"The multiplying villainies of nature
do swarm upon him.(...)
Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel,
which smok'd with bloody execution."
- Shakespeare, Macbeth
December 29th, 2027. Around 3 AM. Koto-ku, Tokyo.
The girl lands on their destination with a soft *thud, the ground beneath her boots firm but uneven. Because yes, she is now wearing boots.
Or that is the easiest way to explain it.
Speeding across the night sky is way easier than she could have imagined. A bit scary at first, but her new magic-infused body has the strength for it, and surprisingly, she completely lost any fear of heights now - as well any of the vertigo and nausea she had at times in plane flights.
It is integral and necessary to your new condition, the creature thought to her before she could ask. As is something else - your armour, if you will. Summon it.
Summon? How? I have no idea -
You know exactly how, Kurokawa Akane.
And, well, yeah, the next moment shows her exactly how she already knew.
It starts with a sudden warmth on her chest, which then quickly courses through her body. Her hands, needing no conscious decision, start moving, and as her fingers clench, she feels the touch of fabric.
It twists, and stretches, and she knows it was not just her hospital gown that suddenly vanished - it is her own fabric that is changing, fading away like the ripples of a crashing wave, whirling into a burst of colour and light, and shifting into a new form.
First comes the dark blue fabric, covering her in a long, silky dress which appears from thin air like a slow, deliberate tide. It's a Victorian gown, elegant and silky, cinched at the waist as she feels something else against the skin - the firmness of a belt, the cool, metallic touch of its buckle.
On it shines the aquamarine brooch, her Soul Gem, set against her waist, shining like a beacon in the dark of the night, the heart of her power, feeling like it has forever been there, a magma chamber supplying energy to the volcano that she became.
Then comes the bonnet - a wide, archaic, floppy thing sitting the top of her head and framing her face, like she is on a period piece drama in Old England. The dark leather boots that come next feel like they would be used for riding, and well, she thinks she probably looks like a Pride and Prejudice character out for a picnic, which is... nice, but also a bit ridiculous and out of place for hunting demons?
Until, of course, the weapon appears in her hands.
A big, heavy rifle, wooden with inlaid metal, with engravings in some alien language she cannot fathom, that would look like a museum-piece if it didn't have an elongated scope - and if she didn't know how deadly that thing is be in her hands. And when her subconscious starts "OK so I'm at a dis-", the gun vibrates softly in her hands as a blade forms at the end of the barrel, gleaming with ethereal violet.
Finally, a strip of green velvet flashes in her sight and ties itself in a bow above her heart as the final plate, and she understands what the creature meant by armour. Her armour. And what she is meant to be is deadly - not a noble out for a picnic, but a huntress, out to turn predators into prey.
She is Kurokawa Akane, and she is Mahou Shoujo.
She's not sure any time has actually passed, though?
I told you.
Stop being smug. Faust didn't have a gun.
It didn't even need to tell her where to go anymore; she could feel it from kilometres away, before she even sees the Azabudai buildings in the distance. Even in the dead of night, even quickly jumping as she did from building to building, it beckoned to her like a compass.
That wasn't all.
She can... well, the closest approximation is sight, but it's really something else entirely, nothing like her mind used to understand vision, and way beyond it. It's like a distillation of reality, seen through a sort of invisible lens; there are more colours, lights do not blind her, darkness cannot not block her... she can even see the night sky clearly through all the city lights, Arcturus rising in all its enormous red glory in a way she never saw it.
Even walls cannot hide whatever is behind them from her sight. Thick concrete seems like clear water, and she feels the people behind it... children sleeping on their beds, industrial workers taking baths after long hours, salarymen sitting in barstools drinking, elderly homeless women crouching under the hostile architecture to try to escape the bitter winter cold.
The city, laid bare to her.
Well, not quite - some places she cannot see into. She also knows she can see way further than before, but how much - kilometres? Note to self, investigate that later.
We will arrive in around ten minutes at this pace, she thinks to the creature.
Not enough. We must go faster. Every minute sharply decreases your chance of survival.
It didn't tell her how to make it faster, but there is no need; again the instinct just comes to her as the rifle reappears in her hands and she shoots the blade towards a tall building at the very edge of her perception.
She feels the blade burying itself in the concrete, and then pulling her at break-neck speed - and again she aims at another distant building, and then it pulls -
Good. Now listen, Kurokawa Akane. You must hide everything. Your Gem, fingernail, abilities, previous memories, all must be concealed.
Concealed? From whom?
Others will reach you before long. Do not mention my wings or your precise wish. Create a credible mask and learn to wear it.
But -
Silence! It sounds imperious, but talks so fast, the urgency is clear. Keep your gem as secure as possible at all times! It IS your soul and your life, more literally than you can fathom. If is revealed, do not allow it to be touched by anyone and do not let it be taken from you!
And then she arrives.
It took her less than three minutes to go from Minato-ku to this old factory in Koto-ku, a trip that would take at least fifteen minutes by motorized transport and over two hours walking.
She doesn't want to calculate how fast that was. Not yet.
As soon she lands, though, the feeling of wrongness comes up, way stronger than before.
Akane isn't sure on the details, but she remembers Kawasaki Steel Works was a company that arose after the Great War and got into some serious financial trouble in the 1980s. She's now entering Kawasaki Steel Mill #3 (says the plaque above the gate), and she doesn't need her father's* excited long speeches on Japanese industry to know it's been abandoned for a long, long time.
It was forlorn, a monument to rust and decay.
Windows broken, doors jammed, concrete and steel rising like twisted tentacles, a dead labyrinth of accidental make. A few battered trucks, obviously dead on the cracked asphalt, standing ground in what now feels like a graveyard to a whole generation of dreams of a better tomorrow through stable employment. A very unpleasant, very strong smell of urine.
And yet oblivion and abandonment isn't what's wrong.
What is wrong is the thick, unnatural fog around it, which makes no sense at all with how windy the night is. This carcass of a long-dead leviathan was breathing, in a way, and its breath was more suffocating than anything she remembers.
What is even more wrong is what's inside. She doesn't need to ask; these are the "demons" the creature told her about. She shivers.
It is time, Kurokawa Akane. You will adapt or you will die.
She didn't need these words. Her hand tightens the grip on the stock, the barrel gleaming in the murky light, and she leaps onto a window, already aiming at one of the forms inside.
What happens then is extremely hard to properly recall.
Vague splotches of colour. Streaks of killing violet flowing from her gun, murderous streams of mist coming at her, her running on walls like a wuxia movie character, the fog impeding her vision but her mind slicing through it. True Sight. The name clicks into place, another stream of deadly mist - hot - she dodges and leaps in the air.
How tall the things are. A moment of hesitation.
Impossibly tall, with shapes like... robed phantoms of trees full of infinite branches that have no clear beginning or end, or maybe they're roots. Or maybe not trees at all, vertical jumbles of wiring and duct tape and pieces of steel from the factory.
Try as she might, she cannot recall whatever is on top of them - she does not dare to compare that with faces.
The silent pull of the trigger - the booming sound of the blades shooting forward, the loud bursts as they cross through the things into walls and machinery - the reverberation of the sound on the whole building. Deafening - exhilarating -
A moment of clarity - she has downed some of them - three? Eight? Do numbers apply here? Maybe it's just *one with many fingers* (where did that comparison come from?).
Then they charge.
Can't track - too many - trying to deny her range advantage? Smart - or at least they learn. She barely dodges - searing sensation on her leg - she throws herself away, jumps up to grab a dead lamp, they're reaching for her -
- no disadvantage.
The blade is a bayonet. It hums with purpose.
Adapt or die.
She charges them - pierces like butter - twists and spins to avoid their attacks - slashes and slices and limbs (?) flying.
They stop. Confused? Irrelevant. They're lined up. In her crosshair.
Her lips, a small smile - they're actually also painted - metallic blue. What the hell? The lips part, she shouts something. Primal. Can't remember what.
The forms shatter, turn to dust, dissolve, melt - vanish. The fog slowly starts fading. Small clacks on the floor - something magical. She barely notices.
Silence.
The small smile, still on her lips.
Huntress.
If someone could have seen her then, her eyes would be the most disturbing part. Impossibly sharp, impossibly deep. Pupils like six-pointed stars.
She doesn't know that yet.
But she will.
The next proper memory is the sudden, absolute silence - and the sudden weight of her body now that it stopped, like it left water for solid ground. The rifle, an anchor. The knees, bent. The eyes can't focus, the smell, too strong. Thoughts scattered, struggling to form words.
And then the shock, the knowledge of what she just did.
There is no blood, no corpses, nothing remained - and none of those things were even remotely human, of course - but still. Yet I thought I could become a murderer for him. Maybe...
"...lady Macbeth."
The words feel harsh on her ears. But no, that's not it, not exactly. Just animals... I think. Then what?
Her hands feel... not blood-stained. Not hers, this is it, they don't feel like her hands.
How the hell did I do that?
One moment the girl was a... goddess of destruction, flying around, shooting and maiming in impossible ways - and she had never even held a pistol in her hands, much less a rifle, much less this weird contraption - the other she is back to being the same shy, awkward blue-haired girl that wouldn't hurt a fly.
The ease of it is grating. But it was passing - she is starting to coalesce, in a way, and to be able to properly look at what was around.
To her relief, it is no longer wrong, wrong wrong, supernaturally wrong. But it still profoundly unpleasant, now in a very human way.
A good start, Kurokawa Akane, came the now almost familiar thoughts of the creature. Next step.
The place is a damn mess, as filthy as the yard outside, but even more filled with old machinery. Looks like a former storage area, or a break area for workers, by the size of it. There were people there, however - living there, in fact, from the looks of it. Sheets of tarp, old blankets and cardboard boxes haphazardly arranged to try to form beds, some personal belongings... maybe a dozen people lived here, for months by the look of it. Too little food for that number, though - must always be on edge.
The camp itself does not disturb her. Homeless people taking over old buildings are nothing surprising, nor morally wrong in any way - what is morally absurd, from her point of view, is that people were forced into the streets while houses are kept empty for real estate speculation. She isn't the most political person around (at least not in her former reality), but that, at least, she knows.
What does disturb her are the two flags, high on display.
No, not disturb. Offend.
The first is already disgusting enough. But the second one, that brand-new, shiny blue and yellow abomination beside it, is simply revolting.
Fucking bastards!
The face immediately flares back to her mind. Her mother's cousin, Yamagami Karin, a gentle, eager Architecture major who she met in family gatherings. How excited she was, talking about some new religion, a church of some holy man she got involved with - and how quickly it turned her into something completely different.
The former gentleness became a relentless attempt at recruiting everyone around at every possible turn, her family first - and then how she seemed to feel insulted when they refused, at first politely, but more and more firmly. The former artist's vision, her wanting to develop houses for poor people to end homelessness for good, twisted into paranoid speeches about "communists" at every corner, obstacles to their so-called holy mission - which was what, exactly? Breaking families up with demands of allegiance? It was almost ten years since she had cut contact with everyone.
Now she sees Karin, progressively gaunter eyes, thinning silhouette, lack of sleep and food, worn shoes, in the faces of most of the unconscious people strewn about the room.
It hurts her, and she isn't sure if what hurts is pity, anger, or remembering a long-lost relative. A mix of all three, more likely.
Her chest tightens.
How engrossed had she been in the battle against the demons? How dared she, how did she not before notice this horror, the true horror?
The smell of urine - overwhelming now, unbearable - not what she had thought.
The pinboard on one side, filled with pictures and strings, connecting professors, actresses, journalists, some of them her friends!, to a painting of a faceless, imposing man in military uniform with a huge red star on it - a bad pastiche of the "communist" they always think is behind everything?
A chair in the centre where a woman is tied, hands and feet tied, a sack on their head, a man behind in a disgusting mockery of traditional samurai wear lies collapsed, an expensive gun in his hand? The shiny new cellphone in a ring-light pointed to the scene, eager to gobble and share the horror?
The hundreds of boxes, the chlorine bottles, the piles of pamphlets? Holy Mother - even what she thought was just dining apparel is way too sharpened!
The rising tension. The coming violence.
Mishima - worse - Asahara.
Her father used to say, quoting some revolutionary with a name she forgets, that "fascism is the movement of counter-revolutionary despair" - a very technical way of saying that people who lose everything are easy prey to pundits.
Breaking her reverie, the creature, her Mephistopheles, jumps on a ruined chair and looks straight at her.
Do you understand what has happened here, Kurokawa Akane?
Struggling to focus, she nods slightly.
"A nationalist cult of former middle-class people in dire straits", her words come out strained, the rage barely contained, "about to murder a famous online personality and transmit it on her very channel, as a call to arms for a coming crusade against communist infiltration of the country. Someone I know!"
More than that. Demons arise as a natural, inevitable consequence of accumulation of negative human emotion. Unexplained suicides and disappearances, bizarre outbursts of rage by calm people, sudden mass murders, are possibly caused by demon contamination. Again it spoke fast, betraying an urgency its monotone voice would not impart otherwise. To be Mahou Shoujo is to purge them when they appear, lest they bring even more despair and death. It will be what you will do until I am back. These - it gestures, and the dark baubles that appeared after the demons vanished float to her, - are Grief Cubes; you need them to purify your Soul Gem and stay alive. Figure out how to use them and save as many as you can, for you will need them.
She opens her hands, the Cubes slowly fall to her palms, something dark flowing from her aquamarine to them -
Wait - back?
I will break contact. Not sure for how long. You will hunt demons and adapt to this timeline. More information when, if I return. I have more to say.
It glances back at the scene.
At times demons arise unnaturally. This is not well understood, but in rare situations, like now, the cause is evident.
It looks at the executioner, his expression softened by unconsciousness.
How you deal with it is at your discretion, Kurokawa Akane, but minimize further negative emotion if possible.
She looks at its her red eyes quizzically, then her own eyes widen.
"NO! Whoever is responsible is not even here!"
Indeed. I was correct to bring you here. Still: your discretion.
It opens its wings and looks at her again.
I have other agents. I cannot tell whom, lest the information be taken from your mind. They know of you and will come, if the situation is dire enough and they can keep their cover. Do not rely on that, Kurokawa Akane.
One last time: you will adapt, or you will die.
Then it simply is not there any more.
All that remains is the horror - of her surroundings, of her new life, of her new reality. Of being a soldier with orders to follow, without a commander who was the only one who knew her predicament. Of having to play a character among those dearest to her, unable to explain what is going on, having none of the memories they are supposed to share.
The horror of her loneliness, she realizes, her eyes starting to water.