Tangled Regrets – Chapter 7 – The Tired Fighter

Moments slip through my fingers like treacle as I struggle to tighten my hold on time around me.

It’s no longer the effortless grace I used to have as everything froze, as bullets hung in the air waiting for me to dance around them.

It’s enough.

Sayaka’s voice is distorted as she yells out a warning to Kyouko, the redhead turning so fast her ponytail becomes a shimmering trail behind her, her spear in a two-handed grip, ready to shield herself.

I aim and shoot over her shoulder, and the witch’s minion’s head explodes.

Sayaka’s voice cuts off moments after that, her brain finally catching up with my actions.

My magic strains, I jump to the side as I spin, and I survey the battlefield.

Hunched over, thirteen of the little green humanoids crawl down the walls of this unnatural cave, the rock actually made of an oleaginous substance that yearns to catch any of us if we are careless enough to let it.

Aim. Shoot. Aim. Shoot. Aim. Shoot.

It’s careful, honed, precise.

It’s stupid.

I kill three more of the minions, each one falling to a single bullet through their bulbous, misshapen heads.

And then my magic strains beyond my hold, and the world snaps back into place.

“Homura!” Sayaka yells as I drop to the ground, thankfully made of solid rock, and I stumble half a step while I try to regain my bearings, far too used to being able to do so without anyone noticing.

I jump back toward them, toward the safety of numbers my instincts still tell me to ignore, but something drops from the ceiling—

It’s like one of the minions, at least from the waist up, but below it… It’s a slug. A giant, enormous slug that leaves a trail of the tar that covers the walls. It’s longer than a bus.

And it’s between me and my allies.

I throw myself to the side, rolling on the floor and coming right up as I aim my gun not at the monstrous thing I’m unsure I’ll be able to put down, but at its minion jumping to me.

I shoot.

And fail.

Keep moving. Don’t dwell on it. I’m used to stopped targets. I’m used to finer reflexes. I’m used to being better, and I worked so damn hard for every ounce of skill—

“You damn moron!” Sayaka yells as she rushes past the thing, taking its head off with a slash that’s far from elegant, but it’s efficient enough I won’t complain about it.

Her legs momentarily bulge with explosive power, and she becomes a blue line rushing past me to keep the giant witch in the middle of a triangle with Kyouko at the other vertex.

“Kyouko!” she yells while she readies her saber, something glowing along its edge that doesn’t make sense, because when did she get that power—

“Stop screaming my name when we aren’t alone!” the other girl answers and—

What?

I look at Kyouko as strange symbols I don’t recognize spin around her, her feral grin sharpening with each one added to the glowing spiral.

Then to my side, at Sayaka angrily mumbling something I don’t catch as her free hand contorts into an unnatural gesture that—

This isn’t a witch.

This isn’t the magic I’m used to.

This is a curse.

I take a deep breath, feel the energy of projected space strain around me, lashing around as it looks for a place to anchor itself in, the angle I should provide to the triangle Sayaka and Kyouko are forming.

I remember a moonlit clearing where a goddess told me to take care of her. Of the girl I gave up everything for.

Silver motes rain down around me, their fall slowed as they touch my magic, and the triangle snaps into place.

The motes condense around my gun, spiraling along the barrel and extending it. At first glance, it’s my preferred Beretta 92 FS, the grip familiar on my hand.

But it beats. It throbs along with the pulse of this body that actually isn’t, of this manifestation of mind, soul, and magic.

This gun is mine in a way none of the countless ones I stole over the years ever were.

My shield is barely more than a stylish bracelet, but my gun…

I look to the side and catch Sayaka’s hard eyes as she nods at me. The triangle pulses once, twice…

And I rush forward, unleashing a storm of bullets far beyond the capacity of any magazine on the monster as a teal crescent shoots from her blade and Kyouko’s spear elongates, snaking around silver motes gently falling down around the screaming monster.

Its flesh burns and shrivels, and the curse crumbles.

***

I’m laying on grass that’s too long to be in a cared for park or garden, the dappled light of the sun slightly uncomfortable on my chest.

“You… You slipped in there, didn’t you?” Sayaka asks from my right.

I open my eyes, looking at the shifting, roundish leaves above me.

“I called it a witch. Thought it was,” I force myself to answer.

“Careless, hitgirl,” Kyouko’s teasing tone comes from my left.

We are forming a triangle, all of us lying down on the grass.

I close my eyes, orange tinting my vision as the sun filters through my eyelids.

“Yes,” I answer.

And then Kyouko… pokes me.

“I’m teasing you, you overly dramatic brat. This is where you’re supposed to banter back.”

“Oh? You mean she’s supposed to tell you after accumulated decades of experience you should know how to watch your back without me yelling at you to do so?” Sayaka interjects.

Kyouko stutters, and I can almost hear her blush.

“Her! She’s the one who’s supposed to banter! You’re supposed to be on my side, you traitor!”

“Maybe I would be if you didn’t have to rely on the newbie.”

“Oh, come on! I called you that once!”

“Once per life!”

“Heh. Yeah, it was hilarious.”

There’s a sound of frantic movement, and I’m pretty sure Sayaka just tackled Kyouko to the ground.

I’m also pretty sure they’re now making out.

…

I hold back a sigh as I ignore my sisters in arms’ constant foreplay.

Then I hold back a blush as slender fingers brush my hair out of my forehead.

I open my eyes, and see Madoka smiling down at me in that way that makes me wonder how much of the goddess really left as soft pink warms and burns, and—

Oh, no. Kyouko and Sayaka have infected me.

“If you three are done with… whatever it is that you’re all doing, I’d like to have an after-action report now. If you please.”

All sounds of wrestling (making out) suddenly stop at the Curse Breaker’s voice.

And I remember this is a class trip, and we are definitely being watched.

My blush is no longer repressible. It has grown beyond my ability to contain.

Still, I pretend not to care about the stupid boy whom Sayaka devoted far too much time to (and Kyouko threatened to kill one too many times for me not to draw the obvious conclusion about jealousy). He’s studiously not looking at us in a way that makes it very clear he’s done anything but for the past while.

It’s easy to ignore him when Madoka’s cheeks are tinged just—

Right. Her mom is right here.

“Well?” Junko Kaname taps two fingers on her biceps, her arms imperiously crossed not like when she’s in her teacher persona, but like she’s the military officer who left because nobody could stop her.

Being that powerful has its perks.

“It was… a simple manifestation. Green, humanoid minions, and a curse that was identical except for its lower body being a gigantic slug,” Kyouko almost falters while delivering her report.

“It was related to its environment. We were in a cave, and the ground was rock, but the walls were like… tar? And the slug kept oozing out more of it,” Sayaka continues.

And the woman who has taken me into her home looks at me.

What… What can I say that hasn’t already been—

Ah. Right.

“My instinctive magic accelerates me. It doesn’t quite stop time, but I think, with training, it will be a near thing. Also, my weapon is a gun.” To absolutely no one’s surprise.

Junko’s eyebrow raises.

“Powerful,” she comments.

And then turns toward the class.

“Projected space is malleable. It’s a shared reality, in the sense that any inside it will experience the same events, but don’t expect the usual rules to be more than a guideline. This means that Homura’s acceleration, the first use of her magic in there, has a lot of potential to grow, because magic in projected space works by bending those rules or outright replacing them with the magician’s own. Anyone care to speculate what that may mean? Kyousuke?”

The boy who always tries to look like he’s not looking at us winces when his name is called, but he quickly answers.

“She talked about not being quite like time-stopping, which means she instinctively thinks about it as some... chronal distortion skill? She could potentially rewind events.”

I stop myself from the sharp gasp I want to take and very carefully don’t glare at the boy.

He still flinches back.

“It’s a possibility,” Junko says, “but it would be the strongest temporal skill we have any records on, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Very well, what else can you three tell me?”

I look at Sayaka and Kyouko, who are kneeling on the grass side by side, and answer my questioning look with one of their own.

“I’ve got no clue, auntie,” Sayaka finally answers. Cheekily.

Because she’s Sayaka, and it looks like she’s been for long enough that she can be the utter, unrepentant brat—

“I’ve got childhood pictures, Sayaka. Don’t make me use them,” Junko says. And the class giggles as Sayaka panics.

And Kyouko looks like a shark, but that’s her mostly being Kyouko.

“The slug… The tar. That was the curse, wasn’t it? It wasn’t any of the monsters, those were just… echoes?”

Junko turns toward me sharply enough that the rest of the class quietens down.

“Explain,” she demands.

And I’m suddenly very aware that I’m still lying on the ground, my head only raised because…

Because Madoka’s giving me a lap pillow.

… Why has nobody said anything about this?

I let out an embarrassed cough as I incorporate myself into a sitting position and the girl at my side looks briefly disappointed—oh, no. Sayaka and Kyouko have definitely infected us.

Then I look at my classmates studiously pretending none of this is abnormal at all.

Something that may have a little to do with Kyouko’s sharp grin, Sayaka’s frown, and Kyousuke’s not at all panicked, studiously disinterested, checking of his notes.

…

Is it too late to go back to my blood-drenched flashbacks about hopelessly trying to stave off a destiny that kept getting worse after every try? Those are nice. They don’t make my face feel like it’s about to melt.

“I… You told us the curse permeates this whole area. That it is an ancient battle site where large-scale magic mixed with the regret of the dying. So it isn’t a single curse, but a conglomerate, a compound, and the thing we saw as tar… Many different curses sticking together? So that giant slug would have been... a manifestation. And the tar that came off its body was just a link to the greater curse underlying it all?”

I don’t know where the words, the ideas come from.

They just do.

And Junko is looking at me sharply enough that I begin to worry about my domestic life.

But then she looks to the side, to her daughter sitting right by me, and the look softens, and I—

“You have good instincts, Homura,” she says. And there’s approval in there, but also a sort of melancholy that I don’t understand. “Kyousuke, take out the array.”

The boy who’s too beleaguered for anyone to call him a teacher’s pet rummages through a bag until he gets a roll of paper that he handles to Junko.

She unrolls it, and we see a lot of symbols arranged in a geometric pattern that screams meaning. There’s a round patch of a black, metallic thing right in the middle, and—

“You should all know what a black mirror is by now. It can be done with anything that shows a reflection, but an indistinct one. The idea is that, when looked at with magical senses, the images will blur in the magician’s perception and allow them to see more clearly what they’re looking for. Now, how many of you can see magic? Not feel, not hear, not touch, but see?”

A few hands shot up, Kyousuke’s reluctantly between them.

Sayaka, Kyouko, Madoka, and I are, of course, also part of the group.

“Very well,” Junko nods. “All of you, get over here. The rest, don’t get demoralized. Some never manage, and others are late bloomers, but seeing is only needed for a handful of things. There are plenty of alternative tools for the other senses that cover most uses.”

Madoka stands up quickly enough that she can offer me a hand to help me rise to my feet.

It is as soft as it was when I woke up in her bed to see pink eyes gently looking at me as she caressed my cheek after saying goodbye to her godhood just so she could remain by my side what feels like a lifetime ago.

Even if it was just like week.

And the memory still makes my face burn.

“The array is attuned to curses, so it will guide your visions accordingly. Now, concentrate on seeing magic and allow your eyes to unfocus. Don’t fight it when they get blurry; it’s in the uncertainty that visions will emerge: if you focus too much, you’ll strangle the possibilities.”

Following her instructions, I get nearer and look at the shimmering surface. At first, I can only see my own eyes looking back at me, but little by little, a face emerges around them.

I have to keep myself from flinching back when I see it’s not my face.

The contours are blurry, indistinct, but the shape is all wrong, and there’s something about it that twists in my gut, that…

It smiles.

And the world fades away.

I stand in the middle of a field littered with corpses. They hold firearms, though older models. Rifles, mostly.

They’re wearing uniforms.

Junko said this was a battlefield, but I… I thought it would be a feudal one—

There are also corpses with swords. Spears. Bows. Arrows.

Ah. It’s an ancient battle site. But it’s been renewed.

The stench of blood I’m far too familiar with subsumes my surroundings, but there’s something underlying it. It’s… It’s like dew tinted by moonlight gone stale. Like wonder turned to apprehension.

It’s magic turned to curse.

And then the vision blurs, my head pounds, and the world fades back in.

Madoka’s hand is warm, and that’s the only thing I need to come back.

Junko looks at me, then at Sayaka and Kyouko. And then at the rest of the students, who don’t look quite as disoriented as us.

I guess talent has its drawbacks.

“You will write down what you saw, and I don’t want you to discuss it with others before you do so. Visions are highly subjective, and you’re likely to allow yourself to be influenced if you aren’t used to it, so it’s best to have a reliable record before you let that happen. That being said, what you saw is likely to show you two things: that this curse goes far back in time, and that it isn’t focused.

“Schools all over the country use this place as a way to give students their first controlled experience with curses. That is because it’s old enough we have all studied its effects and manifestations. Unpleasant surprises are very unlikely. It’s also because the curse has had centuries to seep into the land, and no mere student is going to accidentally wipe it clean. It’s a small evil that we tolerate so that you can learn.

“It’s also why the nearest village is not within walking distance.”

Junko looks at each of us in the eye, and this time doesn’t linger on us, the special students.

She’s making a point.

This is a school trip. An educational experience.

It’s also dangerous, no matter how controlled.

Because this world has magic like the other never had, available to everyone who cares to study and train for it.

But that also means everyone has access to the worst parts of it. That we need to be prepared. On guard.

It also means… It also means people can be on guard. That nobody is at the mercy of unexpected horror, that ignorant masses don’t need to rely on hidden protectors.

It’s dangerous, but a more honest kind of danger.

My hand yearns to reach for a weapon I no longer carry and is instead held by a girl I no longer have to protect.

Madoka smiles at me.

And the lingering vision of a battlefield fades entirely.