2019-04-06 - TIMELINE X: What Does Her Soul Look Like
| Title: TIMELINE X: What Does Her Soul Look Like | |
|---|---|
| Summary: It is one end among many, but Homura Akemi will never let them stop her. | |
| Who: Homura Akemi, Kriemhild Gretchen, and some jerk of an alien | |
| Where: Tokyo | |
| OOC - IC Date: 2019-04-06 - Somewhen amid the timelines | |
What Does Her Soul Look Like
A graveyard rain falls cold again from an overcast sky Homura Akemi knows too well. The jagged bones of buildings rise from a shallow stormwater sea once more, like countless exposed fractures across the broken body of Tokyo. A city saved.
A city doomed.
The grey girl kneels upon the tilted corpse of a skyscraper. She stares at the rain-dark concrete beneath her black-clad knees, slim shoulders bowed as if something heavy weighs them down.
Perhaps something heavy does.
Her hair catches the apocalypse wind like a mournful candle's flame and flickers from the nape of her neck in a sable stream. It expresses what the girl herself cannot, any more.
Behind her, above her, the lying beast perches. It occupies the other end of this broken building, and faces the grand central player on this nightmare stage: a terrible and beautiful shape, a storm rising above and behind the churning clouds of Walpurgisnacht vanquished.
It imparts terrible truths about her with a certain satisfaction in its chipper mental voice.
<< Be it sooner or later, there is only one ending for you Puella Magi. As the strongest of all Puella, she took down her greatest enemy. Naturally, after that, all that was left for her was to turn into the wickedest of all Witches... As she is now, I imagine it will only take Madoka about ten days to destroy this entire planet. Oh well. What happens next is mankind's problem, not ours. >>
As the beast's fluffy white tail flicks, Homura stands. Slow. Deliberate. Her limbs feel leaden. She forces them to move.
<< We've got all the energy we need now from this planet. I've met my quota! >>
Homura turns on the ball of her foot: a rotation as deliberate as her rising, as deliberate as every movement she makes now. As devoted.
She turns away from Madoka, away from Gretchen. She begins to walk. The Incubator's curiosity follows.
<< Aren't you going to fight her? >>
That is what Puella Magi do, after all. What they are for.
Hair like liquid shadow flows around Homura's shoulders and head as she walks, a widdershins whirl in a world's end wind.
"No. My battlefield lies elsewhere." Her words are quiet, but not soft.
It is enough to put a note of dawning realization in the hateful foe's mental voice. << Homura Akemi, you're... >>
She does not stay to hear the rest.
<SoundTracker> DJ Shadow - What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFi-z3dCVZE
Silver surrounds her: a gleaming perfection of circles within circles. Magicwrought metal flashes and she hears a rising whisper, as if of secrets spilling.
"I'll do it over..."
Sand courses, red and sinuous, down the face of a shining clockwork shield, and as the uncountable grains filter past they set those finely-meshed gears to spinning. The precision of movement transcends the mortal, as inhuman as Homura Akemi's descent has made her. She is a weapon now, too, a faithful implement whose purpose is inscribed upon the back of her hand in lustrous violet and golden filigree.
"As many times as it takes, I'll keep going back..."
A montage of tragedy and violence becomes her existence, punctuated by monochromatic loneliness. Through the dark, through the storm, she hearkens to a roseate lighthouse: Madoka Kaname is her guidelight and her explicit reason for being, and Homura would have it no other way.
"I'll relive the same events over and over. I'll find the one way out... the way to save you from a destiny of despair..."
Madoka saved her, once upon a lifetime.
"Madoka... My only friend."
Seen from afar but fiercely protected; loved by the whole entire heart of a girl who would now deny the organ if she could. It is not about Homura, after all.
She will keep her promise, whatever the cost. She has chosen these chains; she cherishes them. They bind her to Madoka.
Interlocking teeth speed and blur until they become smooth and shining circles too, instead of jagged-edged gears. The whole round shield spins, then, spiraling away, and round and around and into the ticking black Homura strides, chin high and eyes open.
"If it's... If it's for you... I don't care if I have to stay locked in this endless maze... forever!"
