An End, Some Means, and a Deranged Lesbian – Chapter 3

She doesn’t smell like the sea.

Kirika’s naked beneath the sheets, her body warm next to mine, and I can’t fall back to sleep, not while my mind is stuck on why it’s important that she doesn’t smell like…

Oh. Right. Yesterday.

I feel my cheeks heat up as I remember our marine adventure, as I remember cold water splashing against her naked breasts, white seafoam being born between our bodies as our lovemaking became more passionate, golden eyes holding me, warming me even against the cold of the black depths…

…

That’s… a lot more purple prose than I usually engage in.

I was raised in a house where words were important. Meaningful. A craftsman’s tools. I’m not given to such… excesses.

Except where Kirika is concerned, it seems.

Because I look at her, and I can’t think of anything other than these… excessive passages, these words laden with more than they should carry. I look at her, and I see this burning, bright soul that…

I look at her, and I see her soul gem carelessly left on top of my bedside table by someone who trusts me far too much.

I drop my head down to the pillow and close my eyes.

My bed is big enough that I could move aside, away from her soft body.

I don’t.

It’s early enough that I could get up, get breakfast ready, get to school on time.

I don’t.

Instead, I focus on Kirika’s skin smelling of brine, on her hair being spiky with dried salt, on golden eyes looking at me with shy warmth as we got back home and we ended up sharing a shower that ran for too long. I remember her body being wet once more, but with nothing being hidden from my eyes as our legs entangled and our fingers pretended at slathering white suds over our backs until our lips met and all pretense fell apart. I remember leaning over Kirika as I took her lips and caressed all that her body could offer until she grasped my hips and turned me around, my breasts sticking to warm, wet glass as she positioned herself behind me, grabbed my hips and…

And fucked me silly.

I was moaning like a wanton slut right after she went in, and I only got worse with every stroke, pleading with her to keep going, to keep taking my body in any way she cared to, to have me be hers—her toy, her lover, her release. Whatever she wanted me to be, I would be.

‘I just want to be yours,’ she whispered, uncharacteristically subdued as her breasts flattened against my back and her voice raised barely above the sound of the falling water.

I came. I came right at that moment, the climax taking me by surprise as Kirika held me upright against the glass screen.

And then we kept going.

Over wet towels on the bathroom floor. Held up against the corridor’s crème walls. Hanging by my arms from my bedroom’s doorframe…

And on my bed.

So that’s why Kirika doesn’t smell like the ocean. Because she smells like me.

I open my eyes and look at her. At the girl who fell for me after seeing me just once, after a careless, random kindness… And after she got her elbow stuck between my breasts.

I smile at the memory, at the flustered Kirika that hasn’t changed that much despite her wish. Because maybe she always was what I needed, because maybe her magic wasn’t needed at all for me to end up in this bed, next to her, our bodies suffused with one another’s scents, the vanilla fragrance of my soap completely missing after having made love again and again, after having become drenched in sweat, saliva, and honey.

Her smell is… a bit smokey, maybe like burning pine, but so much softer, so much closer to a perfume than to something intrusive, that I end up thinking she smells like fire would if it could bloom. And my body is covered in the scent of flowers of fire, and I…

I’m not… excited. Not really. My body is ready for more, for Kirika to take me once again, but my mind, my heart… It’s…

She has a soft smile on her lips, and she’s lying half on her back, half on her side, my memory foam mattress keeping her in that position, and she looks so lovely, I could just…

I close my eyes before I act on impulse.

I listen to her breathing, allow the soft noise to lull me to a place of calmness, and I think. Or try to.

Because she’s still here, still near me, and the possibilities she brings, the things I can now dream about, are too much for me to calmly process. Because she dragged me away from the edge, away from the plan, the purpose. Because I can now see a world I want to live in.

As long as Madoka Kaname doesn’t destroy it.

And that’s… That’s something I don’t know how to deal with. It’s taken me this long to come up with a way to neutralize the threat with no regard for my life or Kirika’s, and the fact is we don’t have that much time left until the moment Walpurgisnacht strikes, and Kaname makes a rash wish that will only make things worse.

Much, much worse.

So… Maybe I can find a way out. Maybe I can turn my magic to something I haven’t yet managed to do, with restrictions I never cared to plan for. Maybe I can.

But… That’s just a maybe. A wistful word that carries too much weight on its frail shoulders.

Again with the purple prose…

The thing is… There are things maybe I can do, things I feel I should strive for, no matter what.

And then there are things I want to do.

And most of them center around Kirika being able to smile her carefree smile. Even if just a tad longer.

…

I’m not going to school today.

Slowly, careful not to rustle the bedcovers, I slide down inside the bed, the lazy light coming in from my half-closed window almost vanishing entirely once my head goes beneath white linen, but I still see enough of Kirika to know where to stop.

I turn around, and I’m faced with her sex. Her true sex, not the… the cock she has her magic turn into, but a small, closed-off vagina with a light, sparse tuft of black hair over it that looks almost like a painter’s brush. Her legs are closed together, her left knee crossed in front of the right one, her feet pointed down like she’s dancing, jumping into one of her pirouettes.

And she smells… like me.

My… The remains of my excitement are dried all over her thighs, her pubis, and I feel my cheeks heat up once more at the reminder of all the sex we had after we got back from the breakwater, remembering once more how she looked with her own cheeks flushed, rivulets of water falling down from her wet hair and puffs of steam surrounding her, making the shining droplets on her breasts stand out even more.

I lean forward and lie the softest kiss I can manage just below her navel.

Kirika stirs, and I’m tempted to cheat, to use my magic to learn the best way to prolong her pleasure until she wakes up in the middle of a climax, her fingers digging on my scalp and pulling me to her sex until I drown in her taste.

I don’t.

I want to… I want it to be genuine. Sincere. I want it to be for both of us. No magic, nothing from Kyuubey tainting a moment shared between the two of us. I want this to be a morning Kirika could’ve shared with me in another world, another time, another place. I want this to be two girls in love who could be anybody else and just happen to be Kirika and Oriko.

I lie a second kiss, and an almost snort escapes her lips above me before she shuffles and lies on her back. Carefully, slowly, I straddle her legs and position myself above her. Then, I lie a third kiss, the softest one.

Next to her sex.

She almost doesn’t react, so I keep doing it, keep surrounding her labia, the small tuft of hair, and my lips slowly and methodically wet all that dried overnight until her thighs shift a bit, and I see a gap between them, her sex opening with wetness that is not mine, and her scent comes at me, and I have to bite my lips to hold back a moan of excitement born in my chest.

My breasts are hanging, brushing over pale, toned thighs, my nipples hard against soft skin, and each time I lean down, more of their weight rests on her, this part of me taking her shape in a way that makes me smile as I lower just enough to barely brush her lips with mine.

Her wetness sticks to my lips, and I lick them, savoring the taste of her, of my lover.

And I go back down.

I breathe warm air on her, watching her left thigh twitch at the sensation as her breath catches, and I cannot stand it anymore and allow myself to lick along the parts of her pussy I can reach, my hands moving from outside her thighs to between them, prodding them gently apart as I crane my neck to get a better angle, to lick from the bottom of her sex to right above it.

Then I kiss her clitoris, my lips lingering on it, and Kirika gasps.

I know she’s waking up, that I don’t have more time to gently tease her and push her toward pleasure she isn’t aware of, so I open my lips and circle the pink bud, my pointed tongue pressing down on it right as her hips shift up, and her sex wets my chin.

She gasps once again, the sound abruptly cut off when my tongue slides up and down over her, and I shift my arms to grip her thigs from below the marvelously toned flesh, her legs angling so I feel my cheeks and ears caressed by skin smoother than it has any right to be.

Then I suck, and she yelps.

Her hands go to my hair in what starts as a gentle caress and soon becomes her grabbing hold of me, trying to keep me in place as I keep twirling my tongue around and over her clit from any angle I care to discover, always changing both intensity and speed as my lips go from gentle caress to demanding suction and back again.

“Oriko!” she yells, her fingers digging into my scalp, and the sound of my name on her lips makes a splash of warmth drip down my thighs as I feel myself clench in needy demand.

So my hands shift once again, and I grab her ass and drag her up, drag her to me.

My tongue slides from between my lips, lower than her clitoris, right at her entrance, and I spoon her honey before licking her up as if slathering juicy meat with the most succulent sauce in the world.

And then I really suck on her clit as Kirika’s thighs keep twitching around me, and her fingers trace burrows of fire over my scalp, and I can only think about blossoms of fire drifting around me as her scent and her song consume my whole world.

Her pelvis bends up, held aloft by trembling legs and a quivering stomach, and I force myself to slow my devotion, to accompany her in the rhythm the ebb and flow of her pleasure play over and through her body.

And then all tension flees, and she slumps down, her shape once more hollowing out a perfect mold on the memory foam even as her buttocks yield to the pressure of my clawing fingers.

That… This was…

I have difficulty breathing, something in my chest ragged and animalistic, and so I slide my hands out from below her and lie my palms flat at each side of her before crawling up her body, my own at just the right distance that the peaks of my breasts drag over skin once more pearled with sweat I’ve brought out in a moment of passion.

I lick my lips, Kirika’s mild flavor slightly citric, and I have to stop for just a moment as I close my eyes tightly and try not to rub my thighs together while my knees are at each side of her thighs. I think some of my excitement drips down on her, but neither she nor I are in a state to notice.

So I keep advancing with an enormous effort of will letting me keep going as I pass over her pert breasts without diving down to do to her erect nipples what I just did to her clitoris as her chest trembles with her own ragged breathing.

And then my head gets out from beneath the covers, and I’m looking at golden eyes that look at me in such wonder I…

“I love you,” we say.

And I smile what feels to me like the stupidest, widest grin Oriko Mikuni has ever smiled.

My body still yearns for more, for Kirika, but I… I’m content to lower myself on top of her, to lay a gentle peck on her lips as she giggles in the cutest way I could imagine, her squirming body twisting aside so we end up in a more comfortable position, my weight still pressing us together as the mattress takes the brunt of it.

And I’m once again looking to my right at Kirika’s face on my pillow.

But this time, her golden eyes are open, and they look at me with such warmth I just know I don’t deserve it, that I could live a thousand lives and never manage to be worthy of… of this. Of this love and devotion she offers me like she’s unsure I should accept them.

I caress her cheek, and she closes her eyes as she nuzzles into my touch, my palm tingling with peach fuzz.

It makes it easier.

It’s so much easier not to see the naked adoration, the expectation that I’m worthy of all that she gives me. It’s easier to just enjoy her touch, and warmth, and softness. Our mingled scents once more renewed. Our breasts molding against one another. My right thigh being surrounded by her own as my sex gently presses down on top of her leg.

It’s so much easier not to feel like I’m failing her just by not being the Oriko she sees in me.

One arm snakes between the pillow and my neck, and Kirika pulls on my nape until our lips almost touch as her eyes open and that smile of hers widens even further.

“Thank you,” she whispers, her words scalding over my lips.

“You deserve so much more…” I answer before I know what I’m saying.

I can see the bolt of excitement, the emotions running through Kirika as she prepares to launch herself into one of her ridiculous tirades about my multiple virtues, but then she stops, a small frown creasing her brow.

“I don’t. I really, really don’t. No matter what you think you did wrong, Oriko, I’ve done just as bad, so, if you’re tainted, so am I. If you deserve punishment, so do I. If you are to be condemned, so will I. And it will all be worth it… because we’ll be together.”

I feel tears at the corner of my eyes, and I refuse to let them fall even as I look at golden eyes swimming with them.

Instead, I lean forward and take another kiss from her, this time lingering until her lips part and our tongues entangle. I push myself up and forward, Kirika falling on her back as the mattress shifts below her, and I straddle her once more, my body atop hers, her heat flowing up into me.

“I love you,” I tell her, our lips parting just enough to repeat words that won’t ever be meaningless to her.

My hands shift below her, my fingers tracing the edges of her shoulder blades, and I press down further as I feel her nipples burying themselves in the softness of my breasts. Kirika tilts her head back as she tries to let out a moan that I devour, and I follow her movement, my face turned down so I can keep twirling my tongue around hers in a languid, demanding, hungry kiss.

I open my eyes for a moment, and I see her fingers clutching my sheets in a white-knuckled grip. And I suppress my smirk as I go back to swaying my hips from side to side in an undulating motion that travels up my body and makes me rub all of me over Kirika’s.

I swallow another muffled moan, and her legs encircle me.

My sex demands attention, the heat so intense I don’t think I can hold it anymore, not unless I focus all of me on Kirika, on her pleasure, her body, her love—

And her magic presses up against me, and I gasp.

Startled, I open my eyes as I look down at her, and her eyes are impish as her legs go back to the mattress, and her hands claw down my body until she grasps my… my ass.

And just having her tight grip mauling my flesh is enough to make me close my eyes and moan once again at the mercy of the pleasure she so casually inflicts on me.

She pulls me down to her, my lower lips opening and gliding over magic perfectly shaped to my needs and preferences, slightly longer and thinner than it was last night after making love again and again, each time spreading me open just a tiny bit more than before, just at the very edge of it being uncomfortable, painful, but never going beyond that line that made me feel utterly full and satiated as she thrust in and out of me and I—

Her hands leave my ass, and I whimper in protest before I catch myself. She chuckles and lifts my left leg before sliding her right one below me and then repeats the steps on the other side until I’m once more straddling Kirika, her smooth legs rubbing between my inner thighs as both our skins become slick with my excitement and eagerness.

And then she grabs my ass once more, and I yelp at the slight slap she delivers.

I feel my cheeks burn as I open my eyes to find Kirika looking up at me in wonder, which only serves to make the burning spread to the top of my breasts, racing across my neck with mortifying swiftness.

“You… liked that?” she asks, voice hesitant.

I bite my lower lip before finally nodding just a tiny bit, and her smile bursts once more into a grin so wide I’m positive it must pain her.

And then she forcefully claps both hands on my ass, her fingers digging into my flesh as I moan at the impact that reverberates along the canal of my sex, and she brings me down on top of her… her cock. Kirika’s warm, hard cock is pulsing against my clitoris, and that’s already enough to make me close my eyes and try to rub my thighs together before I remember I’ve got Kirika’s body between them, and there are so many better things to rub myself against…

“Oriko… I’m going to fuck you,” she says, cruder than usual, her voice raspy.

I open my eyes, and feel the strangest urge to lick along her jawline while moaning in need…

And I do it. Oh gods, I do it, and it feels so goodto let myself be her bitch in heat, her wanton slut, the slave of her… her touch, her voice, her scent, her cock.

Her hands pull me up, the glans of her member making me jolt as it rubs below my clitoris in passing, and then she keeps me in place as she shifts her hips from side to side, trying to angle herself in a way that makes me desperate to help her, to grab her and press her against me, but I… I hold still, hold myself right where she’s put me, and wait for her to do as she pleases to my body, my sex, to me.

And then I feel her prod at my entrance, the soft tip soon giving way to hard, rigid flesh as she slowly parts me open, as I feel myself spread at her passage, every inch of flesh she conquers screaming in ecstasy at Kirika being inside me once again, my body never wanting to experience the loneliness of letting her go. And I remember my soft thoughts from earlier, my wish to be just two regular girls in love sharing one another’s bodies, and I…

I still want that. Still want to be with her in a world without magic, witches, and Kyuubey. But we’re in this world, this tainted, tragic maze of wishes gone wrong, and so long as we’re both in this imperfect place, I’ll take everything of hers. I’ll take Kirika’s lonely wish and its tragic consequences and turn them into something that can bring us joy. I’ll take the girl who had no one else and make her happy to have found me. I’ll make it all worth it.

“Oriko? Does it… hurt?” she asks, unsure, her movements stopped.

And I realize the tears from earlier have finally fallen.

I shake my head in silent negation, angrily wiping at them with the back of my wrists because I refuse to have them appear, to have tears mar this moment for her, to have Kirika be worried about me when she should be enjoying my body and…

She hugs me, her arms pulling me down until our chests are once more flush with one another.

“I love you,” she whispers in my ear, and that makes the dam burst, the tears falling unimpeded.

“I love you, Oriko, and I’ll stay right by your side. Always. It’s what I wished for. So you… you don’t have to push yourself. Not for me, never for me, because I love who you are and I… Please, don’t hurt yourself. Please, just be happy. Please… with me,” her own voice cracks, and I want to answer, but I’m sobbing, and I…

I angrily pull back, managing to stare at her through the sting in my eyes, and I see two lonely trails of glimmering morning light falling from the corner of her eyes and over the upper edge of her cheekbones.

“I won’t let you,” I finally say. “I won’t let you make this all about me, and I’ll make a second wish if I have to. You are mine, Kirika, and you aren’t allowed to devalue yourself. You’re my treasure.”

She blinks up at me, her eyes clearing slightly as a soft smile blooms beneath golden warmth.

And she abruptly pulls me down into a sudden, salty kiss that makes me flail my arms indignantly.

“Ah! Oriko, you’re so magnificent! That pride of yours, shining even as you’re stuffed full of cock—”

“Wait, wha—aaaaahhhh!”

That, of course, is the moment when Kirika grabs my hips and pushes the rest of her cock inside me in a single stroke.

My teeth are clenched so tightly I hear a slight creak, and my mouth is trying to spread into a silly grin that—for fuck’s sake, Kirika!! I was having a moment!

Apparently, so is she, even if a very different kind of moment, because she proceeds to speed up against me until she’s making my breasts bounce up and down with the strength of her upwards strokes, and I—I feel I—

“Yes! You look so perfect like that, Oriko! So utterly wonderful as you let yourself be consumed by pleasure and your need to be stuffed full of—”

I shut her up with a kiss before she manages to get me out of the mood.

Unlikely as the prospect may seem as she keeps—oh gods, why does she feel so good? It is utterly unfair to have a body magically molded to be perfect for me! How am I even supposed to keep up with… With…

With her fucking cock pushing right against my cervix and making me spasm around her every time my clitoris is pushed down when she bottoms out inside of me and—

I throw my body back until I’m perpendicular to her, and I scream to the ceiling.

“Yes! Oriko, you’re so beautiful as your tits keep bouncing like—oh, fuck!”

And then she shivers below me, and I feel her cock pulsing inside me so intensely she manages to drag me along with her climax.

It’s… It’s… My mind goes blank for a moment, and I’m surprised to see I remain upright when I regain my awareness. Looking down, I see Kirika panting, her eyes covered by her forearm, her breasts glistening with a layer of sweat that makes me want to lick her clean.

She’s still hard inside of me.

And I feel a slight grin pull at the corner of my lips.

“Wha—Oriko, I’m still sensiti—hn!”

I pull myself up until I feel my lower lips clenching just below her glans, then I experiment at milking the tip inside me with intermittent pressure.

“Ah! Ah, that’s… that’s so… intense,” she moans, eyes still covered, teeth visible clenched through open lips as she finishes her line.

My eyes widen at the burst of… something I feel pulsing inside my chest, and I drop down.

She yells, and I feel the heat inside me thrum.

So I get my hands on her breasts, my fingers sinking into soft flesh that I mold to my touch, and then I start bouncing up and down on top of her.

I see her arm move, likely to grab my hips and hold me in place above her as she fucks me silly once more, so I let go of her left breast and shoot my hand to keep it in place, to keep her blind to my movements and the expressions I can’t keep out of my face as I keep feeling her rigid member going in and out of me.

“Oriko…?” she asks with obvious disorientation that makes me…

I drop down, our pelvises mash together, and I grind on top of her, my clitoris tracing wet eights over her skin, with every turn making me spasm on top of her.

“Kirika… lie back and take it,” I finally answer after being silent for too long.

And, at the sound of my almost growl, her confused face shifts into an enthusiastic grin that makes me…

I raise once again, her cock almost completely out of me, and then I drop down hard enough we both bounce on the bed, the unpredictable movement almost enough to make me lose control before I clench around her once again and, after a single pause, I resume riding her.

Because I wanted to show her tenderness and love.

But… joy and enthusiasm are also something she deserves.

So I keep her blind to my positively sappy grin as I feel my thighs strain and quiver every time I reach the apex of my movement, every time I pause for a split second in burning anticipation before diving back down, swallowing her, pulsing around her, taking all that she offers inside me.

She starts to shift her hips, to angle them so she can push up and fuck me from below, and I regretfully let go of her breast to push my hand below her navel and steady her beneath me, to have her receive pleasure from me and be unable to do anything but lie there and take it.

I… I think I may be a switch? Is that what it’s called?

Never mind! The important thing is that I have Kirika at my mercy, and—and why does that make me so horny?!

“Ori—”

“Shut up! Shut up and lie still as I take your body and make you feel better than you have in your entire life!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

… Oh, dear. She shouldn’t have called me that.

Because now I’ve got to hold back a manic cackle and try to just keep fucking myself on her cock, impaling myself on it with every downward stroke, clinging to it as I raise my hips with my whole weight on her taut stomach, feeling the hard muscle beneath the soft layer of skin and just enough fat that I don’t see the perfectly delineated abs below my touch, and…

And I just wish we could stay like this forever.

I slow down my enthusiastic movements, Kirika writhing below me as I admire her body. Her legs are my favorite part of her, and I could spend hours just looking at the stretch of skin right above her stockings that her magical form always tempts me with, but even with them out of sight, having her naked below me… She’s gorgeous.

I stop once more at the apex of my movement, clenching rhythmically around her, and she writhes in a way that has her breasts sway from side to side until I drop down once more, trying not to be entranced by the sight.

But then I look at her exposed, shining lips, the only part of her face I can see with the way I’ve forced her arm to remain as a makeshift blindfold, and… they are about as mesmerizing. Every part of her is, and I…

Would it be so bad to just have a world of our own, a world where I could admire Kirika and she could yell at the top of her lungs with no one intruding?

Would it be so bad if we could just… be? Together?

If we could…

I remember yesterday. Not the sex. Not the declaration of love. Not even the rush of battle.

No, I remember the brief, aching vision of me holding Kirika’s daughter in my arms, of the two of us having a family of our own, and…

I wish…

I just wish we…

Kirika shudders beneath me, her member inside me distracting enough that I lose my train of thought, and suddenly my body demands I move,that I put in as much effort as I can, and my mind is distracted enough that it doesn’t even think to protest.

So I bounce up and down, violently enough that my breasts clap down with the effort, and Kirika’s face twists into a grimace that ends up with her biting her lip right as my arms slacken and I start to fall forward, her golden eyes locking on mine as soon as they’re uncovered.

And I feel her. I feel it as my hand weakens atop her belly and she starts pounding up into me before her hands once more slap my ass and grab me, her fingers sinking into me as she pulls me down and she grinds on me before she shivers and—

Heat.

My mouth hangs open, and I feel like I’m screaming in silence as I feel it, the liquid heat filling me in explosive bursts as Kirika’s eyes close and her face contorts, and once again, she drags me along with her climax as my mind goes white while my body’s filled by…

By her. By Kirika cumming inside me.

I don’t know how long it takes me to regain my senses, but when I do, I’m lying on top of her, and Kirika is…

Lightly snoring.

…

To be fair, I woke her up for this.

I repress a slight chuckle at how utterly ridiculous the notion is before I feel Kirika still inside me and my cheeks burn once again. Then I remember the liquid heat and what I was thinking at the time, and, for a single moment, I freeze up before I frantically cast my magic forward, hoping to catch any glimpse of… Of… I don’t know.

A swollen belly? A cradle? Kirika smiling down at me while she clasped my hand, and I held a small baby girl suckling at…

There’s nothing.

My magic shows me nothing, because there’s nothing to find. Because no matter how much I wished for it in the heat of the moment, it seems Kirika’s magic has its limits, and I don’t think she could ever impregnate me.

And I feel like crying once again.

But… But Kirika isn’t looking at me, demanding I open my heart with those golden eyes of hers, and so I manage to hold it back and… And do what Oriko Mikuni is supposed to do.

And so I think.

Because so far, my magic has shown me what will happen if I take certain actions. Has shown me the end of my path after every step deliberately taken. Has shown me countless deaths at the hands of Madoka Kaname’s protector.

But… But what if…

I focus on the image of the baby. Of Kirika’s daughter, our daughter that will never be.

And then I prod my magic at it.

Nothing happens, of course it doesn’t, but that’s just my first attempt, and there’s no shame in failing. No, the shame lies in letting failure remain.

So I try again, the mental image more refined, the Kirika in my mind making silly faces at a laughing baby as I look at her, half-exasperated and half in love. We are slightly older, in our twenties, and she’s wearing a suit that reminds me of her frock while I’m wearing a white blouse and a mauve skirt that goes down to my ankles. I’m sitting on a powder blue couch in a big living room, and I sometimes bounce my baby girl on my knee, and I—

Madoka Kaname looks in anguish over a wrecked battlefield and then turns to an almost amused Kyuubey before opening her mouth and making a wish that will fail to make anything better as—

Yes. Perfect. Just like this.

Again.

***

“Homura Akemi,” my name comes from behind me, and I freeze.

Then I immediately stop time and turn around to face the one whose voice I pray I haven’t—

It’s her.

Oriko Mikuni.

The crazed assassin is in her magical girl form, her white vestments frozen in the middle of swaying to a breeze that’s no more. We are alone in this abandoned lot I’d been following a witch’s familiar to, the bare earth littered with sparse tufts of grass and surrounded by an aged wooden fence that covers us from unwanted spectators.

There’s no trace of her accomplice, and there’s nothing in here that serves as cover or would’ve any tactical use. No unexpected trap I can see—which doesn’t mean a lot when going against the diviner.

I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this.

I had really hoped I wouldn’t have to kill her again.

Without giving it any more thought, I take out my Beretta and shoot three times before stepping to the side and resuming time.

The bullets sail through the air between us, my eyes charged with enough magic that I see the trails of turbulent vacuum they leave behind before they each impact with one of Oriko’s orbs.

Oh. It’s gonna be one of those times.

I stop time and run across the lot until I’m three meters behind Oriko, then I empty my magazine in a fanning motion that should cover any possible dodge.

I resume time, and fifteen bullets rush almost simultaneously, only for Oriko to move faster than I’ve ever seen her—

Of course.

I stop time once more and turn around to see Kirika entering the abandoned lot through a gap in the fence, her magic likely slowing both me and my bullets down in a way that makes it seem as if Oriko has accelerated.

I change my magazine as I run, then I shoot both of them, trying to force Kirika to look away from Oriko long enough for my bullets to reach her. I can deal with Kirika easily enough when she’s the last one standing, but I’d rather not go for the obvious target while the brains of the operation keeps unfolding whatever plan she has in mind.

I resume, never stopping moving, never allowing them to get a shot at me while my attacks—

There’s the deafening sound of shattering glass, and Oriko screams in pain. Kirika immediately turns toward her, her eyes not looking at six bullets that suddenly accelerate to the unguarded girl, and I stop time.

I allow the grimace to settle on my lips for a split moment. I don’t like playing on her twisted love like this, their relationship something I’ve always envied whenever we’ve crossed paths, but if wounding Oriko gets Kirika out of the way, then I’ll take the chance to—

I turn around, and Oriko is smiling straight at me, her body to the left of where I expected her to be, and not a single wound apparent on her.

Did she… Did she sacrifice her lover?!

I hold back my rage as I replace my Beretta with an MP7 submachinegun, and I empty the magazine at her, the recoil strong enough to give the shots as much spread as I want them to have as the weapon dangerously overheats.

I resume time, and a single orb suddenly appears in front of the muzzle, the first bullet to hit it shattering and hitting other bullets right as the second one grazes the crystal sphere, and it explodes right in front of me—

Stop.

My magic is already straining, the combat taking far more than it should’ve, but I’ve got enough reserves to continue, so I jump back as I discard the now useless submachinegun, and I go back to my Beretta. This is about precision, not about letting my rage make my decisions for me.

So I take careful aim, and I shoot at her head, knees, shoulders.

And I replace the magazine before resuming time just in case I will need to do something while still moving.

And that’s when Kirika’s glowing claws slice my gun in two.

I stop time, and now I get truly angry.

That was my favorite gun! The first one I fired! I’ve killed more witches with that gun than Mami has over her entire career! It was important!

So I turn to glare at the crazed… gymnast, I guess, and she’s sporting that dumb grin of hers even with her jacket showing the entry points of all six of my shots.

She isn’t bleeding, though.

Did… Did Oriko store her orbs on Kirika and shoot them at the right time to protect her lover? Just how much power does this version of her have?

Not important. Kirika is right in front of me, so I just have to take three steps to get out of her field of view, replace my… Take anotherBeretta out of my shield, and aim three shots straight at her unprotected nape. This time there’s nothing they can do to—

No. That’s a very stupid thing to think. I’ve gotten too used to fighting witches and forgotten how tricky magical girls can be. I should be ready to move as soon as I drop the time stop.

So I do. I jump back and let go of my hold on the flow of events mid-motion, and then—

Light rains around me.

No, not light—and it doesn’t fall.

I feel my new weapon shatter in my grip as a thousand orbs erupt from the ground beneath me as I keep sailing over the lot in a straight pathway that keeps exploding below me, Oriko’s weapons tracing close patterns around me, my clothes being torn in a way that almost compromises my modesty, but none of them coming close to marring my skin.

I keep my magic ready to activate, the ticking of the clock’s hands louder in my ear with each passing heartbeat, with each orb that shatters the earth around me and showers me with clods of thankfully dry dirt.

None wound me. They don’t even come close enough to.

And they finally stop right as my feet touch the, for now, intact ground.

Kirika’s kneeling a few steps in front of me, a line of blood welling along the side of her neck, and Oriko’s looking at me with rage in her eyes and her arms crossed.

“Homura Akemi,” she repeats, her voice scathing, “we want to talk.”

I look between the two of them. I’m tired, yes, but I could still go on, still stop time quite a few more times, and my arsenal is far from exhausted. I haven’t even used any explosives yet.

But this is a first, and, after so many times living through this month, I’ve come to treasure any changes.

“About what?” I finally answer.

Her shoulders relax minutely even as her face remains set in her disapproving frown.

“About saving Madoka Kaname,” she tells me.

…

I cock my head to the right without even trying to stop my confusion from showing.

“Come again?” I manage to ask.

“Oh, she did plenty of that already,” Kirika says from where she’s kneeling, her pain apparently forgotten as she grins enthusiastically.

Then Oriko blushes so hard she feels the need to raise her hands to shield her cheeks from me, and she glares at Kirika before chiding her, to the obvious delight of the girl in a groom’s dress who seems ecstatic to have the white-clad blonde try to scold her, all the while yelling at the top of her lungs about how great it is to see “the bashful Oriko.”

I… I think I may be in a very weird timeline.

***

“Your wish did what?” I ask the girl who has apparently killed both Kirika and me over and over again through the past few months, and not just in my visions like I was already accustomed to.

“I go back. Every time I fail to save her, I go back to the start of the month,” Homura calmly repeats as she brushes her long, black hair over her shoulder with the back of her hand in a gesture so dignified I immediately try to catalog it for future use.

… And I do not feel any jealousy at the way Kirika stares at her while she does it.

“So,” I try to keep the conversation going. It’s not like I’ve got enough magic to repeat my performance of the past few minutes, so I’d rather not waste it, “that means every time I’ve succeeded in taking her out—”

“You barely have.”

“What?”

“You caught me by surprise the first time you tried. Taking a whole school hostage and being ready to throw both your and your lover’s lives away was extreme enough that I wasn’t ready for it. Ever since then? Most times you never show up at all, I presume because something went wrong and you got killed beforehand, and when you do, I’m usually ready for your terror tactics.”

I glare at her.

“It was—would’ve been for the greater good.”

“It was because you caught a glimpse of something you didn’t understand and kept committing ever more creative suicides.”

I feel my eyes narrow as Kirika’s head bounces between the two of us as if she’s following a particularly exciting tennis match. Homura, on the other hand, looks almost bored.

I try not to grit my teeth.

“Whatever the case may be, that’s not the path we want to follow this time around—and that is a sentence that makes my mind recoil in disgust—so, if you could share any vital information you think would help save Madoka—”

“You don’t even begin to grasp how bizarre it is to hear you, of all people, say these words to me.”

“Ah, but that is the greatness of Oriko! You have yet to understand how truly magnificent she is in both her insight and munificence—”

“That means ‘generosity,’ Kirika. I think you meant ‘magnanimity.’”

“Ah! She’s also so erudite! Do you see? Do you see how no one who gets a glimpse of her many charms and virtues could remain unmoved by—”

“I think I preferred it when you were trying to stab me…” Homura (thankfully) interrupts as she rubs her temples.

“Sometimes, I feel precisely the same way…” I mutter until Kirika shoots me a wounded puppy look that I…

I’m patting her head.

Why am I patting her head?

Homura, please, don’t misunderstand—or do. I don’t care. Do whichever one will get you to stop throwing that nauseated look at me and…

I stop patting Kirika to her very vocal displeasure and clear my throat in a very practiced manner that is not, at all, just an excuse to cover my mouth with my loose fist.

Damn it, Kirika, we are negotiating with a very powerful enemy, can’t you keep it in your pants—can’t you hold back for at least a few minutes?

“Anyway!” I gracefully interject. “It seems as if Madoka Kaname is utterly incapable of remaining on the sidelines while everyone else is endangered—”

“A cat. She first wasted her wish on healing an injured cat.It’s like Kyuubey doesn’t even have to try,” Homura interjects in turn with what seems to be an unhealthy amount of frustration held back by an icy mask.

… Why do I feel as if Kirika may drive me to some very similar outbursts in the future?

“Right, so she’s altruistic to a fault, and… you say her witch form gets more powerful after every repeat?”

She hesitates before answering, her violet eyes going from Kirika to mine before she tersely nods.

“How much?” I prod her.

She closes her eyes and takes a moment, I presume, to compose herself.

“She didn’t transform into a witch at the start; it’s… relatively recent that she outright does as soon as her wish is granted. Nowadays, she destroys Walpurgisnacht in a single shot and then becomes… something. She’s far beyond any witch I’ve ever seen.”

I remember my visions, the warnings of a girl who would consume the whole world in an instant.

And that witch’s power is a direct consequence of the weight of Madoka’s wish being repeated and piled on over and over through all of Homura’s attempts to save the…

The girl she loves.

Ah. So that’s why Kirika’s staring at her in such a way. She’s found a fellow zealot, even if from another cause.

… I’m not blushing like a schoolgirl in love.

Even if I am a schoolgirl in love.

… This is mortifying.

“Oriko? Any ideas?” Madoka’s Kirika asks.

I blink at the bizarre turn of phrase and turn to my own Kirika (there’s that phrase again…), who’s looking at me as if it’s a given that I’ll have all the answers.

Thankfully, I think I do.

***

“Kirika, get me another Grief Seed,” I extend my hand, offering my Soul Gem to her as my temples start throbbing at the magic expense, and she immediately rushes to replenish my reserves.

“Is it that exhausting?” Homura asks, standing with her back against the fence and her arms crossed as she pretends to look at me disinterestedly.

Knowing the devotion she feels for Madoka and the lengths she’s gone to reach the answer I’m currently looking for? She isn’t fooling anyone.

Least of all Kirika, who seems to be one-sidedly bonding with the girl who has admitted to executing us time and again.

“It’s… something new. I usually just check the future that will unfold according to my actions, but now I’m looking for a specific future and what actions may lead to it. It’s far more demanding,” I tell her.

And then I close my eyes, sitting on the disturbed earth of this lot, uncaring of how messy a dress that’s replaced with a shrug of will is likely to get, and go back to my focus, to my guiding thread as I navigate countless futures in which Madoka Kaname turns to Kyuubey and says words that doom the world, looking for the one fate that’s safe, the one that won’t destroy us all.

The one where I smile down at a baby girl, my baby girl, bouncing on my knee and laughing at Kirika’s foolish grin and cartoonish gestures.

Something painful throbs in my chest as another wish is discarded, another dead end in the search for the right words.

I stretch out my hand, and Kirika replenishes my Soul Gem without a single word.

***

“Are you… sure you can do it?” Homura asks, the chill of night seeping into my legs from the earth beneath them.

It’s… How many hours has it been?

I don’t know; I just know I need to keep searching, to keep casting my sight forward in search of that baby girl’s smile, to keep discarding words that don’t work, that just bring ruin and a premature ending.

“Yes,” I grit through my teeth.

And I remember the feeling of something that hasn’t happened, of a light body resting on my knee as she shakes in innocent, full-bodied laughter.

***

Another future, another failure.

I stretch out my hand, but Kirika doesn’t replenish me, and I open my eyes to see her almost despairing look at failing to provide me with what I ask of her.

My heart breaks because the last thing I mean to do is to pain her, to wound her—

My magic comes back, and I look back at my hand to find Homura silently holding a Grief Seed to me.

Our eyes meet, and she remains silent.

So I nod and go back to my inner vision of laughter, and love, and a faraway future that may never come.

***

There’s a barren battlefield, and the ruins of Mitakihara burn despite the typhoon blowing apart concrete slabs. Homura lies bleeding, broken, despairing.

She has a single working arm, and she claws at the ground, dragging her useless body toward the pink-haired girl staring in horror at the wounds of the one who would’ve been her lover in a kinder future. A kinder world.

And Kyuubey is there, his disaffected expression as cruel as it ever appears when there’s tragedy to behold.

The air stirs, Madoka’s skirt flitting around her legs, and she turns toward the alien.

Then her lips open, and words come out that change the world.

And my mind blackens with strain and exhaustion, my body falling back as I finally let it feel what it’s been trying to scream at me since the sun set.

“Oriko!” Kirika screams my name, holding my shoulders and gently laying me back to rest against her chest even in the middle of her obvious panic.

I smile, the only answer I can give her.

And then I feel two hands gently grasping one of mine, a body in front of me I can intuit but not see.

“Did… Did it work, Oriko? Did you see it?” Homura’s voice cracks in a way I now know she hasn’t allowed herself to for far too long.

And my smile broadens.

***

The school’s cafeteria is as loud as usual, yet it somehow feels more strident, something in me urging me to get away to a more restful place.

“Oi, are you ignoring me?” Komaki Asako asks from the other side of our shared table.

Which… may account for my current unease.

I understand she’s a far nicer girl than she presents herself as, and her having saved me (or, well, thinking that she saved me) from a wraith’s attack makes it quite obvious how much of a bleeding heart the outwardly prickly, blue-haired girl is.

I suppress a smile at the notion and tilt my head to the side.

“However could I manage that, Miss Asako?” I ask her.

“Mikuni… Is this where I start to answer, only for you to interrupt and tell me that it wasn’t a rhetorical question and you seriously want to learn a way to ignore me?”

“My, my, you know me so well…” I tell her while batting my eyes and resting my cheek on a cupped palm.

And her face reddens in a delightful way that conveys both embarrassment and outrage.

“You’re a prick, you know?” she warily accuses.

“I certainly am no such thing. I am a refined lady with impeccable manners.”

“And a prick.”

I look at her with guileless eyes until I can’t hold it back anymore, and laughter comes to my gaze.

“Well, it may be the case that those aren’t mutually exclusive things,” I finally concede.

She groans, her hand slowly dragging down her face from her forehead to her mouth.

I admit she’s fun to tease.

I just wish I knew why I’ve been so uneasy all day…

***

Classes end… When they do. It’s always stifling to keep up my façade around people too prone to extolling virtues that come as naturally as they do for me, so that may be part of why I’ve felt this way since I woke up, but… It certainly doesn’t seem to be the case.

I step aside to let the pink-haired girl enthusiastically talking at the gently smiling black-haired girl she’s holding hands with pass, and then I resume thinking about my current circumstances.

There haven’t been any visions, so I don’t think I’m in danger, but it’s still something I feel intensely enough that I think I should check just in case, so I’ll transform as soon as I get home. Father and Mother are still on their little trip, so I won’t be interrupted in—

Oh. It looks like I’m more distracted than I thought because, well…

There’s a girl stuck to my chest.

The shorter girl is paralyzed, her elbow lodged firmly between my breasts, and her cute face is blushing in a very pretty way that makes it so I don’t even think about it before grasping her shoulder and turning her to me, a gentle smile ready to reassure—

Kirika.

I look at golden eyes that pulled me away from death, and I see the moment they light up with recognition, the very same instant my unease fades, and I… And Oriko Mikuni steps back inside Oriko Mikuni, marveling at the happy years I’ve enjoyed, unaware of tragedies averted.

Years that would’ve been unbearable if I had remembered sooner, if I had been trapped in a happy life with my parents while keenly feeling Kirika’s absence.

But she’s here. Here.

With me.

Where she should be.

So my hands go from her shoulder to her nape and lower back and pull her to me, my lips parting in a kiss that has our tongues greeting each other for the first time since the world ended, and I—

Kirika makes silly faces at the baby bouncing on my lap, the delight in our daughter’s laughter making my heart swell—

My magic fades. The kiss lingers.

And I cry.

And Kirika clings to me, caressing my back until I calm down, until I feel the sheer joy abate enough that I can stand by myself, that I can come back to this present that promises so much for a better future, and—

And then Kirika pulls me down into another eager kiss.

Her tongue wraps around mine, her fingers digging into my back through the thick fabric of my uniform, and one of her legs wraps around mine, pulling me to her body, making me feel all of her, including a certain addition that ensures our daughter won’t be adopted. And I moan into her lips until I manage to lean back and gasp some much-needed air as her burning eyes devour me, as her body fills me with a kind of heat I haven’t yet felt in this life.

I can’t help the surprise that shows on my face at the sheer intensity of it all, and it seems Kirika realizes it as she looks away from me and then finally mutters her first words since we met again after being reborn.

“Well, what did you expect? It’s… it’s also missed you, Oriko.”

My mind goes blank at the implication of Kirika being backed up.

And then I remember my parents are on a trip and my house is… well, available.

And we both seem to have some free time. About as much as we want.

And so, with a backed-up Kirika hugging me against her, I throw my head back and laugh.

Free.