The opening sixty-five words of this story are not mine. Free cookies to anyone who recognizes them.
In other news, I need help designing Witches for this story, and deciding which Magical Girls survive in this timeline. I'm also accepting entries for custom made characters, preferably Puella Magi, as I intend this to be a pretty big story.
Now on with the show.
Incipio
It is said that in science, the greatest changes come about when some research says, "Hmmm. That's odd." The same can be said for relationships: "That's not my shade of lipstick..."-warfare: "That's an odd dust cloud..." Etc.
But in this case, the subject is science. And Relationships. And Warfare.
And things are just ginormously huge and hard to grasp because space is like that.
[x]
"Hmmm... That's odd."
Arthur had woken up sometime in the ungodly hours of the morning to get a drink of water. It was only a few hours past midnight, and the sky was the pitch black color of a moonless night.
Arthur was a young man, handsome, with dark hair, bright green eyes, and noble features, who looked every bit the mythical king for whom he was most emphatically not named. He stood, in a too-small white tee-shirt and shorts, outside his little sister's room, looking at a strange light shining out from under the door.
This wasn't the first time he had been up late at night; he had been having trouble sleeping lately, and such midnight excursions as he was presently on were no longer uncommon to him. He had seen his little sister's night light shining out from under the door before, and this was not what it looked like.
This light was too blue, for one thing, and it had an ethereal, unearthly quality to it not usually possessed by photon streams produced by incandesce. If he had to describe what what his light looked like, he would say it came from a ghost, which was ridiculous, because Arthur most assuredly did not believe in ghosts.
He was considering opening the door when he heard his little sister's voice. She was whispering, but Arthur could hear her loud and clear. "I think... I think I know what I what to wish for!"
Alexander frowned. What could she be talking about? He tried decided to try the doorknob. Gingerly, he reached out and turned it. It was locked.
"So, you've decided, then." Arthur froze for a moment. Something, a voice, was echoing in his head. It was faint, but he could understand it. "You've decided what you'd trade your very life for?"
"Yes!" His sister's voice again. "I wish for the-"
That instant, Arthur made a snap decision. His sister was twelve, for crying out loud. No one should be trading their life for anything at that age, and he wasn't letting his sister die for anything. He slammed his shoulder into the door. The wood groaned, but held. He took several steps back, lowered his shoulder, and charged.
The door shattered on impact. Arthur smashed through the door wish a massive crash, sliding into the room. He looked up, instinctively falling into a fighting crouch, and looked around the room.
The scene before him was perhaps one of the weirdest things he had seen in his entire life.
His sister was wearing her pajamas and standing in front of her dresser. Atop the dresser, which reached to just above her head, sat a strange creature that looked a bit like an albino ferret, with two pairs of ears, a long set and a short, catlike set, and a long fluffy tail. The room was filled but a dim light, which seemed devoid of any sort of source.
"What's going on here?" Arthur demanded. "What are you talking about, trading your life?"
The creature on top of the dresser turned toward him and looked into his eyes. "Do not interfere in this, human." It said, speaking directly into his mind, its soulless red eyes seaming to pierce him with their gaze.
Momentarily stunned by the creature's voice, Arthur could only look on in horror as his sister clenched her fist and pressed it against her chest.
"I wish for people to have the power to fly to the stars and stuff, just like in one of big brother's stories!" She declared, looking straight at the creature, seeming not to notice Arthur's entrance.
"As you wish." The creature said, and the light filling the room flared to blinding. Arthur screwed his eyes shut and threw his arm up in front of his face.
There was a sound like shattering glass, and Arthur felt a sensation like a red-hot spike being driven into his brain.
"Maria." He muttered.
And then he knew no more.
[x]
Arthur walked home from the school, dejected. He had woken up on the floor of his sister's room two weeks ago, with the door fully intact and no trace of Maria in the room.
His sister showed up later that day, just before dinner. Arthur expected his parents to grill her for being absent all day, but they seemed to ignore it, even when he called attention to Maria's activities over the course of the day.
After dinner, when his parents were watching a movie, Arthur confronted Maria about the incident in her room, and her absence. She broke down in tears in his arms, muttering that she couldn't say anything. Arthur had let her go after that.
He tried to keep an eye on her over the weeks that followed, but he couldn't be everywhere, and Maria kept slipping away for longer and longer stretches of time. Last night, she had disappeared and hadn't come home. Arthur's parent's were ignoring the issue, and he was frankly waiting for the twenty-four hour mark to file a missing persons report.
What was more, he had been plagued by strange headaches since that night, and when his mind was idle, patterns would appear in front of his vision, strings of numbers and letters, bizarre symbols, and other things. They vanished as soon as he blinked, but recently they had been lasting longer and longer.
He had taken to writing down what he found in a notebook, which he was now carrying on his person at all times. He figured that his psychiatrist would like to see his exact hallucinations, when they got bad enough that he needed one.
Arthur looked up. Caught up in thought, he had failed to pay attention to where he was going, and appeared to have wandered onto a construction site. He looked around him.
The whole place was empty, despite it being only early afternoon. There was no one in sight, and-
A strange point of blackness appeared in front of him, hanging in the air. It was about the size of a quarter, and... Growing?
Arthur stepped forward, toward the point of blackness. He felt a strange pull toward it, but touching something like that without knowing what it was would be-
His left hand touched the black sport, went through it, and failed to emerge on the other side. Arthur tried to pull his hand back, but it wouldn't budge. He reach up and grabbed his wrist with his other hand and tried to pull it out, to no avail.
Arthur felt himself being pulled forward, and, to his horror, realized that he was being pulled into the black spot, which was growing.
The spot expanded along all axes, engulfing more of Mark's arms as it did so. After several seconds, it had reached about the size of a medicine ball, and had already sucked in both of his arms up to the elbow. Arthur tried one more time to pull himself free. As he failed, he took a deep breath, muttered a short prayer, and dove forward into the blackness.
...
He hit the ground. Hard.
Arthur got up and looked around. He was standing on a path, suspended over a black void. The path twisted and turned in both directions, and Mark could see several other paths above and below him. The whole space appeared to be surrounded by a circular wall composed of multi-colored lumps of paper-mache, or maybe ice cream, and the paths appeared to be made of smaller lumps of the same material. Overhead, the walls came together in a pointed roof, like that of a cathedral, while there was nothing below.
It certainly wasn't what he was expecting.
Arthur took a hesitant step forward. The path held. It seemed firm.
"Hello?" Arthur called. "Is anyone out there?"
He voice seemed to echo in the massive space, and after a few moments, there was no response. Arthur took another step forward, and then began walking down the path.
Nothing happened for a few minutes, so he kept walking. The path turned occasionally, and Arthur had the distinct feeling that he wasn't getting anywhere. I never thought that being abducted to another dimension would be so... Boring. Arthur though.
He heard a distant rumbling sound. A few moments later, he heard another one.
Closer.
He turned around and began walking back the way he came, away from the sound.
The rumbling came again, even closer this time. Arthur looked back, and spotted what looked like a boulder, a rough green rock at least as tall as he was, rolling down the path toward him.
He started running.
Arthur ran until the path turned sharply, then stopped to catch his breath. Inertia would carry the boulder off the path and into the void, so he had nothing to worry about-
The boulder was slowing down as it approached the bend in the path. It rolled just up to the edge of the path before coming to a complete stop.
Then it started rolling towards Arthur.
He started running again, not stopping at any of the bends in the path. The slowing of the boulder at each of the bends was buying him time, but not nearly enough. The rock was catching up to him. His lungs were burning, and he felt himself slowing down.
Arthur rounded another corner and came to the long straightaway where he had entered this strange space. He looked around. Another path crossed just under the one he was on, but he couldn't tell how far down it was.
Was it worth trying to jump?
Arthur looked back at the boulder. Of course it was. He bent his legs and prepared to throw himself into the void when there was a flash of light and the sensation of something soft and heavy landing on his head.
For a moment, Arthur lay there, then he tried to get up, and got a facefull of frills for his trouble. Frills? Arthur thought, trying to look around.
There was another flash of light, and a crashing sound. The weight on his head shifted, and whatever had landed on him stood up.
Arthur turned his head, and a white-gloved0 hand appeared in his vision. Arthur grabbed the hand, which helped him to his feet.
Abruptly, he remembered the boulder. He whirled around, but only saw what looked like scraps of confetti on the path. He turned back to his apparent savior.
It was Maria, dressed in a Magical Girl Anime's idea of an Apollo space suit. It appered to be made out of loose cloth instead of rigid plastics, and fit his savior's body in a rather flattering way. There were also white and silver frills everywhere. Maria was holding what looking like a streak, silvery pistol, with smoke trailing from the muzzle. There were two more pistols strapped to her belt, along with other strange devices.
The girl herself looked like a younger, female, version of Arthur, with long dark hair vanishing into the neck of her 'suit'.
"Big brother?" She said, sounding genuinely surprised. "What are you doing in a Witch's Barrier?"
"Witch? Barrier?" Arthur shook his head. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE, AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
He practically roared his second two questions, and his sister flinched at the words.
"Sorry." Arthur muttered. "But seriously, what's going on?"
"I'm a Puella Magi!" Maria declared. "It's my job to fight Witches like this one to protect the people of this town. You're in a Barrier, a pocket dimension where Witches live, and make people despair. I guess you got pulled in here or something-"
Arthur nodded.
"-and then one of the Witch's Familiars attacked you."
"Familiar?"
"The offspring of a Witch. Like miniature versions of itself, or something." Maria said, like it was no big deal.
"And... what's a Witch?"
"A Witch is a manifestation of negative emotions." Maria said. "Puella Magi, as manifestations of hope and wishes, fight them to protect people."
The pieces all fell into place. "Wishes?" Arthur said. "That's what happened two weeks ago, isn't it? You became some kind of Magical Girl or something, and traded your life for a wish." He grabbed his little sister's shoulders. "Are you a zombie or something?"
Maria laughed. "Of course not. I'm still me. Just... Better. Although, I wonder what happened to my wish."
"I don't know." Arthur said. "So how do we get out of here?"
"We can't. I need to destroy the witch, then the barrier falls apart. Apparently. I've only done this twice, and never with another person."
"So, should I stay here, then?" Arthur asked.
"No, it'll be safer to stick with me." Maria said. "Oh, and one other thing. It's dangerous to go alone. Take this."
She produced a pistol from her belt and handed it to Arthur. The two stood silently for a moment, then both started laughing.
"I can't believe you just did that." Arthur said.
"Me neither." Maria said, forcing the words through fits of laughter.
"Anyway, just point and shoot." She said, "It's pretty simple. Stay close to me, and try to keep the Familiars off my back."
Mark raised the pistol, holding it vertically next to his head. "Got it." He said.
The two set off. They encounter several more familiars among the way, all boulder-looking things like the first, but blasted them into bits without trouble.
I can't believe I'm doing this! Arthur thought, as he blew apart his fifth boulder.
Just then, a shadow fell over the pair. Arthur looked up, and saw what looked like the silhouette of a dragon flying over the paths. It was losing altitude fast, and seemed to be targeting the pair.
"Is that the Witch?" Arthur asked.
"Yep." Maria said, raising her pistol.
Arthur took a step away from her and raised his pistol as well. He started firing on the dragon-thing, his pistol sending beams of actinic energy shooting up toward the creature.
The thing roared, a massive, overwhelming sound. Arthur covered his ears with his hands, but it wasn't enough to fully block out the horrible sound. Maria seemed unaffected by the sonic attack, and kept firing on the circling creature.
The dragon fell into a dive, and as it shot downwards, Arthur could make out what it was more clearly. It appeared to be a clockwork dragon, with gunmetal grey skin broken only by the occasional visible gear, and four legs like steel girders, with heavy-duty pistons for muscles. Its wings were overlapping plates of metal, highlighted in gold.
As Arthur took all this in, the dragon flared its wings and landed on the path ahead of the pair. It roared again, a sound even more horrible than the first time, and then looked at Arthur. It opened its mouth once again, but instead of sound, a wave of fire shot out, burning over the path as it rushed toward Arthur and Maria.
Arthur turned away, shielding his face. Maria raised he left arm.
When Arthur looked back, a glimmering field of light had appered in front of them, warding off the flames.
The Dragon seemed frustrated with this development, and it folded its wings and strode forward, legs barely fitting on the path. It was the size of an elephant, with shining ruby eyes and ebony teeth.
Arthur raised his pistol and opened fire. His energy beams blew chunks off the dragon, but didn't seem to slow it down. Maria produced what looked like a rife version of the pistol Arthur was holding and opened fire with it, blowing larger pieces off the dragon.
The Witch-dragon roared again as it charged, and Arthur covered his ears. He endured the sound for a moment, but then a wave of fear washed through his body. It overcame him and he turned and ran.
He didn't make it very far. Three Familiars were rolling down the path toward him.
Shaking, he raised his arm and fired, blasting the first Familiar apart. He stepped forward, firing twice more, destroying the approaching familiars.
Arthur looked back at Maria. She had activated some kind of jetpack, and was circling the dragon, firing into it with her energy rifle as it tried to swat her out of the air.
Arms still shaking, Arthur raised his pistol and fired it at the Witch. It turned toward him as his beams burned into its hide, but before it could do anything, Maria shot out one of its eyes. It jumped into the air, stretching out one arm and knocking Maria from the sky.
She struck one of the paths with a crunching sound, and didn't get up, Arthur screamed and began firing his pistol at the dragon, which spread its wings and banked over until it was flying toward him.
There was a flash of light, and bolt of energy streaked out and struck the Witch on its flank, knocking it off course and sending it crashing into one of the paths. Its wing crumpled on impact, and as Arthur traced the bolt back to its source, he saw that Maria had gotten back on her feet and was holding some sort of heavy weapon resembling a machine gun, one even larger than her rifle.
She fired it twice more, and the dragon struggled to catch itself on the path. As Maria jumped into the air, the dragon breathed fire, engulfing her. The flames died away after a second, revealing a diamond-shaped cage of light around Maria. It vanished, and she fired her heavy weapon again.
The Witch screamed as the bolt impacted, and it began to shed gears. Maria shouted something, but Arthur couldn't make it out over the Witch's roar.
As soon as the roar passed, Arthur raised his pistol and opened fire on the Witch. The monster seemed to be falling apart now, strange prices of metal falling from its body like rain.
Maria fired again, hitting the dragon in the head.
The creature lunged forward and smacked her with the side of its head, knocking her off her feet.
Arthur screamed this time, firing his pistol as fast as he could pull the trigger. The bolts tore into the Dragon, and as the creature turned to face him, it simply fell apart.
Pieces clattered down into the abyss below, but one black speck seemed to float serenely down to the ground on one of the paths. Arthur took a step forward, but as he did so, the scenery around him seemed to melt, flowing like a sandcastle under a waterfall.
And he was back at the construction site.
Maria was lying a few feet away.
Arthur dropped his pistol and rushed over to her and knelt down by her side. Her suit was badly torn, and some pieces of it were stained a dark crimson.
"No... Maria... We won... Why?" Arthur mumbled, as he pricked up and cradled his sister.
"I can't." She muttered. "It's too much. I won't... Arthur."
Arthur looked at her.
"I give you the grief seed from this Witch. You might need it. Not listen" Maria coughed, and a trickle of blood appeared at the corner of her mouth. "I called some agents about this. My wish... you remember it, right?"
Arthur nodded.
"You have to use it. Fight them. Don't let them win." Maria took a deep breath. "I... Love..."
The light faded from her eyes.
Arthur checked for a pulse. There was none. He looked up, and saw something black on the ground a short distance away.
Gently laying Maria down on the ground, he walked over and picked it up. It was about three inches long, with an oblong, egg-shaped centerpiece of silver filigree surround a swirling ball of darkness. From the narrow end of the egg, it came to a sharp point, and from the wide end of the egg, a silver dragon's head rose up.
Is this the Grief Seed she was talking about? Arthur wondered, looking at the object. The he shrugged and stuffed it in his pocket, then walked over to his sister's corpse.
Abruptly, the body shimmered and shifted back into Maria's plain street clothes, which appeared to be undamaged.
Arthur was suddenly struck by what just happened. Magic is real. He thought. Magic is real and my sister is dead.
He sat there and cried for a while. He cried until the suits showed up.
[x]
"Excuse me?" Arthur said, wiping the tears from his eyes as the two men in black suits approached. The men, one black and one white, looked like secret service agents, complete with earpieces and holstered handguns.
"Sir, we'd like to have a few words with you." The black agent said.
"This may take a while." His partner said.
[x]
"Huh," Fire Controlman Justin Pendrick said, narrowing his eyes at the radar screen in front of him. "That's odd."
Justin gripped the armrest of his duty station as the USS Okinawa rolled with what he assumed was a particularly large wave. Of course, being in the Combat Information Center, buried deep within the ship, gave him no way to know for sure.
He rubbed his eyes and looked at the radar screen again. The Okinawa had been equipped with some experimental new detection system fresh out of some lab somewhere, and he wasn't entirely sure he trusted the new equipment just yet.
Still, this time, the results were clear. He was definitely spotting a large contact, the size of a small building, hovering several hundred feet in the air.
"Captain!" He said, standing up. "I think I have something here. Anomalous contact, sending data to main display."
Captain Isaac Locke looked at the data being relayed from the radar station and paled. "Comms, get someone from the JSDF on the line. Tell them we have two large areal contacts about twelve miles away hovering over Mitakihara City Center."
[x]
General Kuroda Tadayoshi, JSDF, had a hard time believing the data the Americans were sending him. If it was to be believed, there was something the size of a small skyscraper floating over Mitakihara City and had, if his advisors were correct, levitated and destroyed six buildings in the time he had been deliberating.
"Sir, we have visual of the target, though it's a bit blurry. Putting it through now."
The screen at the front of his command center activated, revealing an image of what appeared to be a massive clockwork woman in an elaborate gown hanging upside down over the city, the storm raging around it. As he watched, a ray of blackness projected from the bottom tip of the thing, its 'head', he supposed, and struck the ground, tracked across it for a moment, then vanished. The video feed was eerily silent, but he could see several structures collapse in the path of the beam.
"Someone call the Prime Minister." Kuroda snapped "and tell the Americans to fire everything they have at that thing. I'm sure they'll be happy to."
[x]
"Captain Locke!" The Comms Officer shouted "General Kuroda has requested that we fire on the anomaly!"
"I have positive lock on the target, designated Sierra One." Fire Controlman Justin said "Certainly at ninety percent and climbing."
That Captain Isaac thought was awfully fast. "Can we get through to Washington?"
"Negative." The Comms Officer replied, his fear plain in his voice. "Something about this storm is messing up all of our satellite and long range gear."
Well then the Captain thought I never thought this would happen, but I can say I haven't spent most of my adult life hoping for it.
"Zulu time 2317." Isaac intoned, for the sake of the record. "Captain Isaac Locke, United States Navy, authorizing requested missile launch on allied nation." After a moment's hesitation, he added "authorizing special weapons release." He turned to the missile station of the CIC. "Set all Vertical Launch Systems to weapons free. Fire on my mark."
The entire CIC went silent for a moment. On the Captain's display board, several lights representing missile status flickered from amber to green.
"Launch."
[x]
A Ticonderoga class cruiser is outfitted with a VLS system capable of carrying one hundred and twenty-two missiles of various types. At present, the Okinawa was equipped with forty-two Tomahawk missiles, carrying a mixture of high explosive, thermobaric, and cluster munitions, as well as eighty Standard heavy anti-air missiles. Eight Harpoon antiship missiles rounded out the load.
Captain Isaac had launched all of them.
The subsonic Tomahawks launched first. An instant later, the Standard missiles took off, engulfing the cruiser in a cloud of smoke.
In the air, the computers onboard the missiles communicated for a moment, then moved the weapons into a complex position designed to place every missile on target within instants of each other.
Beyond that, a pair of tomahawks carried special weapons. Experimental plasma warheads, capable of putting several dozen times the energy of a normal warhead on target. They flew just above and behind the rest of the missiles, in position to take maximum advantage of their superior warheads
It took just under three seconds for the missiles to reach their target points.
Detonation.
[x]
"Captain!" The Tactical Officer shouted, "We have confirmed impact. Every single missile hit the target."
Captain Isaac's frown lessened slightly. "Radar, Report!"
"Sir! No aerial targets present on scopes." Justin responded, "Though we're going to have to wait for eyes on target for kill confirmation."
The Captain grunted. "Comms, what is our status?"
The Comms Officer looked up. "Sir, we still have no long range communications, though whatever was interfering seems to be fading. We should be clear within about twenty minutes.
[x]
Well this Doctor Sugiura Akimotothought, stepping over a fallen girder, is a rather ironic mess. It was impossible to tell what the beam had once been a part off. However, given the oddly fused mass at one end, it was unlikely that the American missiles were the reason it was in her path.
As Sugiura rounded the corner of the building, she finally saw the thing that had caused all of this excitement. It was, she supposed, rather impressive. It was probably over forty meters tall, but lying on its side and covered in missile wounds, it looked pathetically like a beached whale.
The fallen thing was surrounded by dozens of men a women in clothing of all descriptions. All sorts of machines had been set up around it on any appropriate surface available. The people surrounding the corpse moved with an absurd facade of calmness across a crazed spiderweb of the cables supporting their devices, their countless conversations overwhelmed by the constant noise of the three generations powering the makeshift field lab.
"Doctor Akimoto! You've arrived." She turned. A tall American man in what appeared to be full naval dress blues faced her, standing at attention, or possibly parade rest.
She turned and raised an eyebrow. "And you are...?"
"Lieutenant Jefferson, USS Okinawa, ship's engineer. I'm here to represent the US on this project until we can fly in someone with the appropriate expertise." He paused. "Whatever that may be. Plus, I'm really interested."
The pair began to walk toward the wreckage of the monster. "So," Sugiura said, "What exactly have we found so far?"
Jefferson sighed. "A lot of things that don't make much sense." He walked over to a slightly skewed card table covered in papers. He dug through them for a moment, then picked up a packet of papers. "This," he said, handing it to her, "is an analysis of the thing, or at least as much of one as we could do given the resources on hand."
Sugiura flipped through the packet for a moment, then handed it back. She was silent for a moment. "Well." She said, turning back toward the hulk of the monster, burying the countless questions raised by the report. "I suppose we better get to work."
[x]
Captain Isaac leaned back in the Big Chair of the Okinawa. He doubted that he would be there much longer, so he figured he'd enjoy it while it lasted. He was on the phone with someone important, though he had lost track with exactly who.
"So explain to me again," the speaker said, "Why you fired every weapon your command possessed, including two experimental sub-fusion warheads, at a population center of an allied power?"
"After acquiring an unidentified target," Isaac said, launching into his fifth recitation of the story, "I contacted the command of the aforementioned power, which confirmed by observation that the unidentified target was causing substantial damage to Mitakihara City, as well as posing a significant threat to its citizens."
"We're moving the George Washington battle group to your position," the speaker said, after a long pause. "Try not to start a war."
Isaac put down the phone.
It's a little late for that he thought, looking out at the devastated city. I'd say I already started a war. I just hope the eggheads can figure out just what the hell I started a war with.
[x]
Jefferson pressed a few keys, completing his reprogramming of the material analysis machine sitting a few feet in front of him. The machine had been 'borrowed' from a nearby university, but every attempt to use it on materials taken from the corpse of the monster.
He hadn't made a complex change, really, he was simply telling the machine not to automatically reject results inconsistent with known laws of physics.
To be honest, he wasn't sure why no one else had thought of it.
[x]
Mitakihara City, Corpse of Walpurgisnacht
"Well, it's official." Jefferson said, pointing at the laptop controlling the equipment he had commandeered. "This makes no sense."
Sugiura leaned down to look at the readouts. "That's... impossible. These bonding configurations can't happen." She paused as she finished reading though the report. "Or at least simply don't happen in these quantities. This would be like-"
"Digging up a rock of pure, weapons grade uranium." Jefferson finished.
"Yes. Given that we are looking at it, though, clearly something in the old models must be wrong."
[x]
White House Underground Situation Bunker Five, Present
"So, people," Michael Wilson, President of the United States of America, said, clapping his hands. "What the hell is going on?"
"Now that they've seen the corpse... wreck... thing, the Japanese Government has retracted most of their complaints about Captain Locke's actions." The Secretary of State said, "However, public approval for the missile launch remains low in both the U.S. and Japan."
"Is now really the time to be worrying about that?" The Marine Corps Commandant said, shrugging. "I mean have they seen that thing?"
"Officially, no." The Attorney General said. "However, we believe a few of the citizens of Mitakihara City managed to get pictures of The Corpse as they were being escorted out of the storm shelters, as a few admittedly poor images of it have been showing up online."
"I think it's about time to make a statement." The President said. "Prepare a statement. Release all the pictures of it, along with whatever background seems appropriate. "
"That decision shouldn't be too hard." The Secretary of the Navy said. "It's not as if we know anything about it."
As he said this, the large screen at the far end of the room turned on. It showed a blizzard of static for a moment, then resolved itself to show a plush, white, ferret-like creature standing on what appered to be a shelf filled with other stuffed animals.
"People of Earth," It said, without making a sound, "I am Kyubey."
[x]
All over the world, screens flickered to life on their own, or changed from whatever they were displaying to show the same image the most powerful group of humans in the world were watching. In parts of the world, the surface of bodies of water or even the sky itself changed to deliver the message.
On one jet liner, carrying two hundred and seventy-eight people, coming in for a night landing at Heathrow Airport, lost control on the final approach as the pilot's instruments changed. Shocked, the man was unable to regain control in the seconds before the aircraft crashed killing everyone on board.
"People of Earth, I am Kyubey." Its voice echo in the minds of the seven billion members of its audience. "I am what you may call an incubator. For countless millennia, we have watched your species, guided it. Everything you are is as a result of us."
The creature blinked, then continued. "For those aeons, certain matters have occurred, matters which involved only a small fraction of a percentage of your population. Now, however, actions of certain military units of the nations you call 'Japan' and 'The United States' have irreversibly revealed these events to your species, and my kind is forced to take a different approach."
"All we ask is a small tithe. Girls, in their second stage of development. Allow us to contract with these girls without interference, and maintain your society in such a way as to make this process as efficient as possible. More information will be made available to your leaders as needed."
Another pause. "Please understand that your cooperation is essential to the continued survival of the universe! There is a grave threat to the continued existence of everything, one which only we incubators can successfully fight."
"However, we understand that you humans can be emotional creatures, and so we have prepared a demonstration the consequences of failure to comply with our request. The demonstration will commence one hundred and eighty of your seconds after the conclusion of this message."
Everything went back to normal.
Three minutes later, the screaming started.