The streets were alive.
Homura walked without speaking, her eyes flicking from one strange sight to the next. The cobblestone beneath her shoes was uneven, weather-worn. Around her bustled a world that felt centuries older than the one she'd left behind.
People moved past her in loose-fitting clothes, some in armour, others draped in robes. Market stalls lined the sides of the street, their wooden counters loaded with some foreign yet mostly recognisable fruits.
A hunched merchant barked at a scrawny child, who flinched and scampered away after trying to swipe a strip of dried meat. The air here was dusty, tinged with the scent of sweat and smoke, utterly different from the sterile sterility of Mitakihara's city streets. The noise was louder, too. More alive.
She slowed down as she saw one of the domesticated creatures pulling a wagon past her.
Homura kept walking, but her pace slowed when a wagon creaked past her.
The creature pulling it caught her eye.
It was large, comparable in size to a horse, though leaner, its musculature tighter, movements more deliberately precise. Covered in shimmering scales that caught the sunlight like polished metal, it walked on strong hind legs, while its smaller forelimbs were tucked close to its chest. A harness strapped around its body anchored it to the wooden cart, and as it snorted, smoke hissed from its nostrils like a forge cooling after use.
It reminded her of something she'd seen before. A modern depiction of a raptor from a certain fictional series. A domesticated dinosaur, repurposed for mundane labour like a horse was, back in long-since passed history.
The man leading it wore a wide-brimmed hat low over his eyes and held the reins with practised ease. He never once looked her way.
Homura watched silently as they passed and eventually disappeared into the crowd.
"So some things are different here after all," she murmured.
And yet… not enough.
There were too many similarities. Language, humans, familiar architecture, clothes that didn't look far removed from Earth's old or rural styles. The presence of stalls and coins, of shouted bartering and baked bread. If this were truly another planet, another universe, shouldn't there be more alien features? Different physics? A different ecosystem entirely?
The thought chewed at the edges of her mind as she walked past a group of children chasing a rolling fruit.
It didn't fit.
It felt wrong.
Too familiar.
Almost… constructed. (hehe rebellion reference.)
"A dream?" she muttered, narrowing her eyes. "No. That's a fool's way of thinking."
She dismissed the idea immediately. She knew what dreams felt like. This wasn't one. Besides, calling this a dream would be lazy. An escapist's reflex. Something someone said when they didn't want to face the truth.
But if it wasn't fictional or a fabrication, then what?
A parallel world? A timeline that branched off far earlier than the others? A universe nearly identical to her own, just twisted slightly sideways?
Multiverse theory had been speculative fiction once, until she lived it through. Time travel, timelines, loops, they were all real. She'd made them real. She'd turned fantasy into a mechanism of survival. Each "loop" or timeline she traversed, there were small differences in each one, perhaps now that she thought of it. That was multiverse theory at work, albeit at a smaller scale. So no. It wasn't a stretch to believe she'd been thrown into a timeline where things had veered off course long before she arrived.
Of course, that was just theoretically speaking. She had no real evidence. It could all be wrong.
But it helped to think of it that way.
At least then, it was something she could digest more comfortably.
She gazed up again, expression unreadable, before continuing on.
The cobblestone road stretched ahead in uneven paths, with mismatched stones worn smooth by countless footsteps. Her boots made soft, crisp sounds as she walked. Most people didn't pay her any mind, but those who did let their gaze linger longer than usual. before quietly assuming she was just a foreigner and not yet accustomed to local customs or fashion.
Homura, for her part, was too disoriented to think entirely logically.
The world around her was too new, too foreign. It wasn't just the unfamiliar language or the clothes or the lack of any familiar technology; it was everything.
After nearly a decade trapped in one town, one school, one endless loop of tragedy and repetition… this? This was sensory overload. A different sky, a different smell in the air, different voices. it was overwhelmingly different and overwhelmingly distracting. So, for once, Homura allowed herself to be just a little distracted and take to sight seeing a bit and wander.
Past fruit stalls, where piles of round, colourful produce gleamed under the sun. Past a man shouting something about the benefits of "mura root," which, based on the smell alone, she had zero interest in. Past a bakery pushing out warm puffs of sweet-smelling steam. Past children kicking a ball, directly into each other's faces, as children do.
It reminded her, faintly, of a farmers' market. But cleaner, organised and with more shouting. but less chaos overall. But it was similar.
Her pace slowed.
One stand in particular caught her attention, wooden crates stacked neatly with what looked like red apples. She eyed the fruits with cautious interest before glancing at the handwritten sign above them.
Her expression shifted.
A frown tugged at her brows as she stepped closer, squinting at the text. "What...?"
The characters weren't Japanese. Not kanji. Not katakana. Not even distorted hiragana. But they weren't completely foreign, either. Curved lines, loops, connected strokes... There was a rhythm to them, something almost pretty. They reminded her of the first time she'd been shown cursive writing as a child.
"They speak Japanese, but the writing system gets tossed out?" she muttered. Her brows furrowed deeper. "That'll be annoying to deal with."
She leaned in further, trying to brute-force meaning into the curves and swoops. Nothing clicked. No phonetics. No familiar roots. She was completely illiterate here. which is, did you know, not a good thing to be in a foreign country. or universe or multiverse or world or I think you get the point.
"Tch."
"Oi! You deaf or just dumb?" a gruff voice snapped from the side, jerking her out of her thoughts. "You buying something, or just gonna stand there scaring off my customers?"
She blinked, turning to find the man behind the stall glaring at her.
Green hair. A tan. Small beard. Two scars across his face (one slicing over his eye) and a twig hanging loosely from his mouth. He wore the universal look of someone long trapped in customer service
Homura glanced from him to the apples. Or were they not apples? She couldn't be sure.
"I apologise. I was just looking." She raised a hand and pointed at the nearest fruit. "What are those?"
The man's expression softened slightly, maybe thinking she was about to buy something. He crossed his arms. "Those're appa. Don't got 'em where you're from? You dressed kinda funny. Travelling, are you?"
"Something like that," she answered vaguely, gaze still flicking between the fruit and the strange script. "Are they safe to eat raw?"
He snorted. "Safe enough, hah. They're sweet, bit of a tang in the skin. Gotta chew through the rind, though. Most folks peel 'em."
She nodded absently, filing the information away. Appas. Not apples, but close enough in shape and use. Probably their equivalent. Still, it is strange how the name only sounds slightly off rather than being something completely different.
"How much for one?"
"Two bronze."
She didn't know what that meant, but through easy deductions. It was probably the lowest-value currency in their economy. Indicating that they had silver, gold or maybe platinum coins.
"Right." Homura reached into her coat pocket, fingers brushing against the familiar texture of a few hundred-yen coins. She pulled one out on reflex, holding it between her fingers as she extended her hand, and then froze.
Wait. Her eyes narrowed, annoyed with herself. Didn't I literally just deduce they used different currency? Why would I even try that?
As expected, the man behind the cart squinted at the unfamiliar coin. "What kind of money is that?" he said, voice tightening. "Doesn't matter. We don't take that stuff in Lugunica." His tone soured, his casual demeanour evaporating into irritation. "So you're flat broke, huh? Don't waste my time if you're not buying. Move along, you're scaring off paying customers."
He waved her off with a dismissive scoff.
(now imagine... a black cat being tossed out of a door. The cat being homura.)
.
.
.
Moments later, Homura was back on the road, shoulders a touch stiffer than before, her eyes scanning the buildings around her.
"Hah..." she let out a sigh, the sound quiet beneath the murmur of the crowd. "I guess finding money will be a priority. Yen's completely useless here."
She glanced up at the sky again, pale and cloudless, her thoughts turning inward.
"I should still have something in the shield," she murmured. "Maybe I can sell it..."
Her eyes flicked to the side, searching for somewhere private. There, a narrow alley between two buildings, shaded and empty. She quickened her pace, slipping through the crowd with practised ease before ducking into the alleyway.
Her figure vanished into the gloom, and for just a moment, if any onlookers had been watching closely, they might have seen the shadows brighten ever so slightly.
Just for a second.
A/N hope you enjoyed. Please comment if ya have any ideas on where im going with this, because it'd be fun if you guys fail. And even if you did you wouldn't complain.
because my plot has no holes... at all... nope. completely fine plot here. just comment anyway, I love feedback or just people pointing out stuff they enjoyed. (plus, i have no clue if I charactised homura or any characters good or not)
But that's it from me.
See ya!