"It's like poetry, they rhyme." - George Lucas
"Morning, Lauren. What time do you call this?"
Danika rubbed her eyes, blinked back a yawn, endured a silent instant of internal reorientation.
"Morning," she managed, after a long pause. "Sorry, I didn't even get in until one-thirty-odd."
It was true, of course. Danika knew that all the best lies were. She wasn't going to tell Lauren's dad (could she call him Dad internally yet?) what she was out doing, though. She couldn't imagine what he'd think if he knew she went out at night to hunt for revenge for the daughter he thought she was.
"What kinda friends've you got who are interesting enough to stay out with that late?"
She laughed, but on the inside she was trying to figure out what the best angle to sit at the breakfast table was. She couldn't risk him being able to look at her and a photo of Lauren to compare her against at the same time.
The tricky thing about living in Lauren Woodward's house, she found, was that it was full of signs of Lauren's presence. And the tricky thing about being surrounded by the signs of a certain person is that those signs very clearly belong to someone who isn't her. This was manageable for about the first four days of her existence when she was covering for Lauren, who would have been off doing something irresponsible (smoking and drinking with friends, sometimes in cars without their seatbelts on, once at a concert without earplugs, couldn't she see her little sister was worried about her?). Now Lauren was gone, and being her was a full-time job. And it was beginning to break her.
She had to act like the drawings on the fridge were worthless background noise. Maybe even slightly embarrassing. She had to avoid staring at the timeline of person-height notches the hallway door had accrued over the years. She had to leave the high school yearbook back where she found it every time she took it out without making it look like it had been moved. She had to hurry up and stop trying on so many different outfits before she went out every day. She had to... she had to... she had to... she had to... she had to...
She had to kill Thalia. No matter what.
Marie had been given a fair opportunity ere she crossed stairwell to live and let live, if she dared, for impunity. She was too driven for holding the fort, though, she thought, though it pained her to care - she was scared and the simple division of rhythm her quivering heart tried to sort once again made her hair stand on taut end. The stain of the blood on the floorboards, a mark of no quarter, could harken to what might become of the Crawford clan daughter, the entry she wished she'd so plainly aborted but shames like so now were Postvorta's domain: much the same that had claimed her refrain that had riven her quivering heart twixt aorta and ventricle's most monumental vacuity into disorder and into disunity.
Whitman relinquished the child and smiled. Marie, held by fear and unblinking, heart sinking, still kept up appearances - what was she thinking? Retaining her style and gulping back bile, she stepped past the brink of the mildly-lit pile of yet more of those textbooks and files set next to the door, coming nearer, the floor giving mournful and weak little creaks with each pace. She stepped forth and looked each in the face (in the case of the younger what peeked through the cloth that had clung to her face, rather), moth to a light, she was closing the space and imposing her might on her lungs which had manically sprung into panic she managed to channel to fists. She was scared but that baseless, vicarious pain had no need to exist. She was, fair to say, pissed at the case that she witnessed.
"Explain," she insisted to Whitman, a dare for the care of the kid who had strained for assistance.
"It's twisted," she hissed, sick of fickle subsistence that sits on her wits to hit witches for six, "but listen to this, I'll be quick:"
"Is there something I missed?" Marie whispered, "I knew that some shit was amiss, but..." she stewed in her clueless remiss and she uselessly wished for an instant she didn't exist. It's moot, though - she's rooted to listen to Whitman's excuses and rue how she stupidly fluked her own doom.
"Let's assume," Whitman crooned, "that I'm soon to be cursed and if worst comes to worst and my gem is consumed by the blemishes bursting from times when I'm hurt, or," she curtly appended, "let's elsewise pretend that I'm still in my prime and the end where my soul is begrimed by the toll of whatever becomes of an umbrously whole-darkened heart," this she artfully chimed with offending white jewel between finger and thumb til she coolly did spool yet more dumbstriking rime, "is still some way off. I'm not the smartest of partisan martinets - startling, I know - but I posit not numbly this scum in my closet's a positive-sum gamepiece (Closet? Or was it supposed to be sideways? I can't recall clearly. It must have been nearly Good Friday I purchased). Regardless, my theory, or just an excursus, of her and my purpose starts thus. Either I have to die from exerting compassion - I rationalise that the plus side I must say is worthwhile, benevolent action though ever detracting my energy level, gem ashened by curse in a personal fashion as thanks for my kindness or, worse, if I'm elsewise inclined to the opposite mind I could revel in blindly designing a world slightly sicker, delight in innate recreation with spite of whatever I state as my slate for self-righteously fighting like might would make right - but too late! My self-hatred and shame would consume, either way, my remains would establish my nameless and labyrinthine tomb all the same."
Now Marie was awestruck by the fumes of the flames of deep tucked-away serious itches to maim this imperious bitch in this room right away - that was rich! She was stuck now and here and, well, if she resisted, assumed her existence was fucked.
"Are you paying attention?" persisted the wistful despot. When she mentioned the way of Marie's concentration allotted she mystified, nicked back the tick of the plot on the spot like a breeze, like a flick of the wrist. "Did you miss what I'm saying?"
Her guest replied, "What? Of course not. I just don't understand this whole scheme, why it means that you'd best keep a tween in a chest. What's the rest of the plan, you sick demon?" she scolded, then brashly and snidely, aside, "What's her name, and how old is she?" Coldly the low light had ashened her features. "Do you even know?"
But her passion'd not reached her unfettered hostess, and as best as she'd tried, she'd been told off by teachers more hurtfully. Curt, unabashed, yet asserted with smallest import for the ball in her court spoke the girl, "My name's Ashleigh. I'm thirteen years old."
"This kid's thirteen!" Marie exclaimed, mortified, seeing close up all the rashes and cuts that distorted the most of her skin, and how thin, and how pale, and how pleaful and frail was she with her liberties shorted.
Her jailor contributed, "Fourteen, she's fourteen. You're fourteen. Your birthday was last month." It's all in the past, it's passed, tense, like the tension that peppered the vertical curve of her guest in her vertebrae, flex of her ventricles rising and falling, appalled and aghast, caught in Whitman's intent - but the future? Uncertain, inverted, it crept forth; it hurt to attempt to think clearly. She reared up a step for she meant not a part in events that would rep her the epitaph 'dearly departed'. She mentally pent up how fearful the lay of her way that thought sent her had made her, and startled, she started apart from the heartless tormentor of children (she filled in the gaps as she went and she mapped out that that's what she happened to be). She willed back the ills of that wariness building and all it entailed but still was aware that the jailor had balefully tailed her, beelining behind her, declining the stairs and berating her:
"Wait!" Whitman articulated, irate, "while we grieved the bereavement of Deckard a credible prater had said he believed that of late the now dead was close mates with a kid who had overachieved in the field of debate."
Marie seethed and her hatred abated none, evil still breathing close onto her nape, "I am leaving! Good evening!" she'd state, but instead her heart raced with the dread that she braced for: her fate would outpace her, escape chance erased, and her face in the papers (as ends go, it's tasteless).
She wasted no haste in a steadily traced spark of deviance ditching the dream now it seemed that she couldn't redeem before capture by Whitman, blood streaming, life turning to fiction of way out the gate - which she now ran abeam to in switched contradiction, her newest conviction en route to the kitchen.
"Now listen to me!" snapped Marie in a strict bit of diction, the spree in her knees from her fleeing now fading, held only by friction, hand wading through fixtures of trayed-away tools of all trades, all now aged having made many orders of foodstuffs, some crudely misused while a quarter-ish lauded, paraded the staid way of newness (accrued as accord for their shady affordance). Now raised like a sword came the blade of a breadknife she tore from the drawer, then steady, she said with the sharp to her hostess to "give up!" The ghost of a deadly tirade in her throat, and the knife in her grip like a shiv, like she's toast, like the life she was living was slipping away. Her sweat dripped, and she lividly quipped, "now get back, or I'll cut you!"
That shut her up fast, and she passed on the trifle of trying the jut from those clutches, straight-cast like a rifle, adjusted her glasses and buttons her coat was sewn rife with, cleared throat with clear potency, "Try me. I don't mean to stymie you. Go if you'd like, so untimely. I know I'm-"
"A psycho? A killer? A militant freak?"
"I-"
"Stay still!" Crawford trilled with the spike of her blade to be played, in all likelihood, fighting uphill, "'Cause your secret? It speaks more than you could. I'm too good to weakly seduce with excuses and strike. I'll exact what you're doing to Ashleigh-"
"You're acting irrational! Surely the fact that you're tactlessly roaring you'll thrash me would make you the bad guy! What's more, I implore you forsake this whole fanciful trance, put the knife on the floor lest you make a mistake you can't take back!"
"Wrong answer," Marie had reacted and lanced in a slashing attack.
Naturally, the knife didn't so much as scratch her. She brushed it out of Marie's hand and dismissed her coat, cape, and pauldrons.
"Oh," Marie staggered through shaking breath, her pulse now an arrhythmic cacophony she was fighting to exist through, "you really could have killed me at any point, couldn't you?"
"Do you get it yet? I'm not going to, because death is the ultimate horror. Killing is the only unforgivable crime."
"That's how you can justify keeping that girl-"
Whitman threw up her hands. "I'm not justifying anything! As I was going to say before you so rudely interrupted me-"
"What, by running away?"
"See, you're doing it again! Let me speak!"
Marie didn't say anything. She didn't really have another option, so she supposed she didn't need to.
"Like I was saying! If I go around burning myself out helping people, I wear myself out and die. If I'm a dick to people instead, I hate myself and die. So every day, I'm out in those streets, helping witch victims recover from their psychic attacks, protecting people who can't protect themselves, righting all the wrongs of the world."
"So what do you need her for?"
"I need something to make me hate myself just a little. If my feelings are mixed, I'll never make my mind up about myself, and I'll never fall into despair. If I'm perfectly healthy, she helps me stay that way. If I'm on my last legs, she's like a buffer that brings me back to equilibrium. It's brilliant! This way, I only need to collect grief seeds for one of us, and since she's not really doing anything, she goes through them much slower than I ever did."
"And that makes all of this okay, does it, you sociopath?"
"I don't know! That's the whole point! If I thought this was the right thing to do, it wouldn't work! And how can I be a sociopath? If I didn't empathise with her pain, this would all be a waste of time! I'm only hurting her because I care. Like I say, you're a debate kid, right? Haven't you heard of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas?"
"I- what? I don't know, maybe. Not by that name, if I have. Wh... why?"
Whitman shrugged. "It's an Ursula K. Le Guin short story about a near-utopian city, which has essentially perpetually high standards of living for all of its citizens. The only issue is that one particular child needs to be locked away in a dark, dank room forever, and that any act of mercy or kindness anyone could offer this child would immediately turn the city into a dystopia. So the question is: could you bring yourself to keep living your peaceful life, knowing it was predicated on the torment of a child?"
"Oh! Yeah, I know this one. I've made arguments before not to help the- oh."
"How did those arguments go, if you don't mind me asking?"
"I said... I said that if I was a citizen, I'd make it my moral duty to optimise the prosperity of my own life. Wasting the child's sacrifice would be the only completely immoral action I could take, because nobody benefits from that."
"Then that's exactly what you should do! Get out of our world while you can. Enjoy your life! You've got a promising future ahead of you. Just don't interfere with anything you know won't do you any good in the end."
"I- I... fine! But I can't just stand here and act like there's nothing I can do - a child is suffering in your care! For God's sake, her family must be worried about her!"
"So what are you going to do, tell people about her?"
"I just might!"
Whitman put a hand on Marie's shoulder and looked her dead in the eye. "Let me tell you something, Crawford. Everyone in this city has secrets and regrets and private thoughts. And you know what? We're all happier for keeping our own, and for not knowing everyone else's. Whatever you're feeling right now, you don't have to make anyone else feel this."
"I can't... trust you."
"If you can't trust me, who can you trust? Fearnley? There's blood on her hands. Cold blood. At least you can rest assured I'd never kill."
"That's not..." Marie stammered, "no, that doesn't-"
"And you'd know? Three or four weeks ago, you didn't even know she existed!"
"You're lying!"
"How much do you know about Sonia Vu, Crawford? Resident of the Citadel. Like family to Fearnley. Killed by her last November. That's the person you've been spending your time with these past few weeks."
"Shut u-"
"She's got a criminal record, too! She spent two months in juvenile detention for breaking and entering into all kinds of places around town."
"I don't have to take this kind of shit from you!"
"Fine! Fine, then! Don't! Ask the Incubator about it, I'm sure he'll be all too keen to shed some light on the subject!"
Marie was seventeen years old. Almost an adult. She imagined that was why it felt so shameful to be curled up and crying in a stranger's house. She had vague recollections of similar kinds of feelings when she was four or so, but they were always friends of her parents', and the world was so new to her that she was constantly being asked to process new information. She supposed that part was still true, but she was too old for crying now.
She had been too old for crying for quite some time now. It had never helped.
"That's all I found, mother fucker. You owe me in a major way," she would say quite some time later.
"I don't owe you anything. I'm the Marquess, darling, that's up for me to decide. Have you told anyone else?" Lara would reply.
"Only Kyubey."
"Perfect. Keep a lid on this, Crawford. We do not want this getting out."
"So what, that's it?! We just keep this our little secret and carry on with our lives?"
"You know, 'carrying on with your life' is a pretty fun thing to do. Well, if you have friends. I guess you wouldn't get-"
Marie clapped her phone shut and threw it across the room. It skipped cleanly over her pillow and deflected onto the middle of her bed. She kicked the cat food bowl she'd left out for the Incubator (and its content, and its user) off the balcony and into the damp evening air, and stormed off to the bathroom.
"You seem a little upset," Kyubey remarked.
A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF MAGICAL GIRLS, PART 2
The fifteen most generally agreed-upon subspecies are roughly as follows, each with two titles - one treats the emotion that had driven each girl who had executed the contract as a virtue, the other as an insult, the virtue corrupted by excess:
Daughters of Perseverance/Tenacity: There goes an old proverb about resilience, "fall down seven times, get up eight". These girls can do one better and not fall down at all. They are immaculately sharp-dressed at all times, and among their strongest the full weight of a skyscraper brought upon them would not earn a stagger to their step, a maladjusted tie, or a frayed cufflink. If a Daughter of Perseverance is after you, your greatest hope of survival lies in them finding something better to do with their time.
Daughters of Conviction/Cruelty: These are girls with a purpose. If they learned what being a magical girl entailed beforehand, it wouldn't have changed their minds. Once they're sure they must do something, they can seldom be persuaded otherwise. Their unswaying feelings make them excellent fighters, as they take abnormally long to run out of energy. The best (and among their strongest, only) way to win the favour of a Daughter of Conviction is to already coincidentally be aligned with whatever purpose they're trying to achieve in the first place.
Daughters of Audacity/Narcissism: These girls are the centre of their own universe, and they are never afraid to stand up for themselves. Their dresses are pretentiously extravagant, as tends their manner of speaking. Their secondary powers involve drawing from their environments to endure the harshest of conditions. At their best, a Daughter of Audacity will slay a witch twelve times their size just to bask in the sheer glory of it. At their worst, they would gladly step over their nearest and dearest to assure their own selfish desires.
Daughters of Dignity/Pride: Those inclined to seek change, and to believe that nobody but them is capable of achieving it. Augmentations to their outfit largely involve high technology and avant-garde aesthetics - anything that evokes notions of a possible future. Their secondary abilities are much like those of their audacious cousins, but more concerned with amassing power rather than strictly ensuring survival: a Daughter of Dignity would gladly move Heaven and Earth and, if they knew the price of a contract, lay down their life to prove a point.
Daughters of Alacrity/Pessimism: No matter the problem, a Daughter of Alacrity never seems at a loss for a solution. These girls seem to come prepared for every occasion, usually dressed in a costume which wouldn't conceivably fit any. Their manners foresee many potential troubles, so their powers, in one way or another, let them jump between their answer to each as quickly as possible. One so devoted to foreseeing too many terrible things, though, may cease believing in a future without difficulty, and be driven to despair.
Daughters of Security/Paranoia: If they have a castle, they will keep intruders out by designing every trap by hand. If they have a high-salary job, they will burden every employee who could threaten their seat with menial tasks until they quit. Easily jealous, and lords of the status quo, these girls may not be as durable as Daughters of Perseverance, but what they lack in being able to take hits they make up for in ensuring their enemy never gets to throw one.
Daughters of Ambition/Envy: The avaricious. The covetous. The power-hungry. Anyone who just wants more. Their wardrobes, much like their nature, seems to demand only the highest of respects. They usually make for heartless rulers, and the longer they live one finds the more they seem to rule. Whatever their powers are, they usually seem to suggest a karmic gravitas greater than they actually have - as the saying goes, bend the fabric of reality for the job you want, not the job you have.
Daughters of Beauty/Vanity: Composed, charismatic, and impeccably dressed. If they want to win your favour, they can find a way into your heart without you suspecting a thing, but if they want nothing to do with you, dahling, you'll know. Their outfits are, indisputably, second to none. Life is a show to them, after all, and they are the star. Their secondary abilities can be anything, but rest assured, it'll be the biggest, most extravagant display of magic you've ever seen.
Daughters of Trepidation/Fright: Magical girls who adopted the title to run from something. The precise nature of each secondary power differs from girl to girl, but generally, the more their deepest fears are realised, the higher they can rise to retaliate. In a fight, they tend to let their emotions guide them, making them incredibly powerful, but also incredibly prone to counterattack. Their tactics in battle tend to resemble coping mechanisms for phobias: frantic and far from an exact science, but no less forceful and effective for it.
Daughters of Candor/Insult: Rarely ever the fighting type, but almost always a skilled coordinator in battle. These girls are born of a contract to show their friends that which seems so obvious to them, and as such are the bluntest and most straightforward of magical girls. Their powers involve restraining their enemies (and when their egos need to be kept in check, their friends), usually by surprise, or by exacerbating their weaknesses. While not particularly strong alone, they are masters of holding a capable team together.
Daughters of Fantasy/Untruth: With the fact that reality is shaped by the emotions, convictions, and beliefs of magical girls, it follows that the most imaginative, the most inclined to freely daydream, the impulsive liars, and anyone else willing to sell their soul to literally distort the truth are both the best illusionists and the closest things to full-blown reality warpers among mortalkind. Their powers tend to accumulate around others; the more people they can convince of their fantasies, the more emotional energy goes into bringing them to life.
Daughters of Frugality/Indolence: The Incubators' favourite children, always seeking to cut corners and simplify every aspect of life. Their costumes can be anything, so long as they're maximally comfortable. Their efficiency grants them all sorts of powers, like access to a low-energy-usage half-transformed state, or being able to maintain spiritual consciousness when disconnected from a physical body. Good friends to have - all they want is to make everything less of a hassle for everyone. Just don't rely on one in a fight: it's too much work.
Daughters of Serenity/Apathy: Those who mask their emotion well, and are able to betray none in their contract, are the weakest of the Puella Furia, but also the most unpredictable. Their clothes, like their demeanour, suggest nothing - generally, they come in drab colours and form-hiding lengths. Their secondary powers though, are anyone's guess. Whatever compelled them to sign off on their souls is a mystery, and tends to remain that way until the truth becomes apparent halfway through the backs of their enemies.
Daughters of Content/Naïveté: By far the rarest group: those who have spent a wish on something comparatively trivial, already content with their lot in life. Usually manipulable and fragile-minded, and the quickest type to burn out from stress to boot (lasting a month at best), but most of them are almost comedically powerful, and the manifestations of their power are bizarre, and never seem to make sense; they are the tricksters of magical girlhood.
Daughters of Love/Obsession: Love is timeless. It transcends eras and borders and concepts. Its children have barely needed to adapt to the growing complexities of the human mind, and closely resemble the no-nonsense, frills-and-nightgowns, elegant, powerful warriors of yore. The only significant changes are the cognitive capacities of modern humans over their early upright ancestors, and the energy efficiency of Incubator technology. That, coupled with the potency of love as an emotion, makes these magical girls the most powerful in history.