"A dear friend of mine has been abducted."

"If they dare lay a finger on her, I will use every means at my disposal to eliminate them."

To Aru Mahou Shoujotachi no Monogatari

The Sixth Spell – Akemi Homura III

"Allow me to summarize the salient points of your long, rambling exposition, if you will," Homura said, in between slow and measured bites of the potatoes of her curry rice and potato dish. In direct contrast with her slow pace, just across the old wooden table the two girls were dining on, the foreign nun named after the Index of Forbidden Books continued gobbling down dish after dish at an alarming rate. Whereas Homura had barely finished the rice portion and was slowly chipping at the beef and potatoes, the Index girl had already managed to devour a dozen whole dishes, with no signs of being satisfied or even slowing down. Just where the food went inside that tiny body of hers was yet another of the growing list of mysteries facing Homura.

"Go ahead," Index said after quickly wiping her mouth.

"Currently, there is a war between a 'magic side', as represented by a secret occultic arm of the Christian religion and a 'science side', as headed by this Academy City that we are in now. Due to a treaty, this war was primarily a cold war, hidden underneath shadows, until the recent onset of World War III, which ended only a week ago. One of the main branches of the magic world is your church, the… Necessary… Necessario…" Before she realized it, Homura found herself stumbling over the unfamiliar term.

"Necessarius," Index supplied. "The Church of Necessary Evil, the 0th Parish of the Anglican Church."

"I see," Homura said quickly and evenly in response. "As far as the magic side is concerned, 'magic' is the ability to achieve supernatural effects by processing one's own life force into mana, and then by subsequently using that mana according to a set of precepts and theorems entirely unrelated to what we know as physical laws. This system was created so that people without innate supernatural ability or talent could reach the level of the talented."

Index nodded again. Homura noticed that her eyes were wandering to the stall selling the curry dishes. If Index was allowed to leave the table, Homura feared on some gut level, she would lose the girl's attention span to her insatiable hunger. She thus thumped loudly on the table to reclaim Index's attention before the nun could begin to make a run for Dish #13.

"This process stands opposed to Academy City's 'scientific' ESP development curriculum which uses a top-secret methodology of drugs and hypnosis, among other things, to alter its students' brains in such a way to allow those brains to produce psychic powers. These methods are incompatible with each other, to the point that espers who try to use magic suffer severe and potentially fatal bodily rejection backlashes. On the other side of the issue, magicians who do not either have strong wills or take measures beforehand feel distinctly uncomfortable around espers when in the middle of performing their magic."

"According to the treaty preserving the balance between magic and science," Index volunteered, "I'm not allowed to observe the actual processes used in the ESP development program."

"Continuing on," Homura said, her patience wearing thin as the conversation continued, "the organization at the forefront of the 'magic side' in opposition to Academy City is the Roman Catholic Church, which somehow retains enough of its power and prestige even in the modern age to manipulate such First World nations as Russia, France, and Italy into declaring an all-out war on a sovereign city-state within secular Japan with a total area of only one-third the size of Tokyo."

Index frowned up at her. "Well, actually, Russia's magic side is Eastern Orthodox, not Catholic. World War III was brought on by the alliance between the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches. But go on." Homura took a deep breath. From this point onward, it was going to take a supreme effort of will to not let her incredulity show on her face. As it was, it took a surprising amount of willpower on Homura's part to avoid rolling her eyes.

"Furthermore, despite the massive personnel, land, and resource disadvantage such a war would entail, and despite the influences exerted on it via the international community by the two largest denominations of the largest religion in the world, Academy City managed to not only fight Russia to a standstill, but also emerge victorious."

Index nodded vigorously. The childishly self-satisfied look on the nun's face, reminding Homura of the smug self-confident look a certain someone had on her face just before she did something damnably stupid, could do naught but exacerbate Homura's unease and anxiety. She could deal with Index's verbose and slightly condescending manner of lecturing, but what she was far less well-equipped to handle was the implication that there were other methods, other paths, to attaining supernatural power – ones that did not involve little girls selling their souls, emotions, and bodies into the service of inscrutable alien beings. Within Index's lecture on the history and systems of magic, Homura felt, was the reason why she felt an instinctive loathing of this city, one that informed every step she had taken within it since the beginning of her infiltration two nights ago.

All of the pain… the agony… the suffering… and for what?

Put simply, the mere existence of Academy City, of the churches, and of the ESP development program made light of all of the actions that Akemi Homura had taken up until this point. If the nun was to be believed, this city had forged a path to supernatural power via a purely technical process, one that made no mention of, and seemingly made no allowances for, the machinations of inscrutable alien intelligences preying upon the emotions of human girls for their purposes.

A chill ran down Homura's spine, one entirely unrelated to the steadily declining temperature of the November autumn night.

"And you," Homura said, addressing the girl who was stealing glances at the outdoor food stall where the two had purchased their dinner. "You are one of Necessarius' ultimate trump cards: someone who has read and perfectly memorized all of the 103,000 books of the Index of Forbidden Books; hence that unwieldy name of yours. And among these works inside your head are more than mere written disagreements with church wisdom; they are actual tomes and grimoires that possess an active, intelligent drive to pass on their knowledge and can potentially corrupt and poison the souls of those who attempt to gain access to the magic therein. By your own admission, you've involved yourself in this matter on your own accord because you wish to uphold the balance between magic and science as outlined by the treaty."

Index nodded again, though much more slowly and much less vigorously than before. The smile from earlier had faded from the nun's face, and her eyes veered off into the distance, past even the food stalls that had previously commanded her attention. Clearly, there was more to her hand in the matter than being bound by the dictates of some treaty. At some level, this girl called Index was emotionally invested in the outcome of Homura's search for her abducted friend. Homura would need to confront her sooner or later and discover what the other girl was truly after, but now was not the time. Confronting her so soon without gaining her trust would merely prove counterproductive, especially during this critical briefing of the rules of this new game board.

"This treaty was supposed to prevent magic and science from coming to blows, was it not?" Kyuubey, who was up until this point silently listening in on the conversation from the vantage point of an adjacent table, chimed in. "Then in facilitating an international conflict among powerful nations and in allowing the conflict to escalate into a worldwide stage, it has obviously failed in its purpose. Until the authorities can redraw the lines and reform the treaty, then it would be best to consider such a thing as dead letter, for our purposes."

"Eh... you might have a point there," Index conceded.

"But I must say," continued Kyuubey, much to Homura's growing displeasure. "If both 'magic' and 'science' have demonstrated verifiable paths to attaining power that can be duplicated, honed over time, and taught to posterity, then there should be no need to fight over which path is superior. There is no limit to how interesting humans can be. They draw battle lines and fight each other for incomprehensible reasons."

Homura was inclined to concur, but she found the thought of being on the same wavelength as an Incubator, even on something such as this, to be revolting on a gut level. More than that, however, Homura had pinpointed the reason for her own unease during the exchange.

This was a world utterly different from any she had expected.

She had known from her brief talk with the mysterious foreign Puella Magi, and confirmed with her own senses that there existed a sovereign city-state within Japan. She had battled with police forces with tactics and armaments comparable with elite American squadrons; and soon after that, she had witnessed the reality-defying powers that the schoolchildren of this nation-within-a-nation could bring to bear. But it was not until Index had given her that primer on the history of the occult world and of the conflict with "science" that it truly dawned on her.

She was in another timeline, likely another world. As such, many, if not most, of the old rules did not apply here.

"Does that cover the background info?" Homura asked her.

"More or less," Index answered back. She then indicated the Soul Gem on Homura's left hand by pointing at it with the pronged end of the fork still in her hand. "So that jewel on your hand… what is it exactly? A lich's phylactery? A catalyst used in a Solomonic spirit-binding ritual? A materialization of alchemy using the Stone of the Six Keys of Eudoxus? Or maybe an object based on the old Norse and Russian tales of the deathless man who hid his soul inside an egg?"

"…"

Homura suppressed the urge to wince at the mention of the term "lich" but otherwise hesitated to answer. She knew she should repay Index's good faith by providing some answers of her own, and the previous encounter proved beyond doubt that Index was no stranger to magic. Homura's primary reason for withholding information from her compatriots in times past was because she knew precisely how they would act when presented with the unfiltered truth of the Puella Magi system. Given how this particular girl had been able to touch upon that secret within minutes of being presented with it, this would likely not be the case with her. So why was she still reluctant?

Once again, she found herself staring intently into the other girl's large green eyes.

If she knew what a Puella Magi was, would she still be so eager to unravel the mysteries of the Soul Gem? Would those eyes turn away in revulsion and disgust? Would she still be as willing to go along with her and possibly risk her own life, status, and position within Academy City to follow a stranger down what was likely going to be a lonely, bloody path?

"The Soul Gem is an interesting and useful instrument, is it not?" Kyuubey's voice rang, cutting through Homura's thoughts. Its snow-white form crossed the small gap between the two tables effortlessly and settled right at the geometric midpoint of Homura's and Index's table. "Should you want to experiment with it firsthand, you need only wish it, and I can turn you into a Puella Magi with your own Soul Gem."

Homura gritted her teeth and shot a glare at the little creature. As if sensing what was to come next, the tiny calico kitten abandoned its former position of trawling for scraps at the bottom of the table and leaped to the top. Fur standing on end, it paced the length of the table directly between Index and Kyuubey and kept its eyes trained on the alien creature, as if daring the thing to come any closer to its master on pain of getting mauled. Kyuubey, however, showed no sign of recognizing any of the animosity directed its way.

"None of the female citizens of this Academy City have a shred of magical talent. None, that is, except you alone. Figuratively speaking, you are an oasis of potential springing from a geyser in the midst of a vast, barren desert wasteland. Just agree to the contract, and–"

"That will not be necessary." Homura punctuated the verbal interruption of the Incubator's ill-timed sales pitch by hitting its backside with a half-eaten stick of leek from her plate. "Now then, back to the matter at hand. Based on what I have told you of my situation earlier, what do you think is going on, based on your expertise on this world's magic? Do you have an idea of what these experiments are trying to accomplish?"

Index opened her mouth to speak, but Kyuubey preempted her. "Homura," it said, "I think it's unproductive to start exploring from such a standpoint."

This took Homura by surprise. "What do you mean?"

"I mean to say it's transparently clear what they are trying to gain from the experiments, in at least one sense."

"What do you mean?" an irritated Homura repeated.

Kyuubey answered her question with a question of its own. "Why is it that we created the Puella Magi system in the first place?"

"Harvesting energy from the emotions of humans in order to prevent the heat death of the universe via entropy," Homura recalled. "So what of it?"

"You still don't understand?" Kyuubey asked, the lilting in its voice trying and barely succeeding at simulating exasperation. "How surprising. You are usually more perceptive than this. Then let me refresh your memory. Think back to all of the laboratories we hit on our way to the city and inside. And then think on the common thread linking the 'themes' of the witches and familiars you have battled. Therein you'll find your answer."

Homura thought back. According to Index, the true form of the last witch they fought was a monster, based very loosely off a Christian legend, which turned out to be a refinery that constantly dredged a viscous substance out of the ground. Its familiars were solar panels, black locusts, and propellers. The one before that was a sentient maze that consisted of a system of metal pipes, one reminiscent of those found in a certain popular long-running platform-jumping video game series. The source of its power was a colorless substance that flowed among the pipes and shifted freely between liquid and gaseous forms, making it difficult to lock down and destroy. Its familiars were a pair of giant old-style water wheels that outdid even the espers and police of Academy City in sheer doggedness. Then there were the...

She paused.

Drills. Oil. Lightning. Furnaces. Water wheels. Solar panels. Wind farms. Propellers.

"Energy," Homura muttered, almost under her breath. "They're mining the Soul Gems for energy."

"According to a guidebook I once read," Index supplied, "this School District 10 that we're currently in now houses the majority of Academy City's energy research laboratories."

"There you have it."

"That theory's something to go on, yes, but it's just that – a theory," Homura said. "There are still qualifications to it that can't be ignored."

"Such as?" Index asked.

"For one, witches are highly individualized beings, with personalities that vary as widely as any human's, even considering the circumstances that shaped and spawned them," Homura said. "In all of the time I have devoted to fighting them, I've never heard of a distinct 'theme' that could be applied to an otherwise completely disparate group of witches. But that may be a function of how they're created and handled in this world. There might be a fundamental difference."

"But it's something to go by, isn't it?" Index offered. "If that's the case, then we can crack this case wide open simply by finding out where all of the energy they're collecting is going and what that energy is supposed to accomplish."

"That's my next objection," Homura countered. "The energy given off by the Puella Magi system is an energy source that runs directly counter to the Laws of Thermodynamics."

"Ther-mo-dy-na-mics?"

"'Energy is neither created nor destroyed, but only changed.' That's a fundamental rule of physics. As far as what I understand from your lecture, even your magic system merely converts energy generated by the normal functions of the human mind and body into a usable form instead of creating it from nothing. Beyond even that, we're talking about energy that can affect thermodynamic equations on a potentially cosmic scale. Logically, it should be impossible for human technology to reach a level that allows it to utilize such massive outflows of energy, especially without the Incubators' assistance."

"Those scientists could have stolen the information from us. There were Incubators in those capsules as well as Puella Magi, after all. The possibility cannot be discounted that they tampered with us as well as with you." As it made its counterpoint, Kyuubey paced across the table. "We theorized that it could eventually be possible to create a manmade Soul Gem, but the technology would take estimably hundreds, if not thousands, of years to refine before a usable, stable container was made. But that would necessitate a mindset in which the human soul was accepted as a distinct and separate entity from the human body and mind, something that a nation at war with all non-scientific elements could never come to."

"From what you described, this situation has the fingerprints of both magic and science," Index said. "Experiments like that are exactly what the treaty was supposed to prevent. In that case, Necessarius should be investigating. Perhaps if we can get in contact with them..."

"We will do no such thing," Homura ordered. If the other girl was to be believed, then the mere presences of Homura and Madoka within Academy City were potential matchsticks waiting to set off an already delicate political situation. However ridiculous the story may have sounded, she ill needed to be indebted to a major organization for saving her friend. She also did not want to run the risk of betraying her friend, a goddess, into the hands of a Christian militant organization, no matter how benign their mission statement may have been portrayed. She thus steeled herself for the expected questioning of "Why not?", if not outright objection from the other girl. To her surprise, however, the nun simply nodded her agreement and smiled.

"I think that would be for the best right now," Index said.

"How unexpected. Since you were a member of this particular organization, I thought you would be more amenable to their involvement in this case."

Index finally ceased pecking at her food entirely and stared off into the graffiti-covered building behind Homura, or perhaps at the layer of opaque royal-blue plastic strung along the sides of the buildings between which the food stall they were eating in was ensconced. Her unfocused eyes and shuffling legs told Homura, well before she actually answered, that her answer would be at best a filtered response... or more likely an outright lie.

The relationship between Index and this "Necessarius" organization was clearly more complex – and less pretty – than that of a mere missions dispatch to a foreign land.

"You have your reasons, don't you?" Index finally asked. "In that case, it's best that we try solving this case on our own."

In the end, she opted for a guarded response, without either explaining her motives or asking for the other party's. Don't sniff out my secrets, and I won't sniff out yours, she seemed to want to say. Homura could not decide whether this nun was good at hiding her surface thoughts or was as completely transparent as she seemed to be on the surface.

"Now that I think about it," Index continued on, "there's something about your situation that strikes me as strange." Homura merely stared at her. "Don't you think that the show you saw at the end of your captivity was a little… how do I say this? Contrived?"

"The timing of the appearance of the other magic girl and the one in the mask, right?" Homura asked her.

"Right. If the masked person on the other end of that screen knew beforehand that the other magical girl was coming, they might have known about you as well. You say you don't know how you ended up surviving your captivity and release when the others died?"

"I think I know what you're getting at," Homura responded, "and I don't think it's the case. There's no way they could have predicted that two magical girls who have had no prior association with each other would meet each other at that point in time and would have the same goals of crushing their organization. Not unless–"

"Normally, that wouldn't be the case," Index said. "But that could have been anything. The common ESP ability of precognition on a more focused scale, perhaps? Or even your own magic that allows you to control time? More mundanely, they could have manipulated events so that you were the only one to survive to escape your capture. That 'Elise Bradwell' girl could even be in on it."

"That would mean that their target was not just Madoka, but me as well... but for what purpose? In that case, why would they take such a convoluted route? If I was one of the targets all along, they could have completed their objectives while Madoka and I were in their captivity. The only way I can think otherwise is..." Homura paused and stared at Index.

"That they wanted you here, in Academy City, as well," Index responded. It was good to know if nothing else that the other girl was on the same page as she. Still, it was not a pretty thought. Homura ill relished the notion that she had potentially stepped into a trap from the very outset even as she thought she was grabbing hold of her own destiny.

Mere seconds after this, Homura heard a tinny, three-note chime being broadcast from above. Looking up at the source proved futile, as any viewpoint of the sky was blocked by the blue sheet of plastic above them. Opaque as it was, however, the plastic was not entirely soundproof.

"This is a public service announcement," a nondescript female voice sounded from above, "reminding all students to please observe the curfew times set by your respective learning institutions. The current time is 8:30 PM, with the general curfew of 9:00 PM in effect for all students not currently enrolled in night classes. As for students who are, please relocate to your designated institutions; all others, please return to your designated dormitories. Identification checks will be in effect to ensure compliance with curfew ordinances."

"We should get going," Index said. "Judgment and Anti-Skill will start patrolling the area soon, and if we're caught past the curfew..."

"That will not be an issue," Homura responded, to which Index merely returned a puzzled look. Homura answered that look by pointing to the blue plastic covering that she was staring at earlier. "Do you have any idea of why I chose this place in particular to have this little discussion?"

"Because of its proximity to Academy City's energy research?"

"Something like that. The highest concentrations of hot spots on the map corresponded with this general district, though I was unaware of the specifics of its being the energy research center," Homura admitted. "But there's a more immediate reason. Do you see those plastics covering the buildings?" When Index answered in the affirmative, she continued. "Those things create blind spots in the city's aerial surveillance systems, and very likely by design. It was no coincidence that I encountered the least resistance from the police forces in this area. And that's not all."

To further prove the point, Homura produced from out of her shield a small can of aerosol, which she sprayed in the periphery of Index's general eyesight. Within the slightly smoky mist of the area of spray, the two girls saw several tiny silvery, thin slivers of metal suspended in the sky. Each of these curious devices hovered in the air on a set of two rotating, shimmering structures that reminded one of insect wings, or, more accurately, the wing-like structures of seedlings designed to pollinate via the wind. Index, who had evidently never seen such things before, to say nothing of noticing their existence, reached out to touch them. Before she could, however, Homura dispersed the aerosol with a casual wave of the hand, rendering the shiny winged sheets of metal completely invisible to the naked eye once more.

"What were those?" Index asked her.

"To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what exactly they are or what they're called," Homura said truthfully, "and I'm entirely at a loss to explain how they actually work. However, I do have a very good idea of what they're designed to do because of a very convenient property of theirs. Apparently, they're freestanding electromagnetic disruption devices. The alleyways around here are swarming with them." Upon seeing the quizzical look on Index's face, she continued on. "You have a cellphone, do you not?"

Index nodded slowly and gave a tentative "Yeah…" in answer. On some level, Homura found the inquisitive look on the girl's face mildly endearing.

"Try to call someone."

After one more second of staring at Homura, clearly trying to discern from her expression the point of the exercise without asking outright, she complied, produced the cellphone from one of the sleeves of her outfit, and attempted to turn it on. Unexpectedly for her, yet exactly as expected for Homura, the cellphone would not even turn on. Evidently, the nun had something of a stubborn streak; she gave up on powering the device only after no fewer than five on-off cycles.

"What's with this thing?" she cried out after the fifth attempt ended in failure. Her teeth audibly ground against each other as if they were readying themselves to bite the phone apart. If nothing else, the girl seemed to have something of a persistent streak. "Why won't it turn on? That short-hair must have done something to it after all!"

"That was the whole point," Homura answered, letting a slight smile escape her lips. "Thanks to those little winged devices, the police cannot track this area electronically. They also create blind spots within communications networks, which is why your phone is unable to send or receive any messages. For the time being, this general area is as ideal a base to continue from as can be hoped for if we are to continue unhindered by the authorities. It's by no means a permanent solution, but as long as we are careful, it should buy us the time needed to continue our search."

"So where are we going next?" Index finally asked.

"To the next target," Homura said. "Just follow me."

The Minamoto, Minamoto & Shaw Institute of Theoretical and Applied Quantum Physics was a sleek, elegant twenty-story corporate office building with a postmodern design that veered further into the asymmetrical as the building reached the top. Situated beside the branch point of an artificial river delta, it had been seemingly purposefully isolated via a long stretch of roadway from the rest of District 10 and its decrepit research facilities, seedy dropout haunts, and landfills.

Even in the dead of the starless night, the immaculately polished surface of the "Minamoto Labs" (as it was colloquially called) exterior clearly reflected the waxing gibbous moon. A spacious parking lot, fenced off by a large, barred, bronze-colored double gate with a comparatively tiny one-window security kiosk beside it, separated the two girls from the front entrance. Despite the ample parking space, only thirteen vehicles – ten cars of varying make and color and three unmarked white vans – were seen parked at the area, with the vans having been parked nearest the entrance. This in and of itself was not unusual, as night had fallen. However, instead of cars, the parking space was crawling with something entirely different.

Homura counted as many as thirty beige-colored, two-foot-tall cylindrical devices whirling on horizontal axes and roaming autonomously across the lot. At the top of each device, a deep blue "eye" unceasingly whirled across a black wedge artfully cut into the device's "head". Aside from the coloring and height, the architecture of these robots gave Homura an unwelcome reminder of the manned machines she had encountered and fought against at the Kunashir facility.

"Not good. Those are–"

"Security robots," Homura cut in, neatly interrupting Index's statement. "This is the most prominent building within kilometers," Homura said. "I'd like to say the security detail suggests we're on the right track, but to my experience, every laboratory that hasn't been reduced to wreckage is similarly well-guarded."

"But this is by far largest target facility we've seen yet," Kyuubey piped in.

"So how are we going to get in?" Index asked.

Homura had nothing to fear from the security guard-bots themselves. From what she had gathered of them, they were primarily eyes and ears for security forces and had no suppressive abilities of their own. The ones she had encountered earlier, closer to the city's more populous hubs, would simply alert nearby police and volunteer esper dispatches if a suspect was unable to prove that he or she lived in the city. She doubted that this was the case due to the remote location and the search area of these robots, which was limited to the surroundings of the building itself. More likely, if this was indeed another research laboratory, it likely had its own private security force. The ones in the city proper could not stop her, but she still did not want to needlessly tip their hand. In the event that the laboratory was one of the ones held by the masked scientists and their associates, she did not want them using the facility's hired goons as cover while they went to ground.

She grabbed Kyuubey, who at this point was riding on Index's head, by the head. Ignoring its cries of confusion resounding inside her mind, she planted her left foot forward, wound up… and threw the little white thing in a carefully controlled, and magically enhanced, underhand motion. Thus thrown, the little creature glided in a straight line, inches parallel to the ground, across the length of the parking lot, with its flight path cutting directly through the centermost gap in the gate and across the midpoint of the security robots' projected search ranges. Directing Index to follow her, she then sprinted and hopped onto the canopy of a nearby tree so as to obtain a better view of the situation. Index waited behind the tree at its base.

"What is the meaning of this, Homura? If you have a plan for getting in, you should tell us beforehand, should you not?"

Ignoring that remark, Homura watched on as the security robots continued their patrol routine in apparently total disregard of the white alien creature thrown into their mist. She waited at this position for the next five minutes for confirmation; once she was sure that there were no changes in the guards' patterns or new factors in play, she leaped from the top of the tree to its base.

A mere mental gesture later, time came to a complete stop.

The world around her shimmered and warped, visually passing through a grainy, greyscale filter briefly, and then froze entirely, all within a second. The formerly busy security patrol now sat frozen in motion, as did Index who was still at the base of the tree, observing the situation with an impatient, anxious look that was now somewhat comically welded onto her face thanks to the time stop. A simple touch on the head freed Index from the time freeze.

"We're breaking through," Homura said, in an authoritative tone that effectively preempted any further questioning from her partner-in-crime. She quickly grabbed Index's right hand. "Stay close to me," she warned. "If you get too far from me, your time will stop as well."

After receiving a quick confirmation nod from Index, she made her move. With Index in hand, she vaulted over the security gate in a single bound. Once through that obstacle, the two girls dashed straight through the parking lot, with Homura moderating her speed to keep pace with the considerably slower (but still surprisingly fast) Index and pick Kyuubey back up along the way. Instead of heading inside through the glass front door and alerting what she could have been reasonably certain were security cameras watching the front entrance, she instead bounded straight upward, with Index still in tow. She ended her jump so as to land gently inside the second of three metal-colored flower boxes attached to reflective sloping windows on the sixteenth floor. First, she peered through the window to see if there were signs of other people on the other side of the window. When that check passed, she somewhat harshly tossed Index into the third flower box and, using a steel wheel glass cutter she produced from her shield, cut a circle into the window just wide and low enough for her to reach into the window and unlock it from the inside.

First Homura and then Index (along with their respective companions) crawled into the open window. As soon as Homura entered, an acute onset of a feeling not dissimilar to nausea welled up within her for an instant and disappeared just as quickly.

Somewhat to Homura's surprise, the first room the two had entered had an air of luxury and excess about it, in a striking contrast to the grim austerity of the other target facilities. A square, three-yard-long and -wide indoor swimming pool, with a steadily humming motor pushing jets of water underneath the surface, sat at the center of the room. A surrounding wall with velvet-colored pull-down recliners and miniature, personalized white towel racks encompassed the pool's outer perimeter. To top it off, at a corner of the pool room opposite the point of infiltration, a fully-equipped billiards table lay unused.

At first thought, Homura could ill imagine a place like this associated with the inhuman experiments that she and others like her had endured in the cold, uninviting mountain compound. But then she quickly suppressed the thought before it could turn into a digression.

"Do you notice anything out of the ordinary?" she asked to Index, after allowing the other girl to regain her bearings as she had nearly tumbled through the window.

She shook her head in the negative. "Are you sure this is the right place? This looks more like some kind of fancy hotel than a lab."

"Appearances can be deceiving," she responded. "Besides, this is only one room. We still have yet to explore the rest of this facility. Let's keep on the move."

That having been said, the two girls cautiously moved toward the door on the other side of the pool. She signaled to Index to stand next to the wall against one side of the entryway while she took an identical stance on the side next to the door's doorknob. She then carefully unlocked the door and, after opening it, produced from her skirt pocket an elongated shard of glass nicked from one of her previous targets. Holding up the glass to eye level, she scanned the area outside of the room via the glass's reflective surface. Using this, she found that there was an opening through one of the perpendicular walls in which one lone security camera was situated. Other than that, however, the area was empty.

She signaled to Index to follow her through the door.

The lobby the two entered after a short walk through a hallway could well have been mistaken for its own ground floor, due to the building's unique construction, had it not been for the windows on the sides offering their own unique unobstructed view of the night sky. Looking up, the girls could see the entrances to the other rooms on the floors above them, separated only by height and a railing system designed to keep travelers above from falling down. At each corner of the "base" room, a cascade of water trickled down a stone waterfall system, artfully designed so that the overflow fed a system of potted bonsai cherry blossom trees in unseasonable bloom. At the center of this sat a marble work of art consisting of a stylized gun primed and pointed at a one-foot-tall wall with two vertical slits chiseled into it. Behind this wall sat another, blackened wall with five vertical powder-white lines against them. Homura instantly recognized this setup for what it was even before looking at the mini-plaque next to it that explained the history, schematics, and setup of the infamous "double-slit interferometer" of quantum physics.

As Homura steadily examined the interferometer, the sense of unease that had dogged her ever since she had entered the building began to grow.

"Homura?" Index's voice served to bring her back to her senses.

"Nothing to be found here," she concluded. "Let's continue on to the lower floors."

Due to the unique construction of the building, the staircase that led downward was in an entirely different room from and sloped at a considerably more forgiving incline for convenience's sake than the one that started at the sixteenth floor and went upward. As the two girls wound their way downward, the sensation of disorientation and nausea that had beforehand seemed a fleeting annoyance intensified and assaulted Homura's sense of balance. More so than ever before, she felt as if she was trespassing into a foreign, hostile land. The very air itself seemed to whisper into her very being that she had wandered into enemy territory, even more so than she already had. You do not belong here, a voice whispered in her mind.

"Are you all right?" Index asked her.

"I feel... I feel..." Try as she might, Homura found herself unable to give proper voice to her situation.

"You can sense it too, can't you?" Index asked as she reached out to steady Homura, lest she misstep and tumble down the staircase. Upon not hearing Homura immediately respond, she continued. "I'm sorry for doubting you earlier. There's definitely something very wrong with this whole place. And I think I have an idea what it is."

After ensuring that Homura was still on her feet, Index shoved open the door leading to the emergency entrance on the eighth floor and rushed through the passageway, in a complete disregard of the low profile that the two girls had taken pains to maintain up until this point. In a reversal of their prior roles, Homura had to follow Index's lead.

The passageway that they entered was darker than a moonless, starless night, forcing Homura to supplement her visual range with a flashlight. Once she turned on the light, she found herself and Index inside a narrow corridor whose sides were coated from end to end with laminated sheets of paper. On each of these sheets was an exquisitely hand-drawn black pentagram inside a red circle, inside of which was drawn a symbol that varied individually from sheet to sheet. From what she learned of the magic system of this world from Index, Homura was reasonably certain that the symbols inside the circles were runes. What she did not know, however, was what the runes meant and what kind of magic was waiting for them at the other end of the passageway.

"Runes," Index said, affirming Homura's observation.

"So I gathered. This is what you 'magicians' would use to actuate a spell, isn't it?" Upon Index's nod of confirmation, Homura continued. "Do you know what these spells are doing?"

"I'm trying to find out right now," Index responded as she skittered up and down the hallway. "This is a complicated, multicolored array, but what I can tell so far is that the base layout uses the Opila runes of 'property' and 'territory', strengthened and reinforced by Hagalaz rune of 'violent banishment'. The layout seems to be that of a 'people-clearing field' that prevents non-magicians from interfering inside the space delineated within…"

"Which means," Homura interjected, "that someone put up these symbols to keep someone out, am I correct?"

"Normally, that would be the extent of it. A standard field should not require this much energy or reinforcement. There's a related casting woven into it that uses the same meanings of the runes I mentioned earlier to create a spatial distortion. I've seen it before. According to the orientation, the runes' area of effect is… hmm… on the other end of this corridor."

"What is the likelihood of there being a trap?" Homura asked.

"Very high," Index answered. "If we're lucky, disrupting the array should merely repulse us from the area of effect. And if not..."

Index's trailing off told Homura all she felt she needed to know. "Very well then." She produced one of her smaller, personal-issue handguns and undid its safety. "It seems we're going to have to take that risk if we are to proceed onward." After motioning to the other girl to return to her side, Homura turned on one heel and aimed at one of the sheets of paper further down the hallway.

Before she could pull the trigger, however, a white-hot light shone directly in front of her face, causing her to cover it on sheer reflex with her free hand. Upon regaining her bearings, she saw in front of her the source of the sudden beam of light: a high-powered flashlight being shined in her direction, and at that by another human being. As soon as the realization dawned upon her that she and Index were not alone in the room, Homura tensed up and preemptively pointed her gun in the direction of the intruder even before her eyes could register the details necessary to make a more accurate threat assessment.

Once their vision cleared, the two girls found themselves face-to-face with the holder of the flashlight, a person whose distinguishing features had been obscured in totality with a dark grey helmet, a pair of adjustable goggles designed to hide the eyes as well as protect them, and a complete head-to-toe set of military-grade body armor. As if to further complete the unsettling ensemble, a variety of weapons, including an assault rifle, a grenade belt, and an unmarked spray can whose contents Homura could only guess at, were present on the intruder. Gender. Age. Nationality. None of these potential features of identification could readily be made out, which slightly unnerved even Homura.

Just like the ones back at the mountain... she could not help but think.

The armored person reached into the right trouser pocket, but Homura reacted before the gesture could be completed.

"Don't move," Homura commanded. She made a conscious effort to still the rapid beating of her heart and center the handgun's aim on the area between the eyes, right above the bridge of the nose. "Any false movements and I will shoot."

The other party continued digging in the pocket, as if Homura had never said anything, and finally produced a device that looked like a miniature feature phone, only with no numbers on the dial and a visible antenna that seemed to render it somewhat outdated compared to more modern designs. He or she then pawed the cover of the device with his or her thumb.

"You didn't hear me? I said not to move!" Homura aimed at the device and fired.

The shot was perfect. A well-timed shot knocked the device out of his hands, potentially destroying it in the process, and forced the assailant to react on Homura's terms. It also had the advantage of cutting off communications and thus delaying the arrival of any backup forces the enemy may have wanted to call in.

Such was how Homura calculated the scenario would be played out.

What actually happened was significantly different. The bullet completely whizzed past the target, whose form briefly wavered in and out as if it were a projected image with questionable reception. The flickering allowed Homura to see the bullet's trajectory; it had embedded itself into the wall directly behind him, just barely missing the laminate cover of one of the many runes place thereon. Thus unimpeded, the enemy completed the call.

"This is Sumiyoshi," he began speaking into the device. His undisguised baritone voice marked him as unmistakably adult and male, and likely middle-aged at that. "Repeat. This is Sumiyoshi. Have completed the search up to the eighth floor. No signs of either Shaw or Akitaka yet. Continuing the mission."

"Understood," a scrambled, nondescript voice responded through the communication device. "Continue on. Surveillance team has yet to pick up any abnormal activity; however, we are beginning to suspect the enemy has some capability of defeating standard-issue sensory equipment. There is a low to moderate possibility of esper involvement on the enemy side. Is there anyone else present besides the target?"

"That's a negative," Sumiyoshi answered, even as he crept right past – no, through – Homura and Index. "Will keep you posted on further developments. Over and out." Having thus ended his progress report, Sumiyoshi continued on to the stairway entrance behind the two girls.

"I can imagine that's what you meant by a distortion," Homura said, to which Index nodded. "Whoever that 'Sumiyoshi' person is, there's a decent chance he knows better than we do what to look for here. We should follow him back upward."

"But what about the magic array ahead?"

"It's best to gather more information before we go rushing headlong into a trap," Homura said. "Rationality is the key to unraveling this mystery."

She had barely finished saying that when, as if in mockery of those words, the air suddenly grew cripplingly heavy. Without warning, the runes on the walls, as if taking on a life of their own, freed themselves from the walls and from their laminate containers and flew in single file past the two girls and up the staircase. Homura's vision turned upside down before failing entirely, and she had to fight the urge to vomit back up the meal that she had eaten earlier. She did not even realize that she was about to collapse to the ground until she felt Index's hands against her back. Her senses returned to her one by one; she could feel the burning sensation on her left hand even before she could see the violet glow brightening the surrounding darkness.

"If it wasn't clear that we should go back up before, it is now," Index remarked. "Can you still move?"

"Yes," Homura replied. "We should move quickly. It has been quite some time since my Soul Gem reacted this strongly."

Index and Homura hurried after the trail of flying rune papers, switching staircases and speeding past the man named Sumiyoshi as they did so. In short order, following the runes' flight path led the girls to a third staircase at the twentieth story. This staircase, in turn, led them outside the building and, finally, to the rooftop, a square-shaped mass of bleached white concrete with a raised circular platform situated directly at the center. The platform was marked with a black circle painted around the outside of it, and directly at the center of this circle was the English alphabet letter "H", which marked its purpose as a landing pad for helicopters.

As it was, there was no helicopter, or indeed anything or anyone there until the runes and the girls chasing them arrived. Said runes shifted from their single-file flight path and spread out into a three-tiered radial orbit around the airspace surrounding the rooftop. The air around the Minamoto Labs rooftop became a blurry mass of white-on-deep-blue, and a collection of wildly differing scenes, each with its own cast of people, flashed before Homura's eyes.

"What is going on here?" Kyuubey asked. "I've never seen this magic before."

"The cross-sections contained within the spell are overlapping! You have to avert your eyes!" Index, who was shielding her and Kyuubey's eyes (or at least the little red structures on its face she assumed were eyes), shouted. "The spell's gone out of control! The bounded spaces are overlapping and conflicting with each other, causing the runic arrays to intermingle and tangle uncontrollably with each other! If you look into the intersection point for too long, your mind will shut down from information overload!"

"How can we stop it?" Homura asked.

"Trying to isolate the cause right now is impossible! They're reacting too violently!"

"I see..." At that, Homura once again activated her time-stopping magic, but not before securing Index, just as before, so she would not be frozen in time as well. The errant pieces of paper held their position in the sky; and the deep blue forms gathered on and around the helipad had shown themselves to have vaguely humanoid shapes and forms, making them only somewhat less unsettling. "Does this make things easier?"

"Much," Index acknowledged.

"Then hurry up and make your analysis."

"I am," Index quickly responded. After a tense ten seconds of what looked to Homura like Index simply staring a hole into the runes while muttering to herself, Index turned to Homura. "Do you see the symbols that look like... um... diamonds with kite tails?" she asked, indicating the paper sheets containing said symbols with her tiny right pointer finger.

"Are they the source of this?"

Index nodded. "Well, more or less. If we can just neutralize those, we should be able to safely untangle the spell and find out what's going on."

"I see," was all Homura said. That was all the warning she gave the other girl before rearming herself with the pistol she had readied earlier. Instead of shooting directly at the runes, however, she propelled herself forward and into the open sky and waded into the flock of paper pieces holding their position in the sky. While in the air, she quickly scanned each of the floating papers for the particular symbol that Index had indicated earlier. When she found a match, she ripped that paper out of the sky, and before long, she held within her unarmed hand a stack of those papers that was almost as tall as she was.

"Stand back," Homura cautioned the other girl. "I'll take them all out at once."

After flattening the paper stack to a more manageable height with her feet, Homura shot a three-round burst downward, right down the center of the stack. The sounds of gunfire and of the skipping of spent cartridges against the rooftop floor echoed in the stillness, and the three bullets held their place in a hover over the paper stack. With this having been done, Homura pulled herself and Index back into the safety of the staircase's interior before releasing the time lock. At that very instant, a fresh wave of disturbed energy rippled its way through Homura's senses, making her feel as if her heart had skipped a few beats. One second later, two of the shadowy humanoid forms began fading into clearer view and filling out, fitfully and haltingly, in color and in depth.

Once the shapes fully materialized and the surrounding world regained its "time" and stability, the two found themselves face-to-face with the two people whose shapes were contained in the frozen cross-section. The one closer to Homura's and Index's position was a foreign woman of unbound silvery-blonde hair, grey eyes, and a slight height advantage of three inches over Homura. Her face was treated fairly conspicuously with makeup that was artfully applied to make it difficult to guess just how old she was. In spite of the cold November night, she wore only a white blouse and a pair of bleached blue jeans. She carried a half-used cigarette in her mouth, but there was no smoke coming from the burned end.

Strange as this woman was, however, her presence paled in comparison to that of the man behind her. The first thing Homura noticed about the male was his height; at six-and-a-half feet tall, he towered over everyone else in the area. A short crop of unnaturally vivid red hair hung over his shoulders, with a few stray locks almost but not quite obscuring the strange bar code tattoo underneath his right eye. He wore a pitch-black, stylized rendition of a priest's robes, and on each of his fingers was a silver ring. Like his companion, he held a cigarette in his mouth. Also like his companion, he was clearly a person of Western ethnicity and tastes. However, in contrast to his companion, who wore her confusion on her face, he maintained a menacing glare as he stared down at the two girls.

"Oh, my," the woman began. "Who'd have thought we'd run into the girl all the way out here? I guess we should let Kanzaki know, huh? That poor thing's probably running herself ragged up there, all worried to death."

"You do that," the man nonchalantly responded to his companion. He then returned to bearing down over Homura, who in turn could hear him muttering something under his breath even as he continued fixing his gaze on her. He lowered his hands, and a fresh collection of rune-coated papers fell from inside the sleeves of his garments yet did not quite settle on the ground as gravity would have normally dictated.

"Wait!" Index said, jumping in between Homura and the giant priest. "She's not an enemy!"

The runes floated and held their place at the priest's feet, as if to spite of Index's outburst. The priest raised his right hand into the air, and the blonde woman jumped back to distance herself from him.

This, plus the priest's unwillingness or inability to disguise the killing intent radiating from his every movements, prompted Homura to take preemptive action. She stopped time once again and placed arrow shards right next to each one of the runes, and restarted time anew.

As soon as she did, a nimbus of heat energy manifested into flames, and in turn, those flames coalesced in the priest's raised right arm, elongated into the shape of a Western greatsword...

...and then promptly dissipated harmlessly, much to the confusion and terror of the priest who apparently looked forward to the act of destroying a teenage girl with a flaming sword.

A gasp of confusion had barely escaped his lips before Homura closed the distance between the two of them in an instant and planted the barrel of a handgun against the priest's chin.

"You!" the priest bellowed. "Who are you?"

"A friend of rationality," Homura answered, "and an enemy of those who immediately opt for the violent approach upon being faced with an unfamiliar situation. I would heavily suggest you put some effort into improving your first impressions… Necessarius."