I create a world of finite somethings

The Church of Madoka and Unofficial Madoka Online Facebook pages are running a contest of fanart and fanfiction right now. The winner gets one of the nendoroid figures of Madoka. So, I entered. It was really short, though the contest is for short pieces. The guideline was "Write a story of an original magical girl facing Walpurgisnacht."

So, thematically, I'm beating this horse dead. I'll keep beating until something brilliant comes out, I guess.



Chizuko stared out over the bay, at the grey skies and dim light beyond. Her fingers ran over the ridges of her Soul Gem, waiting for the moment it appeared.

It was not the first such storm she had seen looming over Hiroshima. The day of the bombing had created a cloud of terror much more terrible than even the mightiest witch could conjure upon arrival. It loomed over every thought Chizuko had, despite her many attempts to push it from her mind.

Still, she had found her solace. She found it in a touch. The little things her fingers could do, whether toying with the jewel at hand, flipping her pencil around in school—

Or folding paper for her friend.

The winds picked up. More clouds swirled around just above the bay. Walpurgisnacht could only be moments away.

Chizuko wondered why it was that she stood there. When she thought back to her visits to the hospital, it made sense to her that the most powerful wishes should have come from the victims within. Sadako was already so sick from the Leukemia that Chizuko was certain Kyubey would have visited the dying girl. The wish to live, to survive something one was otherwise helpless against, wouldn’t that be stronger than any other kind of spell?

Perhaps, though, it was so. Perhaps Kyubey did go to Sadako. Chizuko just did not understand how it was then that the girl would not have made a wish. She had been so accepting of the origami Chizuko had brought in during those visits, accepting of the magic that folding a thousand would create.

She wondered why, then, did Kyubey come to her instead? Why did Sadako have to die, if a single wish could have saved her?

“Your wish could save your friend,” Kyubey had said to her.

“But she didn’t get that wish,” Chizuko had responded. “It really…it isn’t up to me.”

“But you do have a wish,” Kyubey had continued on, somehow seeing straight through to her heart. It was not a question. It was an acknowledgement of what already hung in the air.

“I do.”

The familiars of Walpurgisnacht stepped onto the wharf, heralds to the might they proceeded. Chizuko ignored them and held out her gem.

“You won’t come any closer,” she said.

The dress that sprang from her gem was red—for she too was a hibakusha, one who survived but suffered in the wake of the explosion. Chizuko remembered the pox marks that had stained Sadako’s skin and hated that she could be so clean in comparison. Origami cranes broke the deep red in a pattern. They were gold like the one she had made for Sadako in the hospital. A silly consideration, but when she had first transformed, Chizuko wished there had been a thousand on the dress. But her own body was far too small to carry such a multitude.

She took one last look over her shoulder. Far beyond her sight, though near enough that she knew where it was, the wish she still held waited upon her defense.

Let her story be known.

A monument of a girl with a crane, standing where death had once rained down upon the city.

Walpurgisnacht formed over the bay. Chizuko Hamamoto faced it, took to the skies like a bird in flight.