*Evening, Wednesday, 16th of March 2011, Residential District, Mitakihara, Japan.*

The air shivered and space twisted as Magical Girl’s surroundings transformed under the power of Witch’s Labyrinth. Gone was the hall of the unfinished highrise building, gone were its darkened hallways and the walls of concrete, now the world was the surreal theatre of dancing paper puppets devoid of any rhyme or reason, two-dimensional butterfly circled around while puffs of white smoke with mustaches jumped around in scenery folding like the cheap yet colorful cardboard set pieces.

Mami wasn’t afraid. She knew what she had to do. It was the job of the Magical Girl to fight Witches after all, and it wasn’t the first time she found herself inside of such magical scenery, and it wouldn’t be the last, she thought. She let the power of the transformation flow through her, and she smiled confidently even though there wasn’t the audience that would witness the fight. Her duty was a lonely one, but she devoted herself to her mission.

Ribbons she conjured formed into the ornate muskets. She grabbed her weapons and fired them at the closest Familiar, then discarded them only to form the new one from the thin air, blasting the Witch’s puppets one after another. They tumbled backward, collapsing like knocked-out targets on the shooting range, only for new ones to rise where the last one fell. They came from the front, from the flanks, and from behind as well.

Mami turned and fired, then turned and fired again, downing more and more enemies. Finally, the massive shape of the Witch rose to provide a target to focus the assault on. She conjured more muskets into existence, and the barrage of the magical projectiles was like the shower of falling stars, triggering the series of flashing explosions on impact. And then, the world faded away, and the twisted, the bizarre landscape of the Witch’s Labyrinth with all its pastel colors was gone.

Magical Girl stood alone in the dusty hall of the construction site, with its dull grey concrete and rusty metal scaffolding, dimly illuminated as the only source of light was by the city neons outside. A Grief Seed, a proof of the Witch’s demise and the tangible prize in this fight, was nowhere to be seen.

“Damn, it got away.” Mami cursed under her breath. It was rare for Magical Girl’s enemies to escape, but it wasn’t entirely unheard of and would generally be a sign of bad luck. Blonde made a few steps forward, towards the floor’s edge where only the improvised wooden balusters prevented people from falling to their death. Normally, a railing of steel and window glass panels would be there, but considering the state construction site was in, that stage was far away.

The blonde girl looked at the skyline of the city and its blinking neon lights, as well as the oily clouds above, promising a starless, moonless night. Heavens rumbled as an unmistakable sign of some distant storm, with flashes somewhere on the horizon, and the air was heavy before the rain. And the stench of sulfur too, strangely enough. There weren’t any chemical plants near the city that would explain them. There was a fire in the city, and she could hear the sirens, offering an explanation that chemicals may have caught fire, but the smell was there before it broke out, making it doubly strange. It was there for days too, a soft scent that came from nowhere and persisted almost like some foul sign or malignant hex.

Then there was this sensation which was beyond the light and shadows, beyond the strange smell coming from nowhere, this foreboding notion that crept into Magical Girl that she found very unsettling yet couldn’t properly place, something that followed her as long as this accursed weather plagued the city, for the past two days. She even had asked Kyubey about it, but her patron spoke only about an anomaly. Perhaps it was a mystery for everyone, the blonde thought.

One way or another, there was no sign of the Witch she wanted to hunt, and the worsening weather along with the poor illumination, added further by the electrical outage at that part of the city.

Mami shrugged and headed home for the night. For a Magical Girl, jumping between rooftops was a fast and uneventful journey, albeit unpleasant and even slightly dangerous due to poor visibility. Even if the fall wouldn’t kill her, or wouldn’t do so easily as it would hurt a mundane human, it would be at the very least unpleasant, and Mami gravely missed the nights where the moon was shining on her every step.

She was positively tired when she reached the roof of the apartment building she lived in. It was more mental exhaustion than anything close to physical, but this barely describable sense of wrongness was slowly getting to her.

Luckily for her, the landlord almost never locked the doors to the roof. Slipping in and out was extremely convenient since her apartment was on the uppermost floor. She let her Magical Girl form go, and in her civilian clothing, walked downstairs.

The air draught welcomed her the moment she opened the doors, and Mami was certain she did let the balcony door close when she left earlier today. That was the reason why she used the roof entrance in the first place.

And since she was living alone since her parents died, no one was there to open the said door. She paused for a short moment.

Mami didn’t have to wait for an answer for too long as the voice of Kyouko welcomed her almost immediately.

“Hello, Mami. I brought you some apples…” Voice said.

“I told you to go to hell.” Mami retorted. She was done with Kyouko. The redhead was too selfish, too brash. She annoyed her, and even though she wouldn’t be against mending their friendship eventually, it was still too soon for such a re-approach. And her breaking into Mami’s apartment wasn’t exactly the best way to do it either.

“I have already been to hell. He doesn’t want you to die, but I can’t just let you accept his offer to get out of this.” Kyouko sighed in the reply from somewhere inside of the apartment. It was a strange way to talk, but Magical Girl mostly focused on the fact she would either yell at the redhead about the break-in or struggle to stay composed throughout the conversation she wasn’t ready to have yet.

Mami flipped the light switch and walked into the kitchen. There was a bag of apples lying on the table, two of them bitten off and unfinished. And three torn packages originally contained raw fish or meat, empty. Her fellow Magical Girl was nowhere to be seen. It was all strange at the very least, while Kyouko would certainly steal the food, and wasn’t above breaking and entering either - it was the reason why the two girls had the argument after all - but she wouldn’t eat the raw meat, it flashed through Mami’s mind. And she wouldn’t waste the apples, considering how obsessed she was about not wasting any food. Then Mami turned.

What waited for her in the doorway to the bedroom wasn’t Kyouko. A silhouette with large wings, and yellow, reptilian eyes gleaming in the darkness, which couldn’t belong to anyone she knew, let alone a human.

Mami was an experienced Magical Girl and reached for her Soul Gem, a source of her power, but even she wasn’t prepared to deal with a sudden ambush in close quarters of her flat. After all, Witch would have a Labyrinth Mami would run into before the apparition itself appeared. But it wasn’t the case here. An attacker quickly advanced forward and slammed the poor blonde against the wall, knocking Mami’s Soul Gem out of her hand and grabbing her by the neck

“You must listen to me!” Kyouko insisted. Or rather, a monster wearing her former friend’s face, with glowing amber eyes of the snake, large horns on her head, patches of red scales creeping all over her skin. Her large leathery wings almost reached the ceiling, and the inhuman hands were practically covered with scales, with claws that dug into Mami's skin.

“You must knock it out, the Witch is going to kill you.” Monster said, in Kyouko’s voice, but Mami was currently busy struggling against talons that could rip her throat open, and she would probably perish if the creature didn’t suddenly decide to let her go.

Mami fell to the ground. She didn’t bleed and didn’t feel all that much pain, but it didn’t make her situation feel any better, as nothing worked actively against her shock. It reminded Mami that Magical Girls were victims of their emotions the same way as mundane people, and the situation she found herself in actively worked against what she had experienced before. Witches were surreal specters that mostly resembled the strange puppets painted in wild colors moving with the unseen magic, their Labyrinths were dreamworlds looked through a kaleidoscope.

But the monster wearing Kyouko’s face wasn’t this surreal, and as much as its existence defied the laws of nature, it lived. It wasn’t a marionette, and it wasn’t a costume either. The monster had a lizard-like tail that lashed nervously in a lifelike manner, digitigrade legs with grasping talons that wouldn’t fit the normal human feet, and many other signs it was a living being.

“Who are you? What are you?” Mami finally managed to ask.

“You don’t remember me?” It replied, a tone of voice suggesting confusion, but it quickly brushed it over and added, “It doesn’t matter.”

The monster reached for the Soul Gem, which Mami saw as the opportunity to fight back, but ‘Kyouko’ was faster and slammed the poor girl against the wall once more with ease.

“I’ll have to teach you a lesson,” Kyouko said in a fashion that indeed reminded her former friend, the Magical Girl, and continued, “If Gem is crushed, you die. If it's separated from you, you die. Witches can kill you. It’s not a game.”

With that said, Mami almost expected the monster girl to crush her Soul Gem, but she simply tossed it back to the Magical Girl in an almost dismissive manner, almost like she wanted to say how pathetic the blonde girl is. Then ‘Kyouko’ produced the Grief Seed she hid in some compartment in her red dress and threw that one at Mami too.

Magical Girl grabbed her Soul Gem and briefly considered her options. Her opponent was faster and stronger, and could probably act against her quickly should she decide to act. She desperately looked for the weakness she could exploit in the enemy, the way out of this precarious situation - ‘Kyouko’ didn’t have the Gem where it manifested on her real, albeit a past, friend, but wore jewelry in the form of bracelets where it may hide. A vulnerability she looked for - it would be the other girl’s Soul Gem.

Mami and the monster girl looked at each other in silence, for a few tense seconds that might as well be an eternity.

“So here you are…” Another voice sounded somewhere from behind ‘Kyouko’.

It was the moment - now or never, Mami thought. She let her power out. Her costume formed. Magical ribbons sprouted from the floor, tying her opponent down. Muskets were conjured and fired. A direct hit, impact shattering the precious stones in Kyouko’s twin, a perceived weak point Magical Girl world has in her gem.

Form another weapon, then shoot again, quickly. Mami thought for herself, conjured a new pair of muskets, and trained at the enemy. Shots rang once more. But the blast of energy erupted somewhere from behind the fake Kyuko and hit Mami like a tidal wave, slamming her mercilessly against the wall so strongly that her vision went black, then another impact struck her even, and another, with an audible crack. Mami had to wonder, was it her who broke, or the concrete of the wall she hit. There was pain. The pain she didn’t feel for such a long time. Suddenly, it was almost like she was back in that car crash and she was dying once more.

She heard Kyouko’s voice, angry, arguing about something, then another voice, also female, but her vision was still too blurry to make up the shapes, and sounds blended into the single cacophony of noises. Her mind was slipping back to the past, to the moment where her parents died, to the moment where she made a contract, dying in the wreckage. She felt her end coming nearer, something she never thought about since that fateful moment when she had taken the offer of the Incubator.

Suddenly, she felt this strange, tingling sensation over her entire body and her senses were slowly returning to her.

“See. She is fine.” Mami heard the other voice saying and her sight slowly fixed itself on the face of the girl leaning above her. Her weary mind struggled, almost like some invisible power kept it down. She focused and could recognize a vaguely familiar face, a girl with olive hair she knew from school, from lower grade she didn’t really know the name of, but probably passed along in the hallways for a dozen times.

But then she noticed the horns, yellow serpentine eyes gleaming with eldritch powers, pointy ears, and the grin of the sharp teeth that didn’t belong to the human - another monster wearing someone else’s face. Mami tried to scrabble back on her feet but was pushed down momentarily. She could take a look at that second girl, a new opponent, a new threat. The face may be one of some junior schoolmates, but the rest was more demonic than human. She had cloven hooves instead of human legs, spaded tail twirling in anticipation, and large leathery wings.

Once again, too lifelike, too alien, neither a Witch nor a Magical Girl. Strange beings that came from nowhere, that doesn’t fit the worldview as it was presented to her by Kyubey, with their own powers that could easily kill her, creatures wearing other people’s faces, with motives she couldn’t comprehend. Mami was lost.

“We should take her to Lord Zarak.” Demon girl suggested. The name didn’t sound like anything to her, and the situation was also quite eerie to her as well. She lost her Soul Gem once again, this time the other monster had it, leaving her once more at their cruel mercy.

“No!” Kyouko’s evil twin said, obviously unharmed from the attack. Perhaps they don’t have Soul Gems, she thought. Assuming that the fake Kyouko would have Soul Gem seemed foolish in hindsight as she stood there, unharmed, although visibly annoyed. As Mami wondered about her mistakes, still struggling with invisible powers gripping her, the redhead continued: “I can’t do that. I can’t let her take the pact too! I had so little choice!”

“It’s her choice.” Stranger said. Mami tried to push herself up, but her body felt strangely weakened in the way she never experienced, making each movement a struggle, with sudden vertigo trying to force her down when she finally forced herself up to her feet

“He said he doesn’t want her to die. And we can’t protect her here.” The other argued.

And they may have argued for a while if a distraction didn’t come, a voice echoing through Mami’s - and perhaps everyone else’s - head, a voice of Kyubey.

“Unknown entities.” Kyubey pronounced calmly, not showing any care for Mami, instead of asking the two monster girls: “I assume you are the reason for the persisting anomaly lingering in this area. What is your goal here?”

“Unknown entity?” Fake Kyouko growled, sounding somewhat agitated.

“So this is Incubator?” The other, demonic-looking one, wondered, albeit she sounded a bit unimpressed, “He is smaller than I thought.”

"Kyubey... they...", Mami whispered and tried to make a step towards the Incubator, to warn him about the danger, or perhaps plead for help instead; she didn’t know, but she felt she had to do something. But the monster girl stopped her.

“Yes”, Incubator confirmed, showing no interest in what was happening to Mami, and continued to query the monsters: “We never encountered your kind before. It is obvious you don’t originate from this planet. What is your interest here?”

Kyubey positioned himself on the table, and stared, paying no attention to the poor Magical Girl.

“I am Kyouko Sakura.” Fake Kyouko growled, and then asked in an accusatory tone: “You don’t even remember me?”

“I noticed a few visually superficial similarities, but anatomical differences are drastically different from human species, including metaphysical aspects of your soul.” Kyubey dismissed the claim, albeit, with no obvious change in the manner of his speech, it was stoic as it always was before he added: “I am certain that Kyouko Sakura is in Kazamino City at this moment. You are not Kyouko Sakura. I don’t understand the reason for the deceit.”

Kyouko's twin was clearly upset, even more so than before Impulsivity was in line with Mami’s former friend, even though the redhead didn’t breathe fire when she was angry, while the twisted monstrous version almost released a spark of sickly blue flame where she spits out: “Deceit? Deceit?!”

Mami tried to object, or at least say something, even if that would be a cry for help, but she could barely stand, and when she accidentally looked into the shimmering eyes of the demon-like girl that briefly looked at the struggling blonde…

...she suddenly wanted to keep silent. There was no need to say anything, after all. Her friends would handle this evil Incubator, she just needed to be the obedient girl…

...no, Mami struggled against the assault on her mind. Monsters weren’t her friends. They attacked her. Those treacherous thoughts weren’t hers, she repeated to herself. She had to resist.

“And you don’t lie to girls when they take their contract? They end up transforming into Witches, their wishes twisted for nothing.” Monster Kyouko growled.

“We mean them no harm. It’s not our fault they can’t foresee the obvious shortcomings.” Kyubey replied, calm and unattached. He didn’t care. He saw what they were doing to Mami, and did nothing, and Magical Girl couldn’t feel anything that betrayed - and still, there was this strange power, this hex, weighing her thoughts down and she quickly realized she didn’t know if her thoughts were really hers.

“Why are you concerned about it?” Kyubey queried, completely uncaring about the crisis Mami was experiencing at that very moment, “We can’t be entirely sure if the process can be replicated on your species, while you clearly experience the emotion we can’t understand, you are far too divergent from humans. Again, what are your intentions on this planet?”

"We have nothing to say." The demon-like girl stated calmly, almost like she tried to be diplomatic. It felt strange. “We are not negotiators.”

She was only one calm though, Kyouko’s doppelganger was fuming with barely contained rage, and Mami would scream if this unseen hex wasn’t putting her down. Incubator kept staring.

“I see,” Kyubey stated, unphased, uncaring. Mami felt betrayed.

However, this seems to be enough for ‘Kyouko’ as she suddenly darted forward and grabbed the Incubator, snapping the neck of the white critter with the twist of her clawed fingers like it was a twig, then tearing him apart like the toy with her talons, and then, almost as there was no end to her rage, slamming the remains on the ground only to set them ablaze with a breath of sickly blue flames. The disgusting smell assaulted her senses, the same as the horrific imagery did.

Mami stared, with the eyes widened at the sheer brutality it witnessed, unable to react.

“I think it would be better if we take the Magical Girl to Lord Zarak.” The demon girl suggested again. Mami was too shocked, the violent demise of Kyubey playing before her eyes, again and again, was barely able to follow the conversation in between two monster girls. Mami felt lost, powerless, the unseen powers mixed into the deadly cocktail with the witnessed trauma, leaving her paralyzed. Magical Girl looked around almost mindlessly and she met a wrong pair of yellow eyes again. For a brief moment, she forgot why she was upset, her mind wandered off to places she didn’t want to go.

“No!” Monstrous Kyouko’s twin opposed, “I can handle a Witch. Or two.”

“He specifically warned us about the patrons, the Incubators. They know we are here, obviously.” The other monster argued, “Take her home, and I will find Sayaka.”

Words brought Mami back to reality and left her confused. Kyouko’s fiendish twin seemed like she was considering something, a mind working against this inhuman rage Mami couldn’t comprehend. Then, without further words, she grabbed Mami, and the blonde Magical Girl briefly thought that it would be her end here. She would die, torn and burned. But instead of attacking, Kyouko’s evil twin just fished out a ring on the silvery chain with her other hand and blew air through it.

Space twisted, almost like the air was water disappearing into the bathtub’s drain, and the split-second after there was a vortex of swirling and crackling magical energies in the middle of the room. It smelled like the darkening skies, like ozone, like sulfur, like the scorching fire. It smelled like Mami’s inevitable doom.

“I didn’t want to do this. But you are not giving me any choice.” Kyouko sighed but then threw the helpless Magical Girl right into the portal. A sensation that Mami couldn’t even begin to describe assaulted her for a brief moment before everything went black.