The other occupants of this room had began introducing themselves. She saw no reason not to give her name, but she did not see a reason to do so either. The only thought she had at the moment was to figure out what was going on and how she had got into this place, not make friends with a bunch of strangers. Clearly enough, she and everyone here were taken away from their familiar lives and gathered together by an entity whose power was great enough to teleport this many people. If it was no witch, nor a deed of Homura, then what was it? And what did she have to do with this seemingly unrelated group of individuals? Another magical girl? What?

And the ironic part was, the strangest thing she felt was not the fact that she was in a room with a talking jaguar and a giant robot; it was the fact that she had remembered everything that had happened to her before coming here, including Homura taking both her memories and her powers away from her. Yet her memories were intact, and she could feel her power surging inside her once more, instead of the numb feeling she had the last couple of weeks as an average high school student. If coming here restored the memories and powers she was stolen of, did it not mean it was related to Homura after all, the one involved in the theft? She became even more puzzled than before, if that was possible. The confusion left her weak and breathless, and as she leaned against the nearest white wall for support, she felt like sitting down and think about this.

"Query: Organic why is your hair blue?"

[i]"Terrific,"[/i] she thought. First, the strangers were making nice with each other, and now, one of them was asking silly questions about her hair color.

And then it hit her, though not as hard as the memory-restoration she had. [i]"Why is my hair blue?"[/i] she wondered. She never had to ask herself that question before. Both her parents had natural black hair, and so did the parents of her friends, yet most of the people she had hung out with had unnatural hair color like they were in some kind of... anime.

[i]"...Nah!"[/i] She shrugged off the notion. The world around her seemed crazy at the moment, but they couldn't be [i]that[/i] crazy. And besides, there were more important things to worry about right then than whether if she had unconsciously dyed her hair or not.

"Well, I'm not sure," she answered the robot with as friendly a tone as she could muster, scratching her scalp in nervousness, "it has always been blue like that..."

There were certainly a lot of weird individuals in the room with her, yet they acted so normally, talking with each other, acquainting with one another. One of them certainly stood out from the crowd; after all, he was trying to shoot the paintings. She would have normally stopped him if this was a museum back in her reality, being the self-righteous marshal she was. But the fact was, she did not even know if she was dreaming or trapped in another world where the logic she was used to did not apply, magical logic or otherwise. She held her movement, keeping a stern observation of the boy's next move in case he decided to hurt someone with his pistols.

"W....whatever you're doing, kid, I don't think it's gonna make a difference. Maybe you should take a closer look at the picture before you do anything rash?"

Upon the short man's mentioning of the paintings, Sayaka paid but a brief glance to them and quickly pivoted her eyes back onto the armed boy. She had thought that they were just normal pictures hung in an art gallery. But after an equally brief moment since she had peeped at the artworks, she felt something was off and gradually shifted her attention back to them. She felt a presence from the paintings unlike the ones coming from the people in the room - a malicious, overwhelming aura oozing out as if powerful magic had been imbued into them. The invisible air of terror did make her nervous, but in terms of pale appearances, those pictures did not occur to her as out of the ordinary. Santa Claus and Sherlock Holmes, Caesar and even Jesus; this gallery might not have a consistent theme, but it seemed like a normal collection of random pictures to the naked eye.

That was until she saw it, the one painting that mattered to her. "Oktavia von Seckendorff", the witch form she was able to summon at will, an armored mermaid knight wielding a cutlass not unlike the one she used. She covered her mouth, muffling her scream, and hopefully stifling her vomit. Her arms began to shake like a dying leaf in Autumn, her knees were trembling so much that she nearly fell onto the marbled floor. It was not the sight of her other self that she had been frightened of - she had got used to that - it was the sight of Oktavia slaughtering her friends, slicing the teenage girls up with its sword, being reminded that she was once that mindless, raging beast.

She finally cracked. First a whimper, then loud sobs, and finally painful screams for mercy.

"NO!" she yelled, huddling her head between her hands as she slid against the wall into a fetal position. She buried her face deep into her thighs, but taking her eyes away from the picture did not help; the images were still repeating in her mind.

She had no choice! She could see her friends through the eyes of Oktavia, but all she could feel at that time was hopelessness and despair, a vast emptiness that ate at her soul. All she wanted was to satisfy the only thoughts in her head during those moments she was turned into a witch - utter hatred and bitterness for the world. Madoka had told her what must be hundreds of times by now that it was not her fault, but even today, no matter how much she told herself otherwise, she could not truly accept it in her heart. She knew - it was her who had tried to murder her friends, not the witch.

And "tried" was the definitive word. She never really wanted to kill them. Amid the soul-sucking despair, she had only wanted their attention, lashing out at the world like a child throwing a tantrum. When a voice screams in a person's head, all one could do is scream back. And that was exactly what she had done - angrily scream back at the voices in her head.

[i]"Why couldn't I just forget?!"[/i] she had wanted to shout, but quickly stopped herself. [i]"No... I deserve this. It's my punishment... I'm so sorry."[/i]