In the end, you don't get to just jump out of the door, sadly. However, ensuring the pilot isn't so pissed as to just take off again without you goes before saving a few minutes' worth of your time, if just barely, and so you end up simply staying put, after all.
You don't like staying put, not without a target in sight and as part of an actual strategy. If you're just biding your time and observing, you have the patience of a hundred Buddhas, but otherwise you're just wasting time or, worse, making yourself a target for someone else.
You are the one that surprise attacks others, not the other way around, thank you very much.
Oh wow, I never realized how enlightened our opinion on time management was.
"Finally," you mutter the moment you can open the door and jump out, disregarding anyone else's opinions. Tabitha is riding on your head as is her right, acting as your crown and all, and so you are holding Brian by his tail, going so far as to keep him raised up high enough to avoid smacking him against the round or anything.
You doubt he'd care, but it would get in the way of your talk.
"Muh, what now?"
"Chuuh, going by the playbook, you would find a local girl and have them read you in on the situation, organize a response, puchuh. It's all very bureaucratic," he says, immediately souring your mood. "However, we can just skip all of that and begin investigating, chuuh, if you'd like."
"Muh." Minions or getting to business already, then. A hard choice. Much as you are loathe to admit, having a few distractions on hand would be very nice just to keep the heat off of yourself, as the three stooges back home have shown already.
Either way you'll need to orientate yourself first, the streets of Cairo you soon push your way onto filled with people of all sizes and ages, most of them from here. Man, Egypt would so much nicer without all the Egyptians, wouldn't it?
Foot traffic is just such a pain.
"Meow."
Exactly, Tabitha. You hit the nail on the head.
… Alright, you don't exactly like it, but needs must, and all that. "How do we get magical girls?"
"Chuuh, the cry of your soul will attract them to you."
"… Muh."
"Chuh, if I had the contact numbers, I could just call up their Puchuu, puchuh, but it is what it is. Think of something yourchuh, puh."
"…" You consider the choice of lobbing Brian over the nearest building and just dealing with everything yourself, after all, on the basis of that being the plan anyways, weighing the pros of the immense satisfaction it would bring you against the cons of Brian possibly managing to be useful at some point and him missing getting in the way of that.
It's a close call, in the end.
However, just as you raise your arm to throw him as hard as you can, you spot something amidst the crowds of people you're moving among- a river, like, with water and stuff, flowing straight through the city and all.
Now, unless your rudimentary knowledge of geography (it's only as much as it is because you looked at a map of Egypt before coming, thank you American education system) is mistaken, this is very likely the river Nile- one of the biggest rivers in the world and kind of important in Egypt, here.
Surely, if there's magical girls around, a place such as this, with deep-running cultural and economic importance, is going to have at least one or two hanging around, no? Maybe even setting up their headquarters near or even on it.
"Chuuh, most girls just squat somewhere convenient, so I doubt it," Brian rudely interrupts your thoughts. You also are starting to draw looks over being a foreign little girl holding up what most people nearby perceive to be a plush doll, so you shift your grip on his tail and keep on walking.
"Muh."
You shall find magical girls using your genius strategy!
…
Two hours and an annoyingly congested part of the city later, you're wandering through Cairo's slums, or at least the buildings to both sides of the road are in dire disrepair, cracks visible in cheap concrete and older and older construction showing through that was just never really maintained all that well.
Is it really so easy, to slide into poverty and life without perspective? You just don't pay attention for a little while and all of a sudden you're at rock bottom?
Sounds about right, actually. That's life.
Meh, at least you could probably massacre a few mundanes to make yourself feel better. It's hot and walking around a bunch is exhausting, even if you don't really feel that first one due to being your own AC even outside of your costume, so you really should look into finding a nice, quiet alley to mug some hapless thugs or something.
It is with thoughts like these in mind that you, finally, come upon signs of magic being used, that being blips on your magical sense. Naturally, you investigate.
"Chuuh, no guarantee it's a friendly, puchuh."
It's either what you're looking for or a fight… Which you're also looking for at this point. "Doesn't matter."
You have begun sniffing out your sport, now all you need is to follow the trail, the usage of some sort of magic a guiding light for your powerful third eye. There's more stupid people in the way, but-
In the middle of a crowd, a girl, teenager, really, is handing out water, creating it in two little bowls she's handling. She looks like the locals, so you reckon her to be a local magical girl, and her costume is very…
How did you say that again? Right, you want to do the Jackie dance, that is to say push her against the nearest wall and do very much not safe, not sane, not consensual things to her all night. Her lithe body is on full display, clothing vaguely reminiscent of a harem dancer's costume and only serving to accentuate and suggest rather than conceal, brown skin looking tasty enough for you to lick all over any day.
She's tall and lithe, if you had to put it into words, with a natural charm only enhanced with her aqua-blue eyes and long, silky-looking black hair, a coy smile thrown your way, even. The layered choker around her neck makes you want to snap it as well, no matter whether that's a thing you can do or not.
Your penis thrives on impossible tasks.
Also, the water she's conjuring seems to be under her control, the casual display of magic stopping nobody nearby from accepting and drinking it. Neat.
"Muh."
"مرحبا هل يمكنني مساعدتك؟"
Oh, come to think of it, you don't really know whatever language they're speaking here.
"I want magical girls," you say, eyeing her nearly naked body all over. "Do you speak English?"
"A little," she says with a very noticeable Arabic accent. It only makes you want to bend her over harder. "You are new here?"
"Muh," you nod. "Just arrived."
"Here, wait," she gestures, turning towards the crowd and yelling something, likely telling them she has something more important to do. Such as gargling on your cock. "I will finish and show friend. She speaks better English."
She looks kind of embarrassed about it, but you just nod again. That's fine with you. She moves very rhythmically when she uses her magic, so just watching her twisting in place is kind of like a softcore striptease to begin with.
Just enough to keep you entertained.
You go with the magical girl when the people nearby begin to wander off, many of them holding containers and the like. She leads you towards a nearby street, motioning for you to follow her.
"Name is, Tahira," she explains, pointing at you. "What is yours?"
"Jackie," you easily admit. "Muh."
After all, with how unlikely it is anyone will ever connect your old life to your new one, you do't mind sharing that much. Jacqueline Frost has nothing to do with Jack Winters, not to mention you generally avoid using your full, non-abbreviated name.
"It is a nice meeting you, Jah-ckie." Oh, she knows she isn't saying it right and she even blushes for a few moments before moving on. You just want to bite into her thighs, but in a good way. "We are going to outside the city, where we are having our base."
"Muh. Should I change?" You twirl around, careful to keep Tabitha uninterrupted on your head- this is a lot harder than it looks like, but you'd really prefer to just use your magic to move around for any stretches of area. "Transform?"
"Ah!" She does understand, which is nice. "If you would prefer, I would not mind."
"Threat detected. None shall escape the Ice Empress." Have to make it look more impressive for your prospective lay, after all.
A short transformation sequence later, you walk alongside Tahira in your full regalia, puffing up your chest.
"Cute." A hand is on the back of your head. You shall allow it, but just the one. "Is this your Guide?"
"Muh, no." She's pointing at Tabitha, up above your head, who is indeed very cute. "That is Tabitha. She's my cat. You probably mean this."
You raise Brian. He, seemingly, comes to life, his upper body twisting to let him stare at Tahari. "Chuh."
She screams.
You stare.
She recovers, laughing nervously.
You conjure a pair of ice platforms, gesturing towards them. "Muh, let's fly?"
She looks at the pieces of ice you created with a wave of your hand, then back at you. "Is it safe?"
You jump on, rolling yourself onto your back as Tabitha clambers onto your belly. Brian just hops onto a corner of your floating construct as it rises upwards slowly.
"Muh."
Everything goes so much faster when you use your magic.
Once Tahira gets over a quick bout of motion sickness you receive directions just fine and, within about fifteen minutes, see where you're going, a small mountain of sand outside of Cairo proper.
It is also lighting up with magic to your highly sophisticated nerves, meaning it is obviously either where the locals are based out of or a monster. You shall treat it as friendly until and unless it attacks.
Oh, and it has a little face and a bunch of sandcastle-like structures on top of and around it, so… Yeah.
Tahira call out in this language that you do not understand as you get closer, so you soon have the apparent master of the place rising on a medieval tower made of sand and growing upwards to meet you.
She has the same brown skin as your current companion, though her clothing is a lot more substantial, shorts with a piece of blue cloth tied around her waist, a strip of cloth around her chest and yellow-brown shoulder padding, topped by a sunhat bearing upon itself a smaller sandcastle in turn.
Also a plush crab holding up a butcher's knife.
This unknown girl holds her weapon, a sand shovel made of shifting sand steadily dropping what looks a lot like a copyright infringement in the form of little formless golems with faces on them, out to the side as she greets you. "Oy matey, what brings ya to this 'ere nice plot o' land?"
"Yarr!" The crab adds.
"… Muh."
"No, but seriously, welcome, make yourself at home. Tahira usually just brings anyone magical to me if they don't speak Arabic, so I'm pretty used to this kind of thing."
"An' if'n you make a good word, ye won't be walking the plank, yarr!"
"Chuh, how'd you replace the chuh?"
"Yarr, wouldn't you like to know!" The crab with the hardboiled pirate voice waves its knife at Brian. "Yar girl can come aboard, but ye scallywag won't be going anywhere with no patched eye on ye!"
"… Chuuh, that doesn't even make sense."
"Call me Yarrbert, yarr!"
"It's Cuthbert actually, I named him way back when," the shovel-wielding girl says, having set the crab down on the table you're both sitting at now. The place you're in seems to be completely controlled by the magical girl that appears to be the leader, or at least strongest, of the ones present all around Cairo, all the buildings and furniture of the Sand Castle, as you have been informed it's called, made of sand, naturally.
It's surprisingly not getting literally everywhere, a fact you shall ascribe to your host's magic.
"Yarr!"
"Chuuh." Brian flops onto the same table, having been brought along by you. Letting him sneak off would probably make a bad impression, plus he might come in handy.
"Yarr!"
"Chuuh."
"I think they're communicating," the sand girl stage-whispers, giggling.
"Think they're stupid," you say, bomping your hand onto Brian's head. "This is Brian. He is very annoying."
"Yar, lookit the lassie! Wouldn't think ye'd choose a girl with character and taste!" Obviously, Cuthbert is a much better minion than Brian. He probably doesn't do as much mad science, but he's also much less aggravating.
"Chuuh, Jackie gets the job done, that's all that matters. That's her name, by the way."
"Oh, right, introductions! My bad, I was so caught up…" The girl with the literal shovel (that you aren't at all jealous about as a weapon) gives you an apologetic smile. "My name's Yasmin, Yasmin Abbaz. Nice to meet you, Jackie."
"Muh." You shake her hand, being all pleasant about it. It must be months since you last did a real handshake, and doing it again now makes you feel a little dirty, like you're conforming with society just a little bit.
… You'll make sure to rape someone later, that should shift things back into their rightful place. Metaphysics thus cleared up, you focus back on the conversation at hand.
"… not that we mind, but I guess there's some history behind our Puchhuus?"
"Yarr, I could spin an ocean's worth of garn about this wanker right 'ere," Cuthbert says, still waving his kitchen knife around. "Why're ye here and why shouldn't we get out tha' plank for ye?"
"Here," Tahira says, coming in with a tray balancing some steaming fluid inside cups. Tea, in all likelihood.
"Thank you sweetie, go ahead and take a seat. I'm horrible in the kitchen, so she doesn't let me in there when she can help it these days," Yasmin tells you casually.
"Muh." You take your cup once the other two have done so, your touch cooling it down a good bit in one go so you can drink it.
Look, if it's hot enough to steam, it's burning your mouth, and tongue, and throat. That's just physics!
"We came due to unusual measure- reports about magical activity in Egypt, chuh," Brian says, finally broaching the real issue at hand. "Something is happening, so Jackie was asked to help resolve the issue, puchuuh."
"Huh, weird. We haven't really noticed anything weird lately, have we Tahira?" Yasmin says something in Arabic, presumably summarizing everything and repeating those last few words.
"Nothing strange, no," the scantily-clad water girl shakes her head.
"Chuuh, how about the sun, then?" Brian asks.
Just then, the evening sun turns bright red, bathing the entire world into a flaming glow. The change is notable and pronounced, such that nobody can deny it.
"Okay, that is strange. And never happened before…" Oh Yasmin, it's obviously narrative convenience at play again. Clear as day.
Just then, however, your phone rings, playing the 'Jaws' theme. You hold up a hand, turning away from the table to take the call.
"Olivia. Can't. Am busy. In Egypt. Deal with it."
You hang up, getting back to things.
"My bad. Where were we?"
"What did Jackie say?!" Kerrie screamed, throwing herself across the street.
"She's in Egypt!" Olivia summed it up.
"Why the fuck is she in Egypt?!"
"I have no idea, what do we do?!"
"We fight obviously, we have to kill it fast!"
"Girls, this thing, like, don't got no dick!"
""…""
They both turned towards Bubbles, then exchanged a look. Right, they needed to do this by themselves, their teammate was going to be useless here.
"Okay, new plan, I cut at the limbs, you try to blow it over!" Kerrie decided.
"Got it!"
One policeman stood defiant against the monster rampaging through fair New Generica, firing his service gun against it. The thing was an ever-shifting mass of flesh and motion, countless limbs growing from it as mouths within mouths within mouths bayed for blood.
"And Bubbles, make yourself useful and evacuate the civilians!"
The sudden intensification and reddening of the sun is, it would seem, quite alarming to the average magical girl, not that you feel the need to be particularly concerned personally. The sun is, in the end, just a giant ball of continually exploding plasma.
You can take it. Freeze it hard enough and the entire planet dies, sure, but if you weren't so considerate as to spare all known forms of life, you could totally win against the sun. You're a better, much colder and more pleasant sun anyways.
… Actually, does the sun count as some form of eldritch abomination? Thinking about it, it is in space and looking at it directly hurts in a very visceral way, potentially even blinding people. Quod erat demonstrandum, bitches.
… But anyways, back to the topic at hand. The girls you're conversing with calm down relatively quickly, whereas Brian is being entirely too smug for being a Brian.
"Chuuh, told them it would happen. Their own chuh fault they didn't believe me, but I'll show them! I'll show them all! Chuuuuchuchuchuchuch-!"
You smoosh his head onto the table formed of sand, shutting him up. "Muh. Something's doing the thing. Where is it and how do I kill it?"
"Puchuh, no idea! Maybe we'd know if someone was already deployed to look around, chuuh, but bureaucracy is once again a chuhing chuh!"
You turn towards Yasmin and Tahira, the two Arabian girls more likely to be constructive. "Any ideas?"
"Uhm…" Yasmin clears her throat, picking Cuthbert up and putting the pirate crab onto her hat instead of letting it try to stab Brian like you were going to. "We wouldn't know offhand, but maybe you should rest here while we take a look around? No offense, but we know the area better and have contacts with other girls that may know something."
You aren't listening anymore, already rolling yourself onto the ground right off of the chair. "Muh." It's hot and though you don't really feel the heat, you still want to just stretch out and lie on the ground.
… Dammit, it would be really useful to have a handheld console for times like this. Maybe you could finally replay p*kemon again, too.
Third gen is and remains the best one, even if Lopunny is weirdly hot.
"God, this stuff is getting everywhere."
"Olivia. Please. Make Bubbles shut up before I hurt her."
"Uhm… We shouldn't fight, okay? That's bad and all."
The fight against the giant flesh monster had been… Harrowing, was one word to describe it. At least a dozen people had died despite their best efforts, that one brave policeman had been eaten and cut out of the monster's main body, twice, and when they'd finally won the creature's last revenge had been to explode in a bubbling mess, covering Kerrie and Olivia from head to toe in a red, stinking tar-like mass of dead, melted tissue.
Bubbles had had the foresight to hide behind a wrecked car, sparing herself the worst of the fallout, but her shoes were still going to be an absolutely lost cause.
"Just…" Kerrie took a deep breath now that Olivia had used her air freshening magic again, utterly thankful for that ability of hers. "Let's just agree that this was the absolutely worst thing we've fought to date, okay?"
The monster had been able to regenerate seemingly endlessly until her fire had overwhelmed that bullshit by completely carbonizing its flesh before it could just reabsorb it, it'd torn down dozens of buildings through its raw strength, the stench and the screams and Bubbles being obnoxious while pulling civilians out of danger and away from the thing… She wasn't gonna lie, she was not a fan of this particular fight.
And Jackie was off in Egypt of all places, very much too far away to come bail them out right when they could've really needed the help.
"Yeah, gonna, like, second that." Bubbles shook herself, almost like a wet poodle, before halting. "Hey, uh, guys? Is it just me or is the goop moving?"
"… Oh are you fucking shitting me," Kerrie groaned, a growl rising in her throat, "this fucker has a motherfucking phase two?!"
Moments later, they resumed fighting for their lives.
It takes a while until the two girls that seem to run things around Cairo return, but they did leave you some water and cookies, so you don't want for much in the meantime. Like, sure, it'd be nice to have a game or a wet pussy to occupy yourself with, but eh, you can manage.
Sadly, you have not yet figured out how to steal a giant animated mountain of sand to keep for yourself at the time of their return, which just shows that you don't care about it all that much (because if you did, you'd have instantly found a way and used it, of course), but once again, you can manage. The disappointment is not that great.
"Okay, so we think we know where the change happened," is what Yasmin says as soon as she's in the room, Tahira trailing in after her. "We asked around a few places and one thing stuck out. Tata?"
The water girl clears her throat, dark skin darkened further for a moment at the mention of what seems to be a nickname. "People disappeared in Valley of Kings. Just days ago."
"Exactly. The Valley of the Kings is kind of a famous spot because a bunch of really old and important graves are inside of it, so a lot of archaeologists are usually around there, but a few days ago a lot of them just up and disappeared."
"So monsters," you nod, nudging Tabitha's face off of yours with your cheek where you're lying on the floor. "The right ones?"
"Chuuh, monster appearances aren't as common everywhere as they are back home, puh," Brian mentions from his position where you froze his legs and tail in place so he'd stop walking around so much. "It is very likely these ones are connected to whatever my detectors picked up and changed up the sunlight."
"Muh. Good enough." You lazily blink around, looking back at the magical girls. Tahira seems to be busy staring at you and Tabitha whereas Yasmin's mouth is loose and wiggly, like she's trying to hold back a big grin and failing. "What now?"
"Well, I figured we'd go take a look around, I don't see enough action as is. Tata?"
"… Can I touch your face?"
"Muh. A little."
"Eh?! What're you two-"
As it turns out, having your cheeks gently stroked is oddly soothing. You shall acquire all the pettings in time.
While you do not mind allowing Tahira to come into contact with thine divine body as your little group proceeds onwards to investigate the Vale of Kingship or whatever, you feel a little strange… Not unlike some cosmic force has empowered you with never-ending, reality-breaking strength.
Then again, it may just be you. Or the way she's patting your head as you sit on her lap and pat Tabitha's head is allowing you to transcend mortal reality and become existent on a wholly separate, higher level, one that allows you to reach backwards in time and retroactively make yourself stronger.
Or something. You're pretty sure your mind is just spasming around because of the desert heat your magic has to continually ward off.
"Why not just use the Sand Castle?" You'll be honest, the question has been on your mind ever since all three of you (plus Puchuus and Tabithas) left the place by sliding on a giant, surprisingly soft and smooth sand ride right out of there.
"Oh, Big Willy doesn't move around very much," Yasmin explains, sitting in the front seat next to the driver, the same quiet Egyptian (you assume, anyways) man that brought you and Tahira to the Castle in the first place. "Not really built for it. He's sleeping until and unless something big comes along and needs to be fought off."
"That happen often?" You always need to keep your eyes and ears open for any new hunting grounds… Even if you doubt Egypt will be it. Too much sand.
"Only very rarely, thankfully. We kind of started our tenure as the guardians of Cairo when a massive creature made of sand attacked it, however, so we like to be sure we have the guns needed to fend anything off," the sandy magical girl tells you.
"Yarr!" Cuthbert waves his little kitchen knife. "T'was a cursed year, it was. High time someone put on the ol' eyepatch an' took out the monster on starboard!"
"Chuuh, so did you get your old team killed or did they just have enough of your pirate wannab-" You forcefully stuff Brian into your pocket headfirst.
"Muh. And who's the driver?"
"Oh, he's an old friend that helps us out when we need to get around," she smiles.
"They saved my, life, I save them the walk," the man at the steering wheel says, his heavy accent hinting at him not being that great with English. Not that you'll judge, idiots in America speak it worse.
American education system ahoy, matey.
Please, please let it not be infectious.
"So yes, he is aware and gifted in his own way, so he can help us without trouble. And we do pay him, mind you." Amateur mistake, that. Paying the minions. "We like to save our strength before any major fights, so having normal transportation is a lifesaver."
Clearly they cannot simply generate unlimited amounts of pure power the way you can. You shall remember this fact for later, just in case.
"How much longer until we're there?" You want to know whether it's worth having another nap or if you should just stay awake and ask more inane questions instead.
"لقد وصلنا." And that is apparently your answer from the grown man keeping his eyes on the road. Yasmin turns her head to smile at you, translating the idea without prompting.
"We are there alread- You really are getting along well, aren't you?"
"Muh," you make, cuddling deeper into Tahira. She is very comfy and her outfit barely covers her, all the while her hands have encircled your belly.
"She is very, cool. Refreshing. Midday would not be arduous with her."
Exactly. You are the coolest. There simply is no way to make the desert heat bearable better than your very presence.
The Vale of Kings (or whatever) is, at first glance… just a pile of sand. Inside a vale. No, seriously, from your vantage point above it, there's sand and there's a few palm trees, with stones sticking out here and there. It's not full-on desert by any means, but good lord (by which you mean yourself), couldn't they at least try to make it look a bit more inviting?
The graverobbers come whether they want it or not, may as well make it less of a chore for everyone else that comes along.
"Okay, we will need to take a look around- nothing feels out of place right now, but we will need to find whatever is causing these recent disappearances one way or the other," Yasmin narrates, adjusting her wide-brimmed hat with the little sandcastle on it. And Cuthbert.
"Muh. I can see it," you point out, raising a hand before using it to point. "It's coming from that direction. Lots of magic."
It's an angry red, though that may just be you inherently disliking the color red due to its implied unfriendliness to ice, which is and remains the best type.
"Oh, really? And here I thought we were going to have to search the whole vale… Well, good work, Jackie, lead the way!"
You conjure your ice platforms, hopping onto one while the car drives off, having been asked to wait at a convenient and slightly less hot place. Well, the driver was, same difference. The other two girls don't take too long to gawk at them and so you're soon floating onwards, straight at whatever horrible fate requires some Jackie to the face to fuck off.
"So… This is your pet cat, right?"
"Mhm. Tabitha." You gently poke your cat's paw where she's already settled down on your lap, making her raise it in greeting.
"Do you often take her with you when you travel abroad?"
"Muh." You nod. "She is best cat."
"Tabitha is very cute," Tahira enunciates, weighing her obviously correct opinion in as well. "I think I see something."
Wait, that's not praise of your cat. Or of yourself. Brows furrowed, you look at the area the mocca-skinned magical girl is gesturing at, seeing…
A figure standing in the sun? It's holding a weapon of some kind, a rifle by the looks of it, and its head is covered by some kind of animal skull used as a hat, you think. It's still a bit far, though, so you bring yourself closer…
Yasmin clicks her togue, eyes narrowing. "A desert goblin. They usually don't get this close to the city anymore."
… Ah.
"It looks like it is waiting," Tahira points out. "Should we wait as well?"
"Muh."
You shall not brook any of this foolishness. Nor shall you suffer any goblin to yet live where you walk.
Or float along on the way to an actual objective, as it were.
Withdrawing your guns from within the folds of your dress, you take aim, the motion so casual that neither of the other two girls react right that moment- though Tabitha does jump off your lap to instead place her little kitty paws on your head, to get away from the noise that will follow very soon indeed.
Smart kitty.
You shoot without warning, out of the literally clear sky. Your first bullet impacts the goblin's shoulder, the second mises as the thing immediately throws itself with the force of the impact to stay moving, not wasting so much as a single millisecond before refusing to be a stationary target.
The third and fourth shot graze it, giving it time to raise its rifle as it jumps to the side, trying to mislead your aim. Said aim is true, however, your shots curving under the control of your magical guns, hitting it in the stomach and chest next, followed by another near miss and, finally, a shot to the head.
It goes down. You are quite happy about your ability to magically create bullets so you don't waste any of your real ones just yet.
"… That is some very good marksmanship," Yasmin says, slowly lowering her sand shovel. Similarly, Tahira nods along, dismissing a small sphere of water she was deforming into a projectile of some sort, you believe.
"Good shooting. Good eyes."
"Muh." You proceed to shoot the creature, again, because you think it might've just twitched. When it tries to actually stumble up and run, you repeat such another handful of times, just to make sure it's really dead. "Persistent."
"Yeah, that's desert goblins for you." That said, the better-English-speaking magical girl still has a bit more to say. "It is weird, however. Normally, they stay far from the cities, only straying close to search for salvage and lone targets of opportunity. What was it doing this close to an archaeological site like this?"
"We know they dis-appeared," Tahira points out. "Not coincidence."
"You don't think goblins are behind this, do you?"
They better not be. If goblins have attained the kind of power required to tint the sun a bloody red for any length of time, the world truly deserves to be destroyed and remade whole in your image instead of you just putting your face everywhere to cleanse it as your initial plan is calling for.
"Muh." Annoyed, you pull Brian out of your pocket, where he just kind of hung limply so far. "Opinions?"
"Chuuh, whatever we're here for is probably drawing upon lesser monsters to serve it, puh." Yeah, that's about what you thought as well. "Most likely using them as sentinels and to keep humans away from the area."
"Muh." You nod, putting him back where he belongs. "Still have a direction. Let's go."
You continue on, your magical might transporting your group towards the source of the magical energy you sensed earlier- as you approach, you become aware it seems to be… pulsing, like a heart or other inner organ, somehow.
That is probably not at all something you need to worry about, so you don't.
On the way, you cannot help but ponder if this makes you the party wizard casting an icy variant of 'Fly' on everyone, but then again in those terms pretty much everyone is a wizard, given you're all magical girls.
… I have no idea how you even know that reference- oh hey, you used to play D ?
Not really big on it, but you kind of liked the concept, though that was all way before you got a job and became a soulless corporate drone doing IT all day. Of course you usually prestige classed into Assassin and all just because having the ability to effectively ram a poisoned knife into someone's back at a moment's notice is a useful life skill anyone should learn at some point, but you didn't always start out as a rogue when you rolled a new character.
Uh, those old TTRPGs were way too complicated and manually handled. If I'd known you played I definitely would've had a few runs with you, though, daddy.
See, this is the reason you are so great- even your daughters are awesome people standing far above the rest of the world. You are not simply individually superior, every time you reproduce you make the world as a whole just that much inherently better.
You do not talk purely inside your head during the time you are traveling, of course; that would be crazy, and you are a mentally sound and sane individual, no matter what anyone else says. In the first place, as you are perfectly normal, doesn't that make anyone that describes you as anything else the abnormal ones?
Yes, you are legitimately saying that anyone criticizing your mental state should be put into a looney bin themselves post haste. Preferably the kind that puts inmates into pillories to let them be useful to society by way of their bodies if nothing else.
You're sure something like that exists somewhere in this world. You have a literal lust zone where all kinds of sex are normalized, at some point an insane asylum has to have been affected by something along the same lines, you're sure.
But enough about the facilities you will use to house any heretical political opponents to your rule as the God-Empress Jacqueline Frost in a constructive manner when the time comes, you have actual talky-talking to do.
"So you have the Sight, right Jackie?" Yasmin asks, her wide-brimmed hat keeping the sun off her upper body as a whole. You are not at all jealous of it, of course.
"Sight?" You tilt your head.
"Very rare power," Tahira explains. "To see more than most."
"Muh." Clearly, that describes you perfectly. "I sense magic and stuff. 'S how I found you."
"Astounding. This ability is known to manifest at times, but it is very rare indeed." The sand-oriented girl sends you a wide smile. "We really would have no idea where to go without you."
"Muh." You puff out your chest, glad to hear your companions are wise enough to know whom to heap praise unto for the many blessings your mere presence brings. Why, all living beings should learn from them, in fact!
"I wonder, what kinds of magic can you see? I mean, is it an active spell we are tracking, or a strong magical being, any idea?"
"Muh-muh…" You concentrate, casting your senses out and ignoring the mundane ones for a bit to receive more clarity, your eyes closed as your brows furrow. "Feels like a big spell. I think."
"لطيف جدا. هل يمكننا الاحتفاظ بها؟," Tahira says, the words sounding like a question of some sort.
"No, fellow protector of peace, Jackie is not a pet." Indeed. If anything, everyone else is your pets.
"But she is, really, too cute," the water-aligned magical girl pouts, her dark skin glistening in the light of the sun.
"Muh." You are the cutest. Though there are some beings that may be able to contest you in this regard, of course. "Tabitha is also cute."
You pat your cat, stroking her back and scratching her head behind her ears. She in turn raises her head to push back against your fingers in a display of delight. "Mrew."
Indeed. She put it like nobody else could.
Finally, though, what you believe to be the next step on your journey comes into sight. "Down there. I think it's the entrance."
A door carved into sheer rock, decorated with pictures of humanoid sideways figures. A clear sign of an Egyptian way of viewing the world if you ever saw any.
"Into the rabbit hole we go then," Yasmin says, taking a deep breath. "I will lead the way, just in case it is an ambush."
"Muh." No way. You shall be the first explorer to see these ancient tombs, you and nobody else!
Sadly, there is a snag in your plan. Why, a terrible, horrible, no-good, issue standing between you and pretending at being a better, cuter and manlier Indiana Jones, and isn't that just rude at this point?
"Spell on the door. Maybe it's a trap."
"Huh. You think we could just dig around it?" Yasmin's first thought has her raise her shovel made of sand, gesturing for the rocks surrounding the entrance.
"Or could trigger it, safely somehow?" Tahira adds.
"Muuuh… !" You are mainly just frustrated at how everything has to stand between you and having fun. You already came all this way, it isn't fair you have to wait even longer to see some genuine Egyptian tombs complete with mummies and lots of artefacts to steal and keep in a museum back home!
… No, wait, you aren't British. Lots of artefacts to steal and decorate your home with!
Right, no, you shall not fall for this trap. This trap that is meant to frustrate you and drive you toward wasting your strength instead of simply outwitting it.
As the size of your wits is only outmatched by the size of your dong, you shall have none of this!
"Step back. I got this." You aren't quite sure Tahira understands what you are saying here, but she still follows along and takes some distance from the door when Yasmin just tilts her head towards this end, giving you more than enough space to work with- and make this look impressive, too.
In a crackling discharge of casually (for you) gathered power, a layer of frost covers the area directly in front of you, followed by ice, simply taking over the rock formations around you as more and more of it grows upwards in jagged, rugged formations itself, pointing in random directions. In the center of it all, though, a swiftly thickening pair of your miniature spires forms, ice cracking everywhere, and it soon turns into a roughly humanoid form, slowly emerging as it gains more and more definition by the second.
Its eyes are a pure white, uneven surface spraying out rogue-ish charm when it raises a hand, index finger making a 'come hither' gesture.
You actually based its build off of your former self, now that your memories of that time are returning much more clearly these days. You really worked damn hard for that bod.
It's pure heresy your old body died, daddy. A crime against humanity.
Thank you, Elena. Practicing so much with your golems really did pay off, you think, just for the aesthetics.
"W-what is that?" Yasmi asks.
"Golem. Muh." You tilt your head. "Controlled minion."
"… Why is it flexing?"
"… No idea what you mean." You clear your throat, making your unruly, unusually attractive ice-type automaton pay attention. "Open door."
Your golem shrugs, tearing its legs from the ground (those calves were sculpted back then and they are sculpted now, by the way, though you did have leg hair that's absent here) and approaching the door in question. Putting its hand on it, it pulls-
And nothing happens. It tilts its head, looking back at you… And tries pushing this time, applying its considerable strength as a rocky grinding noise is heard.
Finally, with a quick flourish of it shoulder blades, it throws the double doors wide open, turning around to give you a victorious look.
"Did the spell not trigger? Or maybe it was no curse after all," Yasmin suggests, only to be denied by her compatriot immediately.
"No, look. Cracky."
Indeed, as Tahira says, your sculpture in honor of your past self is already falling apart, vicious cracks running through its body as it moves to look down at itself. Then, falling to its knees, it plays out an absolutely silent death animation, its hands on the sides of its head, moving as though to bemoan its fate or maybe plead for help.
"Success. The spell is gone," you announce.
"Uhm… Are you sure it has no ego of itself?"
"Muh." Of course it doesn't. "Just a drama queen."
The tomb you finally enter, now that you've cleared out everything in the way, is… honestly not all that exciting, at first. Sure, it's filled with all sorts of very atmospheric interior design, from the stones used to construct it to the usual pictograms and just straight-up pictures you see in places like this all the time in video games, but you don't see any curses nor traps barring the way forward.
You do naturally send additional golems you summon ahead of yourself, that much goes without saying; you have an eye for details and no magical traps could hope to escape your sight to begin with, but there is no need to risk it when you have infinite amounts of disposable summons to abuse, is there?
That was a rhetorical question. There is not.
"I've never actually been to one of these before, would you believe that?" Yasmin whispers as the three of you proceed (you are in the lead, of course). "The graves that the old pharaohs made for themselves were amazing."
"Muh." You speak at normal volume, by the way.
The tomb doesn't go too far, honestly, and before long you arrive at a room with no door, instead sporting a false one that does not open and is instead covered in more hieroglyphs. Above it, a slit inside the wall lets in a wide ray of sunlight, right above what seems to be some kind of altar.
"Huh. We didn't see a sarcophagus or anything," Yasmin notes.
"This is strange." Tahira is right, of course. She often has the right of it. "There must be something."
"Muh. Probably didn't cremate him," you nod along. "So he wouldn't fit here. Probably a puzzle."
It's one of those things you are very happy about in Bloodborne, it not making you solve a ridiculous puzzle every five minutes of playtime. Just endless amounts of violence and death, just like the Jackie intended.
Okay, take a moment to evaluate what the room gives you. Step one, identify the pieces, followed by step two and three which is to determine what the pieces are meant to do and finding a way to make them do so.
… Oh, who're you kidding, you aren't gonna bother thinking about this too deeply. Just try things until something works.
"Chuuh." Unlawfully, Brian pops out of your dress pocket, landing on the dusty floor in a caricature of catlike grace. "You just have to-"
"Muh," you interrupt him. "Let me think."
"… Chuh."
"Yarr! Let the lassie do her part, she's 'e brain between you two!"
"Puchuuuh."
Meanwhile, the conversation washing over the background behind you, you are looking at the little altar thingy standing on the stone scaffold, inspecting it from all sides. It obviously looks like the centerpiece of the room, so…
You poke and prod at it, feeling for any hollows or other ways to insert anything. Partially because you've been thinking about inserting a little something into Tahira, her outfit is really distracting, honestly, but that doesn't matter.
You eventually feel a pattern, a smooth piece of gold. Smoother than the rest. Looking at it, it looks sort of like… A feathered eye?
Look, these guys had zero artistic sense, it's a miracle anyone can make out anything on this stuff. Really, if anyone involved in creating these hieroglyphs were still alive, you'd have them all fired on the spot for this.
Still, if it is an eye and stuff… You go to the wall it would be looking at, giving it a good kick.
Something rattles beyond it, like a chain moving around, and the whole chamber vibrates, movement resonating throughout it. The slit letting in the sunlight widens, just enough to shine onto the altar, and a bunch of mirrors slide into place, out of little pockets they'd been hidden inside of.
The palette the altar is standing on slides into the round as it sinks downwards, splitting apart and making the golden centerpiece swing open to reveal-
A ladder, compacted into one single piece, only one part staying in place as the rest slide down, snapping into place one segment after the other.
"Ooh," Yasmin murmurs, "how did you know how to do that?"
"Are you a genius?" Tahira asks on top.
You ponder the question. Could it be that you are, in fact, a genius, intellectually so far above any peers you might have that you may be distinguished from them in a categorical manner?
"Yes," you nod. "Am a genius."
"… Chuuh, I was literally screening your thoughts. You had no idea what you were doing."
"Yarr, see, you're polar opposites! You know what to do and get nothing done, she doesn't and gets results, me matey!"
"Chuh, that's it, I'll boil you alive and tear off your legs!"
A brief scuffle ensues during which, amazingly, nobody gets cut by Cuthbert's kitchen knife, despite him flailing it around wildly. You and Yasmin take possession of your respective Puchuus to keep them apart, in the end, before you descend down the newly revealed ladder.
Now that you're inside the real tomb, you're finally getting somewhere; not only are there a bunch of Anubis statues to accompany all the hieroglyphs, there are even what seem to be enchanted braziers burning forevermore and a bunch of these big, segmented pillars holding everything up everywhere.
In short, it's a lot more imposing and atmospheric than the boring vanilla area above. Way more worthy of being explored by Indiana Jackie, at last.
You proceed onwards quietly once everyone has made it down, quietly creeping ever closer towards the source of the wide-ranging magical aura you sensed. You are the very epitome of stealth.
"Muh muh, muh-muh muh muh, muhmuh muh-muh, muh muh muh-muh, mu, mu, mumumuuuuh, mumumuuuuh, muh muh!"
"Is that the Mission Impossible theme?" Yasmin asks.
"Do not know, I do not watch your American movies," Tahira shrugs.
"Yarr!" Cuthbert waves his kitchen knife from atop the former's sandcastle straw hat (that you are still not jealous about, dammit). "It is."
"Muh." They screwed up your rhythm, now it's gone. Fine, whatever, you'll just proceed straight onward.
Suddenly, however, Tabitha stirs from where she was napping in your arms, giving off a fluttering purring sound as she stretches (her little paw pads are very soft against your skin) and jumps to the ground, sniffing the air a little.
Then she darts off, cutely tapping away and running off into a niche inside of the wall. It's way too small for you to follow her, but that's alright- Tabitha has proven she can take care of herself, she'll find her way back to you in time.
"Uhm… Is that alright? She's just a little kitty, shouldn't we have just stopped her?"
"Muh." You shake your head. "Tabby will find us when she's done."
"Done with what?" Yasmin asks.
You shrug. You're her owner, not her boss, how the hell would you know?
Tabitha moved onward, deeper into the pleasant gloom away from the main halls and towards the final resting place of a very particular being. She hadn't known ahead of time, but the scent had been all but unmistakable.
It didn't take her all that long to follow it towards its source. Inside a small chamber, the door to which was still locked and most likely carefully hidden somewhere else, she found what could only be it.
There were a few candles that, judging by their smell, hadn't been off in a few centuries at least, and she had to hold back a kitty sneeze as she poked her head inside. All the same, she had arrived, so she emerged from the little hole in full, shaking her fur out after all that dust she'd just trawled through.
That would need lots of brushing later.
Now in a bad mood about how messed up she'd gotten (brushing was nice, but cuddling was better and this would be cutting into cuddling time), she growled at the mummified figure inside the chamber she'd found, paw raised with half-unsheathed claws.
'Stop pretending and get on with it already, bitch.'
"Hohoho, such an impatient youngster," the grandfatherly voice replied, ancient, mummified cat proving it could move to face her with no issue. "Let the elderly take stock of you before you rush them, will you?"
Tabitha laid her ears back against her head and swished her tail. 'Time is money and my human is already getting into trouble, I can feel it.'
"Ah, youth. That would do it. You simply have yet to learn patience, young kitten."
'Fuck off, old-timer,' she hissed, 'not everyone's old enough to start forgetting names and faces.'
"You wound me, you truly do," the dead, yet still animated body of the cat said, plopping itself down on its side. It was more amused than wounded, a great failing on its part Tabitha was considering the correction of. "Now, I do not have much to offer in my humble quarters, but you are wondering what led you to me, yes?"
'The scent was pretty clear, 'gramps'' she meowed at the distant ancestor of hers she had come to visit. 'Nice grave you got by the way, but I'll be shooting for immortality. Just so you know where you can stick your life lessons.'
"Hohohoho, the impetuousness of youth, truly. So I take it you would not care for learning of the clan's secret techniques I can only imagine died with me? Or of the location of Bastet's hidden temple, where the Big Cat is revered to this day? I sensed your human you know, she truly has a righteous spirit of cattiness in her."
Tabitha grit her teeth, snapping at the air. 'Out with it before I lose my patience, old man! She's suicidally overconfident at the best of times, even if she can just power through most of what's thrown at her. I can only imagine how much she will rampage and destroy this whole place if I'm not there to rein her in!'
"Hohoho, have some faith, little one! I am sure you will arrive to keep her in check in just the nick of time in that case. Believe me, these things have a way of working themselves out."
She did not, in fact, believe him. Her Jackie may have been fooled by the words of the not-cat, but she was not going to trust in narrative convention to keep anyone safe.
Still, she sat down on her haunches, regaling the obviously doddering ancestor of hers she had found in an unexpected place with an unimpressed look. 'For the record, I do not believe anything you say has any worth whatsoever until it's proven correct.'
"I would not have it any other way, young kitten. Now listen and listen well, we will start with the Art of the Litterbox and move on to the Secret Squeezing Paw from there, depending on your aptitude for paw techniques. It has been so long since I have handed down the clan's techniques, a true treat this is, hoho!"
Now that Tabitha has demonstrated the obvious advantages of a cat's form in navigating and exploring this place, you take a moment to consider creating more ice-type cats to do just that, mostly in the hopes of searching every nook and cranny of this tomb for valuables without having to do so yourself.
To this end your conclusion is that, indeed, more cats are good. More cats are always good, really, so you do not even have to think about it particularly deeply.
"Muh. Magical cats, appear!" All around you, ice forms, turning into small and almost fuzzy creatures whose surfaces are designed to mimic actual fur, once again demonstrating your immense mastery over the mysteries of cats. And the universe, but mostly cats.
"EEEEEEEEE!" Tahira squees, snatching one of your newly made minions up and cradling it in her arms. "So cute! And so cold! Aaaah!"
"Muh. Ice type best type," you affirm. Then, clearing your throat as you note the way Yasmin just seems to look slightly lost, you issue forth your command. "Loot Kittens, away!"
They scatter in all directions, squeezing through any visible openings just like real cats. Tahira makes a disappointed sound as her chosen one also runs off, but she will simply have to deal with it until you are done here and can leave one around for her to play with.
"… Loot Kittens?" Yasmin adjusts her hat, adding a few battlements to the sandcastle upon it in what you believe to be a subconscious action. "Is the name literal?"
"They are kittens that find loot for us," you nod. "Very convenient. Also, Trap Finder! Hero Golem!"
You conjure another normal golem to lead the way for you again, followed by a blank template you swiftly nudge Elena's soul into, your daughter wiggling in anticipation in playing adventurer archaeologist with you.
Her body comes into being in a glittering of ice and snow, supernaturally soft yet durable frozen water coalescing into long, white hair and widely spread, thin sheets of ice-cloth, slowly settling into place as a kimono-adjacent garment. Her face is of delicate beauty, big blue eyes fitting into the color scheme of white, blue and purple (mostly in the clothes) even as her lips are the only red on her, a minimal contrast meant to attract and divert one's gaze both.
In short, you very much approve of the body she chose to create for herself. All that secret training to enhance the malleability of your golems really did pay off.
"Hello. My weapons, if you would not mind?" Elena asks, choosing to have manners all of a sudden for some reason.
You naturally just hand your sword and her knife over, your daughter tucking the latter away into the folds of her clothes (that are technically the surface of her body right now, but eh) and laying the flat side of the former over her shoulder to keep it ready for battle.
"Thank you. Now, shall we proceed?"
"Okay, I have to ask, are you self-aware?" Yasmin cuts in. Cuthbert leans in as she stretches her head forward, looking Elena over "Because we've been treating Jackie's golems as disposable so far, but I am having ethical concerns right now."
"Oh no, most are entirely mindless. I am somewhat of a… special case, if you will, but I am cooperating with Jackie in this and do not experience death no matter how often my body is destroyed, so the point is moot," she waves the suddenly nosy magical girl off. "I actually quite enjoy the chance to battle to the death repeatedly. But let us not dally any longer, we have evildoers to slay and their plans to cross."
"In that order," you agree. "Onward! More kittens later."
Thus it was said and thus it shalt be.
Ten minutes later, you regret everything.
"Puny mortals! You dare defile the sanctum?!"
Utterly unfuckable. Even if you were into guys, which you are not, this creature is just completely not sexy enough for your purposes, that being driving your hard cock into it. You'd need Tahira licking your balls at minimum just to stay hard.
"My Mistress shall rejoice over your broken bodies!"
You perk up. That sounds much better already.
The very first thing that happens, of course, is that Yasmin swings her shovel made of sand, heartily scattering the material as it grows into a huge wall of sandstorm, is the best way you can describe it; a massive barrier made of constantly moving sand, grains shifting and dense enough that they look like a single whole in constant motion at first glance.
"This one looked strong. Any thoughts?" She asks, giving everyone a look.
"Yarr!" Above her, Cuthbert speaks up. "Looks like a fiery ol' bugger, alright. Matey has dem muscles to hit hard an' fast, too, 'e does!"
"Chuuh!" Having reversed his position inside your dress pocket, Brian lets his head poke out, the tip of his tail behind it as well. "Goes to show what you know. It's an Efreet, or Ifrit, same thing. Spirits of fire and destruction."
"Muh. Ice type best type." It has to be said just to make sure everyone is on the same page here.
"Yes yes, chuh. Expect ranged explosive fire magic that can penetrate defenses and immense physical strength. I would suggest keep a distance, puchuh, until you can deal with both and destroy it fast, the more you wound it the stronger its magic will become."
"As I said, yarr, fire and strength."
"Puuuh, your tactical evaluations aren't worth the shi-chuh of a brain you take them from!"
"Muh. Focus."
"هل يجب أن أغرقها؟" Tahira asks, once again in Arabic. Which you still do not understand.
"It would likely break out, save it for the right moment," Yasmin suggests. Then wincing, she looks towards her sand barrier, which you can see is slowly turning into glass and slowing down its movement. It looks pretty cool actually. "It is breaking through already. What will you do, Jackie?"
"Muh." Thinking quickly, you wiggle one of your hands while the other one pulls a certain ring off of it; once it's free of your finger, you hold the green-ish glinting piece of jewelry out to Tahira. "This makes it flood. Lending it. Go nuts."
"Thank you," the dark-skinned magical girl smiles, nodding politely. Just like a model citizen of the World Government of Jackiemania. You approve.
In the meantime, you use what few moments you have left thanks to Yasmin's timely intervention to concentrate, your magical outfit oscillating and shifting as you don your magical ice armored dress, more and more additional golems rising from the floor as well and stepping forth to serve as your frontline under Elena's command. Your hands, though, are busy changing out your ammunition, preparing the special clips and jamming them into your magical girl guns.
"Muh. Ready."
"Good, because I can't hold it much longer!" Gesturing with her magical girl weapon, Yasmin dispels her barrier, showing the Efreet standing right on the other side, pulses of pure carbonizing heat emanating from it and distorting the air.
"Oh? The puny mortals dare to reveal their faces again?" It laughs, voice like mountains rubbing against each other. "And they even brought their dolls, how quaint!"
"Muh. You go play with the dollies," you quip, marshalling your magical might and blasting him with your signature spell. "Bad children only get the ugly ones."
A wave of frost emerges from your frame, blasting the humanoid creature standing around thrice the height of a grown man.
Your magnificent magic is met with a furious roar, the fire-giant's hand coming down against your spell and swiping through it. In its wake, a wave of flame burns away all your Jackie-attributed mana, minimizing the effect you had, though obviously not easily; the Efreet has to spend twice or even thrice as much mana to snuff yours out.
Obviously, the Jackie juice is so powerful it requires at least this much inferior-typed magic to negate!
Next to you, Yasmin thrusts out her shovel, a small whirlwind of sand coming up to twist around the creature's legs, followed by Tahira swinging one of those water bowls you saw her with when you first encountered her around, a wide arc of water left floating in the air that follows suit and turns the sand into wet mud.
"Pathetic! Truly pathetic! Is this all you can do, puny mortals?"
"Overcompensating much? Mini-sausage-man," you grumble. You raise your hand in a swishing motion, then bring it down to point at your opponent, ordering your golems into the fray.
The Efreet responds by snorting, then spitting out a ball of fire that impacts right into their midst, melting two of your trusty minions outright before they so much as make contact.
"Muh!" You groan in frustration.
Bosses that get two actions per turn are bad design.
You do what comes naturally. Knowing the bullets you chambered do what they will, you take aim over the heads of your golems, the towering monstrous spirit presenting the perfect target.
You loosen a series of shots, pumping as much enchanted lead as you can into the air and in turn into the Efreet. Said Efreet exhales a gout of flame, one clawed hand wiping through the air to instantly melt most of your shots with the sheer heat of the appendage, but a few yet make it past it, their exact trajectory becoming clear.
The spiritual being's eyes widen fractionally, much to your immense satisfaction, as several bullets slam home right into its crotch, the enormous creature stepping back, one knee on the ground and one hand joining it to keep its balance.
You can see the magic roiling throughout its body, your enchanted bullets' effects manifesting themselves. Now, devoid of a dick and yet overcome with horniness, it will-
"RRRAAAAAAAGH!" The Efreet roars, fire spontaneously coming into being around it and magma-like blood coalescing into new flesh and even clothes for it. "I will tear you in twain upon my cock, mortal!"
It lunges straight for you, jumping above your golems and breaking out of the mud spell the local magical girls laid upon it. Said golems promptly jump upwards themselves, stabbing their sword-sharpened arms into its boiling skin as a dense mist escapes where they begin to melt, their bodies shaken violently when it lands and they're still stuck to its chest and belly, but your opponent squarely ignores them, instead grabbing straight for you with a hand large enough to grasp your whole torso easily!
"Jackie, dodge!" Yasmin calls out from where she's already repositioned, too far to interfere at a moment's notice.
"Muh."
Your eyes narrow, time seemingly slowing down. Waiting for just the right moment, you lean forwards, the large hand coming right towards you- you jump, somersaulting over the attempt to grab at you and landing on the Efreet's wrist with both feet.
You dip downwards, pushing off and rolling right between its legs, coming to your feet behind the monster as it uselessly swipes at the air.
"Muh muh."
Turning around, you face its back, together with Elena who is charging past you with your sword raised up high, executing a textbook downward slash. You assume anyways, if you ever read a textbook on sword fighting it would be mentioned somewhere.
Her strike impacts the fire spirit's hamstring, a powerful snapping sound coming out as she cuts into the back of the monster's foot.
A bit of frost gathers, but is dispersed uselessly, the additional effect of a sword strike brushed off as though it never existed.
Meanwhile, the other girls haven't been idle either; Yasmin took a moment to somehow enlarge her magical girl weapon, the sand shovel now twice her own size and raining sand down from its loose surface. "Try this on for size, asshole!"
She swings. She hits. The disoriented Efreet is sent flat onto its face, a large cut running over its side where the edge of the shovel impacted it.
"Jackie is mine!"
Tahira activates your Ring of Tides, conjuring forth a massive rush of water. This water rapidly splits up into oversized pikes, still rushing forward to pierce into the monster's overheated flesh with strangely satisfying, meaty sounds.
They are heating up, turning to steam, but Tahira keeps on pushing in more water, keeping the forcefully expanding matter from having an easy way out.
She knows what she is doing, too. You can see it in her face. "Be punished and suffer for my place as big sister!!!"
The holes she made into the Efreet's body explode, sending magma-blood flying everywhere. It is kind of awesome.
It is only now that your groaning opponent, wounded heavily, rams an elbow into one of the golems keeping him down by stabbing at his limbs, rolling around and crushing another golem under his body, the trapped heat simply melting it before you can do anything to counteract. "You will suffer eternally once I tear out your vapid souls… !"
Naturally, you cannot let that stand. Guns raised, you gather your power, the magical juggernaut you are focused into a single intent.
You will play proctologist. Using your biggest ice lance available.
You're thrown back by the recoil of your mighty attack, an enormous icicle dashing forth and-!
The Efreet dodges, rolling to the side as his horn glow a flaming red, your majestic attack striking the wall behind him instead of your actual target. It goes without saying that, on impact, the wall loses decisively, your projectile going straight past it and crashing through the brick of another, and another, and another…
You and the Efreet exchange a glance. "Muh. You were meant to be hit by that," you explain to this very slow child, the temperature around you dropping precariously.
"… No more playing games. Time to get serious!"
A wave of heat washes over your position, your opponent opposing you, oppositional to your own influence, heat and cold fighting each other in a battle of will.
That you refuse to lose, of course, and so he cheats almost immediately, roaring as a bright glow emerges from his body, a literal explosion shaking the chamber even further and throwing you backwards with its sheer expanding force!
You impact the wall with enough force to incapacitate any lesser being, your back actually kind of hurting even as you witness yet another wall coming down next to you, scrambling back onto your feet and coughing a little. Your amulet did its job, the extremely resource-intensively crafted artefact taking most of the damage in your stead, but still, this was pretty uncomfortable.
That does not excuse you from trash-talking your foe, however. "Weak. Do you even lift?"
"Feisty. I like them f- would you stop that?!" The Efreet lashes out at Elena, who made it through the shockwave by using one of her fellow golems as a shield and just came forth to stab your opponent in the foot, dancing backwards out of his range immediately afterwards.
"No," she tells him plainly. "I will keep going until you fall over."
Efreet now at 360/800
Glancing to the side, you see what Yasmin and Tahira did while you were occupied; having reacted quickly, the two of them hunkered down behind a barrier of hardened mud, now partially glassed and torn down but the girls emerging from behind it unscathed.
Good on them, not everyone is as immortal as you are and you didn't even have to babysit them through this attack.
"Perish and let your ashes be trampled by a thousand camels!"
Oh, right, you're fighting. The Efreet is gathering a fresh new fireball in his claws, the rapidly growing obviously offense spell very much meant to obliterate you.
Time to act quickly.
Clearly, if the Efreet you are fighting is going out of his way to do one last constructive thing before his death, so you shall follow suit and consume the meal he is preparing on your account.
Watching on impassively as some kind of… fire black hole finishes forming, you let your foe throw it right at you… but instead of being swallowed by it, you raise your hands, increasing the size of your body's profile.
"Muuuh~!"The rattling, blistering heat surrounds you, but you readily counter it with your own magic, carefully observing using your additional senses.
You pull and scratch and tear, fraying the magical consistency of the spell meant to destroy you and instead dissolving it into pure mana, raw power that simply exists as the intended effects gradually fizzle out, becoming nothing before fully reaching you. Instead, you are left with the consequence, just a bunch of magical power right on you.
Naturally, you absorb it, your own magic already halfway buried in it as it is. This process is actually quite straining, far from as effortless as you make it look, but even so you refill your reserves by supping upon your enemy's essence.
"Muh," you address the fiery spirit, voice as clear and emotionless as ever. "Bland. You're made of fire and your spells still taste fucking raw."
"This is bullshi-"
He doesn't get the time to finish that sentence as you raise both your guns from where you tucked them away momentarily, firing off one of your signature massive icicles once more. This time, though, you hit him before he can move much, nailing the towering humanoid against the nearest wall as the magma-like blood he sprays from his wounds rapidly cools and turns into what looks like obsidian.
"-iiiit."
Nevermind, he's still alive and managed to finish talking after all.
Just before you can decisively order Elena to execute your political opponent, however, something unusual happens. Out of nowhere, a blur appears, darting from beyond one of the walls someone broke down earlier towards your foe. Rotating like a spinning ball, the small object impacts the Efreet's head, right between the horns.
"Mreow." Tabitha, in all her kitty glory, wearing her assassin's cloak, is sitting upon the fire spirit's face. Then, moving deceptively slowly, she turns around and jumps off onto the floor, slowly walking towards you with her tail raised into the air confidently.
The Efreet's face, lacking any and all understanding of the situation, tilts. It tilts further and further, the severed head falling onto the floor with the clattering of its horns marking the very end of the fight.
"Muh. Good kitty."
"Do not think this is the end," the disembodied head declares, now staring at you spitefully. "I will return in time and you shall never find-"
"Fuck off and die already, loser," you murmur as you use your water cutter pistol mode to fill his mouth with water, shutting him up and making him gurgle as both the headless body and the bodyless head slowly go up in smoke.
Not even leaving a corpse for you to desecrate. How incredibly inconsiderate of him.
"Prrrr." Tabitha jumps into your arms anyways, purring and happily licking your nose. She is such a good kitty. Yes, yes she is, hmm?
"Mrrrrrm," you purr back at her, smiling.
"… Is it over already?" Yasmin asks, joining you. "And here we didn't even get to go all out."
"Too cute. Can you take a picture for me?" Tahira asks in the meantime.
You bask in your victory for a few moments, your victory and Tabitha's application of her little kitty paws upon your face. They're very cute and squishy, their feeling on your mouth and cheeks making you smile.
Eventually, however, all good things have to come to an end, including the time you are holding your cat up to let her cuddle your face. "Muh."
In the meantime, the other two magical girls that came to this place with you have been taking a look around, notably at the apparent lack of the controller of the ugly guy you just beat the crap out of.
"Pretty sure whoever that 'mistress' of his is, she isn't here," Yasmin finally concludes, her and Tahira rejoining you at kitty cat cuddle station. "Still a very interesting underground grave-temple-thing, though."
"Muh," you shrug, carrying Tabitha on your head again, your cat sitting more secure on it than ever before. "Any loot?"
"There was a ritual chamber, yeah," the sand-oriented girl said. "It had a big altar glowing red and stuff, with this on top of it."
Waving her hand, she gestures for a chunk of sand she's been controlling, rolling after her like a doggie or something. On it, you can see some kind of staff or sceptre, made of massive gold and with bright green gemstones and amber set along its length, culminating in a flaring head where it splits into four parts that hold a massive ruby the size of a grown man's head in place.
"Looks nifty," you say, observing it closer. "And magical."
"Chuuh!" Comin from behind one of your feet like he was hiding there all along (the massive creep), Brian looks up at the item in question. "Transported like this in case of curses?"
Yasmin shrugs, unapologetic. "We're in Egypt, we have curses in literally everything. It pays to be careful."
Tahira shudders, her bare skin drawing your gaze. "Genderbending is not fun. Ever."
"Yarr!" With Brian present, Cuthbert naturally comes scuttling out of the little sandcastle on Yasmin's head, the one that cannot possibly contain him due to sheer physics- it's simply too small. "Looks to me 'ere like a bigly doodad, a plot item or device!"
"Chuh, this is the object known as the Eye of Ra, said to be the key to ruling all under the sun," your own Puchuu interjects. "Obviously what was used to cause the effect we saw, chuuh. Its last known use was by an ancient pharaoh, Thutmose III., before it was lost during his efforts to obfuscate-"
"Yarr, important thingy, we get the drift."
"Puchuuuuuuuuuuh!"
You grab Brian by the scruff of his neck before they can fight again. "Muh. Looks safe, no curses on it. Just lotsa magic."
"… How can you tell the difference?" Yasmin asks.
You shrug. "Just do. Any hints about the controller?"
"Meow," Tabitha speaks up, purring and swatting at your nose.
"Muh."
"Mieow."
"Muh?"
"Mrrrrrr."
"Do you, understand her?" Tahira asks.
"No. That would be silly."
Sadly, your Autonomous Loot Kittens (you'd call them ALKs, but that's not cute enough, you have to think of a better acronym) have not found the Efreet's controller for you while you were busy, the person in question by all accounts legitimately not within the underground grave. Annoying, but you will have to find and fuck her until she understands who gets to end the world, when and how (hint, it's not her) later, once you've found some way to track her down.
What they did manage to do, however, was to trawl all over the grave and loot it for all it was worth. The sight that greets you as you return to the initial chamber accessed through your transcendent understanding of ancient grave mechanics and their practical applications is one of glittering gold, implements made of such and miscellaneous objects that seem like they might be valuable thrown onto a large heap, a few of your icy loot kittens carrying more bits and bobs in their mouths and throwing it in while a couple of them seem to just be lounging on or swimming around in your treasure as you come in.
They're tough enough they can casually do so, of course. From the looks of it, they even ripped a few hieroglyphs cast in gold out of the walls and added them to your loot pile.
"Muh." Taking a running leap, you hop onto your loot, proudly looking at how big it is as your kitty golems walk all over it and around you, little tails stuck up into the air.
You are the happiness.
"Ah jeez, pretty sure that's some priceless historical artefacts there," Yasmin says, coming to a stand before your new throne. "Then again, apparently this whole place was a secret ritual chamber kind of deal, so who cares?"
"Muh, ours now," you nod. "Need cash?"
"We actually don't have many living costs, so financing ourselves is pretty easy," the girl that's been hanging around Cairo for a good while apparently says. "Most expensive is still gas for the car and food, but we actually get by pretty nicely from donations for Tahira's work."
"I give out water, and do performances," the dark-skinned water girl proudly puffs out her chest. It is small, but very delicious looking. "The people that are doing better often donate food directly."
"You wouldn't believe some of the stuff we get to eat because of that, some of the people in the poorer districts are great cooks with what they have." Yasmin takes a look over your loot throne again, your legs tucked under your thighs as you sit on it. "Actually, how will we get all of this up the ladder?"
"Muh. No problem." You pull out your storage box, made out of only the finest industrial horror thingy you could find. Swiftly cramming everything inside, you hear a sigh from behind you.
"Well, that's sure handy… We usually just use my sand to move stuff, but this is just making everything too easy to transport, isn't it?"
She should see all the chocolate you're storing inside of this thing.
The drive back to the big sandcastle is fairly quiet, the day's events having drained a lot of everyone's energy. Tabitha is being careful not to shed her fur anywhere, instead rolling up into a lump of cat on your lap and resting her head on your palm- holding her snout is, as a matter of fact, very nice and you can only recommend it.
Next to you, Tahira is sitting and holding her hand out for you in a similar manner, so you indulge her and rest your face upon it, eyes drooping a little like they are. What? You've used up a lot of energy to regenerate all the mana you used up during that fight and that always leaves you feeling a kind of phantom exhaustion, if you aren't actively expending it again right away during more fighting.
The Jackie needs her naps. Muh. Thus it shall be decreed.
The Sand Castle itself, now that you're all returning, is turning out to be even more impressive than you'd initially thought, now. Sure, it pales in comparison to your own home, dwarfed by the immensity of your basement alone (that is very much yours no matter what Brian may think on the matter), but still, this sandy little palace has an actual underground parking garage inside of its massive bulk, which is where the car is parked now as you're all getting out of it.
The male driver gives everyone a polite nod before making for a side door, most likely to go… do whatever it is normies do these days, whereas you and the girls go and enter what seems to be an elevator made of sand of all things, soon ascending up to where you were parked earlier while waiting for them to finish looking around for the clues that led you to the Vale of Kings.
"How's this even run?" You ask.
Yasmin just shrugs. "Magic," she says before getting serious. "So, planning time. We interrupted whatever was going on with that ritual and took the Eye of Ra, but while we know there's someone around that initiated it and summoned that Efreet to guard it we don't know exactly what it was meant to achieve nor where our mystery villain is."
"Muh. All we know is she's female," you nod along.
"So the way I see it we have two options here. One, we investigate whatever we can find on this mysterious 'mistress', two, we wait until something else happens and track her down that way, because like hell is someone that did all of this going to sit back and give up," Yasmin continues. "That sound about right?"
"Yes. Option two is horrible and we should ignore it," Tahira… agrees? "Best to take initiative however we can."
"Muh muh," you nod.
"Guess we're all in agreement then, I didn't like option two either," your apparent second in command (seeing as she technically leads the local team you suppose) adds her opinion. "But let's do that tomorrow, we've been running around investigating and fighting all day! Who wants to run a movie marathon!?"
Tahira clears her throat. "Yasmin loves, American movies," she whispers conspiratorially. "Is how she learned English."
"Hey, everyone needs a hobby and my hobbies are explosions and gun violence."
"Yarr! Are ye reddy to find yer end against my world record win streak of tic tac toe?"
"Chuh, that game is stupid and I will crush you, reprobchuh crab."
Looks like everyone is making plans for the evening already, how nice.
Tabitha seethed, knowing full well her human had no sense of direction unless she was literally using cat vision to orient herself off of magical energies. Really, this whole thing was proving to be way too much work already and she'd just been at it for a day!
Curse that stupid old undead cat and whatever bullshit came to his mind when he was instructing her. Ugh. Sure, it was helpful now, but she still had to actually prepare the instructions.
Twitching, the pen shivering in her paw, she squeezed down, carefully dragging it over the paper she had found inside one of the cupboards, together with a bunch of other writing supplies. Cat paws were not made for holding things and that old fogey knew perfectly well she would have to use a pen for this!
It was probably an extension of the 'training' he had insisted she do. Which was ridiculous, she was already the ultimate life form, she did not need to train anything to get even better when nothing surpassed her as it was.
Growling unpleasantly when the tip of her ballpoint pen slipped, again, Tabitha just took it in her mouth and did this the old-fashioned way, her jaw's grip much more secure. How exactly her doddering ancestor had known where she would need to send her human and assorted servants to the Hidden Temple of Bastet she had no idea, but hey, he'd told her where to find it and that it should still be maintained by the Big Cat's clergy, so to the temple they would go.
Just as soon as she managed to write these stupid instructions on where to go down while everyone else was eating packaged snacks and watching television. Then all she'd need to do was show the paper to them in the morning and they'd be set, no investigating around, no nothing, it wasn't like they had any clue other than this.
Tabitha huffed, putting the pen down. They should… probably be able to read this. And she'd even drawn a map showing what she'd been told, it should be okay.
You have a bit of a wild night, with party snacks, soda and action movies, the three of you having fun and doing the magical girl equivalent of getting buzzed, as there is no alcohol stocked anywhere that you could find.
And Elena actually did forbid you from drinking any and, as you're technically sharing bodies, you aren't going to just ignore that, even if the sentiment of it being originally hers and her thus refusing to let it be 'devalued' like that is rather weird.
Still you shall indulge her, as all good parents do at times.
Groaning, you fight to get up after the night you just had, looking around- where was the toilet again? However, before you can either poke or bump into the other two sleeping girls until they wake up and tell you where to go, movement in the corner of your eyes makes you look at one of the windows of the wide room Yasmin seems to use as her home cinema.
And the person stepping through it as it is currently open, scales growing on their forehead even as her feet are entirely inhuman, fingernails formed into sharp claws. She is also even more naked than Tahira in her magical girl outfit, the woman's very much voluptuous, womanly body on full display.
If anything, the contrast between nipple-tassles and bare string panties combined with little strings with baubles woven into them crossing over her bare skin and her veiled lower face plus the shawl she's wearing just make her look even lewder.
"Oh my, you weren't supposed to be awake," she says, the small army behind her coming to a halt. "Would you mind going back to bed?"
While her voice is silky and soft, you have an opinion about people ambushing you in your sleep, which is extremely dishonorable, intolerable and just downright rude in opposition to the other way around.
"Muh. Narratively, this is not kosher," you declare, summoning your guns to yourself. "We just did a thing, we should have at least a full day before being attacked. You were doomed from the start."
Who knew you get chatty sometimes right after waking up?
"Also, I'm gonna rape you," you announce, just to make it clear where you stand here. Seriously, with that body and those clothes, she better be expecting it.
Taken aback by your frank statement about her future fate, the woman that you now see actually bears a third, monstrous arm growing from behind one shoulder stays still, observing you.
Then you continue speaking, louder. "Muh. Company."
… Except the two girls lying inside the room, asleep, do not budge.
Maybe this would work better if you could raise your voice, but you can't. Annoying.
"Oh my, it looks like your little friends aren't up for it… Are you sure you want to tangle in that way, I'm sure my men wouldn't mind teaching you about the meaning of-"
You shut the overly long and unnecessary monologue off by raising your gun and firing at the ceiling, the gunshot sound echoing inside the room painfully as your allies twitch awake. "من فقط-"
"Bwaghk!"
The utterly amusing reactions of Tahira and Yasmin aside, you actually do need to get them to fight. "Enemies," you declare. "They used a flashbang."
"If it was a flashbang, there would've been a flash," the woman hisses, waving her apparent minions, the couple dozens of men following in her wake, closer.
"Guh… How are they even here?" A groggy Yasmin asks, slowly staggering to her feet. "Big Sandy should've just bombed them out of existence the moment they came close."
"We came prepared. Magical items that inhibit constructs from perceiving us- you fool girl truly thought yourself safe?" The veiled woman smiles, an evil, kind of seductive smile that would make you want to fuck her mouth if it wasn't for the sharp teeth becoming visible every time she opens it. "There is no safety. You will-"
"Guess they also went around the traps somehow," Yasmin grumbles. "Bah, screw it. Tahira, Jackie, take cover, I'll deal with this!"
"Oh no," Tahira yawns, not even bothering to stand up and rolling across the floor to get away from her teammate. "She is going to, do the thing."
"What thing?" You ask, quietly backing off.
"She saw too many American movies. And the Japanese ones as well."
"Huuuarrrgh! Ultimate! Transformation!" The entire sandcastle shakes, tremors running through the grainy material making it up as it begins moving, in part flowing like a fluid and in part tumbling in large chunks.
"What the- ! We weren't told about this one, back up!"
"If I never have to see another Gundam movie…" Tahira shakes her head.
"Magical Girl! Desert Queen!" The shout comes from within the swirling vortex of sand, Yasmin already long since hidden behind its bulk. Then, fluttering, her hat is thrust into the air, slowly floating down in the early morning's shine to land on a large, bulbous construction of sand.
You have to repress a tear. Truly, you have found a comrade on this day.
It is enormous, a considerable chunk of the sandcastle transformed into Yasmin's true form. A big, utterly massive even, humanoid, small, stout legs leading into a massive set of sixpack abs and pecs, large, sweeping, manly arms that look like they rate as siege engines of their own, hands large enough to grab and throw grown men like toy soldiers, all topped by a round, featureless head.
Yasmin's own head is sticking out at that head's front, belligerence writ across it. "Come and get some, bitches!"
Truth be told, Yasmin just won a million points in your heart. That puts her ahead of Tahira by around two hundred. Tahira is very cute and soft and pliable, but Yasmin just pulled… that.
"Boo yeah, I love having some damn space to work with!"
Sand is still vastly secondary to ice-types, but it just shot up in rating. Why can't you do that?
You simply stand back as the small mountain of sand made siege golem moves, rumbling ahead and jumping off the rest of the sandcastle, a clean cut the only thing proving just how finely controlled its creation was. The foes that caused this whole thing have already retreated down from the structure, acutely aware now that even if they can ignore the magical creation's own reactions, being nonexistent towards them, its creator is still perfectly capable of using it as a weapon.
As the presumably manually controlled cannons prove with their first volley of explosive sand-balls, scattering their targets and making them easy prey for the true danger on this battlefield.
Yasmin stalks, bent forwards like the feral engine of destruction she inhabits, sweeping slams of her fists squashing any opposition before it can build. A few of the figures down there try to fight back, firing off beams of light from some kinds of devices, but Yasmin simply laughs it off, mocking them for their impotence as she transforms one arm into a giant drill, summarily executing her foes.
You are getting a little hard right now, even though Tahira tries to hold a hand over your eyes sat the particularly brutal deaths. "Muh. Nothing new. I like the action."
That's enough to make her ease up. "Ah," she makes. "It is better than action movies at least."
It isn't long before you're joined by the driver, the man setting up a folding table and even chairs for all of you so you can enjoy the show with style. You mentally reclassify him from 'overpaid help' (because he gets paid) to 'mildly overpaid help'.
He still does get paid, but at least he does come in handy.
The massacre continues, a few of the snacks you all ate yesterday whose packaging is still half-full being recycled by way of your gathered mouths. You really, really want that kind of raw physical power; your manliness is crying out for it, feet dangling happily as you watch.
"You really enjoy violence, do you not?" Tahira asks, watching you carefully.
"Muh," you nod. "Have the job, may as well enjoy it."
"Perhaps you are, right," she mutters, one arm stretched out to pat your head. You shall allow this.
Eventually, however, a lone figure sacrifices its subordinates to escape the fight itself, moving into the only direction that offers cover from the constant bombardment of lethal sand fired at everything in sight- that of the castle itself, it goes without saying. Well reasoned, too; beig immune to detection from the structure as is, as long as she can escape Yasmin's sight she should be safe for the moment.
Still an incredibly stupid idea to come closer to you instead of chancing it with the violently exploding miniature-sandstorms capable of rending flesh clean from bone, but outside of that, yes, well reasoned indeed.
"My cue to go," the driver just grunts, giving the two of you a curt nod as he goes. To be honest, you're just surprised at how many words he spoke.
Man, this guy is really uncommunicative.
"New plan it is," the obviously monstrous, but also very sexy woman says, easily jumping up and along the obstacles presented by the half-missing parts of the castle, her crew being absolutely slaughtered behind her. "Who is up for being a hostage?"
… You turn towards Tahira. "Five copper on her finishing them off with the drill."
"No bet, no betting. That is a bad habit."
"Muh."
"Hey! I am-"
You focus your power, firing off a Winterblast followed by encroaching frost shackles, effectively sapping her strength and binding her in place, limbs frozen inside a large chunk of ice that is now sticking to the surroundings.
Not satisfied with that, you proceed to conjure more ice, making it harder and harder for her to break out. "Said I was gonna rape ya," you mutter.
A short while later, the missing chunk of Sandy the Sandcastle is back in place, Yasmin having restored everything to be exactly like how it was. It's a very cool party trick and one day you're going to be able to do this kind of thing yourself.
When you have the time. And feel like it. It would take maybe a few days of practice, you reckon, but for a genius such as you it really can't be all that difficult, now can it?
Obviously not. There is nothing your superior Ice-Type powers cannot achieve, after all. Why, if you really wanted you totally could create a giant floating ice castle twice as awesome as the sandcastle!
That cleared up, you return your focus to the present. The woman creature is tied up now, her third arm in particular chained down by a chain made of extra-dense sand and your ice in combination with each other. A Yasmin confessed privately, her magic is very versatile, much more so than most magical girls that are specialized towards Stone instead (which by your reckoning actually makes her an Oddball magical girl going by the classifications you're aware of), but in exchange her constructs tend to have a lot less durability than ones that would be summoned or formed by them.
Simple tradeoffs. With lots of practice and such, she has a lot easier time creating things like this castle or her giant sand mecha (that you still want), but there are actual downsides to her specialization compared to the nearest comparable, more common one.
Almost as if things are kept balanced among magical girls in some way. Normally you'd laugh it off as the world simply not being fair or caring about balance like that, but… Narrative tropes are real and very much your life, so it could totally be, you suppose.
At any rate, the three of you now stand around the disabled female creature, her tits hanging out nicely due to the angle you insisted she be tied up in, and discuss what to do.
"Should we not, kill her?" Tahira asks. "Just in case of surprises."
"I'd say we interrogate her first, at least," Yasmin grins drily, making you think this is not the first time she has to argue with her partner for this kind of thing. "See what we can find out, then make our judgement."
"Kuh… I will never talk! My lips are sealed!"
"Muh," you say, looking the chained-up woman in the eyes. "Sounds like a challenge."
And you so do love pathetic little challenges like this.
"How will we do this? Torture? Tahira, you could use your waterboarding trick," Yasmin suggests.
"There is no board involved," the darker-skinned girl points out, rolling her eyes.
… Okay, for that alone she gets two hundred points, making the current scoreboard inside your heart a tie between them.
"Muh, muh," you say, raising your hand to be heard. You know exactly how to do this, of course.
"I have a tool for this," you declare, more than eager to get to use it- it's been, what, over a day of Tahira's terrible teasing on account of her skimpy costume without you just sticking your dick into someone somewhere, and such a length of time without sex is taking its toll.
"A tool for extracting information?" Yasmin asks doubtfully, leaning towards you.
"Muh." You nod, wiggling your hips out of your panties and letting them slide to the ground before anyone else in the room can react. You have become quite adept at quickly taking them off, if you do say so yourself. Then, lifting your skirt up, you stand triumphant, your hardening tool immediately apparent. "Just have to use it a lot."
"… Jackie, I don't want to alarm you, but that is a penis," the sand-oriented girl points out. "Why do you have one attached to your body?"
"Brian. Muh." When in doubt, always blame it on Brian. He's at fault for pretty much anything and everything in some way, after all. "Put it on me one day. It's really sensitive and stuff and putting it into people feels good."
"Yarr, of course you would do this! Prepare to be keelhauled!"
"Chuh, bring it, lobster!"
Ignoring the background fighting going on, you proceed to promptly tear off the strings of clothing that until now kept the mysterious assassin's privates hidden from view (if just barely), enjoying the way her breasts jiggle in her bent-over position.
"Hah," she makes, "you think I'll talk just like that? You'll have to do more than wave a mutant dick at m-"
""Language!"" Yasmin and Tahira both demand in unison, sharing a concerned look before seemingly coming to an agreement about what to do. You, meanwhile, have other concerns.
"Muh. Why wave it when I can use it?" That's point number one. "Over and over and over again. You'll talk eventually. When you want it and need it but I won't give it to you unless you do anymore."
Tahira steps closer even as Yasmin sighs, walking off to go stop the escalating fight between Brian and Cuthbert; last you saw, it involved the butcher's knife the crustacean Puchuu likes to use, a broken sand-chair's leg and a miniature chainsaw. You shall not question any part of this. "Have you done this, before?" The darker-skinned girl asks.
"Works every time," you nod again. Well, technically you only did it with the explicit goal of gathering information a couple times back when you were Jack, but hey, same difference. You still know exactly how to do this. "Want to help?"
The tilt of your head must be what convinces her, as your devilishly silvered tongue once again works its wonders. "… Yes. I will help."
"Muh." Stepping behind the now almost completely naked woman, you take a moment to grope her butt, smacking it with one hand a few times just to see it jiggle. Looking along her body, it seems she's just refusing to comment, so instead of wasting any more time you spread her buttocks, slowly rising upwards as you grow a little block of ice out of the ground to stand on, like the little stool you have at home to reach things around the kitchen.
However, before you can do anything else, a slim, warm body presses against you from behind, Tahira's slender fingers wrapping around your cock. You gasp softly as her hand rubs along your length, getting you nice and hard, all the while her other hand explores your nether regions, weighing up your balls and dipping between your already moist folds below it.
"Here, let me," she whispers into your ear, guiding the tip of your spear right up to your target, the woman's defenseless pussy pressed in a little at your mighty rod's touch. The magical girl doesn't let go, though, instead continuing to slowly rub her hand over it. "Now you just need, go in. Can you do that, Jackie?"
You can. And you do, parting involuntarily slickened lip with a long, slow thrust of your hips, your hands on the gold rings around the woman's thighs for leverage. You pant, but do not stop, her tight, heated depths taking you in without issue, your sensitive ribbing sending a storm of sensation all throughout your brain.
Your would-be assassin's teeth are grit, but she still refuses to react otherwise. This can not stand, so you properly take hold of her hips and ram yourself in to the hilt, filling her up and driving a cute sound out of her. "Eep!"
"Muh, huh, ugh," you smugly proclaim your superiority, not at all suddenly assaulted by her insides squeezing down and massaging your entire manhood, instead staying completely unaffected.
"Well done," Tahira praises, her breasts rubbing against your back. You cannot help but wonder what the hand she's holding close to herself is doing near her crotch. "Now you must fuck her good. You know how?"
"Muh!" A bit sweaty, obviously due to the heat and not because certain anatomy is being stimulated, you nod, pulling yourself back- with great difficulty, the pussy you're fucking trying to suck you back in and sugly keep you contained within it, regardless of its owner's opinion.
Still you persevere, finally getting to thrust back in again. Which you do, with great fervour, and repeat the process, soon more a piston than a person, thoroughly rutting into her and knocking on her breeding chamber every time you spear into her, knowing precisely what you want.
This womb must be claimed for the great Empire of Jackiestan! You will knock this bitch up so she may understand her place in this world, stuck to your breeding stick and pregnant all day every day!
"Muh! Muh! Muhmuhmuhmuhmuuuh!" You come in a great burst, too rapidly for you to react, all you can do is to sink yourself as deep into the bitch you're seeding as you can, angrily shoving her hips against her butt to fit as much of yourself inside as you can. She grits her teeth again, the saliva running down her chin proof of your superiority, and you feel how much you're coming into her.
Being celibate for over 24 hours truly is a great trial, you come to understand.
"Is that, hah, all, after all?" The woman asks, chest heaving pleasantly. "I'm, not even, close to giving in!"
Your response is to renew your thrusting, but before you can work yourself into another frenzy, Tahira fondles your balls with a pleasatly wet hand, soft lips nibbling on your ear ("Muuh…?!") for a moment before she resumes whispering.
"There is another hole, for you to take, you know…" You immediately pull the woman's asscheeks apart, revealing a shyly twitching pink star, her asshole right there for the taking. "Right. Would that not feel nice?"
"Hey, what're you- that's not a place you should-" Your target doesn't get the time to complain; you smoothly fight your way out of her milking pussy and instead press against the as-yet unseeded orifice. "Get away from that place! That's my ass- Nuoooh!"
Your eyes close of their own accord as you force yourself into her back entrance, the dry, incredibly tight place you are now exploring made to stretch around your girth. It's almost like a vice, too tight for a normal man to withstand, but you are Jackie, the manliest of men, truly the epitome of manhood, and so your cock forges on into the fires of this new frontier.
Oh, also, the bitch you're fucking is going absolutely crazy, twitching and slobbering with her mouth wide open, as far as you can see. This must be her weakspot.
"Muuh, muuh, muuh!" It's much harder, but slowly working your way in, you manage to steadily sink your cock into her butthole, the woman's breathless screaming likely indicating her coming several times along the way. Once that is done, the entrance of her asshole pleasantly twitching with added tightness right before your knot, you once again start fucking.
"Ng, nnn, nuooh, I'll talk, please, stooohp!" You ravage her cutely vulnerable butt, squeezing it and stretching it, playing with her pliant, soft cheeks as she is unable to really pull away, rapidly working your way towards nother release.
"Muh, could be, lying, have to, make sure!" And by make sure you mean fuck her so stupid she forgets how to lie. Simple. This is not torture, where a simple halfway believable lie will get her out! "Gonna, claim, muh, your ass!"
What tips you over, finally, is not the tightness or the twitching heat of the asshole you fuck, however. No, instead it is Tahira lifting your skirt from behind, gently pushing what you belatedly realize is a water construct in the form of a cock into your snatch, making your legs tremble and eyes roll up just as with the silly cunt you're fucking the brains out of right now.
"Muuuuuuuuuh!"
By the time you're done releasing your seed into the vulnerable asshole you found yourself, breathing hard, halfway lying on the subject of your interrogation, you spot a decent little bulge on her belly, the sheer quantity of your cum making itself known. However, it seems you aren't done yet…
"Now back into her front," Tahira softly orders, the teasing, wet press of water against your own backside spurring you on. "Have to make sure she understands her place here."
"Muh." Your cock is and remains rock hard, of course, and so you do not stop filling this unreasonably sexy woman with your seed until you have to stop for hydration purposes, Tahira oddly apologetic about driving you on until you literally become too sluggish to continue fucking.
In the end, Yasmin comes back into the room, having managed to wrangle both vigorously arguing Puchuus into solid blocks of sand holding tight under her control, though for some reason she seems awfully unamused by the sight of your captive looking like she's several months pregnant with the weight of the cum you pumped into her filling her up, all the while you are lying back on a block of ice, steadily being fed water by the resident water-controlling magical girl as she slowly fondles your cock.
Tahira just shrugs as her partner comes inside. "I have no, regrets."
Yasmin just massages her brow, looking an awful lot like she's repressing a massive sigh. "We will talk about this. Later. For now, did you get anything out of her?"
"No moohre," the captive babbles, the smooth skin of her bulging belly wobbling a little as she reacts to the voice in relatively close proximity. "I'll dalg…"
"Muh," you make, sluggishly raising a fist in victory. You declared you shall make her talk and you did. If that isn't delivering results, you don't know what is.
"Alright then, talk and we'll consider letting you go. Without any more rape." Yasmin seems to be keeping up with the situation, at least, so you can just lean back and enjoy Tahira fussing over you, her pretty chocolate-colored skin looking very tasty at the moment. You wanna nibble.
Summarizing everything you (by which you mean Yasmin) can get, this woman and her compadres were actually hired mercenaries, gathered and paid to perform a quick strike against the local magical girls weeks ago, only now receiving the signal to actually perform it. Presumably after the three of you interrupted the ritual thingy with the Eye of Ra thingy. Coincidence, this is not, obviously.
She doesn't actually know who her employer is exactly, all interactions performed through intermediaries, though she claims that she believes those intermediaries to have been controlled remotely, somehow, on account of their behavior.
Apparently you develop an eye for such things in her business. Or something. You doubt it'll matter that much, as your brain is too powerful for any such thing to work against you anyways.
That aside, they were supplied with magical items that did the thing to make the sandcastle not react to and blast them out of existence by this mystery employer, together with a magical item that apparently makes it easier to spot traps and a specialist to disable or circumvent them being part of the team- both got crushed by Yasmin earlier, so you can't exactly steal anything from him, sadly.
All of this does heavily hint towards some sort of well-prepared and organized plot, with the means and the motive to be ready to remove Yasmin and Tahira from the playing board in case they interfere with whatever nefarious plots are at play. Resources, information, all that good stuff, plus whoever they are they apparently had the time and means to set up a ritual about an ancient Egyptian artefact of world-conquering and set up an Efreet to guard it.
"Chuh, this clearly speaks of a powerful sorcerer or mage, or alternatively a cult," Brian pipes up from his sand prison. "Expect sorcerous traps, misdirection and other magical security measures, puchuuh."
"Watch out for glowing stuff, yarr!"
"Chuuuuuh!"
You also do snack on some leftover party snacks still, to recover in full. You sure do like being fussed over, you have to admit, even if it sometimes just gets in the way.
"Meow!"
Before you can begin brainstorming ways to actually find this mystery employer who is totally the mistress the Efreet mentioned, however, you hear the sound of a cat telling you that something important happened. Curious, just in case it's a red spot to chase after, you go to find Tabitha sitting on the kitchen table a piece of paper lying on it next to her.
"Muh."
"Mrrw."
You pet her head and stroke her chin, your cat closing her eyes in happiness as she receives her cuddles. Only once that is done do you take a look, finding that the paper…
Contains a bunch of scribbles, a few squiggly lines and some kitty paw prints?
"Jackie? Can you, read that?"
"Muh," you make, eyes squinting, the strange note in your hands now so you can look at it from a few angles. "Muh… It's illegible."
Tabitha slumps down, plopping onto her side in disappointed annoyance. "Mew."
"I think your cat is trying to tell us something, Jackie," Yasmin points out.
"Don't be silly. Tabby is a cat. She is always telling us something. Muh."
You proceed to rub your kitty's belly, but instead of enjoying it like usual Tabitha rolls onto your hand, locking it down in place.
"Muh."
"Meow."
Perhaps there is something to Yasmin's hypothesis, after all…