Sometimes, there are decades where nothing happens; and then there are weeks where decades happen.
Maxine Steele breathes heavily as she stares down the group of cowed rioters in front of her—the armored panels of her raiment spark and whine, battle-damaged from hours upon hours of uninterrupted patrols.
All around her, carnage reigns. The streets have been practically demolished. The wreckage of a hundred drone carcasses fills the air with the noxious chemical smell of burnt circuitry and leaking lubricant. The burnt-out husk of a motherfucking tank has been embedded in the building next to Max.
It's embedded there because Max punted it into the building. Even as Max glowers, she can see the thoroughly shaken crew struggling to bail out of the hatch. The driver staggers out, holding his head. He vomits all over the pavement. The smell of his sick only adds to all the other disgusting smells in the air.
Like all the goddamn smoke.
Because of course Terminus City is on fire right now, just as it has been for the last week.
"Are y'all going to be good now?" Max demands. There are murmurs of assent from the thoroughly beat-down gangsters in front of Max. "Good, good-"
Off in the distance, a Kaiju roars, and Max lets out a quiet moan. God, this shit's never going to end. Chaos calls to chaos. The denizens of the realms beyond are particularly drawn to scenes of calamity and destruction. There's a reason why all the magical bullshit started crawling back out of the woodwork during the Resource Wars.
Nuclear armageddon is, after all the kind of event that would create that chaotic environment supernatural nasties thrive within.
And to think that not even twenty-four hours ago, things were worse. Much, much worse. This is what it's like when things are quieting down. Max hasn't even had to fire her satellite cannon once today. And, of course, there's better news -
"So, what's the score boss-lady? We tagging and bagging them?"
Max turns to face her junior, Primal Huntress. Who squirms underneath Max's withering stare. Max snorts, turning her head away dismissively.
The better news is that Max's cute juniors have finally returned after going who knows where for weeks on end. There's a lot to unpack there, and Max has questions out her shapely ass, lord knows she's going to be spending weeks after the current crisis has died down interrogating Heavenly Testament, Primal Huntress and Crimson Champion.
But still, good news. Great news.
It means that Max can finally kick out the out-of-town Magical Girls now that she's got more womanpower to work with.
Speaking of...
"… Yep," Max says, eyelashes fluttering as she pulls up her HUD and checks the time. "… I've got to get to a meeting."
In the distance the Kaiju lets out another distant roar, and Primal Huntress twitches.
"A call? You have to take a call while-"
A blinding flash of light erupts in the distance. Primal Huntress flinches as a massive torrent of mana washes over her. The ground quakes, buildings tremble as one of the out-of-towner Magical Girls Max called in for backup fires off her attack.
"… Yep. A meeting," Max grumbles, ignoring the flashy battle in the background. It's one among many, after all. And it's the reason why Max has to attend a meeting.
Everything in existence is transactional. That's something Max knows from bitter, bitter experience. Every favor has a cost; every sin creates a hidden debt that weighs on your soul. Max's lifetime of empty, meaningless hedonism left her a quadriplegic orphan after that damn drunken car accident. There's no such thing as a free lunch in this world.
Not even for the MGA. Nominally, it's the MGA's duty to send reinforcements when one of their representatives calls for aid—it's the whole point of the organization. But in practice, any aid received is expected to be paid back.
With substantial interest.
Max already knows what the MGA council's going to ask from her, and her head throbs in tandem with the roiling of her tumultuous tummy because god, those negotiations are going to be an absolute headache.
From one meatgrinder to the other, huh?
-
The general public mystifies meetings between high-ranking Magical Girls. It's the result of all the Virtusims and propaganda vids and massaged messaging. In the vids, every time Magical Girls meet it's because of world-ending business, where the brave heroines make a plan to charge boldly into the unknown to fight the forces of chaos and evil. Their dialogue's coached in ominous metaphor, and their costumes are dazzling.
"- And I'm saying that Terminus City needs to start paying their dues, especially after you called us in for this… Shitstorm," Phoenicia Herodota says. "Seriously Max, what the fuck have you been doing in this city?!"
Max's eyebrow twitches, and she resists the urge to let out an annoyed sigh.
Well, the vids got one thing right. Magical Girl meetings do take place in full costume. Admittedly, that's to enhance the sheer amount of posturing and bickering that takes place whenever Magical Girls from different regions of the globe interact. It's something Phoenicia Herodota is using to full effect, her fiery aura blazing so brightly that sparks are practically flying off of her skin.
Not that Max appreciates that fact.
This whole goddamn meeting could've been an email.
"Don't blame this shit on me, you know as well as I do that our numbers were great up to this point Phee-Phee," Max fires back. "Violent crime was at an all time low. The number of supernatural incursions was dropping. I don't even remember the last time we had a Kaiju attack. Then, I don't know, something fucking happened with the goddamn corpos and gangs-"
"Do you have any idea how many other cities I had to pull Magical Girls from in order to cover your ass, Maxine?" Phoenicia Herodota leans forward, steepling her fingers and glaring daggers into Max's soul.
Max sighs. Oh god, here we go again. "Tokyo, Taipei-"
"Tokyo, Taipei and Sydney," Phoenicia Herodota complains. "I had to assemble a scratch team of twenty Magical Girls to cover a city that, to be quite frank, should have already been covered. Because you have six Magical Girls. That's roughly twice the number regular cities have."
"Damnit Phee-Phee, I know," Max groans, dragging her hand across her face. "That doesn't mean shit though when three of those girls didn't even bother to show up, and then the other two showed up late."
"Yes, andwhy were your girls AWOL, Max?"
"Are we going to play twenty questions or are we going to actually start negotiating here, Phee-Phee?" Max grumbles to cover the fact that, well…
… Max herself would very much like to know what in the actual hell every one of her colleagues has been doing in the last few weeks. Dearly. There are absences, then absences, and some absences are excusable. Fuck, if Kaina ever wanted to take a vacation, Max would happily delight in approving as much vacation time for Kaina as she wants. Kaina's worked hard enough, and she deserves some time to herself.
The rest of the Magical Girls in Terminus City do not have that excuse. Yeah, an investigation's more than called for, if only because all that shit's wound up rolling downhill to cover Max in its stink.
"This isn't a negotiation, Maxine. It's an order-"
"No," Max groans, even as Phee-Phee barrels forward.
"Ul'tharion the Unclean's preparing to launch a campaign of conquest on the North American continent."
"Oh come on with this guilt-tripping nonsense-"
"A strong vanguard is required for the preemptive assault on his position in the Great Beyond to achieve-"
"Again and again with the world-ending threats-"
"Maxine this is serious. The world needs Infinity Princess to lead the charge-"
"I need Kaina, damn it all!" Max shouts. "I need Kaina, Kaina's one of the only girls holding Terminus City together-"
"Infinity Princess is wasted here, Max," the third member at the table speaks up, and Max and Phee-Phee quiet down. Nihil Eschaton, leader of the Black Cabal, leader of the MGA's intelligence operations? Not a Magical Girl to be trifled with, especially when her reputation is as bloodstained as it is.
The newbies used to call Nihil Eschaton "Little Miss Genocide," a nickname that was entirely warranted after she personally erased Paris from the map.
… Okay, Paris, Texas, not Paris, France, but that's still terrifying levels of firepower that Max absolutely does not want to fuck with.
Which means that she's going to start having to play nice around the apex predator now.
… Which is something that Max honestly isn't very good at.
"Maxine, Infinity Princess is utterly wasted down here. She's one of nine girls with a Class-7 rated Mana Reactor. She's legendary for being able to fight night and day without rest," Nihil Eschaton states bluntly. "Frankly, she should have left five years ago. We could have used her on a hundred different ops and she would've saved more lives than she ever would have, here."
Goddammit all.
"And she would have burnt herself out even more," Max snarls, throwing caution to the wind.
"… Max," Phee-Phee says hesitantly, warningly, even as Nihil Eschaton turns to glare at Max.
"There are roughly fifty thousand Magical Girls in existence, Maxine, and a third of them are currently slumming it in New Vegas," Nihil Eschaton declares angrily. "We're strapped for numbers, and we're strapped for girls with abilities that are actually useful. Nobody's happy things are the way they are. I don't like asking Infinity Princess to give more than she's already giving, but we have to make that ask because the list of people we can ask? It's not very long. The needs-"
"Don't you dare quote that Vulcan bullshit at me," Max grumbles, only for Nihil Eschaton to plow through Max's concerns.
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one. You know this as well as I do. Let me remind you, that you were the one who swallowed her pride and radioed in begging hat in hand for assistance," Nihil Eschaton says.
Ugh.
It's times like this that make Max want to beat her head against the table until she's knocked unconscious because, damn it all, trying to handle politics on top of all this extra bullshit being thrown Max's way is beyond her.
It's times like this that make Max seriously hate this crapsack world, times that make Max question what the hell the whole point of this Magical Girl gig even is. This is not what Magical Girls should be doing. Magical Girls should spread hope and joy, actively working to make the world a better place.
Since when did the MGA start trading Magical Girls like baseball players to defeat a never-ending series of world-ending threats?
The worst part about all this bullshit is that Max knows. She knows, she knows that Kaina…
… Kaina really was meant for better than Terminus City. In terms of power and experience, she's just leagues beyond all the other girls in the city. God, even here, in her corporate headquarters, Max can detect Kaina's mana if she closes her eyes and focuses hard enough. Every Magical Girl in the city can probably pick up on Kaina's mana signature. It's as brilliant and warm as the sun, and sometimes Max sits in her office and fixates on that mana signature to bask in its radiance…
An endless font of power. That's what Infinity Princess is, and it's why the other Regional Representatives within the MGA have been trying to poach Kaina from Max for the last few years. And Max can't blame them. Kaina's too good for this sordid shitheap of a city, and she's definitely too good for Max.
But… Damn it. God fucking damn it, Max doesn't want Kaina to go.
But…
Damn it all.
"You know what? If we're playing Moneyball, then I'm going to throw out my own pitch," Max says calmly. "Let's cut the bullshit and just get to the point. You both know that if push comes to shove, at the end of the day I'm going to have to be the one to order Kaina to go along with this campaign. Because the MGA's an association, it's not actually a government. And it's a horribly decentralized association as well. The whole point of the organization is to give Magical Girls more of a say in how their affairs are to be conducted after the corpos got kicked to the curb. Which means that, with the way the MGA's structured, Regional Representatives like myself have outsized influence when it comes to their girls. And Kaina is one of my girls."
Max takes a moment to pause and take a quick swig of water. "And you both also know that you can't strong-arm me here because if you do, I'm perfectly willing to tattle to the other Regional Representatives. And they'd get twitchy about having their members poached. And because nobody's interested in having centralized authority coming in again, telling Magical Girls what to do and how they should think and how to act. Like the damn corpos did."
Ah yes, the bad old days when Magical Girls were paid, hired, and employed through Magical Girl corporations. What an absolute circus that was. Those events predated Max's tenure but even Max knows they ended in blood. Literally, Max knows there was at least one Magical Girl in Terminus City who went on a murdering spree because of corporate overreach. Pretty Heart or something along those lines. Max doesn't remember who she was, but Max certainly remembers the mess she left when she snapped and fled to the shitheap that would become New Vegas.
An entire skyscraper of corpo-drones, turned into a meatblender. They were rinsing blood off of the windows for weeks.
"With that being said…" Max sighs. "… World-ending shit is, actually, pretty important. Nobody actually wants some creepy-ass Old One to get his tentacled mitts on the planet. And yes, I am fully aware that Infinity Princess is… Overkill for this area of the world. And that the arrangement you're asking me for, well, that's something she's done before. In the past."
Kaina used to go on 'business trips' all the time. This was before Max became the regional representative for Terminus City, of course. There was a time when she spent more time outside Terminus City than in it.
"… What are your terms?" Phee-Phee asks.
"You leave a contingent in Terminus City until Infinity Princess gets back. I need a big stick to get the fucking corporations here in line, and a supercarrier with multiple Magical Girls on call? That's a very effective big stick," Max states bluntly. Also, more importantly, Max needs the extra manpower so she can do some digging in her own time to see what the actual ass everyone else in the city was getting up to instead of doing their fucking jobs.
Phee-Phee looks slightly annoyed by the first of Max's terms, but eventually, she nods. "Acceptable. Anything else?"
Max chews on the inside of her mouth. "… MAGI-CON's being hosted in Terminus City this year. I know you talked about canceling it after the shitshow that's been the last few weeks. I want the convention uncancelled."
"…"
"What? It brings a lot of revenue to the city," Max defends.
"… Acceptable," Phee-Phee sighs, looking very pained. "What else?"
"This arrangement's temporary. I want your word that you're not going to try to poach Infinity Princess from me. If she leaves on her own, if that is entirely her own choice, I can… Learn to accept that. But if you pressure her into leaving, I am absolutely going to start calling all the other regional reps," Max says.
"This is… tolerable. What else?"
"I want to sleep on this for at least three days," Max declares bluntly. "I'm exhausted. My HUD's saying that my stress hormones are through the roof, and I haven't gotten a lick of sleep in days. I am taking the mother of all powernaps, I'm taking a day off to decompress, and then we'll resume negotiations later. Savvy?"
"Max, you know-"
"Phee-Phee, really not in the mood, just answer the question."
Phee-Phee sighs. "… Acceptable. You'll have your seventy-two hours."
"Wonderful!" Max claps her hands together. "Alright, I'm going off right now. Meeting adjourned. Bye."
And with that, Max flounces off, marching towards the elevator. The elevator that'll carry her back to her room. Ah, sleep. Blissful, blissful sleep. Something Max can indulge in now that everything isn't too on fire anymore.
Decompression, huh?
Idly, Max wonders what she'll do now that she's managed to wrangle a day or two of free time. Maybe laze around. Veg for a day in an attempt to ignore the fires still raging throughout the city. Maybe take some time to follow up on leads, check in on a few people…
… Ooh. Now, there's an idea—a nice way to kill two birds with one stone. Maxwas wanting to try out her new swimsuit. And shedoes need to seriously start digging for more info when it comes to Kaina's girlfriend…