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The game was in full swing, and there was one girl kicking circles around the rest of the third-grade class.
In a rush of frustration at never being able to come in first, Nagisa sprang for the ball the next time it came her way and whacked it with her foot as hard as she could. Her aim was better than she thought: the ball shot through the air to smack straight into the blonde girl's face.
Play stopped short before the coach even blew her whistle. "Everybody pause!" she ordered, jogging out into the field. "Tomoe-chan, are you all right?"
The girl looked embarrassed at the attention. "It's fine, sensei."
"Are you sure? Maybe you should sit out for a while."
"I'm sure!" Tomoe Mami rapped her knuckles against her skull, near the base of one of her drill-shaped ponytails. "I have a tough head, see?"
"All right then. Nobody touch that ball! I'll throw it back into play. Hang tight."
While the coach jogged over to the prodigal ball, Nagisa crept up to the central line, pink with embarrassment. She had been angry, sure, but she hadn't really wanted to hurt the girl. "I-I'm really sorry, Tomoe-sempai," she whispered.
Mami gave the girl her warmest smile. "It's fine, Nagisa-chan. You want to know a secret? The ball bounced off of something in the air. It didn't even touch me."
~*~*~
"Are you sure this is a good idea, nee-chan?"
"Mama said not to use the stove when we're home alone. The toaster is not the stove. Now go get out the jam."
Swayed by this impeccable logic, Momo obediently trotted over to the fridge while her sister kept an eye on the toaster. She had to stand on tiptoe to reach the strawberry jam, and was balancing the glass jar very carefully in both hands when she was frightened by a crackle and a scream.
Kyoko barely noticed the jar crashing to the ground, transfixed as she was by the flames shooting up from the top of the toaster.
"Get the fire extinguisher!" yelled her sister.
"I don't know where it is!" cried Momo, and began to sob.
Looking over at her, Kyoko realized there was broken glass all around her feet. "Okay, never mind, don't move!" she ordered, holding back her hair with one hand and leaning over the counter. She could feel the heat on her cheek, but she had to persevere, had to pull out the plug....
She wrapped her hand around the cord and yanked.
When the plug jerked from its socket, the fire disappeared.
Kyoko stared for a second, wondering if the toaster was playing a trick on her, before she decided not to question her good luck and turned to Momo. "See, Momo? Your onee-chan fixed it! Now stay right there, I'll sweep up the..."
The pieces of the jar had all gathered in a neat pile, well away from Momo's feet.
Kyoko snaked her arm into the fruit bowl, hopped down from the chair she was standing on, and took her sobbing sister's hand. "I'm really sorry, Momo. When Mama and Papa get home, I'll tell them it was all my fault, okay? And they'll only yell at me, and clean it all up, and everything will be fine. Let's go outside. We can have apples instead."
~*~*~
"Do you think we should have brought her?" asked Isako, as the car turned back onto their dimly lit street. "Kamijou-kun is her friend, after all."
"And keep her up all night in a hospital, only to come home not knowing any more than we did six hours ago?" replied her husband. "It wouldn't have been good for her. Besides, she has school tomorrow."
"She might have stayed up anyway," said Isako, noticing their front window. "See, the light's still on."
The curtains were drawn, and Isako couldn't make out her daughter's silhouette, but she wouldn't put it past the girl to have forced herself to stay awake ever since the panicked call from Mrs. Kamijou had dragged them all out of bed. Even though the hospital had been a hive of chaos, with terms like critical condition and losing a lot of blood and major nerve damage flying through the air like balls at a tennis match, it couldn't be much easier to spend the time cut off in an empty house, expecting every second to hear a ringtone heralding the worst....
She breathed a sigh of relief when they got inside. Sayaka was on the couch, slumped awkwardly against one of the arms but soundly asleep, cell phone standing guard on the table beside her.
"Poor thing," whispered Isako. "Dear, let's not force her to go to school if she's too tired."
Her husband nodded. "I'll write down what we know about Kamijou-kun, and put it next to her phone so she can see it when she wakes up."
While he went to get paper and a pen, Isako watched her daughter sleep. From her position Sayaka looked as if she had drifted off in place while sitting up, but that couldn't be exactly right. Not when there was a blanket draped over her, tucked around her shoulders no less thoroughly than Isako herself would have done.
Saying a silent prayer that the boy would survive, for Sayaka's sake almost as much as his own, she turned out the light.
~*~*~
When Homura closed the medical textbook and pushed it back across her desk, she didn't have to look at the clock to know that it had been far too long since she'd showered.
Of course, Homura never had to look at clocks at all. It was an ability that had developed right around when she made the contract with Kyuubey, though she avoided telling other puella magi about it, since as far as they knew her wish had had nothing to do with time. But that was beside the point.
Grabbing a bathrobe and a change of underwear, Homura trudged through the cramped university flat to the shower. Her reflection in the mirror was harried; even with its cropped, face-framing style, her dark hair had managed to get tangled and unruly. The backbreaking schedule of pre-med plus demon patrols didn't leave time for much else.
Certainly not time for a girlfriend, she thought with some regret, stepping under the stream of water and running her hands over her toned body.
There was a time when the thought would have scandalized her. She had just dropped out of a battle with red ribbons in her hand and dueling sets of memories in her head, one twice as long as the other and dominated by a face she thought would be burned on her mind forever. Now that half of her life felt like a long nightmare, and she didn't feel guilty about looking at other women on the street, even if she hadn't managed to invite any of them home.
Still, it was easy enough to summon up Madoka's face as Homura slipped a hand between her legs. Easy to age her up, slimming down the curves of her cheeks and filling out the ones on her body, and to cradle that vision of a young woman in her mind...
Something warm and wet slid against Homura's chest, almost indistiguishable from the hot spray except that it was on the underside of her breast.
Homura let her eyes fall closed. "Madoka...please...."
The sensation traveled up her skin, lingering on her nipple, mapping the way she curved. Homura swallowed, shivered, worked her fingers in slow circles until her whole body was so sensitive that even the faintest touch sparked like fire.
When she was pulsing with the heat of it, two fingers not her own pushed inside her.
"That's right," panted Homura. "Right there. How do you know...exactly where...have you been spying on me?" She groaned as a phantom tongue flicked against her ear. "I see how it is. The immortal guardian of puella magi is a common voyeur."
The fingers within her thrust and twisted. She could feel her inner walls clenching in answer, even around something that wasn't, strictly speaking, there.
"Do you watch me a lot?" she demanded, stepping up her own strokes. "How long have you wanted to touch me like this?" With her free hand she clutched the door handle for support as her knees began to weaken. "Do you have any idea...all the things I'm planning...to do to you? Madoka—!"
Homura had been up close to a lot of explosions in her lifetime. This one had them all beat.
The extra physical sensations faded as she rode out the orgasm, until there was nothing left to do but open her eyes on the empty stall. Homura leaned back against the tiles, water pouring down her stomach, a satisfied smile curving her mouth.
"I love you," she said out loud. "So much."
A butterfly-wing brush against her lips assured her that the feeling was mutual.