She took a walk in the park not too far away from the fort, a place where she could collect her thoughts and sit on park benches watching the sky. When she and Kyoko were younger, they used to come out here all the time to lay in the grass and watch the stars for a while, and usually make out too.

Kyoko already turned thirty earlier this year, but she sure didn’t seem to have any major existential crisis along with it. Why was Madoka going through the same thing? If she had just read the previous story arc where Kyoko reflected on how much her life had changed since the events of “Madoka in Mexico” she would have realized how similar their lines of thought had become, but since Madoka was not omniscient like me, she was only able to sit in wondered amazement at the fact that she was now twice the age she once was, having spent a majority of her life in Mexico at this point. She might even have to add Mexican to her identity. She was... Japanese-Mexican. Not just Japanese. That was so uncanny and strange.

“Oh, what am I going to do in my life, sky?” she asked the sky.

“Don’t ask me that,” the sky replied.

Oh, how her life had declined...

Or ascended, maybe...?

Agh, it didn’t matter! Madoka was old and weird now! Her hair was probably going to start thinning and she’d have to start dyeing it pink because it was going to start going gray in a few places, but she bet that since Mexicans were a reasonable society with normal human genes they didn’t even SELL pink hair dye around these parts. She’d have to special order it from Japan and pay all the extra shipping costs and that’d basically be like a really small, really annoying Mystery Box Subscription for the family every month, except that it would just be hair dye and not really a mystery, and she would rarely ever get a free t-shirt that she never wanted to wear. To add to this, it was very clear that Madoka was burned by her service history with Blue Apron and would not recommend them to anyone.

What was her purpose in life though, really? She’d already gotten married and had a kid with another on the way. Was it just motherhood, at this point? Did she need to live a surrogate life through her children and also protect the Caribbean region from Furries and stuff? Was her own life, her own character arc complete? Was she... a minor character now???? Even if her name was in the title????

Okay, gotta admit now that Homura was always the protagonist of the Madoka animes, not Madoka. Of course all that The Rebellion crap ended up being completely non-canon to the true timeline (the Madoka in Mexico timeline) but Madoka knew to call it when she saw it, and she really was a secondary character in her own story as far as the source material went.

They had saved Homura from that other universe, even if she was a brooding teenager who called herself Neoakemi and had weird Cybernet powers and pretty much abandoned the Magical Girl Squad as soon as that whole Neo-Diablo business was finished. Was... SHE the main character, then? Or was Kyoko the main character since she had the highest percentage of POV chapters? Or, did. In “Kuttsukiboshi x Madoka Magica” she didn’t have any POV chapters at all, so it probably balanced out more in favor towards Madoka, honestly.

Was she the main character of her own story, was her big question. This may have been the very thing that other popular series main characters with more popular side characters always asked. She bet Amuro was really jealous when Char got a car commercial, or when Duck Dodgers became the best Looney Tunes show of all-time and didn’t feature Bugs even once. Madoka was like Michaiah from Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn , and Kyoko was like Sothe, who was just way cooler and more popular in every way and also not a total Mary Sue like she was.

Madoka’s crisis had gone too far past the fourth wall at this point, so it was time to introduce some conflict into this story so that it didn’t feel like TOO much of a complete waste of time to read it.

Suddenly, a villain appeared in front of Madoka, ready to strike. He was a dark purple, with a long, lashing tongue and eyes like white fire. His grin was massive and filled with digital computer graphics that cost way too much to justify the budget.

“Holy... crap!!!!” Madoka shouted. “It’s Venom, from the Spider-Man series!”

“Mwahahahaha! You’re correct!” Venom, from the Spider-Man series, cackled. “We’ve come from afar for one singular purpose, to destroy you, Madoka Kaname!”

“Wait, what? Why? What did I ever do to you?”

“You insulted our very being! You ruined our lives! You cast us into oblivion, reached in to get us out, and then pulled out your hand just before we could latch on!”

“...Eh?”

“You left a bad review on Spider-Man 3 on Rotten Tomatoes back in 2008!”

“I was like, ten years old then or something!” Madoka tried to add up the time and her mind started boggling again. “Actually, I’m really confused about the timeline here and what year Madoka in Mexico is actually supposed to take place because I was fourteen then, and I’m thirty now, so it’s been a little under sixteen years since then and.... uhh..... Yeah, I have no idea what year it currently is supposed to be. Let’s just go with 2018 and say that Madoka in Mexico took place in... 2002? What? But wait, Mitakihara City was pretty advanced and had a lot of high-tech infrastructure and our middle school was really fancy in a way that a high school would never have been even in the year 2011 when the anime came out, so surely it took place in the near future, except that there was a calendar shown in the series itself which suggested that the story took place in April 2011, or any year corresponding with 2011, so it would be something like, 2022, 2033, probably not 2039 because that was just a little too far, but... this whole thing about leaving a review for Spider-Man 3 would be useless if I was just a zygote and egg cell at that point.”

“Agh! Just shut up!” Venom, from the Spider-Man series, shouted. “We were just hired to be your special villain for today so you could be happy in defeating an easy boss for your birthday! Geez!”

“Wait, really? You’re not ACTUALLY here to kill me for writing a bad review?” Madoka asked.

“Yeah. But not anymore. This ain’t worth it. Tell your wife I said see you at Thanksgiving.” Venom, from the Spider-Man series, left as quickly as he came, leaving behind only a notecard advertising his new movie releasing on October 5th. It’s called Venom, and it’s being produced by Amy Pascal and Avi Arad, two of Sony’s highest-ranking producers.

Kyoko would do this all just for... her? Awwwwwwww....

Madoka, suddenly cured of her existential crisis mode, ran back to the fort and... realized how tired she still was from all the fighting she did yesterday... and then walked the rest of the way.

As expected, Kyoko and Makoto were looking out the window trying to see the park with binoculars. Madoka caught them in a surprise behind hug because they didn’t seem to realize that Madoka had already left the park. “Guys!!!! Dudes!!!! I love you!!!!!”

The three girls all giggled and laughed and had a jolly good time. “Thank you so much for hiring such a badass, toyetic, marketable villain for me to fight! It was the best birthday present ever!!!”

“Aw, it wasn’t nearly as good as the life-sized cake of myself you got me for my twenty-fourth,” Kyoko said.

“I liked the Bratz doll pallet you got from a wholesaler last year,” Makoto said. “I like Bratz dolls so much even if my friends at school say they look like nightmare creatures.”

The Kaname Household was caught in a warm and tight embrace. Even if Madoka felt like the sands of time were slipping away and she would soon be caught in middle age before she even knew it, she had no doubt that these were the two girls she wanted to spend that middle age with. Also the fourth child that was still in the womb but let’s wait and see if she wasn’t some devil in disguise or something first.

This was the best thirtieth birthday ever.