Chapter 6: Chapter 6: *Evening, Tuesday, 12th of April 2011; Industrial District; Mitakihara, Japan.*

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

Something broke. Homura was certain of that. She had experienced countless variations of the past several days, she had seen her friends, and Madoka, making the contract with Incubator and dying again and again. But today, and a day before that, were something she had never experienced.

There was an anomaly in this loop. Sayaka ran away from school, followed by Hitomi, and didn’t come back, but that alone was a minor alteration There was something foreboding about this strange weather that affected the city since last night. As the sun slowly set, the city was steadily submerged into harrowing darkness under the moonless and starless skies where only sources of light were artificial, either the blinking neon of street lamps or dim glow behind the closed curtains.

However, it wasn’t a lack of luminosity that unsettled a veteran Magical Girl. She could handle the blackness of the night without much of the issue. What she couldn’t handle was this pervasive, crushing feeling of wrongness, a creeping sensation of dread she could barely explain but was growing worse with each passing hour. An inkling of danger, a barely defined promise of coming terror that Homura didn’t experience even when she had been inside Walpurgisnacht’s Labyrinth. Somewhere on the horizon, a storm was brewing once again, and wind brought in a vague stench of rotten eggs.

The Incubator felt it as well, Homura was certain of it, that must be the reason why he didn’t pester Madoka tonight and disappeared to who knows where. It was the reason why Homura was out here - in the city's industrial district, to use the opportunity to find answers to questions she couldn’t even properly formulate yet. As uncomfortable as she was with leaving Madoka without her oversight, there simply was no other chance to find out the reason for the disturbance that burdened her mind so much.

She stood at the top of the construction crane, scanning the district below and the city on the horizon for anything she would find suspicious, that would ping her interest and provided her with a lead for her investigation attempt. The area was significantly darker than normal, thanks to the overcast skies, providing a good cover against the untrained eyes, but Homura had the advantage of the long experience, both in time and knowledge of every corner of this city.

And soon, she noticed it. Movement in the darkness, vague shapes jumping in between buildings, construction scaffoldings, and pipes, carefully keeping in the line of shadows above the line of streetlight, and outside other sources of illumination, being almost invisible to the naked eye of the normal human who didn’t know where to look. Suspicion rose. The possibility of the Magical Girls was out of the question as soon as said shadows took to the sky and Homura briefly caught the outline of the moving shapes - they were quadrupled creatures, equine sized, but with massive wings, capable of flight, and fast movement unlikely for their seeming size. There were no creatures on Earth like this, and even unnatural apparitions like Witches' Familiars weren’t moving out in the open, no barriers and disguise, just stalkers between lines of light and shadows.

And then, there was a shimmer in between a building, a more familiar sensation, something Homura already had plenty of experience with - Witch’s Labyrinth boundary - set as a contrast between two forms of strangeness unfolding in front of Veteran Magical Girl eyes. and then again, more movement. Homura paused, refraining from following the strange flying beasts, noticing that their behavior wasn’t entirely single-minded, and how they occasionally stopped, seemingly sniffing the air, like a pack of predators following the prey. This time it was something Homura could recognize. Someone, she corrected herself, it was Sayaka, in her Magical Girl’s form, most likely moving in the direction of the Witch.

Homura was about to move, it seemed to be a believable course of action for Sayaka, but then stopped again for a brief consideration: Sayaka, as inexperienced as she was, would have noticed the creatures from the distance and direction she was from them, yet she didn’t react to them at all. Homura waited. It was very suspicious. Even considering how dark it was and the minimal experience Sayaka had, she would have reacted somehow. But she didn’t - even when sinister azure flaming eyes flashed briefly in the darkness, looking briefly in her direction. Homura was startled in surprise despite the distance between them - but Sayaka, much closer to the monsters, didn’t react.

Homura jumped from her spot at the top of the crane arm on the building below, aiming to slowly follow without being noticed, staying hidden in dim shades.

Few small jumps - albeit small only for Magical Girl standards, not for a mundane human being - she was able to take a better look at her targets as they gathered around the barely visible but still mildly glistening distortion of the Witch’s barrier and in the dim light of the streets.

The creatures were perhaps vaguely vulpine or canine in the shape of the body, but that was where the similarity between Earth’s animals ended. The large leathery wings were the most obvious features, and the glowing eyes were equally otherworldly. Their tails were long, probably for balance or steering their flight. Their furs were spiky, and by that point grasping talons in the place of their paws was a little surprising in these twisted monstrosities of creatures. Homura has no fear, the endless loops taught her that, but there was an underlying sense of wrongness emitting from the creature's presence.

But there was something equally if not even more outlandish than the creature's appearance. It was Sayaka’s reaction, she stood next to one of the beasts, looking down at the now mild traces of Witch’s presence downside in the form of distorted air that hinted at the borders of the barrier. The Magical Girl looked visibly upset, nervous, perhaps downcast, but not from the growling monster next to her. And it was painfully clear she saw the creatures as well when she touched the beast. She didn’t look comfortable with them, but she certainly did accept their existence. But Sayaka wasn’t a Witch, at least, not yet, and those weren’t her Familiars, nor it appeared she somehow took control of them from the Witch. Instead, they were very tangible, albeit alien, beasts, and it felt … wrong, as Homura didn’t have words for it.

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Sayaka was seemingly mumbling to herself, a sign of a bad mental state Homura first thought, but then another bizarre creature materialized, perched on Magical Girl's shoulder like a horrific parrot. That one was a different, smaller, cross between the lizard and the bird, with toothed beak, featherless long neck, and long tail tipped with a spike - and Sayaka was talking to it. It meant Sayaka knew what those creatures were, and that sprung a series of other questions that flooded Homura’s mind. She also noticed that Sayaka had a dagger, long, curved, not the usual sword, but she didn’t have one a day or two ago. Back then she was her usual self.

Suddenly, the larger creatures, ones resembling the large winged foxes, started to crackle madly, and all together released a torrent of the sickly blue fire from her mouths, like living-breathing flamethrowers, down on Witch’s Labyrinth, turning the yard below in raging azure inferno. It caused a violent reaction which set an entire bubble ablaze with furious, uncontrolled lashes of energy sweeping the area, illuminating the area, followed by the flashing pulses that gave the impression that Witch hidden deep within the distorted space of her Labyrinth is in pain, yet still far from being done. Air was filled with the smell of sulfur and burning. A few more breath attacks followed, one after another, timed almost like they wanted to torture the Witch, almost like they were offended by abomination hiding in her bubble of distorted space.

“Ka-ka-ka-ka-ka!” Hellish foxes cried in unison, excited. They spread their wings and dive into the Witch’s Labyrinth for the kill, their barking resembling a burst of sadistic laughter. Sayaka followed them.

Homura briefly considered her options and decided to find a better vantage fight rather than interfering with the fight as she couldn’t be certain how those monstrosities would react to her presence. The whole existence of those hellish monsters went against everything Homura had experienced during countless loops, and should they appear in the future, she wouldn’t know what to do. And should Incubator’s sudden change of interest be due to those beasts she had to know how to protect Madoka…

And almost as if there weren't enough anomalies, Kyouko showed up. Homura took a glimpse of her looming over the entire scene from the top of the steel construction, focused on a raging storm that was now the Labyrinth’s bubble, and pockets of still lingering blue fire, not even noticing Homura. She would try to talk with the redhead Magical Girl, she had talked to her before in this loop, but the ridiculousness of the situation made her hesitate.

Then the Witch’s Labyrinth ruptured. And it wasn’t supposed to behave like that, instead of a gradient phase-out or fading to nonexistence, it was like if someone cracked the spoiled fiery egg, with cobalt colored flames spilling all over, like gasoline on fire running wild, bringing the unbearable stench along with a wave of heat. It forced even Horuma to look away.

In the middle of the raging inferno below, Sayaka stood, surrounded by monsters and desolation. Some monsters were harmed, probably from the battle with the Witch, bearing visible injuries and blood, others unscattered, but all seemingly excited almost like they were looking for the next prey to burn and tear. Kyouko descended in their midst, seemingly unconcerned by the unlikely company Sayaka kept. Hellish foxes barked, almost like it was a greeting. It puzzled Homura, there was no suggestion that two Magical Girls were any different than those she knew from previous time loops, yet now they stood, having an argument in the middle of flames and hellish monstrosities like they were always supposed to be there.

Homura didn’t hear anything from that conversation, due to distance, noise, and crackling flames, and decided to join in. Veteran Magical Girl regretted it almost immediately as those infernal vulpines didn’t take kindly to interruption and made it clear that Homura wasn’t welcomed.

They noticed her almost immediately, turning their heads towards her, a few growls, then their “Ka-ka-ka” rallying cry while spreading their wings, while the others moved on sides in the cover of buildings and around.

She managed to catch a glimpse of the weird tear in space among all the sudden movement, a swirling portal of energies, appearing behind Magical Girls. Sayaka threw herself into it, and Kyouko jumped in right after. But at that moment, infernal foxes were already in the air and the steam of lurid blue fires blasted towards her. Homura whipped a gun from behind her shield.

Time stopped.

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