『Final Attack Ride』
『Decade』
"This world doesn't need children to protect it!"
The Rider Kick, infused with Rider power, slammed into Walpurgisnacht's body and actually punched a gap through its gears.
"Remarkable. Aside from certain exceptional individuals, adult humans—especially adult males—shouldn't be capable of producing emotional fluctuations powerful enough to generate this kind of force. And this man himself is perfectly ordinary."
"Yet in that single instant, the karmic connections forcibly elevated him to a level that doesn't belong to him. Did you do something?"
Kyubey turned its gaze toward the little kitten pattering along on her short legs, but received no response.
Not that it cared about this one extra variable named Tomohisa. The important thing was that Madoka had already eaten that thing—what kind of reaction it would produce was what Kyubey needed to observe.
"Ah, the world was saved by a dad who's never been in a fight." Sayaka lowered her weapon and turned to Homura. "So what was that about just now? The bit about Magical Girls all becoming Witches."
Homura came back to her senses but didn't answer.
She genuinely had never seen this scenario before—Madoka's father materializing out of nowhere to join the battle. Was he actually a Magical Girl who'd survived since his youth? No, that was impossible.
Regardless, they were saved now, weren't they?
Not daring to tempt fate again, Homura used her sleeve to wipe Madoka's mouth. "How are you feeling now, Madoka?"
"Hm? I don't really feel anything. Maybe because I forgot to make a wish?" Madoka held her hands to her chest, a faint sense of injustice stirring inside her.
She'd steeled herself for the somewhat risqué price. She'd even eaten something far more unbearable than what anyone else had to swallow. Why was nothing happening? Had she eaten it wrong? But she'd finished every last bit—there was no taking it back now.
"No, nothing happening is for the best." Homura lowered her head, tears of relief falling softly as a small smile tugged at her lips. "Walpurgisnacht has been destroyed. There's no longer any reason for Madoka to become a Magical Girl in this world."
After uncountable loops, this timeline had finally reached a happy ending.
"There is, though." Madoka shook her head gently. "You said it yourself just now, Homura. Everyone eventually becomes a Witch. Being a Magical Girl means fighting under the weight of tragedy from the very start, doesn't it?"
"You ate it!"
A clear, childish voice burst onto the scene as Yimi came running over, pointing at Madoka, and approaching step by step.
"Um..." Madoka looked at her with a twinge of guilt. "I don't think it worked on me."
"How did you eat it?" The anxious kitten stamped her little shoes in place.
That object couldn't be destroyed through conventional means. To isolate it from the outside world, its outer shell contained power from the same source as Love Train—any destructive action targeting it should have been deflected elsewhere.
Right now there seemed to be no anomalies, and that was precisely what felt wrong, because it couldn't possibly sit quietly imprisoned inside a human body the way Miracle kept it sealed.
"Wait, that wasn't meant to be eaten?"
Madoka's nerves spiked in tandem with the kitten's expression. Come to think of it, the reason Yimi had chosen a lemon as the vessel might have been precisely so that no one would want to eat it.
"But I don't feel anyth—"
A violent dissonance, like an electric shock, jolted through Madoka, making her stagger forward.
"Madoka, are you all right?!" Homura caught her immediately.
Madoka looked down at her hands.
Everything clicked into place. Regardless of the process, bearing karma this massive meant she was all but destined to be unable to live as an ordinary person.
That outer layer of Miracle apparently didn't possess the power to grant wishes, but by now it hardly mattered. There was no going back. Just as Yimi had puzzled over: a self-perpetuating program could not be sustained by a mortal body.
She gave Homura a gentle hug, her voice warm and calm. "I'm sorry. I'm truly, truly sorry. Because of me, you've been protecting me all this time. And that's exactly why I found my answer."
In that long-ago loop, Madoka—on the verge of total corruption—had handed her final Grief Seed to Homura and said, "Could you go save the me who was tricked by Kyubey?" And Homura had persisted through all those loops.
"What are you saying, Madoka? It's about to be over. How could—I already..." Homura grabbed her hand.
Madoka took a deep breath, speaking as though addressing somewhere beyond: "My wish is to eliminate all Witches before they're born. Every universe. Every Witch across past and future, by my own hand."
Homura's eyes flew wide. Her hand reached toward Madoka, but her gaze drifted involuntarily to Yimi.
In this moment, what was she thinking? If she hadn't been so cautious—if she'd agreed from the start to hand her Soul Gem over to this little one, even if it was all a lie, just told Madoka "everyone's already been saved, the Soul Gems won't be corrupted anymore"...
Would Madoka not have become a Magical Girl?
Or if she'd stalled for just half a minute longer—held out until the moment Tomohisa arrived—Madoka wouldn't have bitten into that Lemon, and everything could still have been different.
"Incomprehensible. That layer of Miracle was already destroyed by your own hand the moment you bit into it. Are you directing your wish at me? Or at that unknown entity who wields Miracles?" Kyubey stood with its paws tucked, observing the radiance blooming in Madoka's palm.
But Madoka's wish had indeed been answered.
"This isn't merely interference with time—it's a rebellion against the law of causality itself. Do you intend to become a god?"
"Shut up, you Walpurgisnacht!" Sayaka brought her blade down vertically, cleaving Kyubey in two.
In the distance, the already crumbling Walpurgisnacht shattered instantaneously—just as Madoka's wish demanded. The Incubator's cycle had been broken: creating Magical Girls who would eventually become Witches, having other Magical Girls destroy them, and collecting the resultant Grief Seeds as energy for the universe. If Witches were eliminated before they could be born, then Witches would never appear at any point in history. The enemies that Magical Girls faced would be replaced by something else entirely.
By the same logic, at the moment a Magical Girl's Soul Gem reached full corruption, she would be separated from the factors of despair—and this became the newest law of the universe: the Law of Cycles.
And Madoka, who had made this wish, would no longer exist in the world as a human. No one—parents included—would remember her existence. She would persist only as a deity passed down through generations of Magical Girls.
This wish—she had actually conceived it the very night Yimi was brought into their home, long before she knew anything about the true connection between Witches and Magical Girls.
...
...
Like a dream dissolving, the ravaged Mitakihara fell still in an instant. Everything seemed as though it had never happened. The city looked that peaceful.
At the Kaname residence, Madoka opened her eyes after a brief nap, gazing blankly at her surroundings.
"Awake?"
The sound of scissors—Tomohisa, trimming the garden in the early morning. He picked a fruit that looked nicely round and placed it in Yimi's palm.
"Dad? Why am I still..." Madoka sat up from the chair, bewildered. She'd never had the habit of sleeping face-down like that, not even at school.
"My wish was for our family to always be happy."
"Without Madoka, how could the Kaname household ever count as happy?"