Fanfic / Stars Above

"Magical girls aren't real." "Not in your world..."

Kyubey: "I give my word that I will not make, nor will I attempt to make contracts with these girls... Contracting them would be foolish and irrational, no matter the circumstances. If they ever became Puellae Magi... it would mean the end of everything."

—From the prologue

Stars Above is a fanfic started in September 2011, written by Tropers BHS and AshenDream. Based loosely on the events of a long-running RP on the TV Tropes Forum, the story is a Puella Magi Madoka Magica/Lucky Star Intercontinuity Cross Over which takes place after Madoka's ascension and ignores the events of Rebellion, as the story was written and planned out long before the movie's release.

A mysterious transfer student arrives for her first day at a new school. Cold and emotionless, she treats everyone in her class with indifference... except for one ordinary girl, who is mystified by her attitude. Later on that same day, this girl and her friends are attacked by a hideous monster, only to be saved by a Magical Girl...

Sounds familiar, right? Well, here come the twists:

The new school is Ryouou High, the ordinary girl is Kagami Hiiragi, not Madoka Kaname, the monster is called a Demon, and the new transfer student is wearing a red ribbon in her hair...

A Yuri Genre Crossover Ship fic that aims to be "as awesome as possible", according to the authors.

The story was completed in December 2014.

Now has a Characters Page, under construction.

Stars Above has Bonus Material including two side-stories, My Sunshine and Pioneer, and profiles for each of the Demons of the Nine, which can be found here. The story is also posted on Archive of Our Own and DeviantArt

You may also want to check out Tasakeru, an original work written by BHS, who wouldn't even think of indulging in Shameless Self-Promotion.

There is a discussion thread for this story on the TV Tropes Forum.

This fic and its related materials are also posted on DeviantArt and AO3 (Archive Of Our Own), in addition to its home on FanFiction.Net.

The fic has a Spiritual Successor of sorts in the form of Shattered Skies: The Morning Lights, also by BHS.

Also see Respect, another unrelated Crossover by the same author.

WARNING! Here there be SPOILERS. It is highly recommended that you finish watching the Madoka anime before reading the story or looking at this page!

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This work provides examples of:

• All Deaths Final: The Puellae Magi are well aware of this. The Kagami of 2012, however...
• All There in the Manual: The names, natures, origins, and background information about the Nine are explained largely though their profiles, written in the style of the Madoka website's Witch Cards.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Homura, initially stoic and unfriendly as usual, until she opens up to Kagami.
• Anyone Can Die: And does die. Every single Puella Magi on Earth dies in Homura's time, long with Tsukasa, and in Kagami's time, quite a few innocents die. Homura herself also dies at the end.
• Apocalypse How: Vittoria's attack on Earth in the Madoka-verse resulted in one of Scope Level 3 (Planetary). The Severity is Level 2 (Societal Collapse), verging on Levels 3 (Species Extinction) and 4 (Total Extinction) due to the damage to causality and the climate. Only one or two billion people are left, and every city and town is said to be in ruins. The Demons are now aiming for a Class Z Omniversal Physical Annihilation.
• Apocalypse Maiden: Kagami contains the Demon that could destroy The Multiverse... and by the final chapters Tsukasa contains another, unnamed one, similarly powerful. This overlaps with Barrier Maiden.
• Arc Words: "The stars above will fall, and all will come to ruin."
• Barrier Maiden: Both of the Hiiragi twins are this to The Multiverse... their survival keeps everything from falling apart.
• Beta Couple: Tsukasa and Miyuki. Except not, as Miyuki has been replaced by a shapeshifting Demon.

• Big Damn Kiss: In Chapter 17, after a night of terrible battles and even more terrible trauma.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Nine are completely defeated and everyone is saved. However, Homura dies of Soul Gem corruption as a result of the fight. Kagami does manage to heal her timeline's Homura, but doesn't dare use her as a Replacement Goldfish, and hopes to join Homura and Madoka one day.

• Break Them by Talking: The Second is an expert at this, and takes perverse pleasure in it.
• Calling Your Attacks: Mami, of course, continues to do this as well as the Pleiades Saints. Homura also takes to naming her ultimate attack, "Requiem Violetta", and credits Mami for it. By the end, all of the Stars Above have named attacks: "Blue Moon Sapphire Power Kiss" for Konata, "Ultima" for Miyuki, "Demon Slayer" for Tsukasa, and "Starry Night" for Kagami.
• The Cameo:
  • Madoka appears to Kyoko to take her Soul Gem when she runs out of power.
  • In Chapter 5, Nurse Amahara from the Lucky Star manga makes an appearance. Minoru Shiraishi has a single line in Chapter 6, when he informs Miss Kuroi that Miyuki has been gone for a long time.
  • Cameos of the Kazumi and Oriko characters are found throughout the 2012 flashbacks in Chapters 7, 8, and 9.
  • Every Magical Girl ever appears in Kagami's dream in Chapter 12. Specifically alluded to are Tokyo Mew Mew, Revolutionary Girls, the Magic Knights, Cardcaptor Sakura, the Wedding Angels, all of the Precure, the TSAB agents and the Wolkenritter, all 108 Devil Hunters, and every Sailor Senshi and Puella Magi to ever exist.
  • Soujiro Izumi, Yui Narumi, and Yutaka Kobayakawa appear in Chapter 18.
  • Minami Iwasaki cameos as a Chekhov's Gunman in Chapter 20.
• Caught with Your Pants Down: How Kagami finds out about Tsukasa and Miyuki's relationship.
• Circles of Hell: The Nine modeled themselves after the Circles in Dante's Hell.
• Cloning Gambit: Desideria pulled this with one of her Spawn. She let it feed until it transformed into a copy of herself, let it read her memories, and allowed the copy to take her place and be killed by Kagami.
• Conflicting Loyalty: The reason why Homura decides to take some distance from Kagami. She thinks that she's betraying Madoka by falling in love with another girl after Desideria goads her about it, but she also doesn't want Kagami to get hurt in the crossfire that keeps getting violent. The later situation is ironically not unlike the events of Madoka Magica.
• Continuation: Of the Madoka anime. The story deliberately ignores the events of Rebellion, as it was written and planned well before the movie's release.
• Corrupt the Cutie: Desideria disguised as Miyuki does this to Tsukasa throughout the story.
• Crossover Ship: The story was totally not written with an ulterior motive of promoting the authors' Kagamura ship.
• Darker and Edgier: At least when compared to the much lighter Lucky Star anime/manga. It's even pushing it at times in the Madoka-verse's case.
• Dark Magical Girl: Homura, obviously. Though significantly more heroic than she initially appeared in the Madoka anime, her determination and ruthlessness have not changed.
• Demonic Possession: Konata in chapter 15, given a Brand and forcibly converted into one of the Sixth's Spawn. Several chapters later, the Seventh briefly possesses Tsukasa when she seals it inside her body.
• Despair Event Horizon:
  • The 2012 Kagami crosses it in heartbreaking fashion when she learns that Homura can't make the pain of losing her sister go away.
• Determinator: All of the Puellae Magi, especially Homura. They fought on until there were only four left.
• Dies Wide Open: Tsukasa and Kazumi in the Madokaverse both die staring upward, at the sky and at the ceiling respectively.
• Dope Slap: First with a bento box, then with a pillow. Both times Konata is the recipient.
• The Dying Walk: Homura does this after the final battle, shortly before she dies of corruption.
• Eldritch Abomination: Vittoria fits the bill, and later Desideria mutates into a huge rift described as a living time/space paradox.

• The End of the World as We Know It: This will occur if anything happens to Kagami and Tsukasa, the "multiversal focal points".
• Enemy Within:
  • It seems like Vittoria already exists in Kagami's head, clouding her mind and making her almost lash out at the already beaten up Homura for letting Jovanni's monks take Konata hostage.
  • A more obvious example is probably when Kagami accidentally snaps the neck of one of Kyubey's bodies when she's freaking out about Tsukasa going missing.
  • She nearly gets loose at the end of Chapter 25 after Kagami's Extreme Mêlée Revenge against the Second.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: Every Puella Magi on Earth teamed up to battle Vittoria, Kagami's Demon form. Only four survived.
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge: Kagami turns the Second into a bloody smear with her bokken.

• Feel No Pain: The mechanism of this one nature of magical girls is explained as the "pain switch", where in an extreme case, a magical girl sacrifices her movement and speed for numbness of their body. An example of the technique is when Homura takes a spear that almost severs her torso without dying, and lets Kagami hit her with her bokken to destroy Demon Spawn that latch on all over her body.
• Genius Loci: Jovanni, the Sixth, takes the form of a twisted cathedral made from volcanic rock. He also has the ability to turn his Branded into his monks, which confuses Homura at first-she thinks they're the Demons.
• Getting Eaten Is Harmless: Kagami is swallowed whole by the Third Demon Ciacco, a giant, emaciated dog, but the only real danger involved inside is his Spawn^note  Demon equivalent to Witches' Familiars, a horde of maggots that eat everything he eats, depriving him of actual nourishment.

• Heroic BSoD:
  • Homura suffers a terrible one after Desideria reveals all her secrets to Kagami, and violates her Soul Gem while wearing Kagami's form immediately afterward.
  • Kagami has one at the end of her fight with the Second. This time around, Homura talks her out of it.
  • Konata suffers one after the battle with the Seventh, witnessing for the first time just how screwed up the Demons are- she managed to escape this due to Laser-Guided Amnesia after her encounter with Jovanni.

• Heroic Sacrifice: The Yuki impersonator pulls one to save Kagami, Konata and the other bystanders from demon crows. She gets killed by being flayed alive for her troubles.
• Heroic Second Wind: Homura's Soul Gem is already blackened before the Third's battle and she is supposed to fade per the usual Law of Cycle, but not only does she not fade, her Soul Gem becomes bright again. Kyubey, who is understandably confused, discusses it with her. She gets another one later when Kagami reminds her that she's not alone.

• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Just as in Madoka, the title of each chapter comes from a line of dialogue within it.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Homura at the end of Chapter 10. She gets Taken for Granite immediately after.

• Intercontinuity Cross Over: Between Lucky Star and Puella Magi Madoka Magica. The first work of its kind to do so. The story also unites characters from the Madoka, Kazumi, and Oriko timelines in the Madoka-verse.
• Is That What He Told You?: Said by Kyubey in Chapter 5. Homura's explanation as to what happened to her timeline's Hiiragi twins wasn't entirely truthful...
• It Can Think: It's soon revealed that Demons are just as intelligent as humans, and capable of long-term planning. And sadism, in the Second's case.
• The Juggernaut: Gaspare, the Fourth, a knight made of solid lead. Homura throws half her arsenal at it, and nothing works until she impales it with its own lance and spears it with her Finishing Move for good measure.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Tsukasa, and one chapter later, Kazumi, as the first victim of Vittoria.

• Mortal Wound Reveal: Homura's Soul Gem is revealed to have been damaged in the final battle shortly afterwards. This changes the ending from a straight Happy Ending to a Bittersweet Ending with Homura's death as a result.

• New Transfer Student: Homura, just as in the Madoka canon, but with a twist...
• Not What It Looks Like: The title of Chapter 5, said when Tsukasa misinterprets Kagami lying in Homura's lap.

• Pre-Climax Climax: Kagami and Homura spend the night together in Chapter 27, just before they go to face the Ninth.
• Present Absence: Madoka. This being set after the series, she's serving as the concept of Hope and is unseen but omnipresent throughout the story, but she makes personal appearances to lead Kyoko, Nico, and Homura to the afterlife.
• Rape as Drama:
  • The Second was doing this when she played with Homura's Soul Gem. Combined with the psycholoigical torture Homura was put through, it's no wonder she was catatonic by the end of it.
  • She threatens this against Kagami in their rematch. Kagami, understandably, does not take any of that.
• Rage Against the Reflection: A variation of this. The reflection Homura rages against is the Second, having shifted into a doppelganger of her past self. Kagami gets a turn at this several chapters later.

• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Said by Kagami to Kyubey in Chapter 4.

• Secret Relationship: Tsukasa and Miyuki, until Chapter 13.
• Shapeshifter: The Second, who imprisons Miyuki in the lens of her own glasses and assumes her form. Airi Anri also this, and she's in the force of good now unlike in her series.
• Shout-Out: Most of them come from Konata, naturally.
  • Konata talks the Hiiragi twins' ears off about Code Geass in Chapter 2. The first season was airing at the time the story takes place.
  • Kagami's ringtone is the OP from the first Full Metal Panic! anime.
  • Konata quotes Fist of the North Star when showing Homura that she means business in Chapter 13. She also lets out Kenshiro's trademark Funny Bruce Lee Noises and pulls off some Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs before being abducted one chapter later.
  • Kagami changes her ringtone to the first Bleach ED theme, "Life is Like a Boat".
  • Upon finding out that Homura's a Magical Girl, Konata pesters her to do the original In the Name of the Moon speech, complete with posing.
  • And later, during Kyubey's ultimately failed attempt to forge a contract with her, Konata whispers "Moon Prism Power Make Up."
  • When she finally does transform into a Magical Girl, her costume is clearly based on Sailor Moon's, and she gives the full speech as she arrives at the battle.
  • Konata and Patty put on a show featuring the original Pretty Cure at the cosplay cafe in Akihabara.
  • Konata gives Tsukasa a Cardcaptor Sakura costume for her birthday. It's the infamous pink and black rubber catsuit.
  • When visiting Miyuki in the rehab hospital, Konata plays Monster Hunter Portable, and later quotes Terriermon's trademark "Moumantai."
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Homura and Madoka prior to the story, and Kagami and Homura after the latter dies at the end.
• Start of Darkness: Chapter 9 shows the 2012 Kagami's gradual descent into Demonhood.
• Supporting Leader: Oriko Mikuni takes command of all of Earth's Puellae Magi in the 2012 timeline.
• Swallowed Whole: Kagami gets eaten by the Third in Chapter 15.
• Taken for Granite: Homura gets temporarily turned into a gold statue by the Fourth.
• The Stoic: Homura, though she's a little more free with her emotions than she was in the Madoka anime.
• Theme Naming: The Nine are given sobriquets that are patterned after the nine circles of Hell.
• Title Drop:
  • Done twice in Chapter 5, the first time by Oriko and the second by one of the Demons. Done a third time in Chapter 25 by Desideria.
  • Used several times as Arc Words towards the end: The stars above will fall, and all will come to ruin.
  • And, finally, Stars Above is adopted as a name by the team of Magical Girls.
• Tsundere: Kagami, as always. Konata mentions this by name.
• Visions of Another Self: Oriko reveals to Homura that she has dreams of the other timelines, and knows of all the hell Homura's been through as a Puella Magi.
• The Virus: Jiovanni's Rite of Coversion turns humans into his grotesque red-cloaked monks. Poor Konata.
• Weirdness Magnet: As "multiversal focal points", Kagami and Tsukasa are living WeirdnessMagnets, and irresistible targets for the Demons.
• Wham Line:
  • Two in rapid succession in Chapter 4: "We're all that's left," and "Neither of us killed that Demon... you did."
  • One in the final chapter: "It's breaking...", referring to Homura's Soul Gem.
• Whole Episode Flashback: Chapter 9.

• You Can't Go Home Again: Homura and Kyubey's trip back from the 2013 Madokaverse was one-way. It took a significant power boost to go back that far, and there's no way to return to their own time or universe.

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