...oh shoot, he'd not given the explanation this run round. Crap.
Alright, what would he divulge this time...? Harder to know what was a landmine this time round. He never really dealt with Cygnus in this capacity.
Well, there were those three times come to think, but with the kind of hell that had ended up being and how soon he'd had to go back after, best not to look at those.
So...right.
"The darkness gets everywhere, and you can't always be sure who's working for it...'blackbird' aside." He didn't doubt Nobody - he knew the signs. "Other than that, though? The only reason you're able to get here is that Magatama. If you didn't have it, you'd never have reached this place. And they do more besides. Watch - little magic trick."
He holds up his magatama to Cygnus, and then lets himself fall back, dropping out of the area. Not barely a moment later, another girl enters the place, ginger hair flowing to the hips as she takes delighted steps toward Cygnus in a dress of red and gold. Sparkling sapphire eyes and an almost euphoric smile are turned her way, before she holds up a familiar object.
Junpei's magatama, the golden flecks now moving across the red surface.
"I can't say I know all the tricks, but I hope this one at least convinces you there's more to this than a pretty bauble."
Iris presses the magatama back in her palm and sighs, her eyes closing as she enjoys the feeling of another form again. "It feels good to be able to do this again."
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"Youuuu might want to slow your roll on that." Tracy's demeanor erodes like a landslide, plummeting from puckishly challenging to a dead, flat, antagonism. "Last time I saw a guy flip to girl," her tone leaves no doubt just what kind of girl she means, "just SO, the world ENDED not much more than a day later."
"At least jewelry is better than humours this time." She mutters to herself.
"Also, FYI, small problem with your reasoning." If those, She points to the Magatama in both Iris' & Cygnus' grasp, "are what bring us here," arms spread to as if to indicate the 'Hideout' around them, "I wouldn't be here. So, answer..."
"Girl..."
"what's your answer to that?"
Not again. I can't do this again.
Iris winces, pain flashing across her face both from her old friend's antagonism and the memory of how she let things get this far in the first place.
Oh, how she wished she could explain it all, but not only would she not be believed, she'd destroy her relationships before they could ever remotely start.
That couldn't happen. It just couldn't.
She looks over at Tracy, trying not to let how painful this was show too badly. "I'm aware of all that, and all I can say is sorry. Only so much you can do to hold things together when you get thrown into things to stop a murder and everyone starts dying around you anyway. I had even less time than you to figure this out...whatever was going on with you at the time. I never saw you." He looks meaningfully at Ao, for a moment. "There was more going on than I'd ever known, and it went back far beyond all of us involved in it. Didn't have a chance."
She looks to the magatama in her hand for a moment, before beginning to toss and catch it, trying to busy her mind a little more. "I don't have an answer, Tracy. I'm just saying what I knew before you came here - that I can't get here without using this. And I'm still willing to bet everyone else who came with one can't either. All I'm trying to do is keep people in the loop. Please don't crucify me for it."
Rage, betrayal, denial, grief. These emotions and more whiplash across the desperate & defeated young woman's face. "You aren't the one who should be crucified..."
Maybe this is my shot at redemption?
Do I DESERVE redemption?..
"I...
"I could have said yes. Could have stood beside the others that night. Bled or sweat, or cried. Said the words. Stood the watch. I chose not to."
Her gaze upon Iris is apologetic, confessional even. "I envy you in a way. You may have been found wanting, but at least you TRIED."
Eyes closed, resolve & composure gathered, "Ten years I have...
plodded, day after day after day, night upon night in this Paradise HELL wondering, 'was I the pebble, the grain of sand, the droplet of water in the ocean, that would have been the difference between victory & defeat?"
"No." Tracy shakes her head. "My time was then," she holds out the parcel, wrapped in prayers, "yours is now. This is a quintessence, In a way you could think of it as the physical distillation of the last vestiges of humanity, or hope" she mutters almost to herself, "those who give up their lives at 'the Enemy's' behest leave behind."
"This was at the site of the last 'incursion'," she nods to Astre, "I think it might be of aid in whatever you plan to do." With the 'you' Tracy's gaze shifts, meeting each of your own in turn.
...for all the times you might see a person throughout time, it's moments like these that serve as a reminder that you need to stay connected to the one here before you now.
Iris walks forward, gently pressing the package into her hands again with a wistful smile, and a bit more sentiment than really belongs on her face at this point in time. "Don't count yourself out so quickly. Honestly...it's probably for the best you didn't get involved then. We lost people in more ways than one, and had things taken we can't really recover." She sighs, her gaze drifting a moment before returning to the woman before her. "But that's not really what's important now, anyway. What's important is that all of us are here - you included."
She finds herself holding back from giving a hug, unsure whether the gesture would be appropriate or welcome. "So give yourself credit. For all the crazy things magic did and can do, it was never really the thing that made the differences that really mattered..." Iris twirls and gives Tracy a wink. "Though I can't say getting to be a girl like this isn't an absolute delight for me. I'm making more pretty clothes to wear the first chance I get."
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cygnus gasps, and clutches her own Magatama, trying several times to recreate Junpei's trick, managing only to bruise her shoulder as she tries to recreate the "falling out of the hideout". What is that- how do you? she asks, before Junpei and Tracy's conversation really catches her
You guys are talking about... the day everything went to hell. you guys know about that? Cygnus says, she draws in a breath, thinking back on that last 10 years What the hell did you guys do?
"Don't ask her. That one's on me." Iris turns around to face Cygnus. "And ah...let's just say the Erohin had a hand in things long before all of this, and I had a little trouble trying to hold everything together as both the people as new to things as I was and the ones with far more practice using their magic went a little wild with the powers that as we found out, were drawn upon through the veil of reality itself." She tries to laugh it off, but it's awkward and humourless. "I had some help, but...fixing existence as it tears wide open is about as hard as you'd imagine."
She pauses a moment, fiddling with her hair. "...I'll answer any questions you've got later, but I don't think now's the time."
Astre watched the exchange between Cygnus, Junpei (weird, female Junpei), but remains quiet, mentally logging all these things.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
three days later, after Sora has finished working with the shrine, Astre walks into the hideout.
Let's talk. Astre says Don't do the whole sullen "I don't deserve kindess" or "I don't need pity" or whatever it is. I spent a while doing that, It wasn't constructive.
You need to forgive yourself.
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"Indeed not," Tracy endorses Iris' re-direction, "now is the time to plan what we intend to do in the absence of clear direction from our 'betters'."
Snorting in what by now has become a rather familiar self-derision, "My preference would be that we seek out the unfortunate dupe where she is hiding. She won't be able to stay hidden long and she may provide us with some much-needed answers."
Nobody is missing from the club house for a day or so, while Chessa is off doing super busy cat things! She goes to report to Brilliance on what she found - that Suzu got something precious to her, that Conquest and Azu and birdfriend stopped by, and that a strange person that she'd never seen before also stopped by!
She then goes on to make a request! "Azu looked supurr lonely, Brilliance. And I realized that probably everyone in the team doesn't have as many furriends as they should. And we don't really know each other at all. Do you think that maybe we could host a get-together for everyone to get to know each other? We could have tea and crumpets, and I could bring the dead birds. I really think we should try to make the Purrity committee count for something! What do you think?"
When you home in to Brilliance, they are sitting cross-leged in a lightless room. They sway from side to side, barely acknowledging Chessa's report until it's complete.
"Mmm, the Delphic knight wore a long coat..." Is all the reaction they give to the report. "Thank you, Chessa.... Yes. I'll talk to the others and see about making arrangements. I'm seeing some troubling currents in the attendants. Some team-building exercises might make things clearer..."
"Delphic Knight? That was the one with the motorcycle, yes?" Chessa asks as she pads towards the door.
* * *
"How did you figure out how to do that, precisely?" Nobody asks from her bookshelf perch, lying on her back and viewing the scene upside down - the scene was upside down, not her. All a matter of perspective, same for time - later was now, after all.
"Mmm, yes. Had a thing for that Junpei kid. The one with the anomolous pact? Like Chell: a name not in the codex. All connected... Every point... All meaningful... Having them socialize is a good idea. Good kitty." A pizza roll catapults from behind Brilliance's medatative form.
Nobody...ever the curious one.
"The first time? Tripped. Did it by accident trying not to hit the floor too hard." A perfectly true story, albeit one that seemed like ages ago for her. "I...came out at an even worse angle, admittedly, but it tipped me off. Took me a while to get down doing it deliberately...or, ah, to figure out I didn't have to flop onto the floor every time."
It was a little embarrassing when Astre first pointed that out.
More so when she still had to use the floor for a while because she kept managing to walk into the wall.
Chessa smacks the pizza roll and chases it out of the room, her hunter-instincts kicking in. The pizza roll would know fear by the time she ate it.
* * *
"Not the falling and landing. Anyone can do that! The body-swapping!" Nobody purrsues.
"Oh. Right." Well, that was one story shared she could have avoided telling. "I...guess I just wanted it. I find out this thing is magical somehow, I remember the last time I had magic, and...wanted this-" She gestures down her body. "-back. Being able to warp reality has its benefits and all, but I'd have taken just being able to walk about like this whenever I wanted over all of that. I guess the magatama responded."
Iris sighs remorsefully, looking at her magatama. "...of course, I still can't do what I wanted to. Just for different reasons now."
She turns up her gaze to Chessa, suddenly cheery once more. "Why do you ask? If you want to do it too, I think I can teach you how." She grins wide. "Who knows what you'd look like? Bet you could be one good looking man if you wanted to."
"So... it's just wanting. Like a Hogyoku? I think I'd want to look just like this, really. I mean, look at the volume of my hair!" Nobody says with a grin. "Anywho." she continues, turning her head to look at Tracy, "I plan to have fun. I don't really know of any plans beyond that. Hiding out in the Hideout, spending time with interesting people with no responsibilities, and helping where I feel like helping... sounds marvelous."
She tilts her head the other way, "I think this jewelry is made from the humours of a lot of dead people, though. Thousands of souls go into the making of a single one, though that can be sapped ever-so-slowly, so it only makes days dreary, not..." she makes a choking sound and flops to the side, before returning to look at her. "And seven dead magical girls... normally. Unless we've figured out an easier way to do it."
Before Iris can ask, she gives Iris a wink. "When you're Nobody, you learn a lot of things from just... observing."
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"Well, I don't want her to get the wrong impression." Nobody says, kicking her legs back and forth in the air above her. "They're not any less Squicky than the other way was. But they're squicky in a different way. Like consuming the decaying remains of millenia old creatures to move a box full of things from one place to another." she shrugs her shoulders from her uncomfortable-looking position on the bookshelf. "Humanity has a long history of squicky."
Then, you hear a ringing sound, like metal against metal; A hammer against brass; A gun cocked. This place and your magatama are connected in ways the others aren't. You recall the mail girl back at your calligraphy job: tall and wiry, and a parcel left at your desk.
You see the Hideout, empty of it's clutter. Twisting hallways and rooms filled with purpose. In the back, behind a vault door is a machine shop, and silverROSE, bent over a long ornate cylinder, face obscured by a welding mask.
Within the other rooms you see the man you saw 'executed', Shugi, aka trussed_in_me, cooking in a well-stocked kitchen. You see the tall and bulky DelphicKnight, wrestling a foul creature of darkness into one of a line of cells. You see simple4sight, cleaning equipment stolen from Mercy's stocks. You see a male Erohin, opening a gateway through space. You notice at once that he has no shadow, and recognize him as an agent of Darkness. You see a female Erohin drawing the darkness out of a human as if she were spinning thread. You see a third Erohin with bold black tattoos on both arms, standing with both hands next to yours on the spinning orb.
This Erohin turns to you, as if aware of your presence, and says, "Sorry about this one, PT, but we need you to hold down the fort, yeah? Keep the darkness a bay. Use the light cannon if you need to, but above all, keep it from spreading. Violence begets violence. Grief begets grief. Heartsgate can only hold it back for so long." With that, the image fades.
The entire team is hurting. This is a team at the end of their ropes. silverROSE is shaken, hollow, and running on momentum, like a deadly barbed arrow in flight. After years of self-abuse, trussed_in_me was already fighting mortality before he was captured. DK, the immovable object, can't carry the team forever. In a private moment, you watch him peel burnt plastic flesh from a mechanical leg. Benji is terrified to even be in the hideout. You see him watching over his shoulder and ducking at small sounds. The male Erohin is burdened with guilt. In the shadows behind his hooded eyes you see two women standing back to back. The female Erohin weeps openly for the futility of her work. The other is barely containing a seething rage borne of frustration. None of them looks well.
The left arm of the tattooed Erohin is the most dangerous in terms of sheer destructive potential, but silverROSE is perhaps more likely to cause harm to others. Gone is the carefree, impassioned girl you knew in the office, replaced by something brittle, and careless.
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Two weeks after this first episode aired, the network green-lights a Tracy spin-off prequel following Tracy's activities during Season I. The pilot's title is Kawaii Redux: Least Magical Girl.
You guys are talking about... the day everything went to hell. you guys know about that? Cygnus says, she draws in a breath, thinking back on that last 10 years What the hell did you guys do?
As Cygnus' question reverberates slightly, the camera pulls back, rotating counter-clockwise as the image becomes a tunnel leading steadily away for a five count, then fade to SCENE.
[SCENE]Camera flickers, cutting from scene to scene, no more than fifteen seconds or so at most for each;
Panoramic of Obusa city just before twilight fades to full dark, camera pans rapidly to the old abandoned Bay Street shopping mall, motion showing several figures converging from different directions; cut
Camera focuses in on one figure, free-running side-to-side along a wall toward the mall, Tracy; cut
At one of the entryways to the mall, we see Tracy & another girl (Kurosawa Miyako/Dread Witch Chrysanth) just as the girl's head seemingly explodes into a cloud of bird feathers, Tracy obviously horrified; cut
Interior shot, mall food court, young man (Alex Brooke/Cresting Tide Naiad) fails to catch a spectral girl falling past him, camera focuses on a silvery straight razor in the girl's hand just as she slices across the young man's throat, blood spurts; cut
same interior, Tracy is now facing off against the same spectral girl [SG], the straight razor is replaced with a spectral/ice FX katana, 'slow motion' [SG] slices through the air right-to-left, Tracy falls back under the swing of the katana shattering the blade with an upward kick; cut
Alex, blood flowing over the hand applying pressure to the cut across his throat, silently mouths words, light FX, transforms into Cresting Tide Naiad; cut
Exterior shot, bright daylight on what seems to be a tropical island little more than a sand bar, Tracy, Cresting Tide Naiad, Miyoko (now Dread Witch Chrysanth), several other magical girls, including (Hashimoto Sora/ Cloud Watcher Tenshi) and (Shirakawa Kiyomi/Diamond Sovereign Juno), who is clearly involved in the capture/dismissal/something of some manner of eldritch horror; cut
Tracy free-running up the back of a three or four story building, crossing the roof & then leaping across a gap formed by an alley, as she leaps across the gap, the camera slips focus to the street level below where a portal forms; a young man, dark complected & barely holding on to a crutch flies through to impact a blue dumpster next to the far wall of the alley; cut
same alley, the young man is being menaced by an obviously supernatural figure; opposite, we see Kurosawa Miyako just containing a panic, a young man in an outlandish westernized costume with an oversized hat(Junpei Sagara/Sonic Sorceress Airi) steps into the alley carrying bags of trash before realizing the stand-off he is disrupting; cut
different alley, Junpei, in an increasingly heated argument with several magical girls, pulls an I-pod out of his pocket with a bleeding hand, light FX, transforms into Sonic Sorceress Airi before collapsing screaming on the ground; cut
Teenaged Japanese boy (Nakahara Senshiro/Ao) & girl (Nakahara Kyou Michi/408chan), apparently siblings with matching curly brown hair, walk along a shopping arcade; unnoticed & unnoticing, Tracy walks in a different direction, narrowly but adroitly avoiding colliding with the two of them; cut
Senshiro rapidly but correctly placing ofuda upon a structure just before a golden light spreads from the ofuda over the structure, wind FX in background; cut
Tracy, seated on a hill-top overlooking Obusa, her back three quarters to the camera, beside her is seated a teenage Japanese girl. The two of them are gazing off-camera with expressions of mixed disbelief, concern, and in Tracy's case, regret. Mixed digital, static & practical effects, beginning from the side of the field the two girls are gazing towards completely occlude the field before collapsing into a point of light, center-screen as a low murmur builds to...
pauses a moment, fiddling with her hair. "...I'll answer any questions you've got later, but I don't think now's the time."
"That is unfortunately a truth" Tracy nods in pained agreement with Nobody's words. As Senshiro's focus draws inward, her own attention grows sharper.
"What?" She inquires, "uncomfortable epiphany?"
"I hate those." She mutters to herself.
At night, bands of moss growing along the halls of Neo Jimazan glow a faint and calming blue. The rosehip tea has drawn Tracy through the west wing of Brilliance’s Academy for the Terminally Human, tracing the incline of the helical structure of the metropolis onto Perfection’s balcony: a garish model of Obusa under the naked sky.
Across several picturesque lawns and over a white picket fence, you reach a home modeled after a single family home of Obusa, but which currently houses a dozen or so independent people. The sense of direction Tracy was following ends at the foot of a wooden step ladder hanging from a fantastical homage to a treehouse modeled after a pirate ship. The tree limbs rise out of the deck like masts. A figurehead is carved into a limb that traces the hull. There is a deck, a cabin, and a crowsnest. The last three steps of the ladder hang at an angle, and there are claw marks on the ledge above.
[Map]
Nobody nonchalantly follows after Tracy hands in the pockets of her jean jacket, looking around with a great deal of curiosity. She grins at her and waves as she leaves...
Then just as she vanishes from sight, she grabs a backpack she's stowed away amidst the clutter she continually amasses near the doorway and follows after, shadowing her, with a stupid grin on her face.
The giant Obusa model gives Chessa the creeps, but Nobody remains cool and collected... or as collected as someone who keeps ducking around corners could be. It felt ghostly, and empty. Like... things should be there that were not. And that was a terrible thing in many ways, even though she didn't know just what it was that was missing. A sense of wonder? Of magic? It could just be the absence of other yokai, or perhaps even the vaguely threatening sense of being other and thus unwelcome. A feeling she'd grown quite less accustomed to, in this form. She didn't like that feeling encroaching on this newfound respite.
Eventually, she follows Tracy to the building with the tree house... but doesn't go inside. Instead, she tugs the backpack off of one shoulder and digs through it. She takes off her jean jacket, and replaces it with a bright blue pullover hoodie - absconded from Sora's fresh, clean, warm laundry, along with a festival mask - new, that only covered half of her face. She'd bought that with the power of recycling. She packs away her jean jacket, before carefully juxtaposing it to conceal a third of her face, and returning to what she thought was sneaky for a human.
Approaching the quintessential treehouse, Nobody spots movement in one of the second-floor windows of the house. A teenager with chartreuse hair in a matching denim cutoff jacket and a black graphic t shirt peers down at Tracy.
With a wet smack, something black and heavy hits the ground on the far side of the tree. The grass around it shrinks back and dies, but the mass itself doesn't move. The boards of the treehouse creak, and from inside there are a series of thumps punctuated by the sound of splintering wood.
When the yard goes quiet again, the curtains are drawn on the upstairs window.
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"ur-!" Tracy involuntarily blurts as the tenebrous mass smacks into the earth.
"Wait!" she cries out in response to the sounds of violence within. "I'm not going to hurt you!"
As if I ..
In response to Tracy's initial pleas, the yard is eerily quiet. Whatever was moving inside has gone still.
There is a series of thumps against the wall of the treehouse, and a porthole window in the hull pops free of its hinges, soaring through the air before bouncing to a stop beside Nobody. A foot-long blade, black at its spine, but translucent at the edge, stands straight out of the glass of the porthole window, having pierced several inches through the glass. From the darkness behind the open porthole, Tracy can see a set of blue eyes peering out at them as a low growl rises in the night air. In a voice choked with teeth, the team hears the words leave me be.
Across the yard, the mass of glistening black flesh shifts and writhes weakly, a bubble forming at one end.
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Starting slightly at the display of controlled violence, Tracy opens her arms, spreading her hands to show she is no threat, co-incidentally exposing herself utterly to any further violence this troubled soul might choose to inflict.
"I..."
"I can't do that, I'm sorry." Collapsing to her knees as if the grief and pain of her audience were a yoke dropped upon her shoulders, Tracy's head bows as her eyelids, leaden, droop. "I know what you did," she breathes, "all that you did. the pain just...
got too much. old world gone, new world no better. Just trading one set of torment for another. Finally, to heap insult on injury, even the peace of death is denied you."
Nobody watches for a moment, peering over the top edge of the fence, before moving to snap off a twig from a nearby bush... she then proceeds to slink into the backyard to get closer to the little bundle of goop. She watches it closely for a moment, preparing to poke it with her stick if it makes any sudden moves... or if nothing seems to happen at all, beyond the writhing.
~~~Nobody~~~
~~~Tracy~~~
There is some shuffling inside the treehouse, and two sets of glassy black blades come into view, tapping one at a time against the frame of the broken porthole. A pair of eyes come into view behind the eight blades, iridescent blue, but otherwise quite human and pregnant with emotion. It was to be a statement... not a slaughter... and it was meant to end.