"Even if you say that, I won’t forget this: you, Homura Akemi, have become a devil!"

[i]"I won't forget... I must not forget..."[/i] she had repeated to herself in her heart that mantra for weeks. She did not know what it was exactly that she had to desperately remember, but she knew it was something negative related to her classmate, Homura.

And yet, upon that very instant when her surroundings suddenly warped into that bleak, monotone room, all the memories of her past ten reincarnations or more came rushing back to her with the speed of a bullet train. All the fun times she had shared with her childhood friend, Madoka Kaname, as well as all the nightmares of having her mind enslaved in the body of a witch, they all came flooding back into her consciousness like she had known about them all along. She didn't know which was a more agonizing experience - having Homura brainwashing her and leaving her an empty shell, or having all these thoughts violently shoved back into her mind.

She required but a few seconds to collect herself as her blurred vision gradually recovered. The way her world instantaneously shape-shifted into shades of white and grey was already a lot to take in, and the rush of hundred memories did not help one bit. But surprised as she might be, she dared not let her guard down, the voice in her head urging her to get a hold of herself and quickly transform. For all she knew, this could be another manipulation of the new Homura Akemi, the omnipotent entity who had snatched the fire of god for her selfish desires. With her power, she could have wiped Sayaka's entire existence simply by willing it.

Or in this case, teleport her into a strange joke where a giant robot, a cowboy with a poncho, and a jaguar of white rosettes, were in the same room together. She wondered which of those were the punchline.

When she finally became calm enough to get a good look at the scene before her, she started to realize that she might be dealing with something entirely different. Her first thought when the walls had started to shift around her was a "witch barrier", something the witches she had fought would use to trap their victims. The phenomenon certainly started out familiar, the way her world had melted away into existence like she was watching [i]Alice in Wonderland[/i] while on drugs. But when she saw how [i]clean[/i] this room was, how it was deprived of the colorful papercraft models that would adorn a witch's lair, or just any bright colors at all, it all just didn't project the same ominous atmosphere she was supposed to feel among witches.

"If any of you have an explanation for why I am missing two mates and a rainforest, I would like to hear it!"

[i]"Yeah,"[/i] she thought to herself, [i]"definitely not witches."[/i]

For one thing, the witches she knew wouldn't speak human, let alone speaking it with a voice of such clarity; they would merely sprout gibberish in their own 'witch language'. For another, she noticed a couple of normal people like her among the crowd, one of whom was even a little girl. A creepy girl with a rose, but a normal girl otherwise.

"Would anyone like to explain what the bloody hell is going on?", said a brunette with beauty that easily made Sayaka felt insecure about her own looks.

"That's what I would like to know as well," Sayaka calmly responded.

Despite the girl appearing slightly older and taller than her, she nonetheless felt a bit more secure about having someone normal - and human - to talk to in this strange situation.