Unlike the Date A Live world's sealed shelters that locked you inside until the all-clear sounded, this world's shelters were the ordinary sort—if you really wanted to leave, nothing physically stopped you.
"Madoka!"
Madoka, whose intentions had been transparently suspicious, was caught by Junko in the shelter hallway.
"Where are you going?"
Something had been off about her for a while now. The dramatic reaction to Yimi's cherry tomato, the red-haired girl who'd barged into their house in the middle of the night to snatch a child—and Yimi herself was someone Madoka had brought home. She'd brushed off the specifics vaguely every time.
"Mom..."
"You're going to do something dangerous, aren't you?" Junko gripped her wrist and didn't let go.
Madoka gazed at the raging wind beyond the window. Maybe it was the Lemon in her hand, or maybe it was her imagination, but she could almost perceive the visible despair churning within the storm.
Her gaze hardened. "I have to go save my friends."
"Leave that kind of thing to the fire depart—"
Madoka pulled free of her grip. "No—it has to be me."
Slap.
A sharp crack, loud enough to cut through even this hallway with only a single wall separating them from the gale. Tomohisa, who'd been running over to intercept Yimi, froze momentarily.
He couldn't see his wife and daughter from where he stood, but the sound alone told him everything.
For as long as he could remember, neither he nor Junko had ever struck Madoka like that. And yet it made perfect sense. Because in that instant, he too had the strangest feeling—if they didn't stop Madoka here, they might very well lose her.
"A life doesn't belong to just one person. Do you have any idea how the people around you feel when you say something that selfish?"
Junko was angry.
Tomohisa gently pulled Yimi away from the door, took her small hand, and crouched down with a serious expression. "You stay put too. Don't go anywhere, understand?"
Yimi shook her head. "The Lemon. I need to get it back."
Tomohisa felt a twitch on his shoulder—as though an invisible hand had gripped it and gently pushed him aside.
He rubbed his shoulder. "The Lemon? The one she's been playing with like a toy?"
"That's not, a Magical Girl item." The little cat padded solemnly into the hallway. "It's something very dangerous. Same as a bomb."
Though both she and Kyubey had used random fruits as vessels, the Lemon contained absolutely none of the Magical Girl contract structure. The only similarity was the outer layer of Miracle that served as a containment shell.
In terms even Yimi herself couldn't fully grasp: it was simply an object harboring a virus code. The slightest leak would cause it to auto-install, overwrite, and replace the existing code—setting off a butterfly effect that would scramble every interconnected physical law in the universe. Things like "water does not spread by burning" could cease to apply.
At that point, it wasn't impossible for entities to emerge that, the moment you so much as glimpsed their face, or even a photograph of them, would charge at you with ever-increasing speed, ignoring all barriers, for no discernible reason.
Probably because of this, upon seeing that the unprecedented karmic potential had picked up a fruit as well, Kyubey showed no inclination to interfere—even thinking it might be interesting to see what happened when the two collided.
"What do you mean, a bomb?" Tomohisa followed her down the hallway, but by then Madoka was already gone. All that remained was Junko, arm half-raised toward the door, then lowered.
"I let her go." Junko's voice carried a thread of helplessness. "The instant I did, I regretted it. But at the same time, it didn't feel wrong."
"I'll go bring her back. Stay here with Tatsuya—he'll cry if he can't find Mom or Dad."
"Tatsuya? Why only Tatsuya?"
Before she finished, Tomohisa was already running out the door with Yimi in his arms.
"What on earth..."
...
"When we get back, you're going to explain all of this start to finish—or it's green peppers for dinner every night for a week. Can you sense where Madoka is?"
Yimi shook her head. Revelation was the Miracle she was worst at—so bad she could barely activate it intentionally—and her sense of smell was useless in this weather.
By rights, the kitten's luck should have led them straight to Madoka on the very first turn. But this time, the cat's luck had fizzled again.
Madoka still carried karmic threads as conspicuous as a light bulb, but not bright enough for Yimi to track from just anywhere.
Tomohisa was frustrated. He'd just tried calling Madoka, but the call wouldn't connect. Now he finally understood the restless anxiety she'd been feeling earlier.
A well-behaved child with virtually no bad habits. Parents who loved each other, a spirited little brother and sister. In any drama or movie, a kid like that practically screamed "likely to be sacrificed."
An explosion. Another building, years in the making, collapsed. For some unknown reason, Tomohisa could now faintly make things out.
He set the kitten down and crouched to meet her eyes. "You have another way, don't you? Didn't you ask me before if I wanted to become a Magical Girl?"
"But I already, gave you one." The kitten didn't understand—hadn't she given Tomohisa a cherry tomato before?
Boom—
A savage gust of wind tore past, powerful enough to shatter the clearly-up-to-code glass of a nearby shop. Tomohisa instinctively reached out to shield Yimi, but the blast passed without harming them at all.
As if arranged by fate, a sphere tumbled toward their feet, carried by the wind. The young kitten had never seen one before, but she caught a whiff of fruit from it.
Though bewildered, Yimi began editing its structure using Kyubey's formula, then linked it to this world's Miracle.
She held it up to Tomohisa. "Eat this, and then you should be able to, make a wish. Try to eat all of it."
In Kyubey's technology, "Magical Girl" was just a name—it had never been limited to humans or girls.
The wishing component of Kyubey's tech was something Yimi couldn't isolate and use on her own, since even Kyubey hadn't fully figured it out. And it wasn't exactly convenient—wishes had their own limitations, with the wisher largely bearing the karmic consequences. That was why Sayaka and the others manifested abilities corresponding to their own wishes.
If Madoka's wish—the one forming in her heart just now—were made by Sayaka instead, Sayaka obviously couldn't bear the karmic burden of this timeline, let alone the metaphysical one.
"Eat all of it..."
Tomohisa looked down at the coconut the kitten held up to him.
He counted himself lucky it wasn't sugarcane.
The power of paternal love was not to be underestimated. Humans could create their own miracles too—like a father speed-eating an entire coconut for his daughter.
"As for a wish—if this isn't some kind of scam—I've only got one." His immediate thought was finding Madoka, but an adult's mind naturally looked further ahead.
Yet there was a childlike simplicity to it: "I hope my family can always be safe and happy. Nothing more than that."
"Mew?"
Yimi looked down at her little paws, feeling a layer of blessing settle over her.