Fic Update Thread 63: The Lack of Clever Subtitle

[Mamorien]

Just when you thought it was safe to return to Mitakihara, Shattered Skies: The Morning Lights (BSSM/CCS/PreCure/MGLN/PMMM) comes back together to Fly Apart.

Homura and Fate's mission to investigate the mysterious gatherers is interrupted by unexpected guests, and the picture of what has happened to Vertex Five becomes slightly clearer.

Notes:
Hey, guys.

This was the longest hiatus I've ever taken from Shattered Skies, but I'm back. I hope you'll all understand that the lack of progress was because from the end of January to the beginning of August, I was stuck in the grueling process of moving out of my home of more than twenty years. It was one of the most difficult and painful things I've ever gone through, but now that I'm fully settled in a place of my own, I feel the old me coming back. Pardon me if I'm a little rusty after all this time, but (knock on wood) this is the last big gap for a while.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/244909.../249066346

EDIT: CW for Kyubey abuse.

EDIT: Either I didn't read the previous chapter when I linked it or I forgot about its ending in the meantime, because Mann oh Manfred. To cut a horror story short, Homura and Fate came on board one of the "gatherer" ships Dead End had flitting about V5 (the PMMM-verse) ramscooping mana, and discovered that its CPU was an Incubator terminal whose back half was a swollen mound of flesh with tubes and wires integrated into it. The new chapter picks up there, with Chi-Kyubey (the modified terminal that's working with Team Lighthouse) crawling out of Homura's shield, seeing the gatherer's onboard terminal, and becoming the first Incubator ever to experience being horrified. Homura makes a mental note that, someday, she will tell Chi-Kyubey that what he felt was a faint shadow of the experience had by every Puella Magi who ever found out what the end stage of their contract entails.