Chapter Text

End of Karma

Chapter 1: Glitch

SYSTEMS -00- >Generator online check... OK >Stasis online check... OK >Network online check... OK >Diagnostics check... OK >All systems nominal >... >Karma System Version 1.3.7 >Ambient Capacity: NaN >FATAL ERROR! >UNHANDLED EXCEPTION AT 0x00991501 : BUFFER OVERFLOW >SIGNATURE AT 0x00991501 SEGMENT 7 DOES NOT EXCEED “100” >”NaN” IS NOT A VALID INTEGER >COMPARATOR ERROR, PLEASE REBOOT

Homura slowly opens her eyes, lying awake in her hospital bed. This time, it was more deliberate than most others, as if she were very consciously deciding each and every action she took from the moment she reversed time to the now. Slowly and calmly, she begins to sidle out of bed, undoing her braids and removing her glasses again. Fixing her eyes, changing dress, all of the works in a single motion practiced almost a hundred times before.

“At ease” would not be a correct description. She felt intense confidence, but at the same time a looming sense of tension that she had never felt before, this early in a loop.

“How many times has it been?” she thinks to herself as she strides down the hallway. “How many times have I done this over? Surely it must have broken triple digits by now. Surely. I haven’t counted, ever since the 77th. Or was it the 75th? I forget.”

She passes by a familiar nurse who calls her out, “Ah, Akemi! Are you sure you should be out of...bed?” But as she speaks, Homura merely passes by her without a word.

“I don’t care, anymore.” she tells herself as she transforms and activates her shield. Time bends to her will, and she continues onward with little other suspicion. No reason to worry them in excess, she thought.

Yet, as soon as she was nearing the front doors of the hospital, time seemed to suddenly resume. All around her, people glanced up and jumped at her sudden appearance, as if she had teleported before them. And in such gaudy attire, too.

“What?” Homura wonders to herself, trying to activate the shield again. “I didn’t tell you to—!” The gears in the shield whir, but then start clacking back and forth between the frozen and resumed states like a broken toy. She could visibly see the state of time rapidly alternating between the two as onlookers stared in awe at the girl flickering in and out of reality like a hologram.

“This isn’t supposed to be—!” she excuses herself to nobody in particular, trying in vain to fiddle with the shield as she darts out of the front door. Outside, she starts hitting and tugging at the thing, but none of her physical efforts seem to work. Then, she accidentally turns it sideways.

“Whoops.” she says aloud as she anticipates to be sent back again. She closes her eyes and flinches, and then...

Nothing. She looks back down. Time has stopped. The shield is fixed. Yet, it’s in that upside-down angle. She should be in the hospital bed, but she’s still standing there, unable to parse what just happened — or rather, what didn’t happen. She unfreezes time and puts it back in neutral position. Curiously, she tries twisting it again. And again. 360 degrees. Then again and again, 720 degrees. Nothing.

“That’s...” she says to herself, then incredulously “...not how it works!”

In further panic, she looks around and begins darting away in no specific or meaningful direction while still twisting the shield to no avail. “That’s not how it works, that’s not how it works!” she begins chanting in her head. For several minutes, she runs, until she finally slams her back into a building’s outer wall and slides down, exhausted both from sprinting and panicking.

“I...can’t go back?” she asks nobody. “I...can’t go back.” she reaffirms her lack of hope. “This is...it?” she asks, curling up into fetal position, eyes widened. “I...” she stammers, head resting against her legs. “I can’t do it. This can’t be happening.” She would be rocking back and forth right now if the ground weren’t so rough, so instead she just sits in silence as people walk past her and stare momentarily.

She pays them no mind until a young woman comes up and asks her, “Miss, are you alright?” She’s crouching and extending her hand as a good gesture.

Homura snaps to attention, only to shake her head idly and refuse any help. “I just need...” she whispers to herself, pulling out a chocolate bar from her shield and biting half of it off at once. After reading about the chemical effects of chocolate, she started storing it in case she ever needed a boost.

The stranger walks away with a concerned sigh. Homura eventually manages to stand up and poise herself after remembering that she has a job to do. “Right...” she whispers to herself “...Since I can’t go back again, that means even more that I have to save her. If nothing else, even if I can’t beat Walpurgisnacht, we can still run away.”

Sure that this would be the final outcome of such a mission as this, she consoles herself, “She may not like it, but I have no other choice. Even if thousands die, it’s enough for her sake.”

As she walks down the street with forcefully renewed resolve, she begins to think about her action plan. “I can’t just kidnap her again; already learned my lesson from THAT accursed timeline. * But how else to get her out? Convince her parents that a huge hurricane will kill everyone? With vague ‘statistics’? Like they’d believe me. Ominous warnings about it to Madoka and hope that she runs away on her own? Maybe throw hints about the idea at her. And to keep her from contracting? Well, I can’t exactly just let everyone die. If this is the last time, I don’t...” She stops in her tracks for just a moment before wiping the thought from her train. “Maybe they’ll believe me, this time. It’s worth a shot, at least. Maybe play up the cute persona again? But Mami would see right through that. Changing appearance might help gain sympathy, though...”

All of the brainstorming starts to get to her. Every idea she comes up with is either pointless, hopeless, unfeasible, or some combination of the three. Eventually, she gives up on coming up with a long term plan using ideas that haven’t already failed and synergize (a word she had learned from Junko, once upon a time).

“Small steps, I suppose.” she puts her hands behind her head and starts walking towards the bus station. “Better go kill Oriko, first.”