The engine was dead. The pistons were blackened and burst, the rubber crisped, the bottom of the hood fuzzy with accumulated soot. Grease pattered from the dregs of the engine block in shiny silk streams, where it crept into the dirty frayed shoes of the Magical Girl Hollis, who hung above the catastrophe wringing her hands and licking her lips and bitterly cursing the fateful world.
One hour and change ago the effective second in command of the Charleston Three, Yolanda Bedlowe, chugged into the front drive with their collectively owned car, a red minivan, in tatters around her. She caught Hollis near the front door in a deck chair, hunched over a melted freezer margarita, unable to escape. The exchange lasted a sum total of thirty seconds: Yolanda hopped out (the door creaked and dangled on its hinges) and leaned around the car, cascading corns of glass out of her fishwire hair. "Hollis, you handle this."
Hollis swallowed. "Uhuh."
"Don't tell Dyson," said Yolanda, and then she was gone.
It was possible Yolanda was senile in a different way from the rest of them. This wasn't the first time she'd appeared in such a state during their Georgia tenure, though the desolation of the minivan was a unique and interesting spin on the tried formula of grievous injury. There was a story behind it that nobody except Yolanda would ever know. Like the time she came back home blasted to hell with shotgun pellets. Says she didn't see who did it. Hopeless to wonder. In Savannah Hollis learned that prediction was a crapshoot - the city gnawed up certainty, sanity, and dignity. What little they already had.
She rolled the minivan into the garage, opened the hood, and there discovered the horror, aglow with the tail end of a stopgap enchantment courtesy Yolanda. Tally the necessary cubes, devastating. Then she slouched out of the garage and through the front door and past the living room and Dorchester vegetative before the T.V. and passed again with a plastic tub of cubes in hand, unnoticed. She balanced it on the frame of the engine compartment.
Hollis' power was that she had a little brown bag which produced tools, parts, and useful objects. She had to take them out one by one, cube costs scaled with complexity so she couldn't haul a full engine block out, and despite the package deal including roughly exhaustive usage standards, she first had to identify what to withdraw. Problem: Hollis did not understand engines.
It sweltered in the garage, and her outfit, a draping of generic grey robes, trapped cells of heat right against her skin. She padded the sweat on her brow, lucky to correctly replace one faulty part a minute. It couldn't last - she began to ball up her fists, adrift on the concrete. The cubes themselves dwindled - she'd have to eat into another tub, which would turn the inevitable lecture into a browbeating. Hollis could picture it, actually she could picture nothing else.
"Fuck you," she wheezed, which didn't help.
She paused in the center of the garage, vision pickled. The engine sat prettied up with far too few magical additions to make a difference. Hollis eyed it up. She was thirsty. She'd left her margarita and deck chair abandoned by the front door in the rush of things. She decided - she'd go and get that margarita, and she'd relax for a while. In the name of just this goal she stepped out of the garage and saw the chair and the drink and the unfamiliar Magical Girl standing next to it.
Hollis was only a few inches from the garage, and even though the girl was already looking at her she tried to dart back. The result was a stumbling retreat that ended in tragedy when, still watching the girl, she bumbled directly into the edge of the garage's mouth. She almost fell, recovered, jerked her bag close to her and groped inside it for a pistol which obligingly began to form against her fingers.
The girl had to this point been motionless - now she reached out. "Wait."
Hollis didn't wait. She drew the gun - a piddly little revolver - and warded it in both hands, cringing so hard it hurt to stand. "What's your problem, what do you want. Get the hell out of here."
The true purpose of this string was to buy her time to think. The girl was already transformed, she had a silver sash and a fur coat and a short scepter (or a long wand?) Ring any bells? No on the outfit, but Hollis did have the slightest inclination on that face, though it was narrow and blank here where in the picture she'd seen it was photogenically cheerful. She'd committed that picture to memory by pure virtue of having seen it so much - it was a still shot of ten Magical Girls next to some nondescript brick building, lodged in the bowels of an online article titled Georgia USMF Makes Great Strides.
Oh god. The minivan. Hollis blinked wildly. Yolanda actually went and did something. And it was right there, they had to know.
The girl clicked her tongue. "Calm down. Didn't Kyubey tell you?"
"What? What?"
"That we were coming. The meeting."
Hollis recalibrated. "Uh."
"We moved it up a little. Kyubey said he'd tell you."
Bastard. Hollis bit her tongue. Weasel bastard rat fuck. Just like him. Why had she trusted? Why, why?
"Listen," said the girl, "You'll be there?"
"I don't know. I have to talk about it. With the others." She had not yet lowered her gun.
The girl squinted. "Sure. But you can convince them, right? We've got an understanding?"
What did that mean? Hollis stared.
The girl soured. "Whatever," she huffed, and from nowhere produced an index card and flicked it towards Hollis (who winced and almost pulled the trigger, the card bounced off her shoulder). "There's the address, we'll be there at five. You should come, alright. It's important."
"Yeah. Shit, yeah." Hollis stepped back a pace and finally stowed the pistol. A long silence gestated, and Hollis felt, as the receding wave is overtaken by the inbound one, the urge to reclaim her dignity: "You've said your thing, get out of here. This is still ours so you know."
"Calm down," said the girl.
Hollis bristled. "Get gone. This is our territory, you respect that."
The girl shrugged. She shifted feet, loitered, looked down beside her, and nudged Hollis' drink over with a grey silk boot. Its contents slipped out like a translucent green amoeba. The girl looked at Hollis straight and finally stepped back and with a flourish of her scepter and a flouncing of her coat little stormclouds amassed at her feet and buoyed her up, over the nearest houses, and out of sight.
Hollis had never been the glory of the Charleston Three. Dorchester and Yolanda were the Northern queens, and when Hollis clasped her own power close to her chest it was the glory of a toady and mule. A totally different kind of loss. But in this moment, Hollis may have felt just a little of the gawping, yearning horror that the others must have lived with since coming to Savannah. You have fallen never to rise, and roots will encase you.
She went back to the garage and knelt before the altar of the hideous engine and probed her forehead so hard it hurt.
Immediately to Dorchester? Make the move now? Hollis couldn't bring herself to it - too much too fast. And she needed information anyway. To process. "Kyubey, get out here."
A padding of paws settled above her. Yes, Miss Ames?
Hollis raised her face from her hands and saw the pale form there atop the grill frame, composed and lifeless like a plush hood ornament. The lone bulb in the ceiling burned around him. "Kyubey." said Hollis. "What the hell. Explain this. Explain this to me."
Unfortunately, the local USMF chapter has recently decided to formally claim this city. I was unable to advise them otherwise.
Hollis chewed her lip, she twisted and squeezed her hands. "When."
They adopted the decision a few days ago.
"You could have warned me."
It wasn't necessary. He walked delicately back and forth above her. You should relax, you seem to have handled the situation well.
"Bullshit, that's such bullshit." But she already saw it, Kyubey's hell logic was in force. She tried to recalibrate. "What else is there. Tell me what else."
Nothing within my knowledge.
"I don't believe you."
That's unfortunate. However, I believe you will still act as we have discussed. Despite your current posturing to the contrary, you're more rational than many humans. I would be very surprised to see you sacrifice this chance.
Hollis shook her head. She couldn't think, the heat was in her flesh, her fingers shivered. "What about the pickup? Is that still happening? Or are you screwing me there too."
As I have said, there are no complications at this time. Once you are away from Miss Bedlowe and Miss Malecki there should be little chance of disruption.
Vague, vague, vague. Hollis sagged. "You're hiding something."
No. I simply don't want to promise anything outside of my power. The Kyubey tilted its head. If you're so concerned you may dissolve our agreement at your leisure. However, I was under the impression that you wanted to escape as soon as possible. Is that no longer true?
"Don't ask me fucking questions like that." Hollis rose to her feet and tried to loom over the rat, but immediately, shamefully fell away and took to pacing. They'd hang her entrails from the trees. How had she ever thought any different?
Miss Ames. If you can't control your emotions you will surely put yourself into unneeded danger.
"I'm already in danger. I'm in so much goddamn danger you don't even know."
You are inflating the situation. The only complication is a lack of time to prepare: you have already prepared, have you not? All that remains is the execution, which should pose no challenge at all. You really should have more faith in yourself. Everything is in your favor!
Hollis just let him rattle on. Eventually he vanished. Hollis brought out her Soul Gem, cleaned it with a few cubes, and tossed them to the floor - they conspicuously disappeared when she wasn't looking.
She was as calm as she'd ever be. If she was going to move ahead it had to be now - another minute and she'd reconsider and never work up the mettle again, stuck with the putrefying corpse of the Charleston Three until it ate her alive. It had to be now.
"Dorchester," she called as she came into the living room. But Dorchester was asleep, her posture listed over treacherously onto the arm of the couch she had melted into, her arm cast over her eyes. What was visible of her face was pallid and drowned, washed in blueish specters from the flashing television.
Hollis hung near the vagrant form - she wouldn't approach. "Dorchester," she said.
A murmur, a continental stirring. Dorchester's arm toppled from her face. She turned her head into the couch.
"Dorchester, we've got a problem, you need to get up. Get up."
Dorchester sniffed. "Ames," she said. She refused to call anyone by their first names - it had been a miracle to get her to stop using dead Charleston titles.
"Get up. Come on." Hollis stepped back even as she said this, she slid behind the protection of an errant coffee table.
"Quiet," said Dorchester.
Hollis was quiet.
Dorchester slid up straight, aligned herself, ground her eyelids with her thumbs. It failed to do anything but accentuate her decay. Dirty t-shirt with insipid meme cat branding, along with black sweatpants - both of these she'd worn for a week straight. Her eyes were sunken and red. Her hair was in tangles. When she ran a hand through it her fingers caught and she hissed and tugged them out and looked lost.
"What," she finally said.
Hollis told her that a Magical Girl had arrived from the USMF and told them to meet, presumably about their stay in Savannah. She provided the index card and the time. She didn't mention Kyubey or Yolanda's van.
Dorchester nodded. "I see," she said. "And where is Bedlowe?"
Hollis said she didn't know.
"Well call her."
So Hollis brought out her bag and dug out a phone (pretty pink with glitter and rainbow decals) and called Yolanda. The phone rang one, two, three times. Dorchester took the opportunity to crank up the volume on the TV - tinny newscaster bullshit polluted the air. The phone picked up. "What's up," said scratchy Yolanda.
Hollis repeated the story a second time.
Yolanda said something indeterminate. BUT COMMUNITY LEADERS SAY, said the TV. Hollis controlled herself. "What was that?"
"I said yeah I'll be in a bit. I'm busy."
Hollis clicked her teeth. "You need to be here now. What are you doing."
"Hunting."
"You aren't hunting, I can't hear you hunting."
A huff drifted through the line. "I'm staking it out. Got some good vulnerable wraiths here. Get up out your own ass and chill, I'll be there in like twenty minutes."
No use in pursuing this. Hollis lowered the phone and dispassionately attempted to catch Dorchester's attention. "She says she's hunting."
Dorchester waved for the phone, Hollis handed it over. Freed of her burden she slipped into the open kitchen and made herself a drink, another frozen neon affair. She returned and sat on the edge of the coffee table and ate spoonfuls of crystallized pseudo-wine while Dorchester commanded and asserted into the phone. Eventually she returned it. "She wants to talk to you."
Certainly. Hollis raised the phone to her ear. "Yes?"
"Alright I'm on the way, just so you know we're missing out on about fifteen easy wraiths, Dyson wouldn't hear it, I think it's a damn shame you know. Anyway listen, why I wanted to talk with you, is the car fixed?"
Hollis looked into her glass. She ran her tongue over her teeth. She hung up and dumped the phone into her bag.
Ten minutes later (ten minutes of awkward staring, Dorchester watching the TV, Hollis obliged to do the same) the front door banged open and in came Yolanda. She was in all respects a generic rogue - she trailed a red scarf and had a restrictively slim gambeson-skirt-thing as her two primary points of costume inventiveness. Her Gem, a ruby, glinted on her left forearm. Her robin hood boots clunked into the living room and stopped. "I'm here."
Dorchester made an arcane gesture. "Sit down."
Yolanda did, right beside Hollis, who shifted and took to her half full glass with feverish hunger. Yolanda gave her an eye. "I saw what's outside."
Hollis stared stupidly at her. "What?"
Yolanda clapped her on the shoulder, tapped the rim of the glass, winked like she was in on something. This had not been an issue in Charleston, where in fact Hollis drank more - and better quality - than she ever did here. But now alcoholism was a sign. Hollis smiled in pain, Yolanda didn't notice, she had moved on to Dorchester. The TV blathered. Dorchester reached for the remote.
"Hey, turn that down would ya Dorchester," said Yolanda.
Dorchester worked her jaw for a long moment, then turned the TV off entirely. Yolanda did a thumbs up. Dorchester blinked. She was lost, thinking, maybe debating a violence play. Hollis panicked and cleared her throat. "Well what do we think?"
Dorchester set herself upright and looked no less haggard. "Of course we'll attend."
Of course. Hollis fiddled with her spoon.
Dorchester went on: "On our last departure we faced them with honor. I see no reason not to do the same again. If we don't see them face to face how can they treat us seriously?"
Hollis squirmed. "I think we should just leave, personally."
"As cowards."
"As," Hollis reached, she couldn't find it, the moment lingered, "As smart people. Prudent people. They might have a trap or something." If Kyubey could be trusted this was entirely untrue - caught on her feet, Hollis was already pulling things out of her ass.
Dorchester waved a hand. "I doubt it, but if so we'll certainly rise to the occasion."
Hollis looked into her glass, it was half melted, mounds of ice descended. Why couldn't she say anything? "But they'll beat us. They've got how many Magical Girls, ten."
"The risk is negligible. What do they stand to gain from fighting. Nothing. You are being paranoid."
Hollis didn't speak.
Dorchester took this as affirmation and turned, inchwise, to Yolanda. "Do you agree, Yolanda?"
Yolanda ceased picking her nails long enough to shrug. "Sure. I'd like to see them. I'd like to talk with them."
"Well."
"But on the other hand it's just a lot of trouble. I kind of don't want to screw with it. So."
Dorchester got that look again, not great, but here was a moment. A glimmer of hope ignited inside Hollis, she leaned forward. "Listen. Why don't we just leave, okay, just pack up our shit, no time for them to pull any funny business, get to uh Dallas, set up there," the spiel was out of her control now, the point had fled, "Start doing like the old days, and we don't have to bother with these fuckers anymore. Okay. How about that. How about we do that."
"Well I could take it or leave it," drawled Yolanda.
Dorchester shook her head. "You'll leave it."
Hollis swallowed. She was suddenly thirsty, but her glass had disappeared.
"We have to make a statement. What you're saying, Ames, what you're saying is we do what they want. Do you think they want to meet us? No. They're rats, they're awful Magical Girls, and they know they don't deserve this city. They'd like us to just disappear so they can come in without having to see the real owners. Because they know this is wrong. But I'm telling you, I'm not willing to vanish. I won't. I will make them see me. And so will you."
Her speech was dead monotone, which contributed to but was not responsible for the project of making it almost incomprehensible to Hollis. Hadn't Dorchester admonished her a sheer minute ago for paranoia? Didn't even matter. Hollis could wrap her mind around the last part, the part she needed to. Dorchester was Decided. Okay. Okay okay okay.
"Does anyone wish to challenge me?" said Dorchester.
Oh no. Of course not. Hollis bowed her head suitably.
"Bedlowe?"
"You've convinced me."
"Good." Dorchester stood, shakily. "Ames, call Imler and Addicott. They are to come with us when we leave. Yolanda, put our things in the van. We will leave once the meeting is over. Don't come to me if it isn't an emergency. I need to think."
"Yes," said Hollis. Yolanda saluted explosively. Dorchester nodded, stepped away, and mooned deeper into the house.
Hollis took to her task immediately, but Yolanda did not, having found herself with the responsibility of the broken down van. This bothered her not at all - she hummed and chattered as she fluttered over the scoured engine weaving half-baked enchantments. She was more than talkative enough to infringe on Hollis' very thin patience, thinner than ever since Sophia Imler wouldn't pick up the phone. This was the third attempt. The line buzzed. No end in sight.
Hollis had very little need for either of the two remaining Charleston vassals - Imler a vapid little bitch and Ryatt useless - but in this moment she had shifted down the gradient of hate. Other things, more important things, she needed to talk to Kyubey, she needed to plan, she needed to prepare for the meeting and reevaluate her escape and figure out how to maneuver herself so it didn't all fall apart. But no. Let's wait for Imler. Good god, let's wait.
"No luck?" chirped Yolanda when the third call dropped.
Fuck you. "No," said Hollis. She called again.
"Sorry to say but I'm rooting against you. I think it's better if we never see her again, don't you? What a sanctimonious girl. Way I see it this is a great excuse to lose her. Though," she flourished a hand, her voice rose inquisitively, "Obedience is important. You hate to see her just get off easy, right? If you look at it like that she should stay with us after all. I can't decide what's better. Can you?"
"Be quiet," said Hollis, who was trying to squint through the dial tone.
"Don't mind me at all. I'm just thinking aloud, you know. I wish you'd gotten this thing fixed. I mean I don't blame you really, but wow, tedious."
Hollis mumbled an apology, the response to which: "Nothing, not at all, I'm happy to do it, my fault anyway right?" A beautiful sentiment if she hadn't kept meandering after the fact, now about Dorchester ("Dyson seems real tired lately don't you think, I guess she's getting all bent out of shape about this.")
Hollis survived until, miraculously, the call landed. There was a sigh. "I'm sleeping, what do you want."
Sleeping. Incredible. "We're leaving today. You're coming."
"What?"
"Listen to what I say. The USMF are having a meeting, we are to attend, we're leaving afterward, we will retrieve you on the way out at our convenience. There will be no questions, you won't resist. Do you understand?"
A lip smack. "Not really."
Hollis sneered. "Yes you do. Don't screw with me."
"I'm not screwing with you, Hollis. I'm just waking up, I'm telling you I don't get it."
She hung up. Next call Ryatt the mushroom girl, who answered within two rings. "Ryatt, get ready, we're coming to pick you up this afternoon, we're leaving. You comprehend that? We're leaving."
Ryatt did not comprehend it. She mumbled and slurred aimlessly.
"Listen to me. Answer me. I'm telling you-"
"Tell her I'll wreck her shit for free," called Yolanda.
"I'm telling you to answer. Unfuck yourself and answer."
Fifteen seconds later (Hollis marked them as she paced, one two three four five six) Ryatt returned with an apology and an excuse: "I'm all messed up right now."
What did it mean? No time for that, no time. Hollis stepped out of the garage and muddled before it, Yolanda raised her voice to be adequately heard, Hollis would not hear. "Can you understand my words? Tell me."
"Yeah. Yes. I'm sorry. I hear you."
"Okay," she gestured violently as Yolanda whooped, "Then understand that we are coming to take you tonight, and if you aren't ready then you're still coming. We'll drag you out, do you get me? Just like Charleston."
"What?" Alarm thickened in Ryatt's voice, it took to the sluggishness like acid. Now she was fucking paying attention.
Hollis moved to finish up. "Be ready and don't be a problem. Goodbye."
"No, wait, what about my car? I have a car."
"I know you have a car. You'll ride in our van."
"No wait wait. Can't I drive with you?"
"No."
"But my car."
"Shut up. Goodbye." And Hollis hung up.
As she stepped back into the garage (thumbs up from Yolanda, 'screw her right') she received a call. She answered. "Hollis I'm sorry about that, just please tell me what's going on. You're the only one who will. If I try anyone else they'll just come after me. I don't know what to do. I'm sorry I was slow before. Please."
Hollis hurled the phone spinning down the street - it hit the ground and burst into clattering chunks. "Wasteful!" commended Yolanda. But Hollis just hustled into the house. She could make another fucking phone.
Things needed to be packed, and Hollis was the only one left. She attempted at several points to pass it over to Yolanda, but Yolanda was of course engaged, "Implementing her technique" and such. Hollis had hoped to make use of the privacy of the garage, but fine: she could do what she needed to while she was packing. She did fix herself a drink first.
She only had herself to blame. None of the three had much in the way of possessions save the roomful of guns, grenades, and miscellaneous weapons that Hollis had created since their arrival to Savannah, in the spirit of preparedness. Even culled the bulk would crush everything else, so Hollis moved it first, mostly in boxes since she'd had the foresight to put pistols and such away, but the larger pieces, light machine guns and .50 rifles and so on, she had to carry one by one. Even so ineffectual a Magical Girl didn't need to worry about fatigue, so all that remained was boredom and the distant activity of organizing things so that it would all fit in the back of the minivan. She could only last so long.
Halfway through the heap of bristling, bulging containers Hollis stopped, looked around the house (was Dorchester still brooding? Yes she was), returned to the room, and cleared her throat. "Kyubey."
He did not appear.
"Kyubey I need to talk. We have a problem."
A smooth eggshell head emerged from one of the boxes. I cannot attend to your needs so frequently, Miss Ames.
Hollis sniffed. She hunted for her drink, which was nowhere in sight. "It's going wrong."
It is not. In fact, I believe I advised you that this was probably the form proceedings would take. It isn't indicative of the danger of your course that you failed to comprehend my warning.
"Dorchester and the USMF in the same room. She'll start a fight, I know it."
There is only a negligible chance of conflict - it's in neither party's interest to elevate the situation further. Indeed, you are currently the most dangerous part of your own plan. You'll sabotage yourself if you don't control your emotions.
Hollis discovered her drink in the living room. It had melted, she took a deep swig, it clogged her throat and she coughed. She couldn't think of anything to say, and when she went back to the boxes Kyubey was gone.
What had she expected? He was probably pretty much correct, when you got down to it. Hollis was cracked. Her worldview had never been durable, and ever since the move to Savannah it teetered, a great glass construct swaying on the lip of destruction. Now it tilted again, only Hollis wasn't sure it could restabilize anymore, not with the genuine danger of the situation, not with growing chaos, certainly not with a helpless present of moving boxes and waiting, just moving fucking boxes while other people did other things and thought other thoughts, and all of this so sensitive, important, explosive.
She drank the last of her glass. No energy left for it. But boxes remained.
The rest of the weapons went into the minivan. Then, possessions. Most of these were also packed, though she did have to venture into Yolanda's strewn hovel to pick out valuables (after checking with Yolanda of course - she assented: "There's some stuff under the mattress, you should go on and get that." When Hollis did so she discovered a pistol that she had made, a shotgun that she hadn't, and a pile of various gem necklaces and rings, two that closely resembled Hollis' sapphire Gem. All of it went into a nondescript box, and Hollis refused to think about it anymore.) Presumably Dorchester had her own menagerie, but she was holed up in her room and Hollis dared not even near the door. She topped off the pile with the two remaining tubs of grief cubes, right in the back for easy access, and after making sure that it all fit and closing the hatchback she went for another drink, only to find, upon cracking open the freezer, that no pouches remained.
Somehow, this news broke Hollis just a little bit. She meandered around the kitchen, glass in hand, chewing her lip. No more alcohol in the house - Dorchester wouldn't allow it, and Hollis had never thought to sneak any in, fearing discovery. But something needed to be done. In desperation she settled for tap water. It was syrupy and it tasted like mold. She went back to the garage.
It seemed Yolanda was in the final stages of her hack job on the minivan. Much of its body was straightened and sparkling garishly, held together exclusively by enchantment, sans the windows, which hadn't left pliable remains.
"How about it," called Yolanda from the driver's seat. She revved the engine, red sparks spat from the tailpipe.
Hollis shrugged.
"I think it'll last a while. You'll need to fix it still, sorry about that."
"Sure."
"I'm taking it for a ride around the block, while we wait for Dyson and all. What say you watch."
"Sure."
So Hollis sat outside the garage, nursed her tepid water, and watched Yolanda drive up and down the street. The car slid and careened, more due to artful implementation on the part of the driver than the remaining damage. It plowed into a mailbox, which bounced off the hood like a beachball and crumpled in someone's lawn. Similar scenes repeated themselves. It could only be malice. But this paltry entertainment captivated Hollis. Her old glass, the one the USMF girl had spilled, was still lying on the drive. She got up and took it to the edge of the road. When Yolanda next made a pass she tossed it underhand. It struck the hood and burst, shards rained, the minivan swerved and stopped.
"Holy shit," hollered Yolanda through the absent windshield. Cuts nicked her forehead and cheeks and neck, welling blood. "Good shot Hollis!"
Hollis sat back down. She could make the run right now and probably get away with it. Right now she could do it.
Yolanda pulled the minivan around and with an inarticulate yell hurtled down the street. Hollis watched.
Yolanda settled down after a few more circuits. She left the minivan parked in the street and leaned against it to complain about her circumstance: "How much longer do you think Dyson's gonna be? She give you a figure in there? I'm bored," she added.
"I heard what you heard," said Hollis.
"Sure sure. I just wonder what's taking so long. She did this back in Charleston, you know?"
"Yes."
"It's weird."
"Yes." Hollis sipped her water. Half the glass gone and no ill effects yet, presumably for the same reason she could never gather a properly lasting state of drunkenness. She knew a girl that would boost detergent off of supermarkets, to 'get tough.' Something was obviously wrong, she got the Cycles soon after Hollis beheld her, but the basic principle was accurate: it sucked, and you survived. The bad shit mattered a little less every time.
"How about," posed Yolanda, "How about you go check on Dyson."
"Okay," said Hollis. She got up and went inside. She didn't intend to actually bother Dorchester. Her thought was, she'd hang around in the house until things got underway. Maybe stick by the hallway and listen, see if Dorchester was moving around at all. Play it safe. Hell, wait on the couch.
But it didn't work out like that, because when Hollis stepped into the living room she saw Dorchester right there, standing in front of the TV. She faced away, swaddled in the crimson folds of her cardinal-esque getup. "Ames," she said.
"Yes."
"Tell me the time."
Hollis dug out a new phone from her bag. "Ten till four."
"Okay." Dorchester nodded. "Give me a moment. I'll be out shortly." She went to the couch, picked up the TV remote, weighed it in her hand.
Unpinned. Why stay? But Hollis went flat on a wall. Dorchester turned, angled the remote, and flicked it into the TV screen, where it shattered the glass and zipped through the plastic and came out the other end as a cloud of grapeshot while the TV tilted and toppled.
She continued. An oven door went sailing across the house and lodged in a wall, sticks of furniture airborne, a countertop twirled like a discus, a couch thrown end over end - and then she started in on the walls. She kicked through drywall, batted aside support beams, waded through the wreckage, her twig legs plowing straight through layers of heavy debris. As the minutes passed and the ruins piled and Dorchester's gaunt thousand yard leer failed to wane Hollis started to fidget.
But finally Dorchester seemed to reach satisfaction. She extracted herself from what had been Yolanda's room, stepped up to Hollis, turned around to view the destruction. The frame of the house creaked. She snapped her fingers, and from thin air sprung a parched scroll. She stretched it before her and whispered something vaguely latin and with a flourish of her hand pointed to the nearest pile, which erupted into flames. She paused to see that it caught and brushed past Hollis out the front door. Hollis took a sip of water and left the house.
Yolanda was still leaning on the minivan. She made stupid fingerguns. "Heard you guys had some fun."
Dorchester looked over her shoulder at Hollis. "Time."
Four-fifteen. Hollis said as much.
"Bedlowe, drive, Ames, get in the car. Don't say anything. I need it to be quiet."
Yolanda saluted, she winked at Hollis, she slid around the back of the minivan. Dorchester took the front passenger seat - presumably Hollis was meant to sit in the back. She moved to do just that, but as she opened the door something cracked behind her and she looked back on the house already collapsing, fire gurgling out of the open front door, collapsing what it touched to ash almost instantly. Surprisingly little smoke or sound.
Hollis had found this house - she'd scouted it out, ejected the destitution, invited Dorchester and Yolanda to take over. She'd been disgusted by it ever since. This suburban limbo, this joke of an area, finally abandoned decades past its expiration only to be inhabited once more, reanimated, tormented. An awful, trashy locale that she'd never been at home in. Good to let it burn, probably, but…
"Directions," said Dorchester.
"Yeah. Yes." Hollis got in and closed the door to the blooming heat. She dug in her bag and took out a phone and checked to be sure that it was ready (it was, a hot pink line ran through streets and roads, estimated time thirty minutes) and passed it up to Dorchester. She leaned back in her seat, Yolanda goosed the gas, the minivan lurched, objects shifted and clattered in the back, and they went. An afterimage of the conflagration hung in the windshield. It shrunk, it receded from view.
As they left the suburbs they passed: wraiths clustered in the shade of a doorway, a bulbous white mass in a lawn chair, uncountable empty houses and yellow lawns. A man with a rifle watched as they went by. Animated rags shuffled around on the hot sidewalks. Others bustled over a dead body in the center of the road. Yolanda swerved to hit the mass, the wraiths split away, the corpse remained. Thump thump. Hollis winced.
There was doom in the air - mark it by the faux new car smell, fruity and sticky, and by the light that radiated from a perfectly blue and perfectly flat sky.
Her skin itched. She'd been transformed for hours, but pointless to change back now, pointless and flagrant, and flagrancy was a crime, so there she sat, and looked out the windows, and picked at her fingernails until they bled. Everyone was silent. Dorchester brooded over the phone as it chirped "Fifteen minutes remaining!" in the cheerful cadences of Hollis herself, one and a half years dead.
They entered the city. Streets shortened and pinched. Cars amassed. Yolanda was forced to slow down. "So hey Dorchester," she said, evidently bored beyond pretense of respect, "What's the plan? What are we doing? What are you thinking of?"
Dorchester glowered.
"I just figure it's better we know in advance. We've got what, ten minutes, eight minutes left? I just think it'd be useful."
"We need to be strong," said Dorchester. "We need to intimidate them. That means unity."
She appeared satisfied, as if she had stumbled onto some deep and widely applicable truth. Unity. Of course.
Yolanda took them around a stalled truck, the occupant of which hustled with a pair of jumper cables, waving frantically, peering at the shadows between buildings. "Well sure yeah. I'm just thinking how."
"Follow my lead."
"That's all?" She didn't wait for a response. "What do you think, Hollis? You weigh in."
Hollis swallowed. "I think we should be respectful to them. And we should tread lightly. All due respect, Dorchester, I don't like any of this. I think if we're going in there we should be as small as possible. Personally."
"Seems fair, seems fair. Dorchester?"
"I think," said Dorchester, "That both of you are becoming insolent and that you need to learn your place. I am the leader of this group - you have no power or sway. Negotiations are impossible. I've told you what's happening, so you obey. I find it interesting that you've forgotten. I admit that I've been less diligent lately about making examples, since I don't have the energy to address every idiotic mistake and slight you make. Maybe I should change that? Maybe I should invest a little. You've obviously forgotten my strength, Bedlowe. Should I bring it back then? Should I show you? I can do it right now."
Nobody said anything. Hollis bowed her head, she fingered the door handle, escape was inches away but miles apart.
"I can do what I need to. You may think I'm ineffectual, you may think I'm dense, but if you have illusions about the pecking order then I'd like you to think about Colleton. Very illustrative."
A hot minute since Hollis heard anything about that. Just another one of Dorchester's old territorial claims, owned by a particularly annoying vassal. Colleton pulled some indistinct jape on Dorchester - Colleton disappeared. Hollis had doubts it was much more than smoke and mirrors: suppose Dorchester had killed the girl, wouldn't Kyubey have taken umbrage?
That being as it might, could Dorchester back it up? Maybe, maybe not. Best apologize in any case. Hollis gathered herself. "Dorchester, I'll submit to whatever-"
"Of course you'll submit. I'll make you submit."
Hollis pinched the back of her hand and decided to be silent.
Dorchester huffed. She flicked her hand in dismissal. Yolanda seemed to understand the gravity of the situation and kept her peace, though when she saw Hollis peeking up at the rearview mirror she did a cheeky wink.
They turned onto a wide road, open and empty, tiny buildings with massive parking lots for foundations as far as the eye could see. The phone twinkled: "Your destination is on the left!" Hollis peered - ahead about half a mile away and approaching fast, a sun beaten coffeehouse. From the roof hailed a pink donut creature with vast googly eyes. The array of surrounding parking spaces was entirely empty, as were all others. Nothing moved. Even the cars on the road had fallen back, as though warded away by the stalking malevolence that increasingly hung in the air, portending death and sickness. Yolanda swung the minivan across the road and bumped into the lot, the quaint shop loomed, its ceiling length windows black to rebuff and isolate. She stopped beside the building.
"Okay," she said, "So we need to intimidate them, cool. Weapons out?"
"Use your judgement. Ames, come on."
They organized themselves naturally on the way to the door - Dorchester first, then Yolanda, then Hollis. Dorchester rolled her shoulders back and assumed a shred of quiet dignity, while Yolanda slouched as though melting. Hollis picked at her robes, she shifted them, she itched. Dorchester looked over both of them, lingering on Hollis a second more like she'd spotted something wrong. Then they went inside.
Hollis based her expectations on that press piece, Georgia USMF Makes Great Strides, ten girls and the factual regurgitation and the cute little nods, 'these young soldiers are up to the task', etcetera. Ten girls was on the higher end of the old groups, more and cohesion began to break. Intimidating, absolutely. Certainly beyond the Charleston Three's offering. But you could wrap your head around it. In that way it was a comforting number, especially in comparison to swelling California hordes, the congregations in Washington, the conglomeration of impossible numbers of Magical Girls in every corner of the world. And importantly, a backwater like Georgia couldn't have much more to offer. The numbers would remain within reason.
Last to enter, Hollis believed until the last moment, when appeared not ten girls, but twenty. They lounged in chairs and leaned against walls and looked up from tables, a calculated semicircle facing towards the door, sinking onto the entrants. Glances were thrown, whispers slid across the floor. Dorchester often favored similar tactics for breaking in vassals, the wall of faces padded with chumps, the mafioso bullshit. Familiarity or no, and Hollis lowered her head and made small.
In fitting with the formula was a frontfacing speaker. She even looked a little like a movie Don - she had that pasty face, that thick pseudo-smile, though the overtones became confused with the cane and wide brimmed preacher hat. "Well hello. Glad you came, I'm told that wasn't certain."
Dorchester responded a few seconds off cue. "Who are you."
"Penelope Schuman. I'll be your liaison for the day."
Another silence. Dorchester's muddy eyes roved. "What does the USMF want with us?" she finally said.
"Well, Savannah, obviously. Besides that statements mostly. An understanding of the situation. However you can help."
Dorchester cleared her throat. She swayed a little. Yolanda, standing immediately behind her, caught Hollis' eye. She mouthed something, but Hollis didn't quite see, distracted by the vision, in the far corner of the room, of the girl from before - stormclouds. She appeared to be pointing. At who, exactly?
"Now," said the hat girl Schuman, "Before we get this started let's establish some things. You seem well adjusted so I take it you can extrapolate, but let's get it out there so it's said, since some people have problems with this. You're leaving of your own free will. You have no more claims in this city, or this area. Since you're leaving peacefully there's no need to pursue anything further, but that will change if you misbehave. Do you understand?"
"Yes," said Dorchester.
"It gets bad for you if you try to pull something. We're very fair. Much better than anyone else you'll find. But there has to be agreement."
"That makes sense."
It was of distant interest that Dorchester just rolled over. Babytalk ought to have killed such a prideful girl. But maybe she'd used up her steel: maybe she'd wizened to some of the things lowly Hollis knew. A sudden attack of rationality could be nothing but good - the only downside was the inevitable recidivism. Maybe Hollis could escape before then?
"I guess we'll get on to questions. Just a few, so bear with me, Miss Dyson? Dyson Malecki? That's your name, right?"
Dorchester tightened measurably. "I go by Dorchester."
Schuman nodded delicately. "Your old holding, right?"
Dorchester said nothing. Yolanda signaled with increasing desperation, drawing eyes away from the central spectacle. Hollis ignored her. The stormcloud girl, she had a drink. A margarita? Yep.
"Alright Dorchester, so just to confirm, you and your friends do plan on leaving soon. And those are Miss Ames and Miss Bedlowe, who are in our presence today, and two others who are not. That's Miss Imler and Miss Addicott. Correct?"
"Yes."
"Do you foresee any issues, should we take this city? Do you have any complaints?"
"I don't."
Something tapped insistently on Hollis' shoulder, she winced away, Yolanda was right on her. Her face loomed grey and indistinct in the dimness, and her thick caterpillar smile worked in an arcane language. Hollis tried to get a grip. "What," she whispered.
Yolanda nodded. She patted Hollis on the shoulder and slid back and returned to her place, apparently content.
No time to comprehend - Schuman looked past Dorchester, at both of them. "You girls are in agreement with Miss Dyson?"
No response forthcoming from Yolanda. The responsibility fell on Hollis, she fumbled it, finally: "Yes, I am, I support her." And then, for no reason at all, except maybe the humiliating middle school show-and-tell aspect of this whole horrible thing, "Ma'am."
The assembly rustled. Schuman raised her eyebrows. "Well."
Hollis dug a fingernail into her palm, the pain acute. Fuck you fuck you fuck you.
Dorchester seemed to feel the same way. She curled up standing, head bowed, eyes closed, breathing very softly. Usually a damning prophecy, but as it built and built no culmination neared. Was Hollis satisfied to see Dorchester trapped in such inaction, isolated with her rage, simmering in indignity and bound by capricious forces? Maybe a little.
Schuman nodded, slowly, like a tumbling iceberg. "How about you, Miss Bedlowe. Do you agree?"
"So," said Yolanda.
Hollis didn't pick up on what this meant. Had she been paying attention she might have had time to prepare, to understand the terrible thing and intercede. But she was distracted - the stormcloud girl's eyes, her palm oozing, hazy notions of an actual plan crystalizing in the back of her head and slowly eating her soul. Too weak to beat against the current, fatigued beyond reason, she decided that she was probably safe. Here was why you never made that mistake:
"So," said Yolanda, strutting forward to supersede Dorchester, "I don't actually think I am."
Dorchester gaped. Schuman blinked languorously. "Go on."
"Well, I've been listening to what you have to say, and you know, it really rubs me the wrong way. So disrespectful. Aren't we all friends? Aren't we all sisters? What happened to that thing you guys were going on about? Bright future? But it seems to me,"
"Bedlowe," hissed Dorchester. Hateful urgency on a girl who was never scared.
"It seems to me," continued Yolanda, "That you're trying to intimidate us. And I don't know what's gotten into Dorchester, but I don't take that. I have my pride."
Dorchester stepped forward. "Bedlowe!"
"Let her speak," said Schuman. And as Dorchester teetered on her feet and glared for some reason at Hollis, now bewildered, grasping at the sudden tension of the situation unsure of what even occurred, how it turned around so quickly: as this happened, Schuman said, "Is your pride worth causing a problem?"
Yolanda beamed. "You wouldn't get it. Magical cop looking ass. You wouldn't understand dignity at all. We held Charleston for a year, you know, but I wonder if any of your crowd had territory at all, before it got all easy to mooch and shit. How about a little respect?"
Schuman smiled. "Our dignity is better than that of bandits and murderers."
Yolanda waved a hand in disgust. "See, you don't understand. We protected our territory, law of the jungle and that. It was honorable."
"That wasn't what I was referring to," said Schuman
Yolanda didn't respond immediately. It all came into focus, this was the moment, any longer and it would all spiral out of control. Mindless, desperate, Hollis injected herself. "Okay how about we all calm down and get back on track and get this over with."
Eyes turned. Some girls sneered. Hollis looked to Dorchester and found a hateful bird boned mannequin, small in her red robes, eyes ringed deep. Pasty, simple Schuman might have been a refuge, but then she spoke. "Miss Bedlowe and I were having a useful conversation."
Hollis bowed her head. The floor seeped misery. "I apologize."
"I do believe we should let her respond."
"Yes."
"I," said Yolanda, her voice flat, Hollis could tell that the grin was gone and winced in pavlovian horror but did not dare look up, "I think you're bluffing. That's what I think."
Schuman shrugged.
Come on. That little remark had to be bullshit, a wide net of sanctimony of the type Schuman obviously loved. But if so, why wasn't Yolanda saying anything in return?
Had she really killed someone? The minivan, crumpled in tatters. Think about it: a few of those dents were very large, and high up on the body too - hadn't the hood been caved in? You could magic away blood with an enchantment. Not that she even needed the car, a Magical Girl could just walk up to a man and punch him in the chest and that was it. Or, or she could borrow one of the many guns in the house, which Hollis never really kept track of. When it came to it, that wasn't implausible at all.
Shit! Why hadn't she watched closer, why hadn't she intervened? Laziness, complacency? As though it wasn't her problem, as though everything wasn't her problem…
Schuman cleared her throat. "I've made my point. If we're all ready to be civil, we should continue. Are we all ready to be civil?"
The room was horrible and dead. Shadows pooled. Hollis dug her fingernail deeper into her skin, and she backed her breathing down, and she waited for Yolanda. Yolanda nodded and stepped back.
"Okay," said Schuman. "Now, I've got some more questions for you, Miss Dyson, and we can wrap this up."
Dorchester didn't seem to notice or mind her actual name anymore. She glowered at Yolanda and looked at Schuman and sagged on her feet. "Yes."
"What are your observations on the wraith pop-"
Thwick. Schuman's head jerked back. The hilt of the dagger stuck out like a unicorn horn, she tumbled back, she reached up to grope at it, drifted into a girl in a lacey fairy costume, and slid to the floor. She began to convulse. The girl she'd bumped into looked down in horror, along with the rest of the USMF girls, along with Hollis herself. The fairy's face twisted, and she raised a dainty little wand, and a dainty little light sparked at the end.
Dorchester screamed something unintelligible and hateful - Hollis fell back uselessly - Yolanda slipped another dagger out of her sleeve - and all at once the twenty plus USMF girls around them leapt up and pushed off walls and readied swords and staves and guns, and as Hollis cringed the fairy girl blasted off a thin white scalpel ray at Yolanda and that was the cue.
Hollis didn't see whether Yolanda evaded. The moment those twenty girls started closing in she ran for the door, or attempted to, because a few steps in something heavy connected with her shoulder and sent her spinning. She stumbled, caught a vision of what was behind her - flashing lights, Magical Girls spinning through the air - and finally slammed into a wall. She pressed against it, jammed a hand at her waist, finally found her bag and ripped a pistol out. She couldn't steady it because her other arm wouldn't move. Orientation impossible, Magical Girls everywhere getting an angle and baring steel and charging, none of them were coming for her but only a matter of time.
Where was the door? Halfway across the room, somehow. Hollis squinted, she judged the path, no path, all openings were temporary in this labyrinth of bodies and gimmicky magic. Shit. Shit!
Maybe she could go along the wall. No, she'd have to. An explosion roared in the center of the room, splinters flew and dust billowed, the crashing descended into an inarticulate shriek, maybe human maybe beast. The bounds of this madhouse only seemed to shrink, she needed to get out before she was crushed, she began to inch down the wall, slow, shivering, waving her pistol around like a schizo because the dust was thicker every moment and she couldn't see anything except flash flash in every direction, twinkles and bursts and sparkles, a disco hellscape in the dirty brown void.
Fuck this. Fuck Yolanda and Dorchester and their lunatic pride, fuck Magical Girls in general. All Hollis had to do was escape this building and she'd be gone, never to worry about the opinions of psychopaths again, a lesson learned, a whole new philosophy in hand called 'get the fuck out' which was revolutionary and freeing and sensible with everything she already believed. Just find the door, though the door wasn't where she left it, it wasn't anywhere at all, the dust had consumed it.
Something thumped behind her. She whipped around - in the static a shadow bumbled. Hollis chewed her tongue. No worries, nobody could see shit. No worries! Just let it pass.
In the depths of the room someone shouted: "PURGO." A gale rose from the cracks in the floorboards, instantly the dust stripped from the room and collected into a muddy twirling sphere which spun for a moment and vanished. Magical Girls stumbled in half-motion, blinking stupidly, recalibrating. Then they clicked back on and the fighting resumed.
The form, it was the fairy girl, gouged and hemorrhaging at the waist, looking around cow eyed. She turned magnetically to Hollis. Hollis turned and ran.
A sound like yanking up a zipper. Hollis ducked, it missed probably, no time to tell, she whipped around and fired three shots as she retreated, pop pop pop, all went wild. The girl flicked her wand again and Hollis' body faltered and wouldn't move and a pain needle hit her right in the side. She fired again and managed to put a tiny hole in the girl's forehead. The girl faltered woozily, the chance had come, now it was time to RUN-
One of Hollis' molars detonated. It blasted out her cheek, she swore she could see the bright bits of enamel shoot past in the corner of her eye. The pain was incredible, magically enhanced, what kind of sadistic fucking power? She staggered, no more momentum, she emptied out her gun, two more bullets, miss and miss. She lobbed it at the fairy girl (tooth fairy, haHA) and made another one, identical. The thrown gun diverted one of the girl's follow up shots at a sharp angle, but the second struck Hollis in the chest.
Pop, went a canine. Hollis crumpled, the girl fell onto her.
No fight: Hollis had never been good at defending herself. The tooth fairy whipped the wand back and forth with one hand, each lash a tooth exploded, each freezing rush of pain an opening for her other fist to beat the shit out of Hollis' undefended face. Hollis kicked and squirmed. "Hhhrrgg," she gurgled through mangled lips, near inaudible in the booming confines of Hell. Better to do it this way: HELP
The girl clubbed her across the face, her jaw slipped out of place. Help. Dorchester weak, Yolanda erratic. Twenty Magical Girls between. Just death.
Shit, no! No no! Hollis bucked, it wouldn't have worked except the tooth fairy was distracted with something, reaching down, and gave her advantage just long enough for Hollis to work her hand into her bag and rip out a pistol and jam it into the side of the tooth fairy's crisp blonde head of hair and unload all six shots. The girl seized up, dropped the wand, and collapsed onto Hollis choking and sputtering.
Hollis found the strength to kick the girl off. She clawed to her feet, rummaged in the bag, lifted out a new pistol, and shot the keening tooth fairy six more times in the back of the head until the noise stopped.
Hollis stumbled uneasily. She looked over her shoulder. Nobody else? If she had time some insurance was useful. She kneeled down and heaved the tooth fairy onto her side, quickly digging up a little glittery bulb on a necklace. Hollis tore it off and stuffed it into her bag and moved to get up and get out. She didn't notice that the commotion had lulled, not until Dorchester's voice (AMES) invaded her head and sent her jolting.
Another look. Sans four of their number wounded and slouching in corners the USMF girls had assumed ground in a rough circle around one of the shattered windows, feinting and adjusting but not moving forward. Hollis peered above their heads and at once saw the reason. Dorchester, side by side with panting and bloody Yolanda, held a Gem in her free hand. She waved it and said something inaudible below the jeering girls. She glared at Hollis. Ames, get over here.
Hollis stepped forward. Glares turned her way, prissy boots shuffled. She faltered, she pulled out another pistol (why didn't she already have one out? Stupid), she saw no in, she dithered. They won't let me.
Dorchester brandished the Gem violently, and this time spoke loudly enough to be heard: "If you don't let her in I'm shattering this. Do you understand? I'll shatter it right here."
Muttering, a sliding of bodies, a vague and thorny path. Hollis crept forward, pistol pointed at the nearest Magical Girl, a sneering ghoul with half a face. She stepped back. No way they didn't try something.
GET OVER HERE, howled Dorchester.
So Hollis bit her lip and hurried on over there. Something touched her elbow midway and she lashed out among a swirl of grey hard faces and broke through to light. Dorchester slapped her scroll through the air and a transparent barrier shimmered in its wake. This many magical girls, they could break it in half in a hot second. The only hope was that they'd stay back for their friend, never a sure thing with Magical Girls.
But they did stay back, enough that Dorchester and Hollis and bleeding, spitting Yolanda could work their way out of the window. They came out into a side lot, inch by inch, backing away from the shadowed chamber. No minivan in sight. Dorchester stared emptily at the closely following USMF girls and raised the gem according to seemingly imagined slights, commanding them to back off, which they did, slowly. As they neared the corner of the building she glanced at Hollis. I saw you take that girl's Gem. Get it out.
Okay. Hollis got it out. The glares instantly focused on her again. She shivered. What next? They were clearly on the wrong side of the building, and who was to say the minivan was still even there…
They rounded the corner, and Hollis looked pathetically over her shoulder. There, only a few yards away. Her head rushed, not just with relief. Wasn't this somehow important? If she got in the minivan with Dorchester and Yolanda after all this, if the dividing line hadn't yet been reached, was there any line at all? But what to do otherwise? Stay here with the USMF, hope that went well? Or steal the minivan while the others were occupied, on pain of the enchantments rebelling against her as an enemy. Yolanda would dispel them anyway - better that all of them get caught than one betrayer escape. All exits covered, all windows sealed. Now that her brain was catching up with the pace of its surroundings, she started to realize just how far it went. Everything in Savannah had always relied on the good graces of the USMF, even her escape from it. Slim chance of that working out now.
Yolanda slapped her on the shoulder, Hollis nearly screamed. Daydreaming, she'd been daydreaming and she wasn't even out yet. She wasn't where she remembered - they were near the minivan, Dorchester and some other girl speaking in a distant tongue, and though the USMF girls were still close a significant gulf had opened, so that it would take them seconds instead of instants to end the standoff. Precious seconds to process this. Disoriented, she looked at Yolanda, who still had a hand on her shoulder, a bloody, ash streaked hand. Sickness pooled. Yolanda was giddy, smiling, saying something very satisfied like a kid eking out a plan on the sly. "Give me the gem."
Hollis shook her head weakly. "No. You'll do something."
"Come on. I'm not doing anything. Give me the Gem. It's fine."
Words could not entrap this horror. Hollis felt the world collapsing. "We can't. We can't mess this up anymore."
"Hollis," said Yolanda, and she grinned like a rogue, like some casanova fuck, and sure enough, here came the finisher - "Trust me. I'm your friend."
In what world? Friend, like Yolanda wasn't a psycho crazy bitch, like she wasn't the very bane of happiness and prosperity. Friend. Friendo. This, actually, was more than anything else why when Yolanda snaked an arm out and tugged away the tooth fairy's gem, Hollis didn't resist particularly much. She was so preoccupied it didn't register until too late. Any chance of recovery disappeared as Yolanda slid away, holding the gem secure in both hands, hovering at her waist in smudgy fingers. Nothing would remove it except an outright attack - a doomed matchup for Hollis. The great sucking void claimed another inch.
Dorchester raised her voice and came horribly into focus. "How can I be certain? You could easily attack us once we make the exchange."
A voice piped up from the front of the clustered USMF girls - a familiar one. Hollis peered and saw the stormcloud girl standing proud, furry collar apuff in an intangible wind. "Don't play that game. We all saw what you did. You'll still have a Gem left. Give us Miller and we'll negotiate."
"You could rush us in the exchange."
The stormcloud girl shrugged. "Listen, if you want to sit here and wait for more Magical Girls that's fine. I'm just offering you a chance. We'll let you go with Peckenpaugh if you give us Miller, and you can drop Peckenpaugh off once you're far enough away. And if you don't, then we'll hunt you down. How about that."
Dorchester's lip curled and her dead gaze wandered. "Don't patronize me. I'll do what I want. Shut up." She paced, she shook her head, she whirled back to attention. "Fine. Fine. Send someone weak."
The stormcloud girl, apparently the new leader since the others deferred, looked over her shoulder. A thin little weed of a girl stepped forward, looking down, conspicuously intact. She kept her eyes low all the way up to Dorchester, stopped a few feet away, and held out a hand silently.
Finally cooling, Dorchester dropped the Gem into the girl's hand. The body of USMF shifted, the girl skittered back to the front lines, some bloodied heap off to the side hurried up and cradled the Gem in relief. Dorchester gestured tiredly. Ames, give me the Gem.
Well. I don't have it.
What.
Yolanda took it. I couldn't stop her.
Dorchester burned. Idiot. There will be consequences. Bedlowe, you will give me the Gem.
Yolanda, who was giving the USMF girls an eyeful of her teeth, did not react physically. No.
This exceeded Dorchester's ability to control herself. Her entire body reacted in one roiling shiver. I will slay you here. I'll slay you. I'll kill you.
Sure yeah I bet. Yolanda waved a hand as if to paparazzi. I think you're too weak. I've seen a whole lot of words words words from you today, but no goddamn action. Bad enough I had to do your job for you, what does that say?
Dorchester quivered. Her ethereal witch voice seethed, I'll do worse than kill you. I'll rip you apart. I'll burn you. Bitch.
Through all of this predominated deathly silence, during which the USMF girls shifted internally, stared, and surely plotted. One of them had to have seen Yolanda take the Gem, which meant that all of them knew, and Hollis was guessing here, really spitballing, but they seemed displeased with the prospect. Dorchester we should leave.
Dorchester wheeled on her, spluttered, clenched her hands around an invisible neck, wrenched herself back into control with purely physical effort, and as a diminished hunchback turned to face the USMF. "Okay. Listen. Listen to me. We have your friend's Gem. If you attack us we'll do what we need to. Okay? We don't want any trouble. We'll be gone if you let us go. And if you don't then we can make it hurt. We can take our pound of flesh."
"She means," said cheery Yolanda, "That if you come after us we'll crush your friend like a goddamned soda can. Ker-pow."
Dorchester said, "Shut up."
"What my friend here Dorchester doesn't have the cojones to tell all you bitches is that you're small time, pathetic, trash. Now an upstanding Magical Girl I might have a problem snuffing out, but you're just a swarm of ditzy little fucking gnats. What happened in there is proof, what was that, twenty girls and three on our side and you didn't do it, you didn't get the job done. No honor, no power. Just tragic. I can swat this Peckenpaugh bitch in a second and I'd be happy to do it, be cleaning out this gutter a little for all the good Magical Girls, how about it?"
It didn't seem to amuse the USMF girls as much as it did Yolanda, but nobody got outraged. The stormcloud girl was cool, light on her feet, even smiling a little. The only one truly, irrevocably damaged was Dorchester - she huffed and shifted feet, she sweated and fingered her velvet collar, she matched the eyes of anyone she could and glared murderous hate. Meltdown imminent, evacuate immediately. Hollis retreated and didn't hide it, she backed up against the minivan, so close but could she get inside? She neared the back door.
"Really," proclaimed Yolanda, flourishing the tooth fairy Peckenpaugh's Gem, "This whole arrangement is a mercy for you dipshits. I could pop this girl and mow all you down right now. I might you know. Teach you the lesson Dyson never could. In fact-"
Two things happened. The first was, Dorchester snarled and hurled herself at Yolanda, a blur of magical speed, strange words already on her lips, scroll aglow. Yolanda dodged, a pigsticker knife materialized in her free hand, they squared off.
The second thing: the stormcloud girl flicked her eyes. A miracle Hollis saw it, a miracle that it had even manifested in the first place, probably an unconscious habit of the kind frequent telepathy users usually got. In the last few seconds the USMF girls had receded from Hollis' attention, but this got her looking again, and right when she needed to be, because before her vaguely comprehending eyes five holes opened up in USMF line, and from each poked a long gunbarrel, silver and black and brass, prodding into space-
Hollis lunged, ripped open the car door as she passed, swung behind it. Thundershock - a bullet whanged off of the open door, sent it thumping back into Hollis with a monstrous bulge. She bit the tip of her tongue clean off. Her arm had been braced against the door at the fateful moment, and now it smushed and crackled at the core. She pressed it hard into the door, ground as deep as she could, set her stance hard and wide, and all this done without a thought in the few moments between the first and second volley. It might have been impressive if that second shot hadn't: popped her shoulder in by three inches, torn the door clean off its hinges, and sent her stumbling along the side of the minivan, door still somehow stuck to her pulverized arm, a wide shitty shield with two fuckoff dents. She caught a psychedelic glimpse of Dorchester and Yolanda - Dorchester flung her scroll wide, resummoning her barrier in a crackling flash, hauling Yolanda up literally by the collar - Yolanda, whose feet danced beneath her, who was missing her left arm from the elbow down, who howled, "YOU MISSED, YOU MISSED YOU BITCHES."
Hollis scrambled around the hood of the minivan and dropped the door and ducked low. More pop-cracks, Yolanda raved beneath them, hot magic fizzled as the shield broke again and let in buzzing bullets, one of them skimmed the side of the car and sent metal flakes buzzing. They'd done it, they'd gone and done it, all of them, the USMF, Yolanda and Dorchester, goddamn Kyubey, where the FUCK was he? Everyone just wanted to die, but why couldn't they do it alone? Why drag the people that wanted to live into it? Bastards, fuckers, wastes - every batshit Magical Girl, every selfish stupid human, every conscious thing Hollis had ever encountered, all of them had always been trying to drag her into hell for the fun of it, and look, here she was, they got her in the end.
But no, no, fuck them. Let them kill each other and break everything and ruin the world. She could still get out, a chance anyway, and better than playing along. You couldn't die with pride but maybe you could die with honor, the only honor left, making them hunt you down. If she tried very hard…
Ames, get over here, help me with Bedlowe!
Hollis spat blood. Her throat was tight. Fuck you.
No response at all. A jackhammer rain thumped into the minivan, four shots maybe, the USMF girls seemed to be missing their targets a lot more now, maybe a better shield? But it wouldn't last, Dorchester could only bring so much magic to bear, and if Yolanda couldn't move then death was all but assured. Minutes left, if that. And then who's left?
Hollis spat again, she cursed, she rubbed her eyes and got up into a crouch and hunched there, sweating. She scooped up the door by her shattered arm, she neared the edge of her cover, poked the edge out, the next barrage cracked but nothing came near. Not that it meant anything, they were probably trying to psyche her out, waiting for her to get out of cover for a decisive blow. She'd get out there and POW, cranially inverted. If they didn't go for her Gem.
On the sixth roaring of the guns she gritted her remaining jawline and whipped around the minivan with only an enchanted door between her and death. She bounded across the distance, passed blood spattered revenants Dorchester and Yolanda, closed twenty feet in one second, and received an off schedule bullet directly to the center of the door-shield. Too much - what was left of her arm became structured pulp as the door burst into shrapnel, glittering across the pavement and through the hot clear air and into the side of her face. She twirled back, somehow on her feet, and unloaded vaguely at the enemy lines. Another USMF girl fired, only one - if Hollis had accomplished a single thing it was throwing the enemy out of alignment - but that one struck true. A baseball hole opened up in her chest and she flew ass over teakettle. The world blurred, her forehead bit the ground, useless instincts gasped. Dorchester and Yolanda were nowhere in sight. They wouldn't leave her behind, right? Not after she'd done this stupid thing for them.
Three cracks - bullets hummed. Two went to anonymous targets, but the third hit Hollis as she scrambled her feet under her and blew out her hip inches away from her Soul Gem. She careened forward and fell flat on her face next to the minivan and busted out more of her teeth, found herself staring at the tread of the back tire, but immediately crawled, crawled, blood foaming from her mouth. She got her good leg under her, reached skyward, snagged the remaining back door, ripped it open, grasped at the seat hungrily, pulled, and had gotten herself partway onto the cool dark floorboard when the USMF gunners got their act together and let off a full volley.
Thwip, thunk, a chunk of her lower spine vanished. Her leg went dead beneath her, she slid back unstoppably, and somehow that finally did it. All that and she was going back. A year and a half of suffering, weeks of mental preparation, five eternal minutes of fear, fighting, and mortal peril, to what end? Perversion. Should have just stayed in your hole, now look how bad it's gotten. Maybe if she had some cubes she could do something, but she didn't, and it was better that way. Every struggle drew you deeper - if you wanted to escape you had to let go…
Someone grabbed her wrist and pulled. Hollis lay limp as she flopped inside. Leave me alone.
No way, motherfucker. Yolanda. She sounded like she was smiling even over telepathy, the bitch. Sit tight, Dyson's getting us outta here.
Hollis moaned. I don't care. You have no idea how much I don't care. Why don't you let me die?
You don't want to die, if you wanted to die you'd be dead. Now just sit tight. Another grimy hand clamped onto her arm and hauled her in entire.
The next volley whacked into the back of the minivan, which in the same moment revved and galloped forward like a spooked horse, grinding lamely on a stuck wheel, zero to sixty in seconds. Hollis rolled along the floorboard, her pulverized cheek ground into the hard pseudo-felt. Her eyes were sticky and sore.
We'll fix you up right, buddy. Yolanda still held Hollis by the forearm, and now, bafflingly, jiggled it in consolation. We've got the cubes. Just hold on.
'Buddy.' Fuck you. Fuckyoufuckyou. Die die die.
A distant rumble closed, faster, louder, an undercurrent of snapping firecrackers. She cracked her eyes to the sliver of window above her in time to see a ball of cartoon electricity roar by zapping and licking the air, trailing spectral blue smoke behind. It soared past, and seconds later the air bloomed luminescently. A shockwave slammed into the side of the minivan and raised a groan from the suspension. "SHIT," screamed Dorchester, adding speed.
Hollis swallowed. A few more bullets pinged. They made a turn. Yolanda stared at her, hair all blood-tangled and draped, psycho grinning as arterial syrup burbled out the side of her neck. Don't worry. It's all cool. We're on the way out, no problem. No problem at all.
Hollis curled up as much as the slim space around her would allow, and did not die.