Madoka

Madoka Kaname stood undaunted against the vast empty stretches of desert before her. She tipped her sombrero and chuckled. “Looks like I’m in a bit of a pickle here, aren’t I?” No-one was around to hear her, but she pretended she wasn’t alone anyway. “Guess I’ll have to get back home on my own, then!”

As Sheriff of Mexico, Madoka had been well acquainted with the desert. It was something of a friend that she met often, had tea with, and talked to about her problems. It wasn’t coarse and irritating and it didn’t get everywhere like SOME people would say. The only bad thing about sand was…. that there was so much of it. And it went on for miles (kilometers, actually, but since the author was American it became miles). And it made it hard to figure out where you where. Nearly impossible in fact. Meaning, Madoka had no idea where she was. She also didn’t know what day it was, either. She really hoped she had only been knocked out for a couple minutes and not several days...

She decided to walk east. She may or may not have been far in the west from her home, but she decided that would be the best bet, anyway. If she was wong, she’d just end up seeing the Caribbean Sea eventually, which wasn’t the worst thing in the world The worst thing in the world would be dying out here in the desert. Well, no, the worst thing in the world would be turning into a witch in the middle of the desert.

Though… Could magical girls even still turn into witches? It had been over five years since the events of “My Big Fat Madoka Wedding”, wherein Homura turned out to be a transformation of Kyubey tasked with manipulating everyone to turn into witches themselves, but ever since Madoka and Kyoko defeated all the Kyubeys at the wedding, there hadn’t been a single witch to fight. Maybe no more Kyubey also meant that everyone’s soul gems were forever unbound to the laws of conservation of energy?

But enough of this talk that was actually exposition in disguise. Madoka only wanted to think about the future. A future that included catching that dastardly villain El Guante. It was his fault she was stranded out in the middle of somewhere, and it was now her ultimate goal to catch and imprison him-- for great justice! Madoka almost actually captured him, you know. But when she snuck aboard his private jet and attacked him, she kind of… accidentally… fell out. Though she was fairly certain he did too; he was probably somewhere in the general vicinity and was looking for a place to hide out as well. Wait-- crap. She was doing exposition again. “Sorry, reader!”

Fairly soon, she stumbled upon a small town. Madoka was relieved at first to see that she was in a place where she could sit and rest for a little while, but that relief quickly turned to shock when she realized-- this was the town where she met Sheriff Flint, all those (five) years ago, and became Sheriff of Mexico once he was killed! Luckily, she knew how to get home from here. Unluckily, it was quite a while away.

“Wow, this place brings back memories,” she said, once again to herself.

“Yeah, it sure does,” a deep voice answered.

“Aaah!” Madoka shrieked as she turned around to see none other than-- Sheriff Flint! Except he was really pale and translucent. “Oh, hey Former Sheriff Flint. You’re a ghost, right?”

“Yeah. Been haunting this town for the past few years. It’s been fun, but a little quiet.”

“Mexico is a big place, but it’s pretty quiet when you get outside of the cities.”

“I thought you were a magical girl from Japan,” Former Sheriff Flint said. “How come you’re still here?

“Well, through a series of mishaps and hijinks, I ended up marrying Kyoko Sakura, that girl who owns the fort a few miles north. I’ve been here ever since; it’s a busy and dangerous job, being Sheriff of Mexico, you know!”

“I do know,” he said. “I got killed doing my job.”

“Yeah. That was really sad.”

“Meh. What brings you out here, anyway?”

“I got… lost trying to catch El Guante. He’s a villainous character.”

“Ah, I remember him. The one who dresses up like Santa Anna?”

“Yes.” Madoka rolled her eyes at the absolute flamboyance of these Mexican supervillains she always had to face. Last month, she had to face off against the leader of an Otherkin Independence Coalition, and you would be absolutely right if the first picture in your head was of a guy in a giant Speedy Gonzales fursuit. It’s almost as if the Mexico she lived in wasn’t really Mexico, but instead simply a caricature of Mexico made by an author who has extremely limited knowledge of Mexico and still does not know why all her stories are set in the nation.

“Hmmm…” Flint rubbed his ghostly chin. “I thought I had defeated him for good long before you showed up. I even severed his hands so he could no longer swordfight, nor could he wear ten prototyping rings and go around to each Sburb session and kill all the players.”

Ignoring what she assumed was a Homestuck reference, but was actually a reference to something different, Madoka looked at him and shook her head slowly. “He got better. He doesn’t have gloves anymore, which completely invalidates his name, but…”

“But?”

“He has machine guns attached to his forearms.”

“What.”

“I’m not joking.”

Former Sheriff Flint floated around a bit. “Do you need my help to catch him?”

“Well, If I can find him I think I can take him myself….”

“...But finding him is the hard part.”

Madoka shrugged. “I guess. I know he’s in the general vicinity, since we both fell out of an airplane at the same time; it’s just that the general vicinity is a giant desert.” Madoka noticed people in the town giving her and Former Sheriff Flint strange looks. She realized that speaking to a ghost in the town square in the middle of the day was probably going to lead to unwanted attention, so she started walking back out to the desert. “Uh… Come on with me if you want to help.”

“It’ll be more fun than scaring the same thirty people every night,” he said.

And so they went.