Name: Akemi Homura*
*Akemi is her family name and Homura her given name. See Japanese name customs. Homura will usually introduce herself as 'Homura' because of naming customs in Kin, but she'll slip up now and again.
Character LJ: Clockwork Stop
PB: Toda Erika
Age: 20
Race: Puella Magi (human with magical abilities, contracted to an Incubator).
Job: Homura originally intended to act as a paranormal investigator when she came to Kin, but truth be told, she has her hands full with just dealing with her own brand of magical beasts/demons. So, she's gotten a job at a local coffee shop. It pays her bills, if only barely.
Abilities: Materialization of a bow that is charged with energy weapons. Magic that allows her to speed up her healing and track magical beasts, as well as do things like jump off buildings without hurting herself. Ability to communicate with Kyubey, her familiar (though this is actually Kyubey communicating with her. Homura has no telepathy, Kyubey just provides a link). In dire situations, she manifests a small gray shield on her arm, actually a time control device, enabling her to stop time for herself and anyone she's in physical contact with. This is a carry over from her last life and, she believes, a result of Madoka's interference. Whether that's true or not, well, maybe time will tell.
Physical description: Homura stands at around 165cm (5' 5"), with black hair that reaches down nearly to her rear. More often than not, it is let down, but she sometimes pulls it back into a braid, or even two. She always wears a pair of red ribbons somewhere on her person, frequently as part of her hairstyle. If you were ever to get a good look at her fingernails, you would notice that on her left middle finger is the outline of a diamond in purple. She would probably never let you close enough to do that, but, you know, if you did, that's what you'd find. On the same finger as the diamond can be seen a small ring with an amethyst stone in the middle. This ring is a manifestation of her Soul Gem, which is, in turn, her own soul ripped out of her body and transformed into a more "sturdy" form. If you get her Soul Gem far enough away from her body, the connection between her soul and body will break, leaving her body dead where it lies. Returning her Soul Gem immediately revives her, with her magic curing the damage caused by lack of oxygen. The only way to truly kill Homura is to destroy her Soul Gem, or to get her into a situation where she uses up all her magic.
Transformed, Homura always appears wearing a white swallow-tailed jacket with wide cuffs with black accents. It is layered over a black shirt with dusky-purple accents on the cuffs and collar. The skirt she wears is the same color as the accents of her shirt, and is lined with white. She wears black tights cut with a purple diamond pattern and heels. Her Soul Gem manifests here as a dark amethyst stone cut in a diamond shape, embedded in her left hand. This is really important only in that it never changes and it's the only way to know when she's in full access of her powers.
Kyubey's physical form looks like a small, white cat with an extra set of ears coming out of the pointed set on his head. These second ears drape down and fan out. They are tinged pink at the tips and each has a gold bangle that hovers around it. On his back is a small red, tear-drop symbol, actually a compartment that opens up to accept curse energy. His eyes are red and don't blink very often. If you were to shoot him (and Homura has) you'd see that seems to have no skeleton and does not bleed. If you kill him, a replacement will appear, and he will be mildly miffed at you.
Note: The only people who can see Kyubey are: Puella Magi, individuals with supernatural/magical abilities and people that Kyubey wants to see him. Once you can see Kyubey, he cannot make himself invisible to you in the future.
Also, the image used in this page is sourced here.
Personality: Homura is an emotional person who has ruthlessly stomped most of her emotions into a form where they can't bother her too much. She's fantastic at compartmentalizing and shoving her emotions away until she can deal with them (or, as the case may be, not deal with them.) She is ruthlessly efficient as well as incredibly impatient when it comes to fighting and will not hesitate to tell you off if you get in her way. Also, she's absolutely terrible at working with people she doesn't know and even moreso with people she doesn't trust.
That all said, she's surprisingly good at listening to people and has a compassionate side that she can't quite surpress. She feels much more comfortable around people that aren't wholly human and it usually shows in how she interacts with them. Otherwise, she tries to maintains a surface level of friendliness and engagement with the rest of the world, though sometimes it's just her faking it because she feels she should (and that Madoka would expect it of her, honestly). It takes a lot for her to start to care about someone, and even more to have her open up to them.
Unfortunately (but perhaps predictably), she's not good at treating herself well. She's great at giving herself more or less exactly what she needs to keep going, but not much more than that. Kyouko was the one to make sure that she occasionally treated herself to something, and will continue to do that from a distance via angry, angry phone calls and text messages. However, how much effect that will have is debatable.
Kyubey is a creature that professes to have no emotion. He only involves himself about people when they are useful to him and, though he rarely outright lies, but has no qualms about witholding the truth when it serves him. He sometimes pretends to be a cute, cuddly and generally helpful creature, but that appearance is ruined as soon as you realize that he'd just as soon give you information as he would leave you in a burning building or throw you to the monsters, depending on the situation. He acts only to further his own interests. People have often described him as a 'creepy, creepy asshole' (Homura agrees with this description).
History: Homura's childhood was quiet, but pleasant. She grew up in Tokyo, attending a challenging Mission School. Her parents were both busy and largely absent.
A little while after Homura turned 13, however, she began to get short of breath. At first it wasn't too noticeable - she got a little slower on the track, but then she'd never been fast. However, after a few weeks she began to notice it more and more. Her mother made her an appointment with their physician, but before that date could come, Homura fainted one day during math class. She was quickly brought to the hospital where she was diagnosed with a viral cardiomyopathy.
The next six months passed with Homura spending equal amounts of time at the hospital and at home. She was taken out of school as treatment and rehab were arranged and fulfilled. Eventually, her parents arranged to move her out of Tokyo, to Mitakihara Town. They hoped to make the transition easier for her by arranging to have her transferred to a school well known for its supportive community of staff, though what Homura gained in teacher-relations she lost in parental support, as both her parents ended up traveling much more than before. From that point on, her parents were largely absent from her life.
Her first day back to school came with little fanfare, but did host several important events. First and foremost, it was the day where she first met Kaname Madoka. Second, it was the day she found herself trapped in the maze of a Witch and was nearly killed, only to be saved by Madoka herself and another girl named Tomoe Mami.
Suddenly, Homura found herself involved in a very different world from the one she was used to. It was a world in which young girls called themselves Puella Magi, in which people her own age fought with their lives to destroy Witches and it was a world in which miracles could be yours if only you agreed to join in this fight. The Witches were terrifying, but Homura couldn't seem to disassociate herself from Madoka and Mami. She followed them into mazes and took them out for meals and generally just provided the other two girls with someone to connect to who still led a relatively normal life.
She couldn’t imagine joining the fight herself until the day Madoka's body lay at her feet, dead at the hands of Walpurgisnacht on May 1st. There, she begged Kyubey to let her meet Kaname Madoka again, this time not as one who needed to be protected by her, but as one who could protect her. Kyubey granted her wish, contracting with Homura, and the girl found herself abruptly equipped with the ability to travel, as well as stop, time. She took herself back to early April, and immediately sought out Madoka and Mami.
Homura would spend the rest of the month getting to know Madoka and Mami while preparing for Walpurgisnacht. The battle would level her town. It would almost kill her and her best friend. It did kill Mami. But any slight happiness she might have felt from winning the day at all was ripped from her immediately after the battle ended.
Before her eyes her best friend's soul ripped itself apart, shriveling into a grief seed, the sign of the Witches. And so Homura learned the sad truth of Puella Magi: that these magical girls grew up to be Witches.
So Homura went back again, back to the start of the whole mess. She tried to explain that Kyubey had tricked them; that he didn't care what happened to any of them, would achieve his goal of collecting energy whatever they did; and that the power they had received was anything but free.
No one believed her. It wasn't surprising; after all, these people only knew her as a new transfer student. They didn't know her as someone that had fought alongside them. Who deserved their trust. Who was their friend.
So Homura did the only thing she could: she became stronger, faster and recruited new weapons. She fought, as hard as she could when the inevitable fight with Walpurgisnacht came and lost so many of her friends anyway. In the aftermath, she sat with Madoka, watching as their souls started to decay, and thought almost fondly of becoming a Witch along side her best friend.
Madoka, however, had other ideas. She refueled Homura's magic, preventing her from becoming a Witch for just a little while longer. Madoka begged her to go back in time again, to prevent her from ever contracting with Kyubey and to kill her as she was now, so that she could never become a Witch.
Homura would try and fail to prevent Madoka's contract over and over. She killed Kyubey to try and keep him from contracting with Madoka, and found out that Kyubey didn't need his body, because he had replacements. She warned Madoka, only to find the girl dragged into the fight by a friend or after running into a Witch herself. Every time she failed, she went back. She went back again. And again. And again. She did it so many times she lost count. She watched her friends die or turn into Witches so many times she gave up on ever saving any of them, except Madoka. All she could do was fight for Madoka. She had to hold onto the hope that she'd be able to save this one person. She had no other choice but to believe in that, or give in and become a Witch herself.
She repeated the cycle until one day, finally, the newest incarnation of Kyubey realized who she was, and what she could do. And with that understanding, the Incubator informed Homura of something: everytime Homura rewound time to seek a world where Madoka did not become a Puella Magi, she added a layer of burden to the other girls soul. That burden would become Madoka's power when she became a Puella Mag. And then, when Madoka finished the cycle and became a witch, she would be that much more destructive for all of Homura's efforts.
Perhaps if Homura could have destroyed Walpurgisnacht, she might have still saved Madoka from ever becoming a Puella Magi, but she couldn't. She would never be able to. She simply wasn't strong enough to do it on her own and whenever she tried to recruit allies they inevitably died along the way. For the first time, Homura gave up. Bereft of hope, she would have turned into a witch herself had Madoka not arrived and wished to destroy all Witches, past and present and future, before they could take form. This wish essentially changed Madoka from a human into something akin to a force of nature, which returned Soul Gems into their natural form when they became too contaminated/ran out of magic, allowing Puella Magi to die without becoming Witches.
It also destroyed the universe as it existed so that a new universe, in which Puella Magi never became Witches, could be born.
And Homura watched the whole thing happen. When the new universe coalesced, she would be the only one who would remember the old one. The only proof she has that Madoka ever lived are a pair of red ribbons and her own memory.
Since then, Homura has continued to act as a Puella Magi, fighting against the Magical Beasts, who have formed in the absence of Witches. These Magical Beasts are distortions caused by curses harbored in the hearts of anything that can harbor a curse - anything that can feel. They cause much of the same havoc that Witches did, spreading grief and creating magical barriers which twist the world into a parody of itself and draw in unsuspecting victims which never emerge.
She is one of the oldest surviving Puella Magi. She has survived alongside Tomoe Mami, who is essentially responsible for making Homura finish school, and Sakura Kyouko, who made sure she doesn't fight all the damn time. Kyubey has also stayed with her frequently these past seven years, since she is interesting and a constant source of the curse energy the Incubators harvest for their own reasons. She's never quite sure how she feels about the Incubator, but, at the very least, he's something of a constant, which are rare enough in her life that she's come to more-or-less enjoy his company.
Having recently turned 20 Homura, on Kyouko's insistence, has decided to head for Kin City, a place that has recently lost it's own Puella Magi and is need of the protection Homura can offer. Kyubey is coming along for the ride.
