Population Dynamics

by Fifteen1413

Felicity Harbor, younger sister of Kara Harbor, is a genius. Her brain, however, has limited use for fighting witches, and Felicity waits for the day she can join her sister as a magical girl. When an Incubator show up to Felicity with a message instead of a contract, however, they are thrown into a challenge on an unimaginable scale, with only eleven days left to fix it. [OC only]

2. Part II: Minimum Viable Population

Part II: Minimum Viable Population

"So, any luck?" Janet asked Felicity as she entered the small building. Felicity turned to Janet, examining her carefully before answering.

"Felicity has procured a method of generating functionally unlimited numbers of magical girls." Felicity said. "Her method allows conversion of, in addition to females in the second growth stage, females in the third growth stage, and males in the second growth stage. However, these axillary conversion groups would be far less effective than the primary conversion group. The functional output of a male in the second growth stage would be 0.387 of the primary conversion group, and the functional output of a female in the third growth stage would be 0.491. In the interest of preserving as much human life as possible, Felicity suggests that we maintain the current trend of only targeting individuals categorized as 'female, second growth stage'."

"Come again?" Janet said, but Felicity had already passed into the room and picked up her computer, examining it carefully. With stunning precision, she made an incision with her magic, opening up the back and playing with the processor chips. Janet sighed.

"So, you're a magical girl too now." she said.

"This statement is not entirely accurate." Felicity said. "Felicity is most accurately a magically active human-incubator interface. However, in the service of simplicity, you may refer to her as a magical girl."

"Human-incubator what?" Janet said. "Felicity, what are you talking about? What happened? And why are you referring to yourself in third person?"

"Felicity decided that, in order to diminish the knowledge gap between our group and that of the Incubators, as well as in the interests of providing for magical girls the option of graduating to a K-type population growth model, she should take it upon herself to wish of the Incubators their abilities." Felicity said, her voice cheery, as if she was making small talk. After all, it wasn't like she intended on keeping the information secret. "She did not anticipate the level of psychological and physiological changes that taking on all of the Incubators powers would cause. Felicity experienced a 973.42% increase in data processing ability, 281.94% increase in logical capacity, 429.87% increase in reaction time, and 3,984.62% increase in scientific understanding. Felicity experienced a 87.984% reduction in emotional capacity, 41.875% reduction in memories, and 64.738% reduction in personal identity. Felicity has maintained 99.732% of her will, and possesses 98.481% of her previous subjective morality."

Janet looked at her, stunned. Felicity toyed with her computer for a moment longer, before putting it down and turning to address Janet directly. "If you wish to directly participate in the events which come, Felicity is capable of allowing your transformation into a magical girl. However, Felicity would wish to remind you that, as you are currently in the third growth stage, you are predicted to achieve only 49.1% of the ability that you would have had during the second growth stage."

"You... turned yourself into an Incubator." Janet said slowly.

"This statement is not entirely accurate." Felicity said. "Felicity is most accurately a magically active human-incubator interface. However, in the service of simplicity, you may refer to her as an Incubator." she tilted her head. "Though, also in the interest of simplicity, Felicity would request that you chose which one of the two designations, 'magical girl' or 'Incubator', you wish to refer to her as on a regular basis."

"Oh, Kara is going to flip." Janet said. "Do you have any idea what you've done?"

"Yes. Felicity has provided a way for magical girls to reproduce without the need of an external source." Felicity said. "She has fundamentally changed the structure of the Incubator/human relationship." she tilted her head to indicate her confusion. She couldn't grasp the point of Janet asking such a trivial, senseless question. Of course she knew what she had done.

"No, you idiot. You've given away the one thing that makes humans worth saving. You've given up your emotions." Janet said.

Felicity blinked. She felt... shocked? Maybe hurt? It was too weak of a feeling to tell for sure. "Felicity retains 12.016% of her emotional capabilities." Felicity said.

"So you're one eighth human still. That makes everything better." Janet said, exasperated.

"Felicity is pleasantly surprised that you agree." Felicity said, and Janet sighed heavily. Felicity played around with the computer for a moment longer, then put the laptop back together. "Felicity does not have the necessary tools to improve this device." Felicity declared. She turned back to Janet. "Felicity requests the sum of 794.86 USD."

"What?" Janet said. "No, I'm not going to give you eight hundred dollars. You're going to sit there, and when Kara gets back we're going to figure out how to fix you."

"Felicity is not broken." Felicity explained earnestly. It was nice of Janet to be worried about her, but she would have thought by now it would have been clear that she was perfectly alright. Better than she had been before, even. "She is now operating at an average of 314.77% her previous baseline effectiveness. By any logical measure-"

"That's just it!" Janet said. "Felicity is more than a machine! She had feelings and hopes and dreams and acted in her own little weird ways!"

"Correction. Felicity used to express 'feelings', 'hopes', and 'dreams' in such a way that was easily visible to you." Felicity said. "Felicity still possesses these capabilities, she just acts on them more subtly." Felicity gave Janet a calm look. "For instance, Felicity currently requests 794.86 USD in order to improve her computer. Not because she needs the additional computing power, though Felicity does recognize that such a thing may be useful. No, Felicity wants to improve her computer because she likes having fast computers." she gave Janet a reassuring smile. "Felicity is capable of acting illogically if she gives herself the liberty."

"I don't even have eight hundred dollars to give you." Janet said. "And you're not doing a very good job of convincing me that you're okay."

Felicity sighed. If Janet wouldn't see things logically, she guessed she would have drive the fear from her mind by reintroducing the greater danger of their long term goal. "Felicity does not need you to consider her to be 'okay'. Felicity only requires your cooperation so that we may acquire the three hundred and twelve additional magical girls we need by midnight on Friday, the seventeenth of May 2002." Felicity said. "You are welcome to think whatever you wish of Felicity so long as it does not hinder us in providing for that quota. If we are unable to acquire and manage the full complement of three hundred and thirty-one magical girls by that date, our rate of efficiency begins to decline."

"It's three hundred and twelve now, is it, instead of three hundred ten?" Janet said.

"Felicity has improved her models through use of..." Felicity paused. "There is no word for the branch of mathematics in your language. It involves the treatment of random variables as discreet functions, and provides a method for summing infinite trials in a single equation. It is to statistics what calculus is to algebra, to put it in terms you might understand."

"Oh, great, you're doing maths we don't even have words for." Janet said. "You have to see that there's something wrong with that."

"If you have such trouble believing that Felicity is a fully logical human, you may instead consider her an insane Incubator. It is just as accurate." Felicity said. "She is afflicted with a particular insanity which drives her to protect the interests of the human species, despite their endemic inferiority to the Incubators. Or, rather, it is because of this 'insanity' that she is able to realize that this 'endemic inferiority', the ability to have emotions which cause one to act illogically, is in fact humanity's greatest asset, and one that makes them worth protecting."

Janet sat down, putting her head in her hands. "This is not how I expected this day to go." she said quietly, groaning.

Felicity suddenly felt a little pity rise inside of her. The transformation she had gone through must seem so strange to those stuck outside. Really, though, Janet was over reacting. It was typical of humans, to let their emotions control their actions so freely. In her mind, the psychological ticks of the older girl magnified suddenly, and she saw before her stretched out various paths of stimulus and reaction. Felicity laughed suddenly. So this was how Incubators saw human lives. It was a wonderfully simple game to play. Her human intuition kicked in, and thousands of dead end lines dropped out in seconds. Felicity laughed again. The Incubators had said that their chances of getting Janet to contract were one in eighty-four trillion. How funny! She could do it in three hundred words with eighty percent or higher chance of success, if she really wanted. The Incubators were lousy manipulators. She teasingly sent them the updated data.

"What's so funny?" Janet said.

"Nothing." Felicity said, drawing herself back into reality. "Sorry. She's still getting used to..." With considerable effort, Felicity paused, then continued. "I'm still getting used to all the new information sh-... I have in my head. It might take me a few hours before I get back to baseline." Felicity shook her head. "I'm sorry for scaring you. It must be distressing seeing her... seeing me like this, but I can assure you that I have gained many benefits from the transformation." she sighed. "Like, for example, the ability to create magical girls on my own. Speaking of which, I would like to see the list of names you were trying to generate."

"Oh, yeah." Janet said. "Here." she handed Felicity the list. Felicity scanned it quickly, devoting the contents to memory. She handed the paper back to Janet.

"This appears to be a good start." Felicity said. "I will begin immediately."

"Hold up. You're not going anywhere until Kara gets back." Janet said.

"That is illogical." Felicity stated. "It makes much more sense for me to start immediately. I currently have everything I need to be able to begin conversion. From the data I have received from the Incubators, the chosen targets have an average contract chance of 11.7% upon first attempt. However, the Incubators know far less about human psychology than I do, and also express a level of functional intelligence 46.9% below mine." Felicity turned to Janet. "With the listing of 150 names, I should be able to provide between thirty-seven and forty-four magical girls, with an additional twelve to fourteen being pushed in such a way as to contract before the seventeenth. If I begin now, I should theoretically be able to contract an average of 3.74 magical girls per hour until nightfall."

"We were going to gather the girls together and have them all contract at once." Janet said. "At least, I thought that was the plan. Won't that be faster?"

"It will. However, as I have no ability to target candidates on my own, my slower but immediate start will only end up adding to our total." Felicity said. "It would be true that, if we only had a single operator, it would be faster to do what you described. However, with three operators, using both methods will result in higher totals in the end."

"How am I supposed to explain this to Kara?" Janet said.

"That is not my concern." Felicity said, but then relented. It wasn't Janet's fault that she couldn't see Felicity's viewpoint. She was hampered by her emotions and limited intelligence. Really, Felicity found it almost cute how much she obviously cared for Kara and herself, even if her relative lack of intelligence prohibited her from seeing the actions that would truly result in the highest gain for them. She gave Janet a smile. "Sorry. That was rude. I will explain it to her. Please, do not worry. Just don't say anything and act surprised when I come in next time. I predict a 94.92% chance that Kara will be too concerned with my transformation herself to notice any lack of true investigative questioning on your part."

Janet sat down. "I'm not happy about this, Felicity. I'm really not."

"I know." Felicity said. "But it is of much greater concern to me that you survive than that you be happy with me. Besides, as I said, I'm beginning to return to normality. It won't be quite the same, sure, but within the next few hours I should begin to act considerably more human." She took Janet's hand. "Besides, it's not like the process is reversible. Even via a wish, you'd need a karmatic potential of over 67.8 to pull it off successfully. Only one in every eighty-six thousand five hundred magical girls reach that level. This is what Felicity is now."

Janet paused. "How powerful of a magical girl are you, anyway?"

"I possess a karmatic potential of 94.5." Felicity said. "I am the most powerful magical girl currently alive, and am likely to remain as such for... thirty-seven years, statistically."

"Well, that's something at least." Janet said.

"However, I have no skill using my powers. As such, I could easily be defeated by most moderately skilled magical girls, or witches class A or B." Felicity continued. "Once night falls, I will progress to personal training."

"When are you going to sleep?" Janet said.

"Felicity no longer requires sleep." Felecity said.

"Oh." Janet sighed. "Of course not. Why would you need to sleep?"

"If you don't have further questions for her, Felicity would like to begin." Felicity said.

"You've switched back to third person." Janet informed her.

"Sorry." Felicity said. "I'm trying."

"I can't believe you did this." Janet said. She sighed, then smiled at Felicity. "But the way you keep pulling back to humanity, organically... You're still Felicity, down in the middle. You've got other stuff tagged on, but I can tell." Janet shook her head. "I was so scared that you were gone."

"I have lost much." Felicity ventured. "including forty-one percent of my memory, as previously mentioned. You were not wrong to be worried. But I am still me, if changed. And I will do what I set out to do, which is protect this city. Now that I'm over three times more intelligent and have access to over one million times the data, I'll be even better at it." she gave Janet a steady look. "Still, the problem we currently face is not one which can be solved through intellectual means. It is one of the few problems where violence is truly the only answer. We still will require three hundred and twelve more magical girls. Which I will begin acquiring immediately, if you have no more objections."

Janet didn't seem happy about it, but she sighed and nodded her head. "Yeah. You go do that. We need to get started, you're right. Besides, we don't even have a place to gather the three hundred at once anyway."

"I am certain you and Kara can come up with something." Felicity said. "I can think of eighty-seven suitable locations, twenty-three of which would cost less than 50.00 USD for the service." Felicity's mind suddenly leaped through multiple varied logic connections, her subconscious alerting her to a greater movement. She turned to Janet suddenly. "The plan has changed. I request 37.23 USD."

"Uh, okay." Janet said. "I can actually give you that." she rummaged around in her pockets and handed Felicity two twenty dollar bills. "What do you need this for?"

"I will have 85,500 plus or minus 675 USD by sunset." Felicity said. "We will require the funding."

"Come again?" Janet said, but Felicity had already left the building.

**&^%^&**

Felicity was sitting down at a desk inside of her internet cafe, watching stock prices fluctuate. She was writing furiously in a notebook, checking and double checking her mathematics. She had arrived here an hour and a half ago after putting 25 USD into an account that was accessible by the internet. Ten dollars had bought her two hours worth of computer use, and the remaining two dollars and 23 cents had purchased a donuts and two soft drinks. Currently, one hour and thirty-three minutes into her operation, she had approximately 1973 USD at hand. It was only approximate, as the stock prices continued to vary ever so slightly. The calculations on her paper would have looked incomprehensible to even the most hardened economists. This was unsurprising, as she was using models which wouldn't be invented for one hundred years or more. Still, even armed with her fantastic intelligence and unheard of techniques, Felicity had to admit that economics were very, very difficult.

"Hey, whatcha doing?" A voice said from behind her. Felicity didn't turn around. "You playing a game?" the voice was teasing, female, about her age. "I always thought nerds like you would stay in school."

"I have other matters to attend." Felicity said. She opened a window of her program and quickly wrote a few lines of code.

"Oh, a coder." the other girl said. "Nice."

"Not as skilled as you are, though." Felicity said. She turned around, facing the girl. She had long black hair, black clothes on with silver buttons. Not quite full goth, but pretty close. Felicity put her hands together. "I've been expecting you."

The other girl looked surprised. "What? I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't know you."

"I apologize, Jenifer." Felicity said. She paused momentarily. "Or would you rather I call you Kazzer?"

Jenifer's eyes narrowed. "How do you-"

"Know your name and 'hacker' codename? I know a fair bit about you." Felicity said. "I can read certain information from other people's minds. It's less useful then it sounds. I can only get very basic things, like name, age, basic emotional state. Only things you identify with your sense of self. I couldn't tell you the name of your favorite author, for instance. And, no, I am not capable of planting thoughts into your mind, or changing your emotions."

"You expected me?" Jenifer said, sitting down next to Felicity.

"Not you in particular. But there was a eighty-four point seven percent chance that someone of your type would show up within the first two hours of operations." Felicity said.

"My type?" she said. "I'm not sure I like the connotations on that."

"Young female rebel hacker of moderate to high skill level, large but hidden social drive and highly observant." Felicity said. "Before you showed up, I knew I had a sixty-one point eight percent chance of making a conversion. But your current reactions make me believe that that number is more accurately in the ninety-five percent or higher region. I don't have the liberty right now for an exact calculation."

"Conversion?" Jenifer said. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Please, follow me." Felicity said, standing up. "I have a demonstration for you."

Jenifer seemed resistant, but then Felicity sighed. "Please, I need your help. This is very important, Jenifer. I'm not going to lie to you and say that you're the only one, but you are part of a very small pool, less than 1% of the population, who is useful to me." Felicity gave her a sad look. "Just follow me for a few minutes."

Jenifer still didn't seem happy about it, but then she sighed. "Well, I didn't think I was going to run into a psychic girl today, but I can't say I had something more interesting planned."

Felicity led Jenifer out of the internet cafe, taking her to a nearby alleyway. When they had progressed half way down the alley, Felicity turned to face Jenifer. She snapped her fingers and transformed herself without flourish into her magical girl form, then settled down. Her outfit was pure white, with the incubator's red egg emblazoned onto the front. Jenifer took a step back from her.

"What are you?" she asked.

"I am what is referred to colloquially as a magical girl." Felicity informed her. "Though, you're not one to believe in magic, are you?" she tilted her head. "By forming a contract with the advanced alien civilization know as the Incubators, female humans in their second growth stage are capable of unlocking 'magical' powers. They receive, in addition to these powers, one wish. As a trade off, these girls must fight witches, evil 'magical' creatures who threaten human life." Felicity paused, letting Jenifer digest the information. She continued after a moment. "Currently, there are nineteen active magical girls in the greater metropolitan area of this city. There are additionally over three thousand eight hundred and fifty witches. For the past three years, the witch population has been increasing at a rate that far exceeds the rate that our current magical girl population can control. If we do not do something about this, the city will be destroyed within the next six months. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to act. We require three hundred and thirty-one magical girls total to succeed in reversing the population trends. However..." Felicity paused again. "The Incubators are an insidious parasite species which exists to farm humanity for emotional energy using the magical girls. Until three hours, twelve minutes ago, there were no other options for humanity than to sign up with the Incubators." Felicity smiled. "Then, I wished to be able to produce magical girls personally. I am capable of preforming the necessary steps to produce conversions. Technically, I do not require consent, but I refuse to make conversions without it."

"Well, that's, uh, awfully nice of you." Jenifer said. She shook her head. "So, what you are telling me is that you want me to... become a superhero and fight the forces of evil?"

"In essence, yes." Felicity said. "I will not lie to you, magical girls do not typically live very long. However, there are benefits-"

"Awesome!" Jenifer said. "Can we do it immediately?"

Felicity blinked. "Are you sure? There are other risks-"

"I don't care." Jenifer said. "I get magical powers! What could be cooler than that!"

"If you insist." Felicity said. "I can preform conversion as soon as you make your wish."

"Oh! Uh..." Jenifer looked up, trying to think. Felicity sighed internally. People like this did exist, and they would be the easiest to convert, but she still wasn't sure she was okay with how quickly Jenifer was throwing away her life. "Do you have any suggestions?" she asked after a moment.

"You are trading your life for it. Make sure it counts." Felicity suggested.

"Gee, thanks." Jenifer tapped her foot. "I have it! I want a HUD!"

"A heads up display?" Felicity said slowly. "That is what you are willing to trade your life for?"

"No, I'm trading my life for the magical powers. The HUD's just cool." Jenifer. "What could be better than being a superhero anyway?"

"I just want to confirm with you that you know that this is an extremely dangerous line of work. You will most likely be dead within one year." Felicity said. "And it's hard work, and we are in the middle of a crisis, and you're going to suffer quite a bit-"

"You chose to do it, didn't you?" Jenifer said. "Or did one of those evil alien do the 'without consent' thing?"

"I chose to do it." Felicity said. "But I knew what I was getting into, whereas you clearly do not."

"Don't you have to get three-hundred thirty-one of us?" Jenifer said. "If I'm being stupid and joining before I know what I'm doing, doesn't that help you?"

"Three hundred and twelve, and you're not helpful if you die in forty-eight hours." Felicity said.

"I won't." Jenifer said. "Do it already."

"Fine." Felicity said, stepping towards Jenifer. "This is going to hurt a lot. Please stay calm." she outstretched her hand, and Jenifer buckled over as energy coursed through her body. Felicity kept it in check, collating it into one area to lock the energy down in a useable form. It took her longer than it really should have, and Jenifer bucked and writhed for a good three minutes before Felicity managed to finish the process.

"That was hell." Jenifer said when she had finally recovered enough to speak.

"You were my first." Felicity said. "I should be much better next time."

"Well, great for whoever is next, then." Jenifer said. "How does this magic stuff work?"

"Now you ask." Felicity said flatly. "Luckily, it's all very intuitive. You'll just know what to do."

"Okay..." Jenifer flashed into a black dress, glowing purple energy swords on her back. "Oh, man, that's cool." she said, drawing one of the blades.

"You should be careful about spending your magic." Felicity said. "You have a very limited supply, usually enough to kill two or three witches before recharging. Each witch you kill will drop a 'grief seed', which will be able to restore roughly one full charge worth of energy, or about two to three times what it takes to kill them. In the event you run out of magic entirely, you die horribly, painfully, and become the very monsters you were fighting."

"Wait, what?" Jenifer said, turning on Felicity. "I die if I run out of magic, and I have enough for two fights!?" she glared. "That is not cool. Why didn't you mention that before!"

"I was trying too, but you kept cutting me off." Felicity said. "The process is non-reversible. I'm sorry. I really did try, but you didn't want to listen."

Jenifer sighed. "Well, I guess I'll just have to be good at it, eh?" she blinked suddenly. "Oh, and there's the HUD. Cool, it automatically switched to relevant items." she cast her eyes around. "No HP, only MP. I wonder why..."

"Your body is no longer human." Felicity said. "You are a magical construct. You can withstand any amount of physical trauma so long as you have the magic to repair yourself and your soul gem stays intact."

"Oh, that's this thing, huh?" Jenifer looked at the pitch black gemstone in her hand. "It's cool."

"Usually they darken when you're running low on power as an indicator." Felicity removed hers to show Jenifer, then paused, shocked. The gem was so corrupt that Felicity was surprised she hadn't already collapsed. Apparently, making new magical girls was a very energy consuming process. She could barely manage one. Jenifer looked at it.

"That looks horrible." Jenifer said.

"If it gets this far, usually you die." Felicity said. "I had no idea that the conversion would cost this much. I was at full before."

"93% corrupt, according to the HUD." Jenifer said. She paused. "It's got a mini map too, and event indicators. This is actually going to be useful."

"Congratulations." Felicity said. "Here is the address of our meeting place. Please be there on the seventeenth. You can do whatever you please until then."

"Okay." Jenifer said. "This is... cool." she seemed to still be not quite fully grasping the situation, but, really, that wasn't Felicity's concern. She had done what she needed to do. Slowly, she began to smile. The plan was beginning to unfold as expected.

**&^%^&**

She managed four more conversions. They all progressed more or less similarly to the first, though each successive one was faster, cleaner, and less magically costly. Luckily for Felicity, she had access to more than enough soul gems to offset her losses. Two of them she managed to get on board with the saving the city narrative, one wanted the powers, much like Jenifer, and the final one needed the wish. Seven had said no, and she had let them go after planting the right seeds of thought into their minds. They would send others her way now.

The list of names Janet had given her had proved useless, as Felicity knew it would. Janet knew how to target people who would be most likely to be taken in by the wish, which was not the group Felicity was looking for. Unlike the incubators, her targets being stable, or having something beyond themselves to fight for, things which made transformation into witches far less likely, were not causes for concern. She cared not to harvest their energy, and thus it mattered not what their emotional potential was. She just wanted them to convert. She needed to find people who wanted to be the hero, willing to work in a group to save the day. Still, building the lists gave Kara and Janet something to do while Felicity set up the real plan.

She had sold off her stock at exactly 7:30 PM, as the sun set. 89,348.76 USD. Her estimate had been slightly off, but Felicity wasn't too concerned. Add the $2.77 that was left from the $40.00 given to her, and she had $89,351.53 available. It was enough for her plan, and that was what mattered. She purchased a room in a hotel for one month for $3,500. She spent $8.59 on two reams of paper, $3.76 on a pack of pens, and $43.98 to treat herself to a nice diner. After delivering her items to her room, she went back to the meetinghouse to pick up her computer.

**&^%^&**

"Oh, hi, Kara." Felicity said as she entered. Kara looked up from a map she was examining and turned to Felicity, as did Janet.

"Felicity!" Kara said, placing her hands on Felicity's shoulders and looking down into her eyes. "Where were you? It's nearly eleven, and Mom was worried sick!"

"I'm sorry." Felicity said. "I had some things to take care of. I left a note when I went home to stock up on grief seeds."

"The note said that you 'were out'. That doesn't..." Kara paused. "Wait. Why did you need..." her eyes went wide. "You didn't... already?"

"I formed a contract, yes." Felicity said. "I have been a magical girl for ten hours and forty-three minutes." she turned to Janet. "As you can see, I have mostly normalized by now. Not quite, but I'm getting there."

"Normalized?" Kara looked concerned. Felicity raised her right hand, showing Kara the Incubator's hatch etched into it. She seemed confused.

"I wished for the powers of the Incubators." Felicity explained. "I meant that I wanted to be able to make magical girls myself. What I got was all of their powers. Including their, shall we say, logical processing?" she gave Kara a reassuring smile. "I've lost most of my emotional capabilities, but not all of them, and my morals are still intact."

"You lost your what?" Kara said. "Felicity, what are you saying?"

"I am part Incubator. I have patched into their network, and I have been changed by their influence." Felicity said. "But I am also part Felicity. I have her morals, and attitude, and about 60% of her memories."

Kara put a hand up to her mouth. "Felicity..."

"You know very well that the transformation into a magical girl is non-reversible." Felicity said. "Though my actions were, in retrospect, rash, we have no option but to continue forward under this new set of circumstances. And I'm not dead, Kara. Just... different."

Kara shuttered, then put her hand down, sighing. "I knew something like this was going to happen." she said. "I've been preparing for this for a few years now. It's not quite what I thought it was going to be, but..." she gave Felicity a long, sad look. "I understand that we can't let our personal feeling get in the way of this. Oh, but Felicity... to lose your humanity as well as to give up your life..."

Felicity reached out to take Kara's hand. Kara flinched slightly, but let her after a moment. Felicity looked up into Kara's eyes.

"I need a hug." Felicity said. "Please."

Kara's face melted, and she drew Felicity into a hug, holding her close. "We'll get through this, Felicity, and once we've won, we'll figure out how to get you back together."

"Okay." Felicity said. "I... would like that, Kara. I..." her voice cracked slightly.

"It's okay." Kara said, squeezing Felicity tighter.

Felicity tried to smile. She had now convinced Kara that she was still Felicity. The reactions had gone exactly as predicted. Now that both Janet and Kara were certain that she was working with them, she could count on their support for her plan. Everything was falling into place.

She tried to smile, but her sadness wouldn't let her.

**&^%^&**

Felicity gave Janet $400 in return for her investment, then headed off to the hotel after telling Kara where she was staying. She shouldn't have told Kara, she knew. It made the plan more risky. But she couldn't stop herself. Luckily, once she had removed herself from Kara's presence, her emotions retreated and she was once again able to approach the issues at hand logically and clearly.

The hotel she had chosen had very poor accommodation, except in one respect. It provided an internet connection. A few minutes and a little bit of coding later, and Felicity had a working website running. From there, she quickly accessed the forums used by the 'punk' and 'hacker' subcultures, or more accurately the people who thought they were part of those subcultures but were really just pissed off teenagers, and located Kazzer online. As expected, she had already formed a small group of interested people by talking about her new powers. She'd even taken pictures. By midnight, Felicity had seven more hopefuls just waiting to get their magical powers. She directed them to her website, told them she'd meet them the next day, then left to purchase a cell phone.

There had been some questions, but even at half past midnight, it wasn't hard for Felicity to find a store willing to sell her a cellphone. $500 in cash convinced them that she wasn't an irresponsible teen, and she put her new contact information on her web page by 1:00.

She received her first call by 1:08. Word was spreading, and some people couldn't wait for a wish. No, they weren't going to die soon. Yes, they knew it was 1:08. Wait, don't hang-

Click, then back to planning.

Thirty-one registered users on her site by 2:56, when the rate started to drop off. Better than expected. She'd thought twenty-nine. She would have to re-examine the probability charts for that subculture. More math. More models. Update and redesign. The plan changed, the goal remained the same.

3:18. Felicity closed the computer. She had done enough for tonight. She needed to train, needed the practical skill. One way to do it that was safe and simple. She got up, exited her room, and went back to the meetinghouse.

**&^%^&**

"You just want me to watch?" Kara said anxiously. The two of them were poised outside of the edge of a witches barrier, the otherworldly markings and light casting strange shadows over their faces in the predawn glow which was beginning to fill the streets.

"That is correct." Felicity said. "In the event that I am in danger of loosing my life, I would like you to step in and provide assistance. Otherwise, I need to train myself for combat situations. The best way to do this is to experience actual combat situations. You are, in effect, my safety net. You don't do anything unless I mess up."

"Are you sure you don't want me to run it through with you, at least the first time?" Kara said. "There is something to be said for learning from example."

"Our powers do not operate in any compatible manor." Felicity explained. "My power does not operate in a manner comparable with any other fighting style. I will learn nothing of importance from your interference, and it has a projected long term 3.87% decrease in total combat ability by-"

"Okay, okay!" Kara said. "You've made your point." she seemed slightly shaken. Felicity paused. She felt a little sadness creep its way back into her again. It hurt her that her new method of speaking put Kara off, but she couldn't control it, not for long. And it was more accurate. Kara wouldn't see it that way, though. She could only see how much it was changed from the Felicity of yesterday.

She shook her head. She couldn't care about that right now. She had to concentrate on the task at hand. She turned to Kara and nodded once. "We will begin now."

Felicity didn't wait for Kara's response. She knew that she would follow. Well, there was a 99.983% chance, anyway. Stepping over the barrier, Felicity prepared herself for combat.

She fell into a spinning realm, grabbing onto the edge of a merry-go-round as she passed it, the world reorienting itself around her. The painted horses were grotesque caricatures to her eyes, but they didn't seem explicitly dangerous. There was a grunting noise next to her, and Kara pulled herself onto the horse next to Felicity.

"Hold up, Felicity. You don't even know-" Kara began, but Felicity had already thrown herself towards the next platform, grabbing hold of the edge of a teacup ride and bounding to a tilt-a-whirl. A smiling clown jumped out at her, giggling. Felicity's eyes flashed, and she quickly reflected the vectors of the familiar's front half 180 degrees. It turned inside out and puffed into smoke.

She spotted a house of mirrors among the spinning rides. Unexpected given the theme - thus, it deserved attention. She dashed out, streaking towards the door to the mirrored hall, which opened slowly and menacingly as she approached.

Once she had passed beyond the lip of the hall, she was confronted with a million fractured reflections of herself. Up and down ceased to have meaning. Gravity flipped and spun, and she knew not if she was falling, flying, or standing still as the world turned around her. Felicity closed her eyes, then they flashed with power again. Quickly, she edited the photons in the area to disperse into sub-visual packets after one bounce. There was a flash of heat as all of the conflicting light paths converted spontaneously into infra-red, and then Felicity saw the corridor take shape, the mirrors now no longer able to reflect each other. She alighted on the floor of the corridor and walked down it.

"Felicity!" Kara called, opening the far door just as Felicity reached the end. "Wait up!"

Felicity paused for three seconds, as if considering Kara's words, then opened the door. Kara cursed and started running after her again. Felicity released her magic, and the disorientating effect returned. She heard Kara curse again. "Felicity, you don't know-"

Felicity passed through the door to find herself on a balcony floating in free space overlooking a large, rusty Ferris wheel. She jumped off the edge, landing on the 'ground' of shifting light and looking up at it. This felt like the center of the labyrinth. Now, where was the witch?

There was a rumbling, and the Ferris wheel blinked seven large black eyes down at Felicity. She took a step back. There was grating laughter, and the fifty foot iron behemoth wrenched itself forward, knocking Felicity off of her feet as it bent down almost fluidly, looking over at her.

Well, that answered that question, she supposed.

It tittered, tilted, and then tired to fall of Felicity. She quickly decreased the melting temperature of the iron to 0 degrees and then threw a blast of hot air at it, melting a hole. She was dribbled with lukewarm molten iron, but otherwise unhurt. The witch laughed again, starting to spin around her. Felicity increased the coefficient of kinetic friction between the ground and the iron to 0.99995, and with a lurch the witch tore itself in half around her. The two liberated sides of the ride rolled out, both still functional. The more intact side began to fling its carriage cars at her. Felicity inverted gravity on herself, flying out of the way at 32 feet per second per second, then reset, dropping back to the ground to dodge the next set. Dodging one after another, she danced her way around the witch as it attempted to crush her.

Eventually, Felicity decided that she needed to go on the offensive. She edited the properties of the air around her, creating a bridge of invisible blocks which dissipated back into gas as she passed over them. She subtracted an electron from the oxygen around her, and the now ionized gas flocked around her as she cast a strong magnetic field around herself. Felicity jumped through the air, landing on the nearest half of the witch, which screamed out in crackling, wrenching tones. She placed her hands palm down on it, folding the crystalline structure of the metal into a stable fractal pattern, perforating it with trillions of needle sized holes. Felicity's head spun as she did so. It drained her tremendously, she could tell. Still, when she was finished 3.89 seconds later, the entire half of the witches body was made of intricately supported wire mesh. It still had more than enough structural integrity to attack, but that wasn't of concern to Felicity. She transferred her magnetic field to the witch and felt the rush of air behind her as her pure ionized oxygen flooded into the quadrillions of spaces inside of the structure. Felicity jumped back as quickly as she could, then threw a single spark at it.

The witch exploded as the entire structure, soaked in pure oxygen and turned into what amounted to steel wool, combusted faster and more violently than a gas fire. It turned to rust and ash in less than fifteen seconds. The remaining part screamed, slowly melting. The labyrinth fractured, then shattered, leaving Felicity standing unhurt in the center of a warehouse, Kara out on the balcony above her.

Felicity dropped to the ground suddenly, groaning. Quickly, she drew out her soul gem. Once again, she was almost out of magic. Fumbling, she searched for the grief seed of her fallen foe, to no avail.

"Here." Kara said, handing it to her. She peered in, gasping as she saw Felicity's gem. "Oh, Felicity! Did you go into this two thirds down to start?"

Felicity didn't say anything for a moment, shaking slightly as she used the grief seed to purify herself. After a moment, she looked up at Kara.

"I was at full when I started." Felicity said. "It appears that my magic, while often very powerful, is also very inefficient. I appear to barely be able to break even on my power expenditures, if everything goes exactly as planned."

"Break even?" Kara said. "That's not good, Felicity. That's really not good."

"With the supply of grief seeds we currently have, we should not have any trouble supporting my increased energy consumption until the seventeenth." Felicity said. "We do not have to worry about it interfering with our plans."

"Who cares about the plans!" Kara said. "Felicity, how long? After we finish this, how long will you be able to make it?"

Felicity paused. She could just lie to Kara. She really wanted to. Sadly, she bowed her head. Kara put a hand over her mouth.

"Given the increased spending required during the upcoming period, coupled with the lack of witches after that period, and taking into account the fact that, at this point, almost every one of my daily activities, including thinking, is a semi-magical process..." Felicity paused. "The twenty-eighth. Of this month. After that point, my energy requirements will begin to put a strain on the other girls, which will decrease overall effectiveness, which will end with us losing the city and all dying again."

"Less than four weeks." Kara whispered. She gave Felicity a sad look, then shook her head, determination crossing her face. "No. Wait. We just won't have you fight, that's all." Kara said. "We'll contract one extra magical girl to make up for it, and you'll just sit out of the fight. Then, when this whole thing ends, I'll be able to provide you with the extra grief seeds. Then you won't be a drain on resources, and we'll just keep you running like anyone else afterward."

"The entire city is a battlefield." Felicity said. "There isn't anywhere I could go to get out of the fighting. Besides, by the twenty-eighth, I will have served my purpose. You won't need me anymore."

"Like hell I won't need you." Kara said, grabbing Felicity by the shoulders. "There isn't anything worth protecting without you, Felicity."

"It is estimated that one hundred and seventy-four of the magical girls we contract between now and the seventeenth will be dead by the seventeenth of next month." Felicity said without emotion. "I am no more important than any of these other girls, each of whom will have to make a sacrifice to save this city."

"You're my little sister, Felicity. You're more important than all of those other girls combined." Kara said.

"I certainly do not wish to die." Felicity said. "If you are capable of providing me an option which would allow me to continue, I am not adverse to the idea. But I am also very aware that there is no additional option."

Kara started pacing. "There has to be something." she muttered. "I'm not losing you in less than a month, Felicity. It's just not happening." suddenly, she stopped. "The grief seed. You're only half through with it. The Incubators use those things for energy, and you're half Incubator!"

"We can contain and hold the seeds, yes. But Incubators are incapable of biologically extracting energy from the grief seeds. They use a machine on their home world. This grief seed contains enough power for 87,423,371 charges for me, 161,419,316 for a normal magical girl, and 1,614,195,832 charges for you. However, we have no way to access this energy. The technology required to do so will be invented in roughly forty-seven thousand five hundred years." Felicity said.

Kara cursed and started pacing again. Felicity sighed. "It is not a certainty." she ventured. "I do have a 12.93% chance of surviving for longer than that, depending on certain unknown efficiency factors among the other magical girls. There's even a 0.42% chance that I'll make it through until after the event, in which case I will be able to live for roughly as long as you do. Besides which..." Felicity paused, then continued. "We will likely not have to deal with this energy reduction crisis at all."

"And why is that?" Kara asked.

"Given my skill, the rate at which I expend energy, the difficulty of the next few weeks, and the strain that I will be undergoing, I only have a 4.31% chance of surviving that long anyway. Most likely I will die in combat before this becomes an issue." Felicity said bluntly.

"How can you be so calm about this!" Kara said. "You're talking about your own death, Felicity!"

"I have accepted it as highly predictive statistical data. Whether I wish it to be the case or not, I have recognized that it will almost certainly happen. As there is little I can do to change it, I have instead opted to make my life worth living, and use the time I have left to insure as few others as possible have to die." Felicity said. "My plan is currently approximately 8.39% complete. I will insure the survival of this city." she paused. "I will insure your survival as well. Currently, you have a 91.41% chance of 6 month survival. I plan on increasing that to 99% at least." she didn't know why she said that. She was equally surprised to realize that, subconsciously, she really had been doing that. She would have to recheck her models to see if her subconscious protection of Kara had cut out any more efficient methods from her consideration.

"Spend your time worrying about yourself!" Kara said. "I can handle myself. But you have to make it through as well, do you hear me?" Kara dropped to her knees and pulled Felicity into a hug. "You have to survive. Please." she whispered, shaking slightly.

Felicity faltered. "I-I will. Oh, Kara, I will. I... I promise. I'll run more tests. I'll find a way, I swear. I'm the smartest person who ever lived. I'll think of... something. Something else." she felt her chest go cold as she lied to Kara. It felt so wrong, even if it was necessary. Felicity had to die. Kara wouldn't understand, but it was the truth. Felicity had to die. It was the only way for her plan to work.

**&^%^&**

Felicity left Kara there after she had calmed down sufficiently, then returned to her room. She began a check through her models to attempt to cut out any biases she may have introduced for Kara's safety, but after a few minutes she decided to stop. After all, Kara was her big sister. She mattered more than all the other girls combined. Who cared if the models were biased, so long as they weren't so biased as to no longer achieve their goal.

She contacted her interested parties one at a time, gathering them to a cafe downtown for a noon meeting. When she arrived, eleven had actually shown. Five minutes later, the magical girl population broke thirty for the first time in three years. Various levels of shock and awe from the other girls, and she made sure to send them off with a very strong opinion of her. She made sure to stay aloof and as disinterested as she could. After the meeting, she returned to her room. She placed a few calls to the right people with her cellphone, and set the seeds she needed set in the minds she needed them in. Then, she sat back and watched. The first phase was now complete. She needed to give them 93 hours to let her roots grow sufficiently before starting phase two.

In the meantime, she began working on a better model of predictive psychology. She was okay at determining how people would act broadly as individuals and in small groups on timescales of a few hours, but not so good with groups larger than the Dunbar number or times longer than an afternoon. She needed a way to statistically predict how people would act in groups of two to five hundred with fair accuracy over time-spans of three to five weeks. Searching online databases and cross checking with the Incubator's own vast collection of information, Felicity began to piece together the tools she needed for her part of phase two. She had predicted that she would be able to come up with the necessary predictive measures in time. If she didn't, she wouldn't be able to control things to a great enough degree for this to work. The 93.48% chance she had given herself suddenly didn't feel so safe.

A day passed with little success. The data sets she had access to were too broad to make predictions on the scale she wanted. She found a promising lead after about thirty hours, but six hours in she realized that she was a few steps away from finding a predictive model useful for billions of people over hundreds of years, which while impressive wasn't terribly useful for her. Scrap the work and restart.

Eventually, Felicity gave up on her wider knowledge and turned to her simpler models. Perhaps working her way up from smaller sets of data would be more useful than simplifying down from larger sets. A nearby suburban town of 6,700 had been keeping surprisingly good records since 1952, and they had a website. Their data was more on the scale she needed. What they chose to record was almost exactly what she needed, too. Sometimes, luck just happened. Felicity reworked her models from the historical data, examining upwards through each decision and wave of change, each time getting closer and closer to accurate predictions. By the end of the second day, she felt ready. Much sooner than expected. Time enough left to check.

A call to town's mayor, then two of the councilmen. A vote tomorrow at 9:00 on the placement of a water treatment plant. She tipped the balance back and forth, dropped the right hints, and used her model to predict the outcome. While she waited for the results, she went back to work developing a new model, just in cast this one failed.

The results came in. 13-7-4, exactly the breakdown she had predicted. Each individual had voted exactly as she had thought. But that wasn't the hard part. Any analyst with a little luck could do that. She quickly went through the citizen comments. A smile slowly crossed her lips. The people of the town were reacting to the decision with less than 0.09% deviation from her expected model. Not only that, the information was propagating 0.07% faster than she had thought and opinions were forming only 0.16% slower than expected. Each of her twelve active individual case studies, the twelve people she had been able to get sufficient biographical data on, all acted within 1% of her expectations. She used the information from this live trial to put the finishing touches on her models, then finally let herself relax. She checked the clock. 10:46 PM on the tenth. 36 hours until phase two could begin.

Felicity took a break for a day. She was sure she could have used the time for something, but she decided to let herself have fun for a little while. It was a Saturday, after all.

**&^%^&**

"Psycho-what?" Janet said, shaking her head.

"Psychosociology." Felicity said. "Named in reference to Issac Asimov's psychohistory, a fictional science from his book Foundation. It allows me to predict how people will act in groups of up to roughly sixteen thousand and on timescales of up to three weeks. I was hoping to devise a more accurate tool for groups of a few hundred like the one we will be dealing with, but the model does still hold for groups of that size. The twenty-two day 80% confidence limit does hamper me somewhat, but it should be sufficient for our purposes."

"It lets you see the future?" Janet said. "Math that lets you see the future?"

"Not see, predict." Felicity said. "And it is weak to outliers. If, say, a nuclear war were to start in the next seven days, my predictions would be completely void. But, yes, I can, with almost perfect accuracy, tell how people will react to a situation over immediate timescales."

"Really." Kara said, skeptical. "Well, then, what am I going to say next?"

Felicity paused. "May I have a scratchpad?" she asked after a moment. Kara handed her a pencil and a piece of paper, and Felicity quickly drew up a web, rapidly preforming calculations.

Thirty seconds passed. Kara tapped her foot, then sighed.

"Are you done yet?" she and Felicity said at the same time. Kara blinked. "No, wait-" they said in unison. Felicity put down the pad of paper and looked at her watch, making it clear that she wasn't paying Kara any attention. "Okay, now you're just showing off." Kara and Felicity said together. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were using your magic to do this." Kara stopped, then suddenly shouted "Sixteen purple flying fish!"

"Number-color-adjective-animal!" Felicity said at the same time. The two girls stared at each other.

"Close enough." they said together, sighing. "You've made your point."

"Good." Felicity said, and Kara sat down, putting her head in her hands. Janet looked between the two of them.

"You had to have staged that." Janet said. "I-"

"You will spend eight sentences beating around the bush, then conclude your argument by saying that we have free will and that it is impossible to predict exactly what someone will do. I will tell you that that is absolutely correct, but that it is easily possible to get close enough that it doesn't matter. You won't believe me, and then you'll ask me to tell you what you're thinking. I'll tell you that it doesn't work like that, you'll get mad that I'm not being clear, then ask that I predict what you'll say. I will comply. You'll try to drag me on for two minutes and fourteen seconds before giving up and saying that I'm using magic to do it, then storm off dissatisfied for a reason you can't quite understand." Felicity said. "I would rather avoid those pointless three minutes forty-eight seconds, if it is all the same to you."

"What?" Janet and Felicity said in unison. "That isn't true... at... all..." Janet looked at Felicity. "You can't possibly actually..." she paused again. "I can't believe..." Felicity looked back at her with a kind smile, a perfect mirror of her speech on her lips.

"She's not using magic." Kara said sullenly from the couch. "I can tell."

"Wait, why didn't you use the scratchpad for me?" Felicity said, Janet saying the same thing a quarter of a second after her. Felicity winced. "Sorry. A little off that time. To answer the question, your thought processes are considerably simpler than Kara's. It was easy enough to do in my head."

"Hey." Janet said, sitting down in a little bit of a daze. "That's... not a nice thing to say." she concluded lamely.

"As you can see," continued Felicity, "I am able to both predict future events as well as provide the correct inputs to insure things go my way. I managed to convince Janet in under one third of the time it would have taken if I had let things go on their natural course. Using my models, I can effect similar changes throughout the coming weeks which will insure that our plan comes to fruition."

"Why are you telling us this." Kara said mutely. "You know how we will react already anyway, right? What's your purpose?"

"I wanted to make you feel better." Felicity said, blinking. "I thought that knowing of my new abilities would provide you with a greater sense of security."

"Well, you might want to recheck your models, then." Kara said. "This is... terrifying, Felicity. I'm terrified for you, and I'm terrified of you. You... you're not human anymore, Felicity. Oh, god..." she looked up at Felicity, her eyes sunken with fear and terrible sadness. "What are you going to do with us?"

"I..." Felicity felt words fail her. She shook slightly, and a tear trickled its way down her cheek. She was feeling only 12% of this, and yet it was still enough to entirely disrupt her train of thought. Kara looked so hurt, and she didn't know why. Her brain rushed to provide a statistical answer, but she shut it down. No. She wouldn't do that to Kara. She couldn't do that to Kara.

She still wanted to be surprised by her. She wanted to laugh at a joke without knowing the punchline. Kara was her wonderful unknown, who she would never touch unless it was absolutely necessary. And now Kara was looking up at her with such sadness, such deep heartbreak, and Felicity felt everything fall apart.

"No. No, no, no." Felicity said, grabbing Kara. "You're special, Kara. You're my sister. No data-set can replace you. I wouldn't take a 99.999% accurate Kara for the real one, not for the slightest moment. Kara, please, don't cry. Please. You're irreplaceable to me. I don't care if I can see out a million years with perfect precision, your reactions still precious and important and... and..." Felicity felt the words start to tumble, and she started speaking in the Incubator's natural, precise tongue as she lost the ability to translate into English in her rapidly deteriorating mental state. After about ten seconds, Kara pushed Felicity away from her.

"You already figured out what my problem was." Kara said quietly. "I didn't have to say it, but you knew."

"Oh, Kara, no, please." Felicity said. "Please."

"I'm obsolete." she said. "We're all obsolete. Give you a pen and paper and you can write our lives twice as fast as we can live them. You know how everything works. And you know exactly what to do to get exactly what you want." Kara looked up at Felicity slowly. "How do I know you didn't set this whole thing up for some greater purpose? Is putting me in exactly this mental state going to cause us to have a zero-point-whatever percent higher chance of falling into your little premade game?" she laughed darkly. "How very boring it must all be for you, Felicity, to have to act so perfectly in a play that you already know the ending too. At least you got to write it."

"I-I haven't..." Felicity started to cry, tears beginning to break her speech as she struggled to think of something. 12% of infinity is still infinity, after all. She released a pulse of pain down the Incubator network, felt it reflected back at her a million fold and distorted by a million unknowing entities who were stunned into inaction universe wide by the event. "I've only had this for a few hours. Kara, I didn't run anything on you. I would never-"

"Shut up." Kara said. "You already know exactly what to say, exactly what to do, to get me to do anything you want. Whatever logic you use, no matter how much you cry, regardless of how many times you plead with me to believe you, I can never trust a single word from you ever again. I don't know why you wanted me to be afraid of you, but I can only hope that this plan of yours is worth it to you. I don't have any choice but to play your game, so I'll do my best to not worry about it. And when I'm no longer useful to you, I can at least hope that whatever remains of Felicity pokes through enough to make it painless."

Felicity opened her mouth, but only a gasping sob came out. This couldn't possibly be happening. She had just wanted to talk with her sister for a few minutes. How had everything been ruined? How could she have messed up this badly?

Three minutes alone with her computer, and she could fix this. She'd come in with an exact plan in place, and everything would just fall in around her. The right words here, the right actions there, give enough space and time to let the edges of her psyche bend, and Kara would love her again. They'd laugh about anything, nothing, and Kara would call her Fills again and they would watch a movie and make funny faces and Kara would love her again. No matter what it took, no matter how long, or what she had to give up, or who had to suffer, she would make things right and perfect and happy and fun and Kara would love her again. Kara would love her-

But that wouldn't work. Because then it wouldn't be Kara who loved her anymore. It would be the puppet that she had turned Kara into. And Felicity would rather Kara hate her forever than ever manipulate her. Because Kara was her precious unknown, her perfect, wonderful older sister, and she would never, ever do that to her.

"Leave." Kara said. "Felicity, please. You've done enough already."

Felicity went cold, and she struggled to her feet. With precise, unconscious steps, she exited the meetinghouse.

She didn't move quite fast enough to miss Kara's screams of anguish.

**&^%^&**

Felicity got back to her hotel room. She threw her computer out the window, perforated the furniture, and used her magic to freeze and burn and shock and vaporize everything around her. Her magic let her edit fundamental data of the objects about her, and she let herself throw the universe's switches randomly and without care. Luckily, the effect was only local. Not due to any control on her part of course, but her power did have a limit, and not a spectacularly large one. She quickly drained all of her magic, then purified her soul gem with a spare grief seed from her box. Still had eighty-nine left.

She wished that she could fall asleep so that she didn't have to deal with this, even if only for a brief, blissful moment.

The twelfth passed without event. Felicity stayed in her room all day. She fixed the furniture with her magic. The starting point for phase two came and passed in a blur, not even noticed by Felicity as it did. She just didn't care enough anymore.

The thirteenth passed as well. Felicity found her computer, smashed on the floor three stories below her. She bought herself a new one for 18,000 USD, the most expensive she could find. Somehow, her computer memory had survived, and she transferred that. She spent the rest of the day looking at the three and a half gigabytes of photos of Kara she had and drinking as much soda as she could manage, purchasing a $20 5-gallon 'keg' of root-beer. Less than half of it was left by midnight. Most of it had come out as tears.

The fourteenth dawned. Felicity plugged back into the internet, and checked on her site. Three hundred and fifty-one users. One hundred and twenty-seven would be willing to make the transformation according to her models. It seemed that her plan had carried on without her. With a few quick calculations, Felicity determined that it was still possible to get her plan back in action before the seventeenth. She needed to do this. She had to save the city. It was all she had left, after all.

Felicity wasted no time, letting her following know that she would be available for transformation at noon in a nearby concert hall. $3,000 got her access to the hall in time for the deadline, and she showed up to a quarter filled room, abuzz with excited chatter. Five hundred seats for an audience of one hundred twenty-seven; not quite as many as she would have liked, as she would have had if she had done it right, but it was enough. It was time for her presentation. Opening night for the Felicity plan.

**&^%^&**

Felicity tapped the microphone, and received a tinge of static back at her on the speakers. The audience calmed down suddenly, the hall going quiet. Anxious whispering filled the air slowly as Felicity stood there, not saying anything. One hundred and twenty-seven pairs of eyes trained on her. Now was really not the time to get stage fright.

"Hello." Felicity said simply, and the talking cut out again, her voice becoming the only one in the room. "My name is Felicity. I am not a representative or a proxy; this is the real me." she snapped her fingers, transforming into her magical girl uniform to awed gasps in the crowd. "The one hundred and twenty-seven of you gathered here have come for a chance to receive magical powers and be granted a wish. This will be done. However, it is not all that will be done." she paused, letting a little murmuring start in the crowd. "I have, to the best of my knowledge, never lied to any of you. The information which exists on my site is all accurate in its descriptions of magic, and the responsibilities which magical girls are subject to after receiving their powers. However, I have not told you the whole story."

There was a sudden increase in volume as people whispered back and forth between each other. Felicity let them converse for 8.73 seconds, then raised her hand. "Let me explain. I am not referring to any hidden costs, or secret additional issues which accompany becoming a magical girl. I have already given you all available information on the status of individual magical girls. You should all be familiar with the fact that you must fight witches to regain your powers, and that if you run out of power you become, yourself, a witch. You should all be aware that if your soul gem becomes destroyed, you die. These are all things which you already know, or at least have had free access too. Again, I do not refer to any information concerning the individual magical girl. I refer to information concerning magical girl groups."

"Our city is at the brink of a crisis. A rather major crisis, as it happens. The witch populations are growing without bounds, and the magical girls available have no chance of keeping up. Even all of you aren't enough. We need another two hundred of them by midnight on this Friday, or the city will be lost. By this, I mean that everyone, every single person in the city, will be dead within three months."

The crowd erupted into loud conversation, which Felicity again let propagate for 19.34 seconds before silencing the gathered girls. "However, it is not yet too late to stop this. A population of three hundred and thirty-one magical girls, if reached by midnight on Friday, would be enough to stop the tide before it overwhelms us. But this population can not be a group of free agents." Felicity paused again. "On their own, magical girls come into conflict with each other. Sometimes they get hurt, or tired, or just don't feel like working. Three hundred and thirty-one free agents are worth only approximately two hundred and sixteen working in concert. I don't just need you to become magical girls. I need you to join me in a magical girl army." Felicity let the final statement sink in.

"Why should we listen to you?" one of the girls asked. "I mean, other than having, what, a week more experience than us, you don't know what you're doing. You've never run anything before in your life!"

Felicity sighed heavily into the microphone. It wasn't necessary, but it would add to the performance. "I invite you to have your say, miss..."

"Yana." the girl said, stepping up onto the stage. Red hair, long face, intelligent eyes, perhaps sixteen years old. The 'natural leader'. She was one of three major dissenting voices, the other two being the self-centered opportunist and the antisocial. Any of the three would have worked, but Felicity was secretly glad that this girl had stepped up first. It was the fastest of the three paths.

"Don't get me wrong, Felicity." Yana said. "I appreciate what your trying to do. You obviously are trying to make things better, in your own way. But just because you introduced us to this world of magic doesn't mean we should let you lead us. How many witches have you actually fought?"

"One." Felicity said.

"See? Not very much experience, when you get down too it." Yana said. "What groups have you lead before?"

"None." Felicity said.

"And no leadership experience." Yana said. "Felicity, you do want what is best for the city, right?"

"Yes." Felicity said.

"I'm not trying to say we shouldn't form up." Yana said. "I think we need to, if your information is correct. But I think that whoever leads us shouldn't be a leader by default. We need to approach this logically and calmly, like any other crisis. I'm sure we can do this – but we should have the best person for the job leading us, not the person who found it first."

"I agree." Felicity said.

"We should have a vote." Yana said. "To chose our leader."

"No." Felicity said. "That is incorrect and illogical."

"What?" Yana blinked. Felicity watched the charm begin to drain out of her face. She had, of course, figured that the fourteen year old would love to have an option out of leading, and would easily go along with whatever she said. "Why not?"

"We do not have nearly sufficient information. In order to accurately chose a leader, the voting members of a democracy must have clear and complete information on their candidates. If not, it becomes nothing more than a glorified popularity contest." Felicity paused. "However, I will allow the vote anyway, as it will provide a greater sense of comfort to the people gathered, who have been raised in a society which has been conditioned to consider democracy as the ultimate form of government. It will not change the results. The vote will occur in two minutes and thirty-two seconds, and it will result in my unanimous selection as leader."

Yana shook her head. "You know, saying things like 'two minutes thirty-two seconds' doesn't actually make you sound smarter. It just makes you sound like a-"

"-stuck up know it all who's trying too hard." Felicity finished with Yana in sync. She paused.

"Wait, how did you know what I was going to say?" they said in unison.

"I predicted it." Felicity said. "Along with the time. You see, I will not be holding the vote, in two minutes and eighteen seconds now. It will occur spontaneously as the group draws upon the general realization that I have clearly made my point." she cocked her head slightly. "You called me a know it all. This is far more accurate an assessment than you initial anticipated."

"What is this, some trick with your magic?" Yana said, looking around.

"No." Felicity transformed back into her normal clothes. "I am now incapable of casting magic. This will not hinder my progression."

"We'll see-" Yana started, Felicity easily mirroring her. She closed her mouth, opened it again, then closed it tightly. Felicity turned to the rest of the crowd.

"I will provide a demonstration." Felicity stated. "Please, would you all take a different seat?"

There was a murmurer. Felicity turned around to face Yana. "I am presenting Yana with a predrawn sketch of the seating arrangements as they will appear in exactly sixty seconds, so that you can be sure that my image has no way of updating or modifying itself to fit the situation. This is not a trick. If I get so much as a single place incorrect, I will sit down and let Yana run the show from here on out. I encourage you to sit anywhere."

Silence fell. There was a shuffling, and then people began to get up and walk around. People changed seats, then changed again. Some stood up and walked to the corners of the room. A few stood on chairs, or lay between multiple seats. In general, they acted as one would expect a room of twelve to sixteen year old's to act if told that someone could, with full certainly, predict exactly what they would do.

Felicity clapped suddenly. "Time is up." she said. "Yana, would you please place the chart under the projector?"

Yana glanced up from the chart, her face going white as a sheet. She nodded slowly, then put the chart on display so that the others could see.

A gasp filled the hall. In Felicity's neat, precise handwriting, marked down on the page was a perfect replication of the seating arrangements currently taken. She had marked every person straddling, everyone standing, everyone who were sitting together in the same seat, even the three people who had left the room entirely. Everything was absolutely perfect. Well, almost.

"As you can see, I have neglected to mark Yana's position correctly." Felicity noted. "I had assumed that she would be less taken aback by my presentation, and would have taken part. As agreed, I will now let her run the show." Felicity walked down from the stage, sitting down in the front row of the hall.

Silence filled the chamber. Felicity counted down slowly, precisely. Six... five... four... three... two... one...

**&^%^&**

The vote was unanimous. Felicity was elected to lead the group due to her obviously unspeakably advanced intelligence and evident commitment to keeping her promises. She put Yana in charge of subgroup management, then went and converted the one hundred and twenty-seven of them into magical girls.

Throughout the presentation, she continued to show signs of her abilities. It didn't take too long for the others to gather that even her 'mistake' had been planed perfectly for the reaction she wanted. She saw fear creeping its way through the crowd, as first the most intelligent, then more and more of the people came to the same realization that Kara had. Someone who knew exactly how you would act could always manipulate you perfectly to do whatever they wanted, and you'd never know. If you did what they said, it was because they had set things up so that you would. If you rebelled against their commands, they had set it on purpose to get you to do so. If you went into a loop of self-doubt, of guessing and second guessing, they would know exactly where you would stop, and exactly what to say or do to get you to act exactly as they wanted. A person with that kind of power could use anyone for any purpose, and the person being manipulated wouldn't even know it.

They weren't wrong. She had already started, in fact.

**&^%^&**

"Hello." Felicity said, speaking into her phone. She had her laptop open, and was sending messages rapidly away, keeping in close contact with those she needed contact with. On the phone, a gruff older man huffed.

"Who is this?" the man said. "Who are you?"

"My name is Felicity Harbor, a fourteen year old girl inside of your voting district. In two minutes and fourteen seconds, your secretary is going to walk out of your room. Then, seventeen seconds later, your campaign committee is going to inform you that they are resigning their positions. The lights will then flicker four times, staying dark for two second periods and separated by eight seconds. After this, you will be given a letter from the bank in charge of you campaign fund with the words 'listen closely' written on it. I will call you back in three minutes fifty seconds."

Felicity hung up before the man could speak, and turned her full attention to her messages. She finished them, took a bite of a cookie that Yana had brought her, and then called the man again, exactly three minutes and fifty seconds later.

"Who are you representing?" the man asked anxiously.

"My own interests, as it happens." Felicity said. "What, you weren't aware that a fourteen year old girl was secretly in control of the United States? You're behind the times, Mr. Congressman."

"Please, no jokes. And, let the poor girl go." the man said.

"Oh, I assure you, this is no joke." Felicity said. "I am nothing more than a soon-to-be-citizen with a public health concern that I want your cooperation on solving."

"A... public health concern?" the man said anxiously.

"No, I am not holding my city hostage." Felicity said. "This is not a play by me to gain any kind of power. I already have all the power I could possibly want. I know that you know where I am. You have already searched Felicity Harbor and determined that she is, in fact, a real person. You have most likely informed local law enforcement about her. I will save you the trouble; I'm not home, and I didn't really feel like going to school today."

"What is this about?" the man said. "Is this some kind of terrible practical joke? Have you been talked into this by some high-school delinquents?"

"Please, will you take me a little seriously." Felicity said. "I would have thought I would have earned at least that much. Or do you need another demonstration?"

"No!" he said. "Okay, fine, I'll stop asking questions."

"Good. That will make this much easier." Felicity sighed. "Now, Mr. Congressman, as I was saying, my city is facing a public heath concern. In particular, we have an infestation of witches, an evil magical creature which preys on humans." Felicity paused. "I understand that this will probably come as a bit of a shock, so I have already dispatched a team of my... friends, to show you the validity of that statement. They should be arriving in..." Felicity checked her watch. "Five seconds."

There was a pause, and then the sound of glass shattering. There was muffled yelling, indistinct voices, and then the phone was put on speakerphone on the other end.

"So, I think the guy's convinced." Jenifer said. "He certainly looks it, anyway."

There was some giggling from the room. Felicity let herself smile. Just because they had a greater purpose didn't mean that she couldn't let herself enjoy the moment. She had put Jenifer in charge of a group of five other girls. They were her elite team, made up of only the best – in her case, that meant anyone who had a basic understanding of what they were doing, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

"See, Mr. Congressman? Magic." one of the other girls said, and there was a crackling sound. "Totally real."

"I..." he said, stuttering.

"Please, give him some room." Felicity said.

"What... do you want from me?" he asked slowly.

"Well, me and my girls are more than capable of handling the magical end of things." Felicity said. "But, well, we need some help on the physical end. Not very much, mind. All we want is access to the emergency warning system. We need to be able to order city-wide evacuations on our call, to make sure no one gets hurt. You understand, of course."

"Of-of course." he said lamely.

"Oh, and we'll also need someplace large enough to act as a base of operations for, say, five hundred people." Felicity said. "I take it that won't be too much trouble either?"

"No." he said sullenly. "No, it won't be."

"Hey, cheer up." Felicity said. "We're the good guys. You're just helping us to protect the city, that's all. You do what I've told you, and you'll never hear from us again. No one will be able to explain the infrastructural damage, but strangely no one will have been killed, and in a year everyone will have slipped back into complacency. Be a good boy, and I'll even tip the next election for you." Felicity paused. "Thank you for your time." she hung up.

**&^%^&**

Felicity knocked on the door of the meetinghouse. There was a pause, then the sound of quickly running feet. The door was flung open. Kara looked down at Felicity, stunned for a moment.

"I came back." Felicity stated simply. "It's tonight. The night of the seventeenth. The deadline is in one hour and fifteen minutes." she paused. "I know you can't trust me, but I would request that you come with me. You should know that it couldn't possibility forward my plans to decrease the number of active magical girls, so you shouldn't be concerned-"

Kara grabbed Felicity in a hug. "I missed you." she whispered. "You've been gone for six days now, and I haven't seen a single sign of you. I thought you might be gone forever, that the next time I knew where you were would be after the battles when I came across your dead body. Oh, Felicity, never let me do something that stupid again. Please."

"I can't promise that." Felicity said. "I refuse to manipulate you, Kara. I... I can't do that to you." she smiled softly. "Or Janet. And I'm having increasingly harder times convincing myself it's okay to do to Jenifer or Yana or Bretta or Samantha... What kind of a mastermind am I, incapable of disrupting the purity of those I care about, even in their interests?" she sighed. "It's going to-"

"Felicity, stop defending yourself, shut up, and let me hug you." Kara said.

Felicity complied.

After a little while, Felicity refused to count exactly how long, Kara released her. "I believe you." she said softly. "No matter what, you're still Felicity inside, aren't you? And Felicity would never do that to me. I'm still terrified of you, but... I'll get over it. Just, please, don't run away again."

"Is Janet here?" Felicity asked.

"No. She's with the Incubator off converting our group now." Kara said.

Felicity looked inside the house, pausing for a moment. "Eighty-two, right?" Felicity said. "Not bad, all things considered. Why aren't you..." she paused. "Oh."

"I couldn't leave, not if there was a chance you'd turn up. Even if the fate of the world was in the balance, I couldn't have left." Kara said.

"Eighty-two isn't enough, you know." Felicity said. "Even if you can get all of them to convert."

"Yeah, and I bet you have the full three hundred and thirty-one ready to go." Kara said. "No, wait. You have exactly two hundred and forty-nine, because you knew we would-"

"Two hundred thirteen." Felicity said quietly. There was a pause. "I only ran the most basic of models for you, Kara. Models based on only past data, not personal emotions and reactions. It predicted that you'd get one hundred and thirty-three. I was aiming to provide at least three hundred personally, but I took a forty-eight hour hiatus in the middle, and this was the best I could provide for. I figured you would be able to pick up the slack. After all, the totals still reached." she paused. "But I never accounted for you caring as much as you did. You literally didn't leave the meetinghouse, did you?" she laughed softly. "You're not the only one who fell behind. I started the second phase of my plan a full two days late because I was crying too much to put on the performances I needed. We both lagged below our expected yields by so much that we ate our one hundred man margin and still ended up thirty-six short."

"How did you know?" Kara said. "How did you know how many people we had if you didn't predict it?"

"The coffee table." Felicity said. "You've counted out eighty-two grief seeds. It was an educated guess."

"So, wait, we only have two hundred and ninety-five?" Kara said.

"Yes." Felicity said. "We only have two hundred and ninety-five. We are thirty-six short."

"Thirty-four." Kara said. "You haven't counted us as part of the total yet."

"Thirty-four..." Felicity paused, thinking. "And with my skills, we should easily be able to get the seventeen other magical girls to join us..."

"Oh, yeah!" Kara said. "I did convince six of them already, so that's down to twenty-eight."

"If I can talk to the other eleven, it should take me seconds to get them to join us." Felicity said. "So we really only need seventeen more."

"Can you do seventeen in... seventy-two minutes?" Kara asked.

"I'm the smartest person that ever lived." Felicity said. "I'll figure something out."

**&^%^&**

It wasn't easy, but it worked.

Felicity and Kara showed up to the open park where Janet had gathered the eighty-two girls. Felicity spoke for five minutes and twenty-one seconds, and then all eighty-two converted. Twenty of Felicity's girls showed up, and the group moved to their recently acquired headquarters. There had been a military base here, just outside of the city limits, but it had been abandoned suddenly and without warning yesterday and turned over to Felicity. It was sufficient for their purposes. With some careful wording, Felicity managed to integrate the two groups seamlessly.

She told them that they had fifty minutes to gather another eighteen girls. Of their own accord, the girls scattered into their groups and went searching. Two hundred eyes, looking for seventeen more for their ranks. The remaining ninety-eight, the eighty-two of Kara's girls, thirteen of Felicity's, and Felicity, Kara, and Janet, began the initial training of the new girls. Felicity left after a few minutes, taking Kara's list of other magical girls and contacting them one by one. They began to show up slowly, piece by piece, until all seventeen of them had gathered. She instructed them to provide training support, and after a few minutes they were more than willing to follow her orders.

The other girls began to trickle back in. She got a call from Yana. They had gotten thirteen, and were bringing them in. Jennifer's group had gotten four, Olivia's three, Eva and Anabel two each, and six others with one apiece. Thirty total. Plenty.

At midnight, Felicity performed the final contract, then turned to the others. Three hundred and forty-four. Thirteen more than they needed. And just barely in time.

**&^%^&**

"Three hundred and forty-five." Felicity said, the crowd calming down and turning to listen to her. "Three hundred and forty-four magical girls, plus Janet." there was nervous laughter. "Our minimum viable population was three hundred and thirty-one. Congratulations. We made it in time."

There was a pause. No cheering, no clapping. Felicity smiled. "Good. It seems that you all realize that we haven't actually accomplished anything, not yet. We have gathered an army, but we haven't done anything with it. The witch populations are still higher than ever, and only continuing to rise." she paused. "Tonight, three hundred and thirty familiars will separate from their witches, to become three hundred and thirty more witches in two weeks time. Thus, if we can kill more than three hundred and thirty witches tonight, their totals will begin to, slowly, decline. That is why we needed exactly as many of you as we did. Each girl must kill one witch every night from now until we eradicate their populations completely. Each day, slightly less witches will be born, which will decrease their total, which will slowly lead to a spiral of population decent for them. But we have to be perfect. There isn't room for error."

Yana stepped forward. "I have assigned you into teams of two." she said. "Each team will be responsible for killing two witches between now and noon tomorrow. You should work together to provide assistance to each other. Remember, if you die while in combat, you haven't just failed to kill one witch, you've failed to kill all the witches you were predicted to kill in the future. Every one of your lives are integrally important to the success of our mission."

"The teams will act as a unit." Felicity said. "It would be safer from a combat perspective to send you in groups of five, but because of how our magic works, we would end up running out of grief seeds in about seven days. A group of two spends just barely less magic then they get from a grief seed, so it is unfortunately the maximum sustainable size for a unit."

"We will, of course, still act as a base of operations, and teams should feel free to, and are encouraged to, help other teams if they have the ability to do so." Yana said. "We will make sure that resources get to where they need to be, and that every part of the city stays as safe as we can make it."

"We're counting on you." Felicity said. "Let's save this city!"

There was a cheer, and Felicity turned away from the assembled crowd, walking over to where Kara and Janet were standing, talking with the senior magical girls. Yana would handle the crowd; she was a natural leader, after all. Felicity had work to do.

After all, the hard part had just started.