I have a hypothesis that a venerable scientist - an astrophysicist, no less! - would refrain from indulging the layman's meaning for "theory"... ;)

(That that is the worst I can do means YOU are doing quite well indeed. Very enjoyable so far, and Homugestalt has so much potential it's absurd.)

Lovely story.

"So while I'll love to hear conjecture regarding her perspective, please don't assume apparent errors aren't intentional on my part to develop the story."

Even with that being the case, there's at least one error that can't be due to her perspective.

"Sakura Kyouko, the girl who had before been in a tense stand-alone coexistance with the girls of Mitakihara, was now a team player. This time around, she and Mami managed to reach a detente that kept the two intensely dear friends in alliance if not always in agreement. When Madoka and then Sayaka contracted, they had two mentors and not just one."

Kyouko was absent in the beginning of timeline three. Otherwise, she would have been there when Homura told the other girls about magical girls becoming witches. Although you could try to make up some excuse for Kyouko to be absent for that specific meeting only, it's more reasonable to assume that Homura would want to spill the beans when ALL the girls can hear it.
This is something Fiona would have seen.

"From my own vantage point I can certify until the post-Madoka world such changes were limited to Japan and to events within three years of Homura's return to the hospital bed. Of the consistent variants, Kyouko and Sayaka were the most frequent variables. Madoka too, but only due to Homura's own interventions."

This is the problem with allowing changes to the past PRIOR to Homura's arrival on March 16th. If the past can change before she can intervene, the possibility exists that Madoka could have contracted before the 16th. Thereby making it impossible for Homura to save her in that timeline. She might as well reset without getting up from the hospital bed.
If the other girls' histories can change, why should (and how can) Madoka's be fixed to the point where Homura always gets a shot at preventing her first wish on the 18th?
Homura's wish is to protect Madoka, not prevent her from contracting. In fact, when she made her wish, Homura thought being a magical girl was a GOOD thing. It's only sheer luck that she loops back just far enough to be able to prevent Madoka's first wish.

On Sayaka, I'm with those of the opinion that Kyousuke's accident is "commmon" to all timelines and that that alone isn't enough to push Sayaka's potential up to contractable levels. The thing is, Sayaka's contracting is likely not a certainty, even if Kyousuke is crippled. If it were inevitable, Homura would have spoken differently to Madoka in ep5. She would have said something along the lines of it would have been impossible to stop Sayaka from contracting, rather than she should have watched her better.

LovedItLovedItLovedItLovedIt LovedItLovedItLovedItLovedIt LovedItLovedItLovedItLovedIt LovedItLovedItLovedItLovedIt LovedItLovedItLovedItLovedIt LovedItLovedItLovedItLovedIt LovedItLovedItLovedItLovedIt LovedItLovedItLovedItLovedIt LovedItLovedItLovedItLovedIt LovedItLovedItLovedItLovedIt LovedItLovedItLovedItLovedIt LovedItLovedItLovedItLovedIt LovedIt, etc. ad nauseum.

I loved Fiona's journal note as well. For a noob it provides some much needed understanding and makes it quite easy to comprehend. Thank you.

Can't wait to see how you handle the next chapter :-)

I realized that I still owed you a review for this chapter.

You know, I must have a strong stomach, because Francesco Redi's experiments didn't really "bug" me ;-p

I still love all the science, and the emotions so strongly felt by both Homura's, as well as the (almost) pure action at the end. I'd love to see the both of them survive, but I'm not sure that's in the forecast.

I'll hit the next one tomorrow given how late it is. Hasta mañana :-)

Lol, you might want to change the rating or censor Kyouko. I don't care about foul language personally, but some douche might come along and ruin everything for improper rating due to language. This fic is too good to be removed for something as petty as that :S

You've managed to give depth to both Homura and Sayaka, a little bit more than the canon, and I really enjoyed this chapter because of it. Your dedication makes me want to give random people around me hugs ;-; Good luck to you!

This is intricately written and well in-character for everyone. I enjoy it.

This. Is. Excellent!

First, I'm sorry for ending up not replying to your last PM and thank you for sharing that.

So, the first five or six paragraphs have some very disturbing implication.

Homura was, for three weeks, trapped in a state where she is fully aware and cognizant of her surrounding but cannot move her body at all. That is like being trapped in vegetative state while maintaining full awareness, which is a quite body horror. Even worse, its mean Madoka send her into this state of existence despite all that Homura has went through and as if it isnt' enough.

Ugh, the more I think about it the more I feel bad.

I hope this doesn't come out as if I'm lashing at you. I feel bad saying all this.

Well, other than this chapter was quite interesing. Watching the two Homura interesting sure was. And I dig the math-science tidbits.

I still wonder if there are actually two distinct souls of Homura or not.

No complaints. The only thing that bothers me is that I can't tell if you're trying to portray Homura as being good with a sword or not. It's possible that she can be competent with a sword, but I think she wouldn't have trained as hard in that as she did with firearms. Time taken to train in one would eat into time taken to train for the other.
That being the case, do you think she would prefer to perfect her skills with the weapons she's already good at or start from scratch with a completely different type of fighting?

Tesseracts hurt my head. I'm having a hard time understanding that whole 4-D stuff. Are you going somewhere with that? Should I put more effort into figuring it out or can I dismiss it as irrelevant?

And electricity in its most basic form is not a wave, it's electric charge, a physical property. Electric currents are the flow of charged particles. And electromagnetic waves are, well, waves.

Other than that, it's pretty consistent with what technical aspects I know of. It's good you're not assigning numbers, otherwise it'd all fall apart pretty quickly, probably. It also gives some insight as to how scarily prepared wraiths are in order to keep their existence a secret.

I like Homu-sensei's rational approach to an apparantly clearly non-sensical mess. And it makes me wonder how'd she do as a school teacher...

"Homura-sensei!"

Heh.

Katana-wielding Homura, now that's one I haven't thought of before. It's weird, hard to get used to. While it makes sense that she would learn many, many different combat styles, I guess we're too accustomed to guns and and bows, and it doesn't fit her "cool" image. Or, at least, I can't picture a "cool" pose for swordswoman Homura.

Meh, not really important.

Read you next chapter.

Well that was interesting.

I look forward to seeing what happens next!

I said that I owed you a review of this chapter, so here it is. I alluded to it in my email, but I truly loved the insight and emotions we get from Homura in this chapter. The pain, the despair, the anger, the rage, the helplessness, and, finally, the hope.

Not being familiar with the canon of this story I will say that I'd really like to take Kyubey and, political correctness or not, make a nice muffler or fur collar out of him. Is that possible?

"The brown-haired girl's confession to Sayaka's childhood friend,"
"Homura ran her hand comfortingly down the honey-blonde girl's hair,"

Hitomi has green hair, doesn't she? Also, good chapter.