeping into the emotionless voice, “I am curious, what is so special about you?”

Now, there was a chance, now the creature was talking and was probably focusing on her words. Homura moved quickly, to reach for her shield as there was no chance for her to dislodge her leg from the wound that binds her.

A blink.

Then came the anguish. It wasn’t an injury, something that Magical Girl could resist. It was almost as if someone had torn a part of herself away. But then it passed, the sensation was like a sting of the needle that, while brief, felt more crushing than a sustained beatdown.

And then, Homura was back - it was just like a flash, an eyeblink, and things were suddenly different that they were a split second ago, her body in a different position, her form of the Magical Girl, costume and all, just gone. Her civilian clothing, torn, her injuries still there. And the creature above her was in a different place, a step aside, yet still looming above her.

Homura started up on the abomination above her, confused and in shock, as the monster girl held Homura’s Soul Gem in her clawed fingers.

“I am glad we were informed about your critical weakness.”, the abomination said, the tone of her voice showing no emotion, even if her words were a taunt as she continued: “You are not invincible after all. How did you hope to fight against the system of your patrons if you can’t beat a variation of your own power?”

Homura was silent. She didn’t expect any of this, she was through a hundred versions of the events, but she couldn’t ever expect any of this to happen, it was almost always the same, with Sayaka, with Kyouko, occasionally with Magical Girls not present in the previous loop, but not with monsters that ignored her power, and now effectively disarmed her.

“What do you want from me?”, Homura barked out, frustrated and angry.

“I am merely stalling.”, the monster tilted her human-like head and even though she didn’t show much emotion, she obviously enjoyed toying with her prey. She moved aside while speaking, a mere movement of the oversized spider body was unsettling to behold.

Homura tried to move, she wasn’t too far away from the Soul Gem that would leave her paralyzed, unconscious, and eventually cause her to perish. Not yet anyway. Now she was still able to do something, she still had time, she still had options. One of the more vulpine monstrosities pinned Homura to the ground to extinguish her hopes.

Somewhere in the distance came the sound of the gunshots. With a chuff of helicopter blades coming closer, a searchlight on it directed somewhere towards the next city block, but still visible at the corner of her eye against the darkened skies. She turned her head to witness the salvo of tracer rounds illuminating the darkened sky as some automatic heavy weapon pounded projectiles to the air in short bursts, eventually hitting the flying vehicle. It crashed to the ground, with a deafening explosion.

Homura fired her stolen guns many times, but there was something about the situation that deeply disturbed her, as the peaceful facade of Mitakihara was thoroughly crushed. She still struggled.

“And that was a weapon that should be obsolete for what humans have.”, the monster girl commented as she pulled Homura from under the creature that trapped her, once more handling the powerless Magical Girl as the doll she was about to crash.

“How are you going to protect your friend from your patrons who harvest this planet, handling you as a cattle?”, she said, and continued musing, “I wonder what they do about our ruse? Would they try to seal the area? Banish us from this plane? Destroy us with some exotic force?”

As broken as she was, Homura was nothing but determined and did try to fight back, only to get tossed back and forth, again and again, cruelly twisted abomination tossed her around, causing her even more harm and making her heart sink deeper.

On the shoulder of the arachnid girl, a strange creature appeared, another twisted insult against nature. It croaked something, a language Homura can’t understand. Her adversary smiled, however, at those alien words.

And then, almost as it was meant to be an answer for the taunting, a flash of bright, pink magical energies came, striking down something perhaps a block away with a shower of brightly colored arrows. More shots came. Homura’s eyes widened, it was exactly what she feared, what she wanted to prevent, and it came to be once again - but she didn’t dare to think about it at that very moment.

A blazing pink sank down from the heavens, then rose again, leaving the trail of flames. A barking of guns sending flak, explosions flashing against the already stormy skies, with flaming sparks descending slowly to the ground.

“It pains me to see my kind suffer.”, the abomination commented, barely audible, her voice lost in the noise.

Winged monstrosities took to the sky. There were more of them around than the few she saw before, Homura realized. There were more enemies in general than she could ever know, the city was turning into a warzone Homura had no control over, and it slowly and surely filled her soul with desperation. Spider abomination nailed Homura to the ground with the scythes once more, testing the resistance of the Magical Girl while keeping her far away from her Soul Gem to be conscious and helpless at the same time.

Sickly blue flames met the star of pink under the stormy sky and some flying beasts fell down, pinned down by rosy-colored magical spears, but some of the glowing streams of cerulean hellfire found the target and the purple fell from the sky.

Homura’s heart almost stopped. Tears she tried to keep down came out.

Then, suddenly, a salmon-colored beam erupted from the ground blasting the chunks of rebar and concrete to the skies, and burning the hated arachnid adversary. A sound of rubble falling down followed the short silence that felt like an eternity.

The monster girl, with half of her spider body, burned away and with expression firm despite the visible pain, tossed the Soul Gem back to Homura.

“With each turn, you fatten your pink lamb for your patrons, bringing her closer to the slaughter.”, an abomination gloated as her last words just as space around her bled the nauseating shadows, taking the creature into the horrific rift and the nothingness.

Homura grabbed the gem, letting its magical power flow from her broken body.

Madoka landed on the roof. She was wounded, bloodied, and scared, costume torched and shredded with none of its bright colors. There was agony in her eyes, such a pain Homura couldn’t bear to watch.

“I wish…”, a new Magical Girl said, her words unfinished as she dropped down the mid-sentence.

Homura couldn’t take this anymore. Her magical buckler was back, and she grabbed it as she cried, letting the mechanism spin.

A supernatural set of cogs twirled, spun, and clicked, and in accordance with the old wish, time went back to the days before any of this happened, washing away the tears with the desperate hope of a new beginning.

But even time itself couldn’t beat the Dragon’s greed, he didn’t let go of what was already his.