In which Snow White begins her 'magical adventure'.
A familiar tapping beat sang aloud a set of ears, decorated with soft, gentle flowers, that which heard every fearful thought and every cry for help, whether it be that of a civilian caught at the wrong place at the wrong time or that of a rogue Magical Girl pleading for the mercy she never showed to those whose blood she spilt, often with a smile and a laugh. Yet all of that always faded once the Hunter got her hands on them.
For the moment, Snow White overlooked a white open cityscape. The sky below was dyed a glowing neon, white and gold and pink lights glittering atop lamposts and signs through the wide windows of skyscrapers. Even from afar, the dancing silhouettes of parties of the rich and fulfilled could be seen, with even more going on below her feet, the occasional concerned thought of 'Damn, I dropped my drink.' and other such mundane things made themselves known to her, bidding her farewell just as quickly. Pounding ripples of sound escaped into the open air, the generic beat almost muted to Snow White now where she stood, the only feeling she truly cared to take in being the soft breeze rushing through her hair. Underneath the high crescent, a peculiar-looking lance glinted diamond-bright in the moonlight, the shape a hybrid of a naginata with the edge of a horror killer's machete. The breeze caressed her cheeks and sprinted past the back of her legs, and for a bit, she felt a level of peace; as much as she had since the Raising Project, anyways.
But her solid Administrator's phone requested her attention, and Snow White couldn't deny it long. There was little point, since it usually meant she had a job to do. Her pale hand lifted it up to the height of her eyes, as the text appeared across the screen. Snow White had seen enough to make her guesses as to what it would be about; foreign affairs, or another Magical Girl twisting what the role was supposed to be, people like Fav, like Calamity Mary, like Cranberry. Just the thought made something dark twist and turn within her chest, tightening her organs until it felt she couldn't breathe and hot rage piling over her head until it felt like burning wax against her gentle skin. So, a question mark arose within her mind as she read the text.
"There are signs that the mana of the Magical Kingdom has been compromised to a severe degree, on top of stolen data. The thief's exact identity is unknown, though the possibility of them being a rogue Magical Girl is not out of question, their last-found location has been detected. An official of the Magical Kingdom will aid you in your transport shortly." the text read.
Snow White blinked slightly, light filling her face before fading as the text turned to the dark once more. So, she was partially right, someone powerful enough to be viewed as a rogue Magical Girl and to escape without their identity being known. A sigh lifted from her chest and passed into the cold night air as it swept her hair to the footsteps of the wind, an arm reaching behind her back and unveiling her spear once more, her fingers gripping onto it tightly as the dying clung to the last threads of life, as she turned on her heel, looking straight downwards. It was strange how being a Magical Girl affected your former sensibilities. When Koyuki had first become a Magical Girl, when standing atop of buildings and skyscrapers, particularly when she found her courage and neared the edge, she once felt the peaking of her nerves as she had done when her brittle human body would never withstand a fall from a height like this, even when she was in the form of Snow White, who could reach the bottom with a carefree hop and skip and not break her stride in the least, but nowadays looking down at the drop, she realised she was more like the stones, the stones that trickled off the edge of cliffs and tumbled down and down, crashing into seas of water or solid cement, yet proceeded onward without concern, just as she did now. With a jump, Snow White's body cascaded through the air, the gales shrieking in her ears all the while, lights highlighting her feet, her torso, her ears, the soft pink of her hair, and then nothing. The glow of the city only lit up her uniform's pearl colour now, the rest of her ethereal face obscured in shadows.
The beauty that the cityscape offered up had faded to her now, the relaxing scent of midnight's breath replaced by the whining smell of alcohol and garbage as food rotted away in dumpsters, smoke puffing out from cigarettes behind windows which floated past Snow White's nose, making it scrunch up in an attempt to slow its passage into her senses before it touched her tongue, hoping to turn it away. People chatted and rambled and bartered within the city, traffic beeped and screamed as it drove past and dogs barked aloud, their voices echoing in this alley and the next. With a solid ten steps, darkness shrouded below her feet, all silhouettes spent as she was now faced with but a metal fence and the repetitive song of the alleyways of the night. White flashed against Snow White's stare, akin to that of a dead fish's gaze, as another sea of text arose upon her screen, her instructions for pursuit.
Wherever this Magical Girl was, she wondered if they knew her name, if she knew what she would do to them. Perhaps that was why they fled.
The thought made a joyless smile appear on Snow White's face. "Good." she whispered to herself.
In silence, the Magical Girl felt magic pour into her hands, her hand and spear raised and slammed into the stone below her feet. There and then, a portal circled in the ground, waiting for her to dive in. With that, she returned her Admin's Phone to her pockets, freeing her left hand. she allowed her whole form to sink through, taking a deep breath as her body took the plunge. What Snow White saw felt like she was dreaming; the colours that all formed the world seemed to dissolve into a puddle of nothing, like ink, turning black and surrounding her, her body the only spot of colour. The blackness above her head felt endless in the seconds it lasted as she drifted downwards, the darkness exploding into a canopy of red and purple and pink that swirled together, decorated by glittering stars, allowing her to finally see where she was. Her body, from afar, shone in a thousand skies, her descent shimmered distinctly even next to starlight, a glorious bolide that shot through the air steadily, before the white glimmered and sparked out.
For Snow White though, the experience was much simpler; a slow, steady drift, leaving only her thoughts for company. It made her question if this was just one other domain of the Magical Kingdom that she had been given access to, or if this was a part of whatever powers her target happened to have. It could be a Magical Girl, but it might not have been; but that wasn't what mattered to Snow White. Anyone who would steal and harm others and rip at innocent lives was not someone who deserved to go unpunished where she was concerned, and until the job was done, they would not have a moment's peace once she knew their name and their face.
Calamity Mary had been like that. Cranberry had been like that. Fav had been like that.
For a while, she tasted nothing, not even empty air, really. For that time, she heard nothing and saw nothing other than the vast space between. Eventually, the sound of something like sparkling bells dangled below her ears as a bright light was born before her, pulling towards her. Her free hand reached forward, and her heartbeat pulsed in tandem as the light called to her, just as the air within her body finally felt as though it was hitting zero, like she had been floating here for a moment longer than she should have been. Her body was consumed, forming a glittering silhouette like that of fallen stars.
The moon canopy surrounding her now disappeared, as her fall suddenly increased its pace akin to a runner taking an Olympian marathon upon their shoulders. The dark blues, reds and purples melted away, and the stars dispersed into puffy white clouds that fringed the sky's head. But that wasn't what caught Snow White's attention most of all, but rather it was the scene before her now as her fall came to an abrupt conclusion, her feet landing flatly on the emerald coloured ground. Tightly cared for grass poured up perfectly, slightly tickling Snow White's ankles when she walked, a rippling pool positioned to her right, full of shining lily pads which floated across the water without a care in the world, the sun's rays floating downward and filling the ground with warmth, the sunlight upon her face filling her with relative peace. A rarity for her nowadays, so she appreciated it for the moments that she could. Green hedge shrubs lined the garden, formed into friendly-looking faces, but the one at the centre of the pool formed not a face, but a petite castle, straight out of a fairytale. Dark blue castle towers spiked upwards in the distance like spears in war, crimson flags curling in the wind. The breeze of the cityscape had found her and shifted for the new surroundings into a warmer air that calmed her heart.
Still, Snow White returned to reality, and questions began to circle in her mind. Just where was she? Had the placement of the intruder been here, or out in the plains of space she had been before? And was this part of the Magical Kingdom, or something else entirely? On one hand, a structure like this didn't feel entirely out-of-place from the visuals she had seen of it, but then again, another part of her head seemed to say that this was not the same magic that enabled her to hear the thoughts of those in danger or the magic that let Ripple hit a target without fail. Deciding to see if the Kingdom had any more intel to offer that could be relatively handy - one of the only things she took of any worth from that place - she revealed her phone from her pocket. But then, the screen had turned pitch black. She pressed a button, wondering if she had snapped it off somehow on the way out, but was met with only a screen of static to greet her, a hazy choking sound arising with it.
'Useless...of course it is,' the Magical Girl in white sighed in a voice lacking surprise as it returned to the common home of her Magical Girl uniform's pockets. 'Looks like I'm on my own then.' she thought.
"Hellooo!" another voice called out. The voice of irony, most likely. Snow White went quiet, turning her head to both sides, before the voice sang to her again, "Over here!"
It was just then that she saw something, or more politely, someone, she was not expecting; a white duck, walking on two legs the same way a human being would. Judging by the style of their fashions, it was a lady duck, dubbed in purple up and down. Judging by her dress, aligned with lavender frills and violet ruffles, she was perhaps the princess of this castle. Blinking, Snow White tried to remind herself that Magical Girls tended to look just as strange; she herself looked like a student with a personalised uniform yet carried a spear around, and several others she had encountered had animalistic features. Her mind, as it was prone to doing, remembered a Magical Girl who looked like a robot; Magicaloid 44, the one who...would have taken her life, hadn't it been for Hardgore Alice.
'Alice.'
Alice was somebody whose name Snow White hadn't said for a time, but it always stayed there in her head; at the corner of her mind, creeping up on her when her darker thoughts tried to drown her. Her final words, the vision of her blood trickling away in the pool of rain as it poured, the blood that would never wash off, never, the feeling of her tiny fading hands in her own. The calm, yet pained face of a child that went limp in her arms. Snow White would never forget the feeling of having her there, of realising she was the girl who lost her key, the girl who had been aiding her as Hardgore Alice...
The painful world where death was all Snow White could think of was, rather thankfully, broken into, as she was pulled back into the sunlit castle courtyard. Concerned and wide eyes looked up at her, hands over her heart. "Oh goodness, are you alright there?" she asked, sincerely.
A shaky breath trembled and then joined the open air, Snow White's hands slowly ceasing in their shaking as she finally remembered it wasn't raining, the sun instead high in the sky and with not a cloud to block it out. "Yes..." she almost whimpered, before clearing her throat, offering a polite smile. The smiles Koyuki would offer to her neighbours, to her parents so they wouldn't worry about her. "Yes, I'm alright. Thank you. Who...who are you?"
"My name is Daisy Duck!" the lady-duck said. "Who are you?" she tilted her head.
"I..." Snow White began. "My name's Snow White. I'm...looking for someone, and I was sent here."
"I see...any description of who you're looking for? Is it a friend of yours?"
Ha. The idea of a possible rogue Magical Girl being Snow White's friend. The past Snow White might have thought of things like that. Sister Nana would have thought like that, and got her to believe in it too...
"No...no, I wouldn't say so. It's for..." Snow White refrained from talking of the Magical Kingdom, at least for now. She hardly wished to deal with their complaints about their masquerade being threatened, not when she had her own work to do. "Someone else. They didn't see their face, but something important was taken from them by this person. I'm trying to find them to get it back," she explained simply, telling a lie the same colour as her clothes.
Really, she couldn't care less if the Magical Kingdom was lacking in mana, her heart went out to the Magical Girls who might lose their dreams as a result of it, though it at least seemed less likely to end up as she and those who had been trapped in the Project with her had been. Her heart went out to those who might be endangered by the fact their names were known to whoever had stolen them.
"My...that's not good at all," Daisy lamented.
The tension Snow White had felt at the tips of her flesh loosened as she heard her thoughts; 'A thief...? She must be working hard...I hope I can help...'
"I've not seen anyone around here, especially not any shady folk. I must say...it sounds like Donald and Goofy might know a thing or two, and if it's really bad, the King might!" Daisy answered.
'The King, huh?' Snow White thought. Something in her gut felt this was a confirmation that this was not a domain of the Magical Kingdom, and she was beginning to feel she'd need to curse them for dropping her off somewhere and then leaving nothing but a static screen to go off of. Her opinion of them was hardly one of deep devotion, but it was out of keeping with their usual attitudes towards rogue Magical Girls. After all, they needed Snow White, as nobody else dealt with them as she did. She was an asset to them.
Now she wondered if the King was an animal too...
"The King? If it's possible, I'd like to speak to him, if he's more likely to know," Snow White clarified, but her voice was gentle, enough ill intention could not be found in it, even if you went looking for it.
"Well...the King currently isn't here, I'm afraid." Daisy continued, and her thoughts confirmed she was not lying. "He's attending something important. But, the Queen's here in his place. I can let you see her, she could maybe know a thing or two about this person you're looking for!"
'The Mark of Mastery' was a term Snow White had never heard of, yet its usage in Daisy's thoughts had caught her attention; was it some sort of exam? Whatever it was, it mattered enough to the King that he had gone to see it for himself. But either way, she at least had some sort of direction. "That would do fine. Thank you, Daisy. I appreciate it. Can you show me the way?" Snow White asked.
"Of course!"
The way forward was a peculiar experience for Snow White. Following Daisy's lead, her eyes glanced from side to side as she took in the castle scenery; this place was well and truly like a fairytale land, with its anthropomorphic creatures often appearing to greet them with a smile. A dog of gold and a green collar even darted out and barked cheerily from the bushes, jumping upwards and nearly knocking her into a stumble, licking her cheeks like she was his new best friend. Laughter loosened from her lips as her hands gently touched the dog's fur before her hand patted him affectionately on the head.
"Sorry about that, Snow. That's Pluto. It seems he likes you!" Daisy commented.
Struggling not to smile any further, Snow White shook her head, her features soft. "Don't worry about it. He's a good boy," she said as she got to her feet once again.
"I must say, Snow White..." Daisy trailed off with the sound of someone that had something on their mind. "I do find it funny; you have the same name as someone else around here - a princess!" she remarked.
"Oh, really?" the girl replied, blinking.
Her thoughts searched Daisy's own for context; 'Could she be related to the Princess of Heart? If so...she could really need help...! What if that awful Maleficent hears about it and goes after her?'
"Hm-hm!" Daisy nodded, turning ahead as they passed through several pristine white hallways, traversing many a crimson red carpet and passing large windows that brought the light in, eventually reaching a large throne room.
Maleficent. A Princess of Heart. Snow White felt glad still she kept her weapon with her; if her name was enough to paint a target on her back... then she wouldn't be having an easy time.
But that was okay. She suspected she had discovered her target too.