"All of us are here because we made a choice! All of us are here because we sold our souls for something more important to us! That's a sign of courage, and of charity, and no matter who we are (...) in the face of everything we need to celebrate that we have that much in common." - Lisa "Camilla Highwater" Howell
Marie snapped awake as soon as the rush of the summer sun through the window splashed her face. Secretly, she felt a disquieting weight to the rise from her bed, as if forced by the momentum of a mechanical framework carrying her through another cycle of days passing, passing endlessly in fractalline monotony.
As far as life experience had informed her, Marie was much like most seventeen year old girls, especially with regards to her age and gender. What few regards in which she deviated from her conception of average were largely superficial (for instance, she was fairly albeit unremarkably shorter, and her hair was so fair as to almost appear silver), save for the fact that she had spent the last four years of her private life documenting whatever she could about the existence of magic despite refusing to partake in it herself.
This particular fact, while likely not unique to her on a global scale, was so unprecedented that the Incubator had permanently assigned one of his bodies to remain on standby in case of her contract formation, but if she had noticed this, she hadn't said anything. He had considered pretending to be offended by this, but as far as he knew, she wouldn't understand the purpose of the act unless he spelled it out for her.
In the midst of her introspective reverie a generally-still-bleary Marie bid the current of routine sweep her up into a completely unremarkable beginning to a completely unremarkable day. Her first step of the day, as it was more often than not, was to bid good morning to her father idly from the balcony - that is to say, a safe distance.
"Hey, Dad. Morning."
"Oh! Hello, Marie. Happy New Year!" He forced a grin. For some reason, smiling had never seemed to suit him, which was much to Marie's chagrin because he did it rather often.
He stood out in the backyard, mug of coffee in one hand, the other hand bearing a watch he would often impatiently glance at for no reason at all. He stared out at the Sydney skyline in the distance, occasionally exhaling a silent chuckle and shaking his head. "So this is the life," he thought to himself, because he remembered someone telling him this is what successful people think.
Thomas Crawford was, in the words of the people who had worked for him, "a cheerful, eccentric, and very personable businessman", which was a polite way of saying "complete maniac". For the last twenty-five years, he had made a fortune off of his own real estate company, of which he was owner, director, and bearer of many other similar titles, most of which he'd come up with for his own amusement.
"Marie, would you mind go waking your mother up? She's gonna miss the best part of the day."
Marie tried to imagine a better part of the day than not being around her father. The best she could manage was not being around either of her parents, but with the potential advent of astral projection technology far in the future, this wouldn't be the most feasible thing in the world for her mother.
She knocked on her parents' door on the way downstairs, and figured that was good enough. It was.
Josephine Crawford was Thomas's trophy wife, and she had to make sure everyone knew that. Nobody knew why she had to do this, only that she did, and (much to her satisfaction) that that was exactly what she was. When she emerged from the bedroom in a silken bathrobe, her hair and face were already done up for the day. For a single excruciatingly silent moment, she and her daughter locked eyes. The full but measured intensity of her gaze crowned an already strikingly perfect composure, and Marie had to wonder if she had been asleep at all.
And then they both went on their separate ways, and that was that.
Marie shuffled down the stairs to the kitchen, where her brother was poking around aimlessly at a continental breakfast.
"Hey," she mumbled.
"Piss off."
"Whatever."
Tobias Crawford was just kind of there-ish, although he very much wished that weren't the case.
Marie ignored his presence as vaguely as she could, and opened the kitchen cupboard to help herself to... well, that much, she wasn't sure, and she didn't really care either. She certainly wasn't expecting to find Kyubey perched atop the cereal box, though.
Obviously, it followed that he wasn't. Marie had picked up on his mannerisms over the last four years, and he rarely acted in a manner which differed from her expectations. He was actually sitting behind it, and jumped out when she lifted it up.
"How long were you waiting there?" she thought.
"Since I sat behind that box you're holding there. Isn't that obvious?"
"That's not what I mean."
"That doesn't make it any less true, though. Would you mind getting a bowl out for me, while you're at it?"
Marie made a point of only getting out one bowl from the compartment above the kitchen bowl. "Not while Toby's around. I'll feed you later, alright?"
"Future possibilities indicate this is unlikely."
"I promise I'll do it!"
"Future possibilities indicate this is now slightly more likely."
Marie sighed, and by the time she began to eat, she hoped she hadn't taken suspiciously long to prepare a bowl of cereal.
"Man! I swear you want me to look after you like some kind of cat half the time. You can't even feel grateful for it, so what's the point?"
"Our research suggests it helps reduce your stress level, and makes you more willing to trust us."
Marie paused between spoonfuls. "For real? That's so gay. I don't want to look after a pet."
"Would you prefer I took efforts to cause you stress? Some humans prefer increased epinephrine levels in their blood."
"Yeesh, alright! Be my cat, if you insist! But carry your weight! Would it kill you to meow or something every now and then?"
"Meow."
Marie went back to her breakfast. Tobias shot her an odd look, but he didn't care enough to ask her what it was she kept stopping to look at.
"You know," she offered, after some thought, "I changed my mind. That's incredibly demeaning to one of us, and I'm not sure which."
"Noted. Regardless, I just wanted to tell you that Phoebe's meeting with a friend today. After your performance last night, she cordially extends an invitation to join them."
"I'll think about it."
Her dad took that as the perfect opportunity to stride into the room. "Good morning, champs!"
"Hey," Tobias shrank.
"This is the life, eh?"
"Tell Phoebe I'm on my way."
Tucked away in the unremarkable corners of the half of Sydney to the south of the harbour sat a faux-modernist street corner café, named The Meaning Of Life after the revelation which had led its founder to bring it about six years prior. It was a small-ish and plain-ish establishment, with an atmosphere so relaxed it was impossible to sincerely refer to it with any adjectives sans an "-ish" lazily suffixed to curb the magnitude of conviction any other description might imply it inspired, or indeed had gone into building it in the first place. It was the kind of café where gentrification had set in about halfway, before giving up to do something more interesting in the lives of businessmen who stare at the city skyline and tell themselves that what they are experiencing is, in fact, the life.
A bell hanging over the door rang out when Marie marched in, and her eyes met those of an enthusiatically-waving Phoebe. Sitting across from her was a wiry girl in a black jacket and torn black jeans, leaning back in her chair at an angle the field of geometry had yet to name. A waitress stood by the table, clipboard in hand.
"I'm sorry," she said. "We're all out of Coke. Is Pepsi alright?"
"Yes," Phoebe stressed. "More than alright, in fact: it's what I ordered."
"Hey! Hey," Marie stage whispered and helped herself to a third seat at the same table just as the waitress made herself scarce. The table was a heavily-varnished slab of fake wood propped up on a white iron frame running with equally fake rust. The chairs were much the same, shaped into discs upon tripodal stands.
"Well well!" The girl in black smiled. "Marie, right? Phoebe's told me about you."
"Yeah! You are...?"
"Danika. Danika Woodward. Pleased to meet ya!"
"The feeling's mutual. So why'd you call me here, anyway?"
Phoebe sat forward, and the tangle of "#vintage" light bulbs strung up from the ceiling like stalactites in a world where the process of rock erosion was a little too into D.I.Y. decor magazines cast a sombre shadow across her face. "Right," she huffed. "A couple of reasons, neither of them great."
Danika waved her aside. "Nothing super bad, don't worry. Phoebe just thinks you're cool, and from what I've heard, me too. You're the girl going on four years without a contract, right?"
"Just gone it, actually. Met Kyub in late December 2004."
"Wow! That's, uh..."
"That's four years, Dani. You just said that," Phoebe explained.
"Right. Obviously."
"But yes! Even though we've only met... three or so times? And for most of those times I wasn't even Phoebe-"
"What was your name, then?" Marie asked, voice soaked in the slightest tinge of guilt.
"Oh! You would've known me as Rose Dixon. Little bit taller than I am now. Brown hair. My costume was a red petticoat-type thing. I mean, we obviously didn't get a chance to know each other or anything, you just joined me on the hunt a couple of times."
"Gotcha. I think I remember you, though."
"But my point is! My point is, someone who knows as much as you do about magical society, but hasn't made a contract? Unheard of. Really useful person to have by your side at times like this, I think."
"Hang on, hang on, hang on." Marie held her hands up. "There's an entire magical society? Kyub, how come you never told me this?"
"You never asked," he cheered, dropping down onto the table from seemingly nowhere. Danika jumped back in surprise, but tried to make nothing of it when she remembered most people in the café couldn't see anything had happened.
"Wait," Phoebe leaned an elbow on the table. "You're telling me that after four years you never knew this?"
"I was just studying the physical properties of magic itself, you know? Like the physiology of witches and stuff. That's been my only interest this whole time!"
"In all fairness, you are very secretive about this kind of thing," the Incubator pointed out.
"Not this secretive though, surely?"
"In all fairness, humans are also not very smart."
(The waitress returned, provided Phoebe with a 375 mL can of Coca-Cola, and left. Phoebe furrowed her brow and looked the can over, bit her lip and imagined words she didn't know how to say. She shrugged and partook nonetheless.)
"So true!" Danika laughed. "I'm so glad I'm technically not one."
"You are not very smart either, Danika."
"That's fair."
"Wait! Actually, this might be a blessing in disguise!"
Phoebe's three companions all stared at her.
"Sorry. Let me elaborate. This was actually one of the things I wanted to discuss. A certain Attendant and a certain Sydney community representative - no prizes for guessing who - have both been getting on my arse about missing an important meeting last night, and Hope actually brought up a really good point. Who's going to mediate between the two groups when I'm dead and gone? I mean I'm obviously not going to live forever, and there isn't really a suitable replacement completely neutral to their struggle. There's nobody who knows the needs and capabilities of your average magical girl without being swung one way or another in our local politics. Or at least... not until now."
Danika's eyes almost shone. "Phoebe! Oh my gosh, that's brilliant!"
"Sorry," Marie blinked. "You want me to devote my time to manage the drama between two groups of teenage girls?"
"Wow, no need to be so rude!"
"Nor so irrational," Kyubey interjected, and everyone groaned at his bullshit. "You understand the matter at hand to be more important than that. You're just mischaracterising the situation because you don't want to do it."
"Alright, fine. I don't want to do it. I've got my own life to live. Magical girl stuff isn't any of my business."
"You've spent the past four years making it your business."
"Yeah, just as a hobby though! I'm still a human, dammit!"
"That is correct. You are still a human for now."
"We've been over this, you fat-headed little feral. I'm not becoming a magical girl."
"I'm saying I agree with your assessment! It's true that you're not yet becoming a magical girl."
"Alright then!" Phoebe pried the two apart from what might have been a few seconds away from being at each other's throats. "Marie. What are the chances of you forming a contract soon, would you say?"
"Zero. I'm standing by that, even though a certain someone isn't respecting my decision there."
"So there's still a chance!" Danika slammed a fist on the table triumphantly.
"...Yes. That chance is zero, though. Look! We're not getting anywhere. My point is, I'm turning down your offer, if it's all the same to you. What was the second matter you wanted to talk about?"
Danika grimaced, and rested her chin on a fist. "That's where I come in. See, there's a serial killer going around in our community. Came from up in Queensland to escape her past or something. Our furry little friend here is tight-lipped about the details, though."
"So how do you know he's telling you the whole truth?"
"Because my sister was one of her victims! I saw it happen! And I'm not going to rest until I'm picking the shards of her soul gem from the skin of my..."
The lights flickered and buzzed and fizzled. It was still the middle of the morning, though, so the dramatic effect this would have had otherwise was terribly stunted.
"She's here," Danika whispered, a stab of terror cutting all motion clean from her body.
"Worse," Phoebe corrected. Her companions' eyes followed her own to a short, muscular figure leering through the window. "My ex."
Francis Marlowe allowed herself a grin when, lo and behold, Phoebe Bloody Deckard stormed out of some tacky little joint named after some trite philosophical wank. What's more, she was flanked by something of an entourage now! Adorable.
"Good morning, Francis," she snapped. "You got a reason for being here?"
"Do I need one?"
The taller girl to her left chimed in. "Come on, there's no way you were here by accident. Phoebe told us you're exes, and now she's the talk of the town-"
"I'm WHAT?" Phoebe's eyes bulged wider than Danika had seen before.
"Exes in one of her lives, sure, mortal bloody enemies in another! And in retrospect, she wasn't too quick to the news in either of those lives. Yeah, Rosie. Word from the top is you were off work last night, and that Zoey Day's replacement wasn't the most agreeable person in the world. Just because you've got Attendant protection doesn't mean we aren't letting you go walkabout, got it?"
"That's what you came here for? A little light show and a slap on the wrist?" Phoebe rolled her eyes. "And Hope's fine! We just need to let her get used to the role, is all."
"You want me to tell her that? Sorry, Rosie. My soul gem looks prettier in one piece."
"Look! Look, tell her everything's under control. I'm looking for an understudy just in case this ever happens again, and I'm helping track that serial killer Maddie was so worried about."
"What's... going on?" The girl to Phoebe's right mumbled.
"Right! Okay, my friends don't need to worry about this. Can we discuss this somewhere else?"
"Sure can!" Francis cracked her neck muscles from side to side. "Can't tell if you're brave or just brainless for wanting to talk to me in private, though."
"Bit of both!" Phoebe snorted a dry laugh and placed a hand on the shoulder of each of her friends. "Hey. We'll get back to everything we talked about here over the next few days, alright?"
"Sure...?"
"Sure, look after yourself."
"Of course. Dani, Marie." She nodded at each of them in turn, and Francis silently dragged her away.
"Phoebe's ex sure is intense, huh."
Danika leaned against the Meaning of Life's outer wall and watched the clouds, most of which seemed unsure if it was time for a sea breeze yet. "I feel sorry for her, honestly! With Lauren gone, she and Hope have been like sisters to me. Ha! Honestly, they deserve the world for putting up with someone so much younger than them asking them so many questions all the time!"
"You're younger than Phoebe?"
"Yeah! Yeah, I'm... oh, I must be going on six or seven days old now?"
"Wh-"
"It's a whole thing. Don't worry about it. The point is, Phoebe has the patience of a saint."
"I'm sure."
"Hm."
"Hm?"
"Had no idea she was gay, though. That seems weirdly common with our lot, right? What's up with that?"
Marie's eyes shone with delight. Someone was asking her a question about magical girls that she knew the answer to! "The key thing to understand is that the survival rate among non-straight girls is a lot higher for a few reasons. I think they'd be ranked around third or so in terms of "demographic most accepting of a malleable sense of identity", and somewhere in the top five for "demographics with the most optimised average telepathic communication". The reasons behind this, I'm still not one hundred percent on? I want to chalk it up to something to do with, you know, gay culture, but I can't say. I'm not gay myself, so that's really just conjecture."
"You're essentially correct," Kyubey interrupted from the rooftop without warning. "You can blame the former on experience with self-discovery and the latter on conventions of verbal communication in other cultures with heavy overlap. But you're ignoring one key factor."
"And that is?"
"By using them, we're not denting the human reproductive population."
Danika snapped to attention. "Wait, what the hell? Are you so heartless that you consider their lives less valuable?!"
"Vastly more valuable, actually. Our actions aren't informed by human prejudices, which are, of course, completely irrational. We're simply striving to optimise our factory farming of human misery."
"I... I think that's a lot worse."
"Do you? That's strange, but we don't care. Keep up the good 'experiencing emotions', by the way. You are doing an outstanding job. And Marie, if you ever want to aid the effort..."
"I'd rather not."
"I understand. I will ask again later."
"I really wish you wouldn't do that."
He craned his head to one side. "Would you be willing to exch-"
"Go die in a ditch, Kyub."
"Hostile rhetoric noted. I've moved back the next time I will ask you to slightly later still."
SOUL PHYSIOLOGY
The breakdown of the human body into distinct but interconnected systems is common knowledge, as is the function of each. Even a human, of all things, might proudly demonstrate the knowledge of how a muscular system differentiates from a nervous system and a digestive system, and so forth. It is significantly less common knowledge among Terran mortals that the soul operates in much the same way. What is, perhaps, most impressive is that only one culture among them has ever approximated a complete image of a soul's components.
That culture was the culture of Middle Egypt, and the most remarkable part of this is that what with their beliefs in the benefits of casteism, slavery, and the fear and reverence of a cosmic snake hell-bent on eating the sun, they were so immensely, devastatingly wrong about everything else.
The corporeal system (Khat, in Ancient Egyptian) is the medium through which the rest of a soul permeates. Without it, a soul is quick to collapse and disperse into small packets of emotional energy not unlike Hawking radiation. For most entities, the corporeal system is the body that soul had begun in, though the transplant of a soul into another container is a long-mastered science amongst the Incubators.
The mortal system (Ka) can be compared to some kind of connective tissue, which gives the corporeal system the ability to bind the rest of the soul without dispersing. It connects especially strongly to the umbral system (Shuyet and Sechem), which had once been considered two distinct pieces, but has since come to be understood as one whole - that is, the influence of an entity on the world around it. Both these systems are fed heavily by the emotional energy generated in the hypothalamus, and channeled by the magical system (Heka).
The flow of emotional energy from the brain to the soul is one of the many functions conducted by the ideal system (Ba), which exists as the core of the entity's very being. Its functions as the human spirit itself are generally considered so vast and incomprehensible that Earth's greatest thinkers have wondered for millennia what consciousness is, where it comes from, and where it rests, completely blind to the fact that the Egyptians had already figured it out, named it a two-letter word, and called it a day.