At night, Fluttershy dreams only of monsters. Under the moon’s unerring glow, she fights her way through their endless gauntlets, aided by a legion of unimaginable friends, to rescue the ponies imprisoned at their core. Each dream is different, but every one ends the same: her standing before the final, most terrifying monster, alone and hopeless.
When the sun is up, Fluttershy is like any other pony. She spends time with her best friend Rainbow Dash, trains for war, and follows the latest reports of missing fillies and colts. By day, everything is perfectly normal.
And all wrong.
A crossover with Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Knowledge of the series is not required.
Thanks to CatScratchPaper for editing and cover art!
Chapters (14)
...And there isn't a dark tag because? And what's up with the gibberish in the author's notes?
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Thanks for the favorite! I'm trying to write this story without getting into Dark (or, for that matter, Gore) territory, so I haven't added those tags. I will add them if it becomes too dark or gorey, though. The author's notes are quotes from a Latin poem, but I can include translations if that'd help.
Well, this is pretty good so far. ^^ Have a like and favorite.
Interesting. I wonder who the pink unicorn is?
I like this story so far.
It’s been a while since I’ve read an adventure story, I usually go for the sadder stories. The labyrinth part was my favorite, it was thrilling to see how Rarity and FlutterShy go out of it. 
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Glad you’re enjoying it so far! And the Chapter 2 labyrinth was really fun to write.
That’s racist *ding*
Ah ha ha! I love how everything has been ponified... except for Kyubey who's exactly the same. Honestly that's the most unsettling part of all.
Wow, this must be one of the most underappreciated stories on all of Fimfic. I guess crossovers don't do too well, or something. Regardless, I'm absolutely loving this!
It's so cool how the pony counterparts have such similar color schemes to the original characters! Our star is the pink-haired Madoka/Fluttershy, her brash friend is the blue-haired Sayaka/Rainbow Dash, the friend's rival buddy is the apple eating red/orange haired Kyoko/Applejack, and the mentor character is...
...Well, they can't all be winners. Mami and Rarity are both ladylike tea-drinkers, but there's no real visual similarities between the two of them.
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Whoops, sorry I missed your comment! Thank you for your kind words, and I’m glad you’re enjoying the story so far! I’m sure crossover tags scare off some people, but given I’m basically a no-name author (except to whatever group of people are into deep cuts from the circa 2011 fandom), I imagine it’s getting some extra attention from Madoka fans.
For some reason, I just couldn’t imagine Rarity in the gold dress. She’s got a reasonably similar personality, though, and she’s got the luxurious curls in her hair, so I think it works(ish(?)).
Perfect line there.
I really like your adaptation of the Soul Gems—having the ponies lose their cutie mark talent emphasizes the horror and alienness of the whole situation even more than the original show did.
Another great chapter.
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Thanks again! Also glad to hear the changes with the Soul Gems worked for you. This story has taken some license with the Puella Magi lore, which I know could be distracting for some Madoka fans since I’m asking them to set aside a lot of what they know about the anime, so it’s good to hear when it’s effective (or, if it wasn’t effective, it’d be good to know that too).
Wow, okay, I wasn't expecting that. I mean, I knew that our Sayaka and Kyoko expies would die eventually, but the Rainbow Dash-focused POV tricked me into thinking it wouldn't be for some time.
(I'm actually somewhat disappointed Applejack dealt with Rainbow so quickly. The buildup to Rainbow becoming a witch—the hurricane metaphor—was so good, but we never actually get the chance to see her as a witch properly. Oh well.)
Fluttershy is thankfully being smart and not listening to the plushie who killed her friend, and it also looks like we finally get to meet the Homura expy! Looking forward to it.
(Damn, I'm still the only commenter...?)
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Thanks again for your feedback! I kept the RD’s and AJ’s scenes short in this chapter partly because I worried I had started making witch scenes too formulaic (I even made fun of myself for it in the last chapter), and that the effect would wear thin if they went too long, but it sounds like I could have done a bit more in this case.
The other reason these wound up short probably has to do with Sayaka and Kyoko being my favorite characters from Madoka, and AJ and RD being the characters I most identify with in this story...yeah, this chapter was tough to write.
So.......... ?
All right! Back to Friendship Is Magica!
This is such a cool idea and great use of Twilight's canon abilities. I almost want to see this happen in the show.
This chapter actually includes a lot of really neat ideas, completely separate from the overarching Madoka crossover. I feel like adding a bookmark to this chapter just for the headcanons.
Wait a minute. The hell? Is this the show universe right now? Holy shit.
I love how incredibly casual Twilight is about this. It's just so good. As horrific as it is that Kyubey has found his way into the prime universe, the way Twilight is reacting to it is just perfect. Fluttershy turns to stone? It's okay, we'll fix it. She may cry about it, but she's confident in herself to work something out.
Though I can't believe Fluttershy's wish was to heal the dog. It makes perfect sense for her to do that, and obviously she had no idea what the consequences would be, but just makes me want to scream.
Welp.
Ohhh! I can't believe it took me this long to realize. This chapter is the equivalent of the flashback episode of Madoka! Homura-Twilight incoming!
Typo.
I wish Twilight got the chance to finish that badass boast. It's so perfectly Twilight. Really great line.
Starlight is an Element now? That's a pretty huge thing to just casually throw in.
Wait a minute. I'm confused. Okay, so I'm assuming that the Elements backfired because Fluttershy was a false construct. But then why did Twilight survive?
Oh, Kyubey, you little shit.
Awesome chapter. Awesome, awesome chapter. Eagerly looking forward to seeing what happens next!
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Yay! Playing with these ideas in the MLP world and writing for Twilight made the first few scenes a lot of fun, even though I knew the darker Madoka points would roll in soon after. Thanks for catching the typo, too!
My editor was also confused.
I left it unclear in this chapter because I wasn’t sure how anyone in the story would know for sure how Twilight survived, but I think that uncertainty can get addressed in the next chapter. That said, the explanation in my notes is pretty underwhelming.
So, before I start anything, I want to go back to one of my comments for the previous chapter.
Like a day after I posted my comment I suddenly had a flash of insight and realized that this was an allusion to Madoka in the original timeline who used her wish to revive a cat. So yeah.
Time for aimless thoughts as I read through the chapter!
Red text? Huh? I’m literally reading Umineko (a story that uses red text and time loops as plot points) right now and this is completely throwing me off.
Ah, so this witch is the equivalent of Walpurgisnacht, and is similarly unbeatable. I guess that was obvious enough in the last chapter, but now it’s more clear.
Oh shit! I get it! Homura wished to redo her meeting with Madoka, so that was the only time she could return to. But Twilight wished for the blanket power to return to the past, no limitations!
Uh oh.
Sweet! I actually figured something out before Twilight did!
This would be incredibly clever if it weren’t so callous.
Derpy is amazing in every timeline.
Oh shit now she’s a witch. Never mind.
This is interesting. The first real, major difference between Twilight and Homura’s approaches. Though Twilight doesn’t know how witches are born yet, so it’s understandable.
…
…
…
What a gut punch. I wasn’t expecting that.
Oh, good.
...Wait, not good. This whole situation is awful!
Huh, I had no idea Twilight wasn’t resetting like everything else. So it’s not quite like Homura’s ability?
Fuck!
That was an awesome chapter!
Seriously, I always look forward to this! Even if I'm the only one...
Looks like we're fast approaching the endgame. I can't wait!
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Yeah, I just realized the only foreshadowing I did of this was her eyesight getting weaker. Given how strict Homura’s wish was, I should have done some more to show the differences in Twilight’s wish.
This mechanic admittedly breaks the rules of time travel in both PMMM and MLP:FIM. On the one hand, Twilight wished to have the “power to return to the past,” as opposed to getting to redo events or time travel more broadly, so it should function differently. Her wish is like being able to return to your childhood home. If your home hasn’t changed much since you left (your room’s still the same, the furniture hasn’t been replaced, no one’s left the neighborhood, etc.), you can interact with your past in an older body. If you return much later, though, the house might have been torn down, but it’s still your childhood home. In that case, you can stick around and see something new be built there, which is similar to what Twilight does at the very end of the chapter.
On the other hand, this mechanic is incredibly convenient for me writing the story, so I might be biased.
I like AppleJack’s little speech here.
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Yeah, she got a lot of time to philosophize hanging out in her warehouse turned ware-home, and given her circumstances she ended up with a pretty negative worldview. I like to think this chapter is the first time that got challenged.
Well, that was a trip.
What he said. What just happened in this chapter? Was this a happy ending or not? Oh, I'm so confused...
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I’m still nervous about this ending, but it’s meant to be open to interpretation (the story starts with “All wrong.” and ends with “all right” in a context that’s supposed to make you question what that means). It’s also what I’d planned since the beginning (although when I reworked the Chapter 12 outline I seriously considered scrapping it for a bittersweet but unambiguous one). I’ll write up a blog post later with some of my thoughts about the story in general, so I’ll talk more about the ending in that.
Thanks to you both for reading through the whole thing and commenting. I hope y’all enjoyed it, even with the ambiguous ending.
AAAAUGH! Goddammit, Twi. MadokaShy fixed everything, but you just had to Rebellion it all away!
This was a really awesome story! Uh... I wish I had more to say here, but I was too engrossed in reading to take any notes. There were a lot of cool details in the far future scenes that I wish we got to see a little more of. I especially liked the description of the alien Apple Family.
Anyway, congrats on finishing! Excellent work on all of this.
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Thanks! Part of the reason I wrote the ending this way was because I had mixed feelings about Rebellion, and I wanted to try my own approach at the same tone and ideas. I’m not sure I really succeeded here, but I do appreciate Rebellion’s ending a lot more now.
The distant future details were a hoot to research and think about, but I cut most of it for the sake of pacing. For example, in my outline the atmosphere got too thin for Twilight to breathe so she went into space with a bubble of air to wait for Fluttershy; her confrontation with Kyubey involved launching him away at relativistic speed, making him turn pink from the Doppler shift. It would have been cool, but it would have taken a lot of time to explain, and wouldn’t have contributed much to the story. On the other hand, I do wonder if I could have fleshed out some details for world building. In the “Millennia passed” section, describing how the buildings were incredible might have been good. Striking that balance is tough for me.
Thank you again for all your feedback, and I’m really glad you enjoyed Corrigenda.
...This ain't looking good for Rarity, if it follows the original plotline.
Hmm, pink, black mane, gender-neutral. I thought Starlight at first when I saw the staff, but the colors don't match. Star Swirl's grey/white, though he fits the time travel theme. I wonder if this is an OC or Homura herself? Or possibly Sombra, but he's functionally an OC.
Hmm. So we have Fluttershy as Madoka, Rainbow as Sayaka, Rarity as Mami, Applejack as Kyouko with a tweaked backstory, and Cup Cake as the green-haired girl whose name I can't remember right now. By rights, this puts Twilight as "the stranger," but the colors are still wrong and the costume described is Star Swirl's. And what's Pinkie doing as a minor background character? She's pink, but of course she's not a unicorn. Curiouser and curiouser.
"I swear, I’d lose my head if it weren’t attached." O_O
"Rainbow produced a brown paper sack from her saddlebags. She placed it on the floor near Applejack and unfolded the top so the fragrance of the apples could waft out."
...I see what you did there.
I'm really liking the new spin on both stories, here!
Have to agree with Unknownlight, that this is way better than the original's "we took out your soul but don't worry, the only effect of that is that you can't get hurt much and you're a pretty rock." I never understood why Sayaka was so distraught over it. Interesting that the Homura-alt tells them on purpose here, too.
"She had grayed, too, but in an annoyingly inconsistent pattern: her fur had lost a bit of its blue pigment while her feathers lost their red."
Ah, and there's that piece of the puzzle in place.
Holy shit, that was fucking heartwrenching. Well done.
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Thank you! I also really appreciate your comments about the stranger/Homura expy. I’m going to write about them in the follow-up blog post as well, and the feedback helps me understand what worked (and didn’t).
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I think a lot of what tripped me up, reading, was the colors. I have to admit I don't see a lot of point to the color changes, aside from parallels to Luna/NMM. If you want to keep the confusion over whether it's Twilight or Star Swirl, then wouldn't it make more sense to have her go grey? And even with the palette swap, I guessed it was Twilight more or less immediately, so it didn't obfuscate much, and I can't see how you can take any color out of purple and pink to get black and red. (If it is because she's an alicorn, why would blue, pink, black, and red be the colors of magic personified? I don't get it.)
(I also don't get the beard, but my assumption is she just magicked it on for her disguise, a la Spike's mustache.)
Actually, how come her hair doesn't go all wavy? She's lived long than Celestia by the time we meet her, if I haven't got my timeline confused.
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Her color changes were kind of a muddle of different goals. One goal was to suggest that she’s been rewinding and resetting so much in this timeline that she’s much older than she should be (~8,000 years old). I threw in a lot of color changes to depict her as significantly older than Celestia and Luna in the show, and I also imagine her mane going limp from age (sort of the alicorn equivalent of thinning hair). The rewinding/resetting was also why her language was screwy; she loses track of what words have been invented or become obsolete/archaic. However, I couldn’t find a way to make clear that she is significantly more than ~1000 years old without hurting the pacing in the last chapter, so I think that fell flat.
A second goal was to make a red herring to suggest she was Star Swirl. When I started writing, we hadn’t seen Star Swirl in the show, so I thought I had some leeway with his coloration. By the time Shadow Play aired, though, I realized the red herring was a bad idea, so I left her as she was. It wasn’t a good solution to that issue, and if I were to rewrite the whole story, I’d handle Twilight differently.
So wait, if Fluttershy doesn't have a talent for animals, what is her cutie mark?
That quote at the end was, arguably, the most emotionally resonant part of the chapter for me. That hurt.
heck
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Thanks for your comment! Independent of this story, that speech resonates with me for personal reasons, so I’m glad I could share that feeling with someone.
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Yikes, sorry I missed your question! Everypony has the same cutie mark they did in the show except where it’s specifically called out as different. Fluttershy’s special talent gets addressed (albeit indirectly) in a later chapter.
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I'm curious: what might that personal reason be for you? I'm having trouble myself pinning down why it affected me so.
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I think it’s because of my conflicted feelings about FIM ending. That speech was when I got emotionally invested in the show (I watched the season 1 episodes in order in 2011), so it’s the real start of the series for me. Seven years, going on eight, is a long time to be invested in a cartoon, but there have been enough great episodes these last few seasons to keep me engaged. The show does have to end at some point, and it’s better if it happens while the team behind it has creative energy left. I’m still sorry to see it go, though, and thinking about that speech reminds me of why.
Switching to third person narration is an excellent way to emulate the visual shift labyrinths create in the anime.
It's interesting how knowing what the prime timeline is supposed to be affects the story.