Okay, I'm going to be trying something a little different for this chapter.

Also, those deadlines I seem to promise to get new chapters out by? Don't put all your eggs into a single basket with that. I do try though, really! D:

Anyway, enough with these stupid opening notes. Here's the next segment of the story.

"-ra... let go! The portal was not meant to stay open this long!"

She was determined. Determined to bring them back!

She was falling forward. Their combined weight was pulling her inwards but she remained vigilant in not letting them go.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, she felt herself pushed forward by a third party in the tense situation. She turned around to see who had done so.

White.

That was the only thing she caught before the opening closed up completely. As she fell, she cursed.

She cursed herself for not dealing with them earlier.

When she came to, it definitely was not to any sort of pleasent sight for sore eyes

Smoke littered her vision and was quickly pooling into her lungs. It took only a few moments before she started violently coughing, her body trying to expunge the foreign and toxic substance.

Taking a deep breath of what little oxygen she could, she tried to get to her knees. She needed to hurry. She needed to find Madoka and get her and the others to safety. At least away from the diaster zone they were currently in.

She tried summoning her shield, she tried commanding it to wind around, to stop time in place.

Nothing.

Glancing down at where her shield was, she had to bite back her tongue and whatever previous food she had eaten before.

Her arm was gone. The entire thing below the elbow had was completely gone!

Cursing her luck with being stuck in a 5 inch plastic body, she decided to forgo the time magic and start searching before it was too late.

Searching high and low, she was having a problem trying to locate anybody. The smoke was incredibly thick, making her literally feel like she was just going in circles.

Something bumped her foot.

She looked down... and promptly jumped back, knocking her head on an exposed piece of metal and causing her to fall backwards.

The disembodied head of Mami Tomoe was to blame.

As she lay on her back with her consciousness slipping at the seams, she could only ask herself one thing.

"Is this it?"

Is this the final curtain call for Homura Akemi? She had already failed in preventing Madoka from making a contract but she ultimately swore she would still protect her, no matter the costs. A swirl of rainbow colours clouded her blurred vision, the pink portion particularly becoming larger and closer, as if it were the main focus.

She didn't know why but as her vision neared total pitch blackness, she somehow felt at ease.

Soft...

She felt soft all over. Warm too.

Definitely a much better feeling than that raging inferno she just-wait a second...

Opening her eyes slowly, the first thing she saw was a white ceiling.

Her first instinct and thoughts brought back memories of waking up in the hospital. She almost wanted to scream out at yet another failure but the more she took in the detail of what she was seeing made her stop.

For one, this ceiling wasn't as sterile white as the hospital usually was. It was more akin to a darker shade of white, almost cream coloured.

Another thing was the shape itself. Hospital room ceilings were almost flat, which meant there was another floor above, most likely another room just like the one she used to stay in. This one was more angular and curved inwards, reminding her of a more traditional house roof.

She brought her left arm up for inspection. It was intact, practically as good as new.

But that was impossible, wasn't it? She remembered she woke up in the middle of a wall of fire caused by Kyoko's magical barrier imploding in on itself after they had successfully broken free from it. She remembered trying to summon up he time shield to activate her time powers but failing due to her entire missing left forearm.

That could only mean that during the time she was unconscious, someone must have found the missing appendage and re-attached it to her.

But... who?

She needed answers.

She tried to make way getting out of the bed but was met with an unexpected resistance. It felt as if she were several pounds heavier than she remembered being.

Now that she did think about it, a strange foreign extra bit of weight seemed to be attached to her left side.

She turned her head to look right into the sleeping face of Madoka Kaname.

Her breath hitched and her face turned an interesting shade of pinkish red.

Madoka Kaname, the friend she swore to protect all those time loops ago was curled up next to her with her arms clamped around her in a firm, although not uncomfortable grip.

The last time she remembered anything similar was when she, Madoka and Mami had faced off against that Witch, where she had first learned to build her own pipe bombs. Afterwards, she was "assaulted" by an extremely cheerful Madoka, who crashed into her and couldn't stop hugging her even if she wanted to.

But even back then had its own limits, especially with personal space.

She knew that she should have had some innate feeling of not enjoying being in a closed space with people, yet for some reason it just didn't register with her when she was around Madoka.

Perhaps... was this how-

Her thoughts stopped when she noticed that Madoka was waking up. Soon enough, her own violet orbs were staring back into Madoka's pink eyes.

"Homura...?"

It took her a few moments but as soon as her sleep fogged mind realized who she was looking at, especially after today's events, she acted.

"HOMURA!"

The unexpected bear hug caught her off guard, forcing her to release a mouthful of air she had just breathed in. She also swore she heard and felt a few places in her back pop, although thankfully not in the type where it caused damage. It actually felt quite good.

"M-Mado...ka..." she gasped out. The pink haired girl's sudden burst of energy and strength was very effectively cutting off her air supply and she was starting to feel the effects of oxygen deprivation.

Luckily, it seemed that Madoka had caught on to Homura's plight and eased up her forceful grip on the black haired girl, who was taking several large gulps of air.

After a minute of restoring her air related needs, she hesitantly turned to face Madoka yet again.

"M-Madoka..." she cursed herself for stuttering out. Stuttering was what she associated with her weak and naive self from long ago, incomparable to what she was now.

Whatever inner grievances she was dealing with went unnoticed by Madoka, who simply hugged her closer, though it seemed her own inner turmoil was leaking out as well.

"I was so worried. Worried that you would never wake up." her quivering voice sounded out. She was trembling and seemed to be on the verge of tears.

She hesitantly put her own arms around Madoka, pushing aside her own meager inconveniences. For added measure, she began rubbing circles on her back as well.

Was she doing it right? She can't remember a time where she was the one who was reassuring someone that everything was going to be alright.

Flashes of a destroyed city. A smiling face. A gunshot.

She quelled down the memories, not needing to be reminded of... that.

Her actions did however seem to be working. Although a few sniffles came and went every so often, the tears only remained around the brim and the shaking had near enough died down.

It was uncharacteristic of her but she couldn't help herself from letting out a small smile. To be honest, her current predicament really wasn't all that bad in and of itself.

The idea of magic, battling Witches and all other related and unrelated duties of being a Magical Girl seemed to just be melting away.

She felt like she could stay like this forever.

Forever?

Something about that word made her feel like it should of meant something. It was on the edge of her mind and tip of her tongue and yet she couldn't muster up just exactly what.

She would need to investigate later.

"You know, you two should really think about getting together. You both hang around each other enough that people are starting to get certain ideas about you both". Unbeknownst to both Homura and Madoka, Sayaka had seemed to catch them both in the act.

Speak of the Devil to ruin such peace.

In that instant, two things happened.

It had been 3 days since Kyoko's little "accident" as she had described the travesty that was the pure destruction of the car that they had all rode both in and outside of. It was by pure luck that the insurance for the car was still under warranty. Had it been a mere day or two later, the ending to that curious adventure would be much more devastating.

The area in which the event happened had been closed off by police and the wreckage taken away to be analyzed. Most likely they were thinking it was the act of a potential terrorist bomber or some other related bomb planting maniac.

Interviews were conducted for any and all people who were in the vicinity at the time, including Inika and his family. Ultimately, the destruction of the car left them without any sort of personal transportation whatsoever.

For the girls however, there was more trouble for them. While the family were able to be escorted home after the entire ordeal, they themselves were stuck in a place they knew nothing about with people and buildings whose sizes put Walpurgisnacht to shame.

First things first though: They had to retrieve Kyoko.

Luckily enough, they were able to catch her off guard just as she was digging into an unspecified chicken dish. A bit of struggling and some magical ribbons later, Kyoko was all tied up to the point that she almost resembled one of those Egyptian mummies. Although she couldn't speak, Mami was kind enough to at least let her eyes free to see and her nose to breathe.

It had taken some time but thanks to some quick thinking on Mami's part again, they were able to follow the ribbon trail which was set up when they were leaving the house. Through winding roads and fighting off the occasional animal, they were able to make a safe return to their temporary base of operations.

At the very least all throughout the trip, Kyoko's obscenities and irritation at her current situation were muffled.

Notice something different this chapter? If you said "No POV from Inika" then you're 110% right.

I wanted to try something different with this chapter.

The results?

While I try to make the character of Inika at least somewhat interesting, I found it MUCH easier for story ideas to come to mind when I'm solely writing about the Madoka Magica and I honestly couldn't stop typing.

My original intention of this story was for it to be a story centered around action figures of characters from a show a person liked a lot to for some reason come to life, yet connected to the show itself (In this case, the souls of the girls being bound to the action figures when they arrived in the "Real World" as we usually refer to our universe).

Inika would be a person who tries to go through with the hijinks as best as he can, similar to how Kyon is portrayed in the hijinks and adventures of the Haruhi Suzumiya series. The main difference being that while that series focused only on Kyon's point of view, Puella Action Figure Magica would have focused on multiple points of view.

Sadly though, this also is really starting to work against me. Whenever I try to write for Inika, the story comes to a halt a lot more often than I would like it to. This causes the fic to be delayed more and more from when I usually want to release new chapters.

This leaves me at a crossroads of sorts: Do I continue to include Inika in the interactions of the Madoka Magica cast or should he be cast off and the story solely focuses on the girls?

With option 1, it would continue in the spirit of my original intention but also run the more than likely risk of more delays in finishing and getting chapters out in a timely matter. The sad thing is that the character of Inika is actually based a lot on my own personality and I'm really finding him (the character) to be quite bland and boring. That more than likely means I'm also a bland and boring person and why nobody wants to be around me.

Option 2 on the other hand opens up a lot more freedom for writing as I am more familiar with writing from certain character points of views instead of trying to write from and original characters and trying to figure out how the other known characters in the series would respond. A lot more content would get released more often with this decision but would put an end to what I set this fic out to be.

The final, unspoken option? Give up, put the fic up for adoption and abandon writing all together. I can't help but compare my writing to many others on this website, especially in fandoms that I participate in and I tend to find a lot of authors who seem to be able to write characters better than I could ever hope to be.

*sigh*

I honestly don't know what to do. I'll leave it up to you people who review.

Until next time?