Chapter Seven

Magic Story

Madoka was lost in the world of music again, nodding to the beat of Kalafina's latest hit, "Kimi No Gin No Niwa", pirouetting on the ball of one foot, arms flung out, right in the middle of the music store.

Hitomi's tapping on her shoulder unfortunately yanked her out of it. "Hi, Madoka!" She suppressed a giggle behind a delicate hand.

Madoka had gone pinker than her hair. "Oh, you saw that?" she murmured as she took the headphones off and set them back on their hook by the rack of CDs. Good thing they were cordless, otherwise she'd have been a bit tangled on top of everything else.

"It was quite entertaining," Hitomi complimented sincerely. "So graceful. I might've mistaken you for a Russian ballerina." She flung out her arms dramatically and waved them fluidly.

And then she giggled again, and Madoka managed a giggle too that helped her shake off her embarrassment.

"You ready to go?" Hitomi asked when they'd gotten their giggles out. "It's getting kinda late."

Madoka checked her watch. "Yeah, you're right. I've still got homework to do."

They headed out with nothing purchased, but an afternoon's worth of carefree memories that Madoka might've done better to cherish a little more, had she'd known that they were some of the last ones she would ever have.


Shortly after she and Hitomi parted ways at the station, Madoka wondered if Sayaka had gotten to see Kyosuke. Hospital visiting hours had to be drawing to a close by now considering how dark it was getting.

As she walked along the street with her schoolbag, a few droplets of water smattered the concrete. With the gentle onset of rain though, Madoka became aware of the footfalls that now splished behind her.

Creeping, weighty shadows closing in on her from behind.

A shiver ran up her spine. This didn't feel like another witch, or even a familiar, but it screamed DANGER.

The kind that came from other human beings.

"Hey, little lady…."

They appeared in the pool of light cast by the next streetlamp. Actually, they probably weren't more than high schoolers, and yet something about what they'd been up to and the darkness of night made them seem more dangerous than they might have been in the light of day.

One of them waved a bottle of beer. He took a huge swig from it before he slugged it at a garden wall, where it shattered against the stone and mortar. Then he belched and laughed drunkenly. "You're a little cutie, aren't ya?" He stuck his ruddy face close to Madoka's, his breath stale and heavy.

Madoka's stomach clenched, as bile rose at and stung the back of her throat. She clapped a hand over her mouth and nose.

"Oooh, I don't think she likes you," taunted another one of them.

The guy shoving his face in hers scowled. "Eh? You don't like me? Why's that? You got a problem with the way I look or something?" He reached out for her, but thanks to her quickness of foot, she dodged his groping hand and he swiped nothing more than air.

Only for her to knock into one of the other guys who'd come up behind her.

"Gotchya!" he crowed, entrapping her in his arms.

Madoka squealed and kicked out her small legs, her school bag falling from her grip and hitting the ground. Though she was averse to even the merest hint of violence, she had no intention of passively allowing herself to be handled by unscrupulous men. Her genteel frame of mind seriously turned to the pure instinct to survive, and like a threatened kitten she bit down hard on one of her captor's hands.

With a yelp he released her, and she crumpled to the ground, hugging herself and shivering, spitting out the taste of cigarettes that had hung heavy on his fingers.

"Little bitch!"

The man who'd accosted her first grabbed her by the collar of her blouse and lifted her up.

"Who do you think you are?" he challenged as Madoka kicked again, gripping his hand with both of hers and trying to sink her fingernails in deep enough to make him let her go.

Unfortunately, her fingernails didn't cut as well as her teeth.

Her mind went blank with fear of what would happen next, unable to call to mind her family or Sayaka to comfort her. Yet somehow her mind touched on Homura in a way that surprised her, given how little she knew about her, except that she was a girl she'd dreamed about, felt at least like she knew her from…somewhere….

The guy holding her shouted and dropped her.

She just barely managed to land on her feet, shaking all over. She folded in on herself and slowly sank back to her knees, her heart pounding in her chest. Then she froze when she saw the guy holding her rolling around on the ground.

He'd taken an arrow in the knee.

"What the—?" The other guy who'd grabbed her from behind went down with his own cry of pain, another arrow buried in the back of his shoulder.

"Shit, man, let's get outta here!" shouted one of the others, and two of them grabbed their fallen comrades and half-dragged them along, as they couldn't do much more than limp on their own, and they all disappeared back into the shadows.

Slowly, Madoka lifted herself up off the ground, even as her knees still wobbled like a newborn fawn's.

"Hey: you okay?"

Madoka turned with a gasp, nearly tripping over her own two feet, a hand at her throat. But her fear of another assault was replaced with incredulous awe at the man who stood before her, bow in hand, a quiver of arrows slung on his back, addressing her in flawless Japanese.

He held out a hand to her, and she grasped onto it gratefully, otherwise she'd have collapsed again. But even with her small hand grasped in his, even with her encounters with Iron Man and Dr. Strange, with Homura revealing the double-life she lived as a Magical Girl, she still couldn't quite believe her eyes.

"Hawkeye…—san?" she breathed.

At which the archer of the Avengers who never missed a mark smirked, though there was a wistful edge to it. "Please, at least call me Barton-san: I am retired."


"Guess there's no point in me playing the tough girl card now, huh?" Kyoko furiously drew her arm across her eyes, shoving the tears back inside of her.

Her little sister's dying screams.

Her father's body swinging from that very beam in the corner of this basement, the heart of where the witch had decided to hatch from that Grief Seed.

"Even the strong cry, Lady Kyoko," Thor pointed out poignantly, shouldering Stormbreaker.

Banner cleared his throat, seeming to collect himself as he ran a hand through his windswept hair and then folded his arms across his chest. "So…is this what your little late-night outings are all about?"

"Pretty much." Kyoko mirrored Thor in shouldering her spear. The two of them eyed each other, and then out of nowhere a laugh erupted out of her, and she shook her head. "Come on. You act like you've never seen preteen girls cut through monsters before."

"Well, that uh…would be because we haven't," Banner pointed out dryly. "At least…I haven't."

The corner of Thor's lips curled. "The Valkyries were formidable female warriors, every last one. At least, the only one I've met certainly is. In her way. Though full-grown when I met her, mind. Give or take a few thousand years." He cleared his throat. "Ah…that was…impressive…Lady Kyoko…ah…speaking as…um…."

His voice tailed away at the feral grin Kyoko flashed him, all teeth.

Having managed to pick herself back up, more or less, she was rather satisfied that she could make the so-called "God of Thunder" meek like that. "Yeah well, just be glad that witch was pretty weak compared to others I've fought. Not even as creepy either. But that's probably because it hatched from a trauma that's pretty much worn out its welcome around here. You want impressive? You should see me at DDR. I rock that hard."

"D…D…R…?"

"Dance Dance Revolution—it's a dance-off game," Banner muttered, seeming to suppress a grin as he dropped back into the church office desk, where he took his specs out of his jacket and slid them on before he poked at the Grief Seed, as Kyoko granted him permission to do so.

She wasn't sure how much he'd learn since he didn't have any sensor equipment on hand to give him a scientific reading. She had to admit to herself that that would be cool though if it were possible, to see what went on inside a Grief Seed, even one that didn't pose a threat.

He'd be sad though when she'd have to make him hand it back to her so she could use it to cleanse her Soul Gem, and then give it to Kyuubey to ingest once it started to reach critical mass again.

"Okay, look, I need to know." Thor dropped Stormbreaker on its head with a thud that made a few sparks jump out of the basement carpet (Banner exclaimed a protest). "Where did you learn how to fight like that? Even I wasn't that good at your age."

Kyoko, having shed her Magical Girl form and returned to her shorts and hoodie, perched on the church basement steps with a box of Pocky. "Coming from you, I'll definitely take that as a compliment." She grinned again, this time around the stick of Pocky in her teeth.

"I'm being serious."

"So am I."

The two of them stared challengingly at each other, Banner glancing uncertainly between them before he took off his specs and coughed out an awkward laugh.

"What?" They both demanded at the same time.

"Just you guys." Banner pointed between each of them with his glasses. "You two could be siblings."

Thor rolled his eyes, planting his hands on his hips. "No offense to you, Lady Kyoko, but I think I've had rather enough of siblings…."

Kyoko cocked her head to one side. "That's a shame. I kinda like the idea of having a big brother."

"Ha. Then I think you'll find I'm rather a poor choice for one."

"Do you now?"

"Well…." Thor ruffled at the hair at the back of his head. "I didn't used to. Now though…."

"Hm." Kyoko thought a moment, and then held out her hand. "You beat me at a round of DDR, I'll tell you everything."

Thor stared at her, and then he smirked. "Game."

And he took Kyoko's offered hand and shook it, surprisingly gentle.

"You keep an eye on the ship, all right, Banner?" Thor asked him as Kyoko started up the stairs.

"No problem," came Banner's voice from below. "Assuming Loki hasn't driven Valkyrie nuts yet. We have been down here for a hot minute. Actually, it's a miracle we haven't been picked up yet. At least by anyone we don't want to."

Thunder cracked outside as a downpour started.

Thor's laugh was equally thunderous, more so than it had been for a while, as he made to follow Kyoko out of the church basement. "Ah, Banner. You should know by now that it's probably Valkyrie who's driving Loki nuts."

All the way Kyoko smiled to herself in a way she had smiled with anyone in a very long time.


Even though they'd told her he was in surgery, Sayaka continued to wait. In the end the soft-hearted nurses were willing to let her at least stay until she could see him.

"He's actually been in surgery for nearly twelve hours. Since this morning, anyway," the nurse informed her, clearly a bit in awe herself.

"Wow." Sayaka gaped. "Well…I'm gonna take that as a good sign. Thank you again, for letting me stay," she added, offering another hasty bow. "I just want to know he's still doing okay."

The nurse sighed. "You are so sweet. Ah to be young and in love."

The OR doors burst open.

Sayaka snapped up straight.

They were wheeling Kyosuke out on a gurney. He was actually sitting up, and while his eyes were a bit glassy…he had a smile on his face.

It'd been so long since he'd truly smiled.

And at her.

"Sayaka?"

His voice was slightly hoarse, groggy a little even—probably from the anesthesia—but the joy that throbbed in it was sincere.

She raised her free hand, waggling her fingers in a nervous wave. "Heya, Kyosuke. Um…you uh…went in for surgery?"

"Yeah, I did." Kyosuke sounded really excited, like he used to right before he started playing music. When he could play. He twisted around and asked, "Could we stop here for a minute, please?"

The nurse pushing the gurney stopped him beside Sayaka so the two of them could talk.

"Look." Kyosuke held up his hands. On the back, they were etched with stitches, hardly looking improved at all. But then he started to move his fingers, and far better than he'd been able to ever since the accident, bending them as easily as the bow to the strings of his violin.

Sayaka sucked in her breath, her bag sliding from her other hand as it she lost her grip on the handle. It hit the linoleum with a thud at her feet. "Kyosuke, your fingers…."

"I know right?!" Kyosuke was incandescent, a silver light shining, so beautiful it stole the rest of Sayaka's words. "All those times you told me not to give up, you were right, Sayaka! You were right!"

And before anyone could stop him, he reached out and grasped her hand in both of his. She felt them tremble in their post-surgery frailty, but she sensed the strength slowly resurging within them too, and once those stitches were removed and the scars healed….

Sayaka's cheeks burned, heart pounding in her chest. "Well…I…uh…."

"It's all thanks to Strange-sensei," Kyosuke went on, holding onto her more tightly, but gently, carefully, electrifying her skin. "The Strange-sensei!"

And for the first time, Sayaka noticed him in the waiting area.

Of course, he wasn't as flashy when he was wearing a normal suit and tie, but it was definitely him, the wizard Dr. Strange. Moreover, he seemed to recognize her too as he raised a rather amused eyebrow at her.

Sayaka shook her head. "That's amazing, Kyosuke, really amazing." Her eyes stung, her throat grew tight, her smile tremulous but radiant. "I'm so happy for you…."

"Kyosuke-san," the nurse cut in gently, "you still need your rest after your surgery."

"Right, yeah. Sorry." But Kyosuke gave Sayaka another fond smile. "I gotta go. But we'll talk more later, right?"

He said it so much not like he was telling her, but like he was asking her. Like he wanted to talk to her later. A lot.

Sayaka's nerves and veins buzzed. Her throat was so tight now she couldn't even speak. She just nodded, her face glowing as she beamed, waving back to him again as they wheeled him all the way back to his room. Though not without warning Sayaka that she'd better start for home now, it was dark outside, and it was technically fairly past visiting hours.

"I didn't know you knew that kid," Dr. Strange spoke up from behind, hands casually dipped in his trouser pockets.

Sayaka jumped in her skin and whirled around. But instead of grousing at him for scaring her, her gratitude towards him flooded her overwhelmingly. She hastily bowed and then picked up her schoolbag from the floor. "Thank you so much, sensei! You don't know how much this means…."

"Don't worry about it," Dr. Strange told her, though not unkindly. He also had a grin on his face that was far too knowing. "Suppose I rather sympathized with your boyfriend."

The heat burned in Sayaka's cheeks again, so much so she didn't dare lift her head even as she insisted, "Oh, he's not my boyfriend or anything! I'm just…."

"Take my advice, kid," Strange cut in, though again, not without gentility, "don't wait too much longer to tell him how you feel."

When Sayaka lifted her head, it looked like he was about to pat the top of it but then thought better of it. So, clearing her throat, she made an effort to dispel the awkwardness by asking, "Um sure. So…um…did you and Iron—I mean, Stark-san…um…find that girl, um…Akemi…?"

Strange huffed. "She slipped through our fingers, actually. But hey…you know…if you happen across her…." He handed her a midnight blue marble. "You can contact me on that." He tugged one of the black cords around his neck, and Sayaka guessed that he had the marble's mate attached to it, next to that Eye of Agamoto thingy.

"Um…yeah, sure." Sayaka's voice was faint and she was even a bit dizzy as Strange bid her farewell until next time and then strolled off down the hall to see how his surgery patient was doing.

Was she…had she just been…made an honorary Avenger?

Her heart pounded in her chest, amplified by the roll of thunder outside as it started to rain.


Mami's stomach growled, and for once, it wasn't sweets she was craving before she went out witch-hunting, but another sort of carb to fill her up.

Noodles.

Udon sounded good. Soft, thick udon settling happily in her stomach, curling up like a cat taking a nap in the sun.

And the perfect remedy for rainy evenings like this was turning out to be.

The bell over the door of the next noodle house jingled as she entered, schoolbag in tow, her Soul Gem ring glittering on her finger. Her eyes darted immediately for the menu, mouth watering at the scent of cooking noodles and fried tofu.

But then her wandering eyes fell on the only other person who'd had the idea to have noodles in the middle of a rainy evening.

The infamous Black Widow, spoken of in whispers, was a bit more unassuming, even with her hair bleached to disguise her signature red locks, when she was caught in the middle of slurping chopstick-pinched ramen out of a bowl. But it was unmistakably her, the memory of their last encounter like remembering a dream.

Unable to speak, Mami could only continue to stare in the middle of this happenstance as the door closed behind her, the door's bell clanking against the glass.

Then Natasha Romanoff lurched as if holding back a laugh and gulped up the rest of the clump of ramen she'd had halfway in her mouth. Licking her lips, she cleared her throat and then lifted her chin.

"'Sup?" and raised her bowl as a sort of invitation to come eat with her.

Floating in a bit of a trance now, Mami nodded automatically. Through the mist of her own awareness vaguely felt herself order her bowl of udon and then sit across from Natasha.

As Mami started on her noodles, Natasha cleared her throat again and put her bowl and chopsticks down to dab at her mouth with a napkin.

"So…um…you like ramen, Miss Natasha?" Mami could've kicked herself. Why would she be eating ramen if she didn't like ramen?

But the corner of Natasha's mouth quirked, understanding. "Nothing like a quick snack of carbs to keep ya goin' on a steak out."

"'Steak out'?" Mami opened her mouth to ask but then closed it, realizing. She smiled as she delicately pinched another thick udon noodle between her chopsticks. "Homura Akemi?"

"Bingo. We had her in our sights, but uh…then we got some unexpected backup, which meant we could take a backseat for a bit."

"Just you? Or was Rogers-taichou with you?"

Natasha shook her head, holding back a laugh. "He ducked back into the bookstore."

Mami primly sucked the noodle into her mouth, and just as primly chewed and swallowed. "What backup did you get so unexpectedly?"

"Oh, just Iron Man." Natasha waved her chopsticks, as if it were something so off-hand.

Mami spluttered into her noodles, though even then she managed to do it delicately with minimal splatter.

"Okay, Tony Stark but…I mean, they're the same person. More or less." Natasha grinned but didn't address Mami's respiratory mishap.

After she'd mopped up the splatter, Mami took up her bowl and chopsticks again. "Um, do you think Iron…I mean…Stark-san can manage to get her to come in quietly?"

Natasha put the points of her chopsticks to her chin, thinking. "Well, not quietly, but…I dunno. There was something about the way he jumped in. I mean, we're aware he already had an encounter with her…. Hey, maybe he sees something about her that he can use to get her to cooperate. Like…when you just meet a person and something in you clicks and you just…suddenly realize that you gotta make the call your gut tells you to. You just know what you have to do to reach a person when no one else can." A dim mist colored her eyes briefly before she hastily dove back into her noodles.

Mami hadn't a clue what Tony Stark could've seen about Homura Akemi that made him want to take over getting the Tesseract from her, but she figured that if Black Widow and Captain America trusted him with it, she could too. Which got her thinking about how she and Kyoko Sakura had fallen out with each other. Looking back on it now, she almost felt, well…foolish.

"Can I ask you something?" Natasha asked, her head snapping up, pushing at her ramen in her bowl with her chopsticks but not really eating it at the moment.

"Of course." Her train of thought interrupted, Mami shook her head and braced herself for whatever someone like Black Widow would want to ask her.

"What's with those guns you use? They're…magic…?"

"Oh. Those. Um. Yeah. Basically."

Natasha raised a very fine eyebrow. "Basically?"

Mami sighed and set aside her chopsticks and bowl of udon. She lifted her hand, knuckles facing Natasha, so she had a good view of the ornate silver ring with her golden Soul Gem set into it. "To become a Magical Girl, you have to make a contract with a creature named Kyuubey. In exchange for a wish for anything you want, he gives you a Soul Gem that gives you the power to fight and slay those witches I told you a bit about."

"And that's what this thing is? Your Soul Gem?" Natasha pointed at the gem.

"It is. Using it to transform, it gives me the power to summon the weapons it gifted me with, weapons manifesting as guns with magical flintlock. All Magical Girl weapons work this way." Mami lowered her hand and folded it primly with her other one.

"Really? Any wish?"

"Yes."

"Can I ask what you wished for?"

"I…." Mami didn't normally share this information, and on the rare occasions that she did, she kept it extremely brief, hardly scratching the surface of what had actually happened.

And this time was no different.

Except that with Black Widow, she felt she'd understand better without her having to expound too much on it. And she was quicker to cave as a result. Perhaps also because of her dream where she'd been saved from the literal jaws of death…by a girl who was the spitting image of Homura Akemi.

"I wished…that I didn't have to die."


Now, how to go about this differently than before? I.e., not scare the girl off? Never mind draw the attention of a bystander spotting him and assuming he was some perv stalking a minor.

Maybe Tony should've at least asked Romanoff to tag along since she was so much more adept at covertness.

Unfortunately for all parties involved, that whole conversation they'd just had had been awkward to the enth degree. And that was actually putting it lightly. Given that he and Steve had basically tried to kill each other last time they saw each other, the fact that they'd managed the level of levity that they had in that small encounter over the coms was nothing short of a miracle.

That certainly wouldn't be the end of it, and he wasn't sure he wanted to face the "real talk" that was, nonetheless, inevitable.

Besides, he found it easy enough to use Friday to tail Homura Akemi all the way back to her house, and so far, no one had in fact spotted him acting him shifty a few paces behind her.

At least, that was the idea. For just now, the holoscreen floating above his remote wristlet showed her tracker had disappeared. Blipped out.

No, that couldn't be it.

Tony poked his head out from the building he was keeping out of sight behind when and then followed the path to the point at which her signal had disappeared. And as he did, he became enveloped in a mist of sickly colors, the world around him nauseatingly twisting and warping into a dizzying new reality.

He stumbled, putting a hand to his head, and would have hurled if things hadn't settled just in time to get his bearings. Well, maybe get his bearings wasn't the right term. More just to realize that clearly he'd entered an alternate dimension.

One so obviously based on a perverted version of Alice in Wonderland.

On a combination of LSD and crystal meth.

Even for him, that was a bit much.

Cursing, he tapped into his custom-crafted smartglasses designed like a fashionable pair of shades. "Friday, what am I looking at?"

It appears to be some sort of shift in reality boss, or an alternate reality in and of itself, came the smooth female brogue.

"Great, alternate dimension. Just what I needed today. And what about Akemi?"

Sorry, boss, but I seem to be losing her….

And then her voice got crackled and garbled in static and cut out.

And darkness seeped into everything.

And it got cold.

And for a moment, Tony was back in that cave, the shrapnel digging its way slowly into his heart, bleeding him dry—

Even more frightening than his own fear that he would come up against something his world wouldn't survive despite everything he did to protect it, this place filled him with a dread he could feel as a living thing writhing inside of him, paralyzing him.

A sea of ribbons swam above him like eels, left and right, right and left, surrounding him in a sphere of blue. A troop of what looked like television sets caroused around him, flashing their screens, taunting him with memories of things he'd rather not remember.

The wormhole that nearly swallowed him whole into the vacuum of cold dead space.

That moment when he'd thought he'd lost Pepper while trying to save her, trying to reach her only for her to slip and fall screaming into a sea of flames below.

That horrible vision that had felt all-too real, of all his friends dead, of Steve's imagined last words of, "Why didn't you do more?", his unbreakable vibranium shield broken in half beside him.

That horribly detached voice that sapped away the rest of the world as it told him that his parents had died in a car crash.

That look in Steve's eyes as he'd admitted he'd known all along who'd killed them, but had kept the truth from him all this time.

They all taunted him, closed in on him, telling him without saying it that he could never escape them, as he sank to his hands and knees and struggled to breathe, his smartglasses sliding off, the television closest to his face threatening to reach its horrors out to him and drag him into the void—

A bullet blew out the screen.

He ducked and rolled, and then came up on one knee, pushing his glasses back up his nose. He still couldn't seem to reach Friday, but even so, his being cut off from her did nothing to inhibit the nanotech of his suit. Just when he was about to activate it though, the rest of the televisions were blown out same as the first.

And then the ribbons were blown apart by a hail of grenades, and the entire maddening dimension disappeared.

Tony froze.

As Homura Akemi alighted before him in her black heels, wearing her gothic dress, the shield that helped her manipulate time lashed to her arm, a pistol in her other hand. She turned that pistol on him, as though she'd forgotten he was there, or hadn't even known he was.

Then recognition fell across her face, and she slowly smiled at him in a detached way, like a cat. Sincere, and at the same time, ironic.

Lowering her weapon, she tucked it back in her shield, which appeared to serve also as an endless depository.

Which made him wonder, in his numb state of bewilderment—

"It's in there too," Homura sighed, sweeping a hand through her raven-black hair.

She sounded impossibly weary for one as young as she.

This was the girl who'd somehow survived using an Infinity Stone, the Time Stone, to go back far enough to nab the Tesseract when no one had been looking (probably using her time thingy again). He really couldn't help but be more than a little impressed. It wasn't unlike when he came across that YouTube vid someone took with their phone of Peter Parker catching an entire SUV like a fastball, right before it t-boned a city bus.

Though it was woefully unfair, really, that kids that young could get superpowers and all the baggage that came with them. The way Peter had looked at him when he'd had to lay down the law with him after the "ferry fiasco" said more than words ever could. Thankfully the kid had stepped up to the challenge, and he had a feeling Akemi possessed that same kind of mettle.

Actually, if Tony were being honest, he was glad she was the one who'd ended up saving his ass in this situation. Definitely not one of his prouder moments, and there was some fair competition for that in that arena.

Akemi held out a hand to him. "Well then…" she sighed, "I might as well invite you in for tea."


Tony raised one eyebrow, and then the next, at the surreally suspended images shifting around slowly on the flat of Akemi's sitting room wall.

Akemi herself came in from the kitchen with a tray laden with elegant china tea things. She set it on the coffee table. "Those are all documents pertaining to witches, all the info I've gathered," she explained in response to the quizzical look he gave her. "Plus stuff about…you guys."

"Uh-huh. And the pendulum?" Tony pointed to the clockwork decoration hung from the ceiling, the end of his forefinger following the working pendulum's swing.

The corner of Akemi's mouth quirked. "An homage. To a favorite short story of mine."

"Ah." Tony took off his tinted smartglasses, tucked them in his jacket, and then dropped into the sofa on the opposite side of the coffee table. "Poe's 'Pit and the Pendulum', yes?"

"Indeed."

"Yeah, he kinda seems your style."

Akemi picked up the teapot. "Milk or sugar?"

"Um, milk, no, but sugar, lots. Three's good. Or four."

"Like your tea sweet."

"Sure, yeah, who doesn't?"

"I don't. Actually."

Tony watched as she dropped four cubes of sugar in one teacup and nothing in the other. "'Course not."

Akemi sank down and crossed her legs, picking up her tea as he picked up his.

They both took rather awkward sips, awkwardly avoiding each other's eyes.

"Okay." Tony smacked cup and saucer on the table. "Sorry. I mean…okay. Look. I think…we got off on the wrong foot."

"Do you now?" Another quirk of Homura's lips.

"Can we agree on that, at least?"

"I suppose so."

"Right. 'Kay. Barring the fact that you…used your time-travel…thingy…to go back and then sneak into a wizard's…magical…lair…in Hong Kong…pilfer the Infinity Stone of Time—which you knew was there because of—"

"Extensive research."

"Right. So, barring that, and the fact that you then used the Time Stone to go back even farther than your time thingy would let you so you could then pilfer the Tesseract containing the Infinity Stone of Space—"

"Which you knew about the Infinity Stones how?"

This time the corner of Tony's lips quirked. "Extensive research."

"Right…."

"I think though, that we need to go way back to the actual beginning." Tony picked up his tea again and sat back, completely at his ease, and Akemi noticeably tensed. "So, you wanna tell me how you got into a situation where you felt like you needed to steal an ancient celestial power source and tuck it away in your schoolbag?" he asked, raising his eyebrows at her over his teacup as he took another sip.


When Homura finished her story at length, starting from the very first day she'd met Madoka—the actual very first day—to Madoka as a Magical Girl saving her life, to watching Madoka die for the first time, to becoming a Magical Girl herself, wishing only for the power to save Madoka from her dark and bloody fate, and everything culminating in futile fight after futile fight with the witch Walpurgisnacht, the winding, ouroboros path she'd kept running down for God knew how long anymore, over, and over, and over again…

…her thus untouched tea had gone cold.

So had Mr. Stark's.

He merely sat there, staring at her, and then staring at the tea in his cup as though it were a black hole that would swallow him. And then back at her.

"Shit, kid," he finally said.

Homura folded her arms, to hold herself together more than anything, and averted her frown. "That's one way of putting it, if an indelicate one."

"Sorry. Actually, hearing that made me forget you are just a kid. And remembering that you are makes it way worse."

"Well, I've seen worse."

"So've I."

Homura chanced a sidelong glance at him. "I guess so. Given your line of work."

Stark ran a hand through his dark hair. "And you taught yourself how to build explosives and bombs?"

"I did."

"From the Internet?"

"Yes."

"In this day and age? How did no one flag you? Especially in a country where private citizens really can't own their own firearms?"

"Well, by then I'd managed things like taking weapons from military facilities and such, thanks to my time manipulation abilities, so, it was easy enough to get a hold of a patch too to put on my computer that keeps it off the radar of anyone who might've otherwise picked up that sort of thing."

"'Kay. Sure. Fine." Stark massaged the back of his neck and then stood. He paced from one end of the room to the other a moment and then spun on his heel to face her. "Also: what was your plan exactly?"

Homura sighed, leaned forward, and cradled her chin in her hands, her elbows resting on her knees. "Just…undo it. Somehow. Change things so they wouldn't turn out the way they did. So Madoka wouldn't die."

"Or become a witch."

"Or become a witch."

"Right. And you were just going on the idea of…'somehow'? That somehow things would work out?"

"If I tried enough times, then yes." Homura started jiggling her knees, agitating simmering underneath her calm facade.

"Right. And how many times are we on?" Stark asked, folding his arms across his chest. "Just so I know."

Homura ground her teeth. "I don't know. I've lost count."

"Of course you have. Because you realize what you've done, right? You've fallen for the oldest paradox in time travel theory." Stark gesticulated the concept of cyclical time by rotating his hands around each other. "Ever heard of 'timelike curves'? 'Closed timelike curves', actually?"

"No."

"What about time paradoxes?"

"I—"

"Bottom line, you can't change the past. Because regardless of what you do, whatever you're trying to change already happened and you can't just make it…unhappen. That's why you keep looping. That's why you're not finding a way out of this. To be brutally honest, kid: not a great plan."

Homura quit jiggling her knees, but she sat up straighter, clenching her hands into fists in her lap. She ground her teeth harder as she glared at him. "So I should just give up?"

And for the first time in a long time, not since that night in the previous worldline, when Madoka had come to her, worried about her facing Walpurgisnacht alone, her eyes burned with the threat of tears.

But Stark hesitated, and then took a step back. "I didn't say that."

"You might as well have."

"Well, okay but—I don't—I mean—hell, I don't know."

"Yeah, well, I don't either."

"I mean…I get that she was your friend but…you just…threw your whole life away…your soul…just like that….

"You think I don't know that? Especially after everything I've been through? After everything I found out about Kyuubey and how Magical Girls really work? But I'd do it again. I have been doing it again. That's the whole point. Saving her is all that matters to me."

Unbidden, Homura's vision blurred with those burning, burning tears despite her efforts to keep them in check. She forced them back with all she could just the same, catching the ones that escaped on the insides of her wrists, doing her best to at least hold in her reflex to sniffle or hiccup. Bury it all inside her shaking chest, deep, deep down into the darkness until she felt nothing but her own cold demeanor again.

Then she drew in a deep breath and straightened, hands folded primly once more in her lap, and lifted her chin. "Forgive me, Stark-san. I got myself far too deep into this, and at that point I didn't have a choice. Because I didn't know what else to do anymore." She looked away, still teetering dangerously close to the hair fracture in her heart that threatened to shatter the organ again if she didn't maintain her carefully crafted control.

Yet she felt the billionaire American, the Iron Man, study her from where he stood with his arms folded across his chest.

Curious in spite of herself, Homura lifted her violet eyes to Stark's dark ones. In that moment, she let her shoulders slump and slowly she hugged herself tight. She let everything drop, save for what hid her pain. Everything else she took the risk of laying bare.

Although, she had a sense that Stark could somehow still see the pain deep inside her too.

Then Stark asked, "You said you're in eighth grade?"

"Yes. I'm thirteen," Homura answered.

Stark swore again and turned slightly away. Tipping his head back, he considered once more the swinging pendulum above them. And then he sighed and looked at her again.

At first, Homura mistook it for pity. That's how most adults might've regarded her: oh you poor thing, how you've suffered.

But no.

That wasn't how Stark was suddenly seeing her.

"Thirteen years old, and you've already got demons, kid. I mean…what the hell?"

Homura didn't know what to say to that.

It didn't matter though, because Stark already had something else to add.

"All right. We'll help you out. Or I will, anyway. I might have to double-check with the other guys if they'd be willing. We have our own…baggage to work out still."

Homura blinked. "Pardon me, sir?"

"You heard me. You've said it yourself. You can't face this Walpurgisnacht alone. So don't." Stark unfolded his arms and held one hand out to her. "C'mon. Do the math. You know I'm right. Hey, don't make me parent you on this."

Homura stared at it. It was almost too good to be true. She had been alone for so long. All she'd had was Madoka, and even then, every effort to save her from her cruel fate had seemed to pull them further and further apart.

She'd even decided to still come back to this point on the timeline after she'd gone back to get the Tesseract, instead of just fast-forwarding to the day of Walpurgisnacht…something about having the Tesseract in her hand…her renewed hope…ignited a desire to see if she couldn't save the others too…Sayaka Miki…Kyoko Sakura…and Mami Tomoe.

Well, if she did, it would only be for Madoka's sake. It was that precious girl's curse that she cared so much. Too much. More than any one person should have to care.

"Madoka," she murmured.

"Someone that important to you, you should never give up on 'em." Stark's smile was strangely rueful. "I dunno where I'd be if the people important to me had given up on me, and even after everything I told you, I can't honestly tell you that I wouldn't do exactly what you've been doing if the lives of the people I cared about were at stake. Saving the world aside. Because I would. Physics be damned."

For some reason, this triggered a spark of amusement, and a small, fragile chuckle bubbled out of Homura before she could really think about it.

This was the moment she'd really been waiting for. Whether the Tesseract could actually play a role in defeating Walpurgisnacht remained to be seen. But as she put her smaller hand in Stark's larger one, and shook it, she had the smallest inkling that it just might be all along that her going back to the Tesseract would lead her somewhere she hadn't initially planned on.

Maybe even her salvation.

No. That didn't matter. Only Madoka's mattered. Her own was irrelevant. It always had been.

But if after all this, if it still came to nothing, even with the Avengers' help.

Then.

"Never give up, eh, Stark-san?" Homura smirked slightly. "I'll be sure to keep taking that to heart."


"Almighty, Thanos."

All members of the Black Order present on the Sanctuary bowed in the sincere reverence of their master who was to them, for all intents and purposes, their father. Their god, even.

Thanos drummed his fingers on the arm of his throne, knowing he needn't speak to prompt a report from his most devoted followers.

Maw was the one to speak for them all, a mark of his unspoken authority over the others in the Black Order. He rose with all of the elegance of one whose species may or may not have evolved more directly from cephalopods rather than say primates on planets like Earth, fit into a tight black cassock. "Though Earth is indeed as outgunned as predicted, we appear to have come up against an unexpected…barrier."

"Is that so?"

"And while we do detect a…mystic shield of some sort around the planet, it pales in comparison, certainly to our power, but also to this barrier as well."

"What sort of defense could that tiny world put up that would stop my ships?" Thanos wondered aloud. His tone, though measured, still, as always, cautioned all to tread lightly in any response to it. It was a testament to the relationship he had with the Black Order that members such as Maw knew the best way to approach this was to pique their father's curiosity on the matter more than anything.

"This defense is not of Earth," Maw explained. "Or rather, I should say, it is of Earth, but not of its people."

"Ah. That sounds far more likely."

"Thankfully, that Earth's people has certainly noticed your magnificent ships idling near the planet, is of the smallest consequence. This barrier is the last thing that stands in our way."

"You have identified its source then."

"Indeed. It is a sentience, a consciousness, in the form of a shield that when lit by the sun's fire…glowed the faintest shade of pink. A forcefield, perhaps, wielded by a singular conscious mind, or rather, more than likely, unconsciously wielded. Humans, after all, seem to be creatures most predisposed to…accidental triumph, if they ever triumph at all, which is hardly ever." Maw gave a rather condescending low chuckle.

"You think so, Maw? What of the battle Loki brought to bear upon them?"

"Loki was a trifle. Pretty words with nothing to show for them. As I said: 'accidental triumph'."

And Thanos gave a rare amused curl of his lips. "Something like that would have to come from a will to protect so powerful living within one sentient being that it manifests even without them being aware of it. And more than likely a living being who is also unaware they inherently already possess any amount of power in their own right. Nonetheless, if that is the case, it would be a formidable will that might just prove to be a worthy contender to my own. A god that sleeps inside another. An unknowing god."

"If that is the power of an unknowing god, then there is also the power of an unknowing demon."

"Oh?"

"There was also the color violet, that erupted from the shield of pink. The two colors seemed to struggle against each other, even as they intermixed with each other. But the violet contains elements of…evil. Though…it is evil that I think…is born of…love."

"Hm." Thanos flexed his fingers.

On the word "love", he became lost in his own thoughts for a moment. Remembering a tiny but strong girl he had rescued from the fate of one half of the rest of her people and raised her to become the fiercest woman in the galaxy. Despite so long staining his hands with blood for the greater good, performing the necessary evil that no one else had the will to, somehow, when he had found her, he had since felt things that at times conflicted with his crueler purposes.

He pushed those softer thoughts away. There would be time for them later, when he would see her again. And he would see her again soon: she had something he still needed.

"It would appear that two forces unconsciously oppose each other right over the heads of an unsuspecting world. But if they are struggling against each other, I also imagine that they are not only equally matched, but on the brink of a culmination. Their struggle holds the power of the other in check." Thanos glanced over to the small white Incubator sat primly on its haunches next to his throne. "What do you think?"

Kyuubey preened, licking a forepaw delicately before replying. "I think that what we may be dealing with are the unconscious powers of two Magical Girls who have yet to come into their own."

"Do you now?"

"As I said, as Almighty Thanos himself has admitted, he is not the only being who is capable of becoming a god."

Maw scoffed and the rest of the members of the Black Order hissed under their breaths.

Thanos and Kyuubey ignored them.

"I may need to investigate this a little more and report back," Kyuubey went on flatly. "If one of these powers wins out, and it is power born from the desires of a Magical Girl with such…titanic potential, it could change the face of that planet irrevocably. The universe even, perhaps."

"Do you really think so?"

"Indeed, I do."

"Very well. After that, do you think then, that if I use the power of the Space Stone, once I have it in my possession, my children will be able to bypass these powers?"

"Oh without a doubt. After all, isn't that what the Space Stone is for? Shall I keep an eye out for that as well?"

"If you want to, but I didn't think an Incubator would be willing to put even a paw out for another's ambitions."

Kyuubey tossed the ringlets that circled the longer of his two sets of ears, the picture of unemotional serenity. "I was just curious what it might be like to do what they call a favor. Who knows? It may prove beneficial on the scales of balance."