by N X Hunter
Well, I don't think of myself that way, but I guess I had noticed that I got lucky gene pool wise in some ways. I never had acne when my friends at school all did, I didn't need braces, my hair behaves itself better than a lot of girls...
And my mom was beautiful.
"I wasn't being vain there, by the way, I meant, like, I'd noticed that everyone else was..."
James laughed, gently.
"It's quite alright - nothing wrong with noticing that you are a beautiful girl when you are. And for what it's worth, you are."
Kitsuna's eyes met his for a moment, and she blushed a little, something about the way he had said it made her feel a little like there might have been an implication there. He was, after all, programmed to feel attracted to girls like her.
He's gorgeous, and he's been good at explaining things so far, so much clearer than anyone else, except maybe Illaria, but she's a dead lady inside a cat so I won't be getting hot for her... And he's older. I've never been with a guy much older than me before, I bet he's really experienced and probably a bit dominant and... I need to stop getting distracted by my hormones.
"Thank you! I, well, I don't really know what I look like at all right now, actually - no mirrors in here. But Rayna's face may as well have been a mirror... My transformed form isn't exactly a winner."
"It's not just that people of the mahou shoujo bloodline have some good genes. There doesn't seem to be a standard 'look' or anything, there are girls of every conceivable ethnicity, coloring, build and so on at this point, as we are many, many generations from the original mahou shoujo. But, they, we, I guess, do tend to have some perks like good skin, good hair, general facial symmetry and so on. But those things don't set us apart from lots of other people. More, it seems that we have some more powerful pheromones, that make us more, shall we say, sexually alluring than other people. You might have noticed it, being around others like yourself for the first time - you may find yourself having thoughts that seem a little inappropriate for the situation, about certain people..."
Oh god, does he know how I've been thinking about Soren, and, now, increasingly, him too? He's right, though, I have totally been having those moments of 'why do I keep daydreaming about these men when there are way bigger priorities'. Like, every time I make eye contact with one of them, in all truth.
She cleared her throat, not willing to confirm what he'd just said, but not really wanting to deny it either.
"So Courtney, she gets a supply of power from the adulation of lonely dudes at a strip club. Is there not a less depressing approach she could take? And, what does this have to do with me, are you saying I have to become a stripper as well as some kind of monster hunter? You know I just wanted a job in marketing, right?"
"Courtney is like you in some ways - she doesn't have much by way of a close family - but she did have more than enough love to give her her power, thanks to an extremely close friendship, and a loving relationship she thought would never end. But she lost both."
"What happened?"
"I didn't think Soren and Rayna would have felt comfortable telling you about it before you met Courtney. Well, I don't either, really - it feels quite personal to all of us, since what happened completely destroyed the powerful team we had going here, and it has not been easy to keep the storms under control since. I can only imagine how it is for Courtney. But you do need to know at least the basic gist of it to understand about mahou shoujo and love, and so I'll try and keep it broad - you really should earn Courtney's trust and talk to her if you want to know the full story because it's not my business to talk about her private life... And she could probably do with another friend. Eh, I'm just rambling now because I feel awkward!"
"Please, what happened to the team? I think I have a right to know if I'm supposed to be a part of it."
"Yes. Well, you are replacing a girl named Jacinta. When she was in everyone's good graces, we all called her Jazz, but now, well, I think Courtney prefers that nobody mentions her at all, let alone with cute nicknames. Jacinta and Courtney had been best friends for a long time. Their fathers were friends or something, anyway, so they grew up together, and, when Jacinta transformed into a mahou shoujo when she was 15, we actually allowed her to open up to Courtney about it. It was going to happen to Courtney too, of course, and it felt like the right thing to do to break the rule in this instance and bring her into the world of mahou shoujo before her transformation, so she could support Jacinta, and so this powerful friendship could stay stable, meaning that when Courtney transformed and they became team mates, they would both have that power to rely on. That love."
Kitsuna realized that at the mention of Jacinta's name she had leaned in. This was perfect - whatever story this was going to be, James was sure to tell her how Jacinta had managed to leave and get replaced. It seemed like whatever she had done had had a bad effect on the others, but then, they surely wouldn't feel the same if it was Kitsuna, who they'd only just met. If she got replaced, well, they'd only have lost today. They could be training up the next girl by the end of the week. She wouldn't be causing them all that much trouble.
"When their old team member retired, Courtney began her transformation. This was a year after Jacinta's, when they were both 16, and they were both so happy. It had been hard for Courtney to watch Jazz... Jacinta... coming back from the storms and training with Rayna, and not being able to be a part of it, but now, the two best friends could be inseparable again. Maybe Rayna felt a little left out - she could never be as close to them as they were to each other, and she was the leader now, having been a mahou shoujo for longer, despite being the same age. But she had Soren. Things were fairly harmonious for a couple of years there. As much as they ever are for teen girls who fight monsters, and the guys who help them."
"So what went wrong? Soren said Jacinta retired early? How did she do that? Did she have to do something terrible to be able to leave?"
Kitsuna didn't realize how strange the question sounded, so desperate was she to know something that might help her. All this backstory about these girls was interesting to hear, but not that interesting, if she wasn't going to be joining their team.
Please just tell me how she got to quit!
James's face wrinkled in confusion.
"Jacinta didn't want to leave. I don't know where you got that idea. It's not a matter of how she retired - she retired the same way everyone else still young enough to fight retires: She had a baby. The reason it caused so much difficulty in the group was that the father of her baby was Courtney's fiance."
Chapter 9
The way he said it hit her like a rock.
Then, if Jacinta didn't have some exit I didn't already know about, she just got knocked up... It's a dead end. I'd be willing to do most things to get my life back, but having a baby at 18 and having to raise them under these people's rules... perhaps condemning them, if they're a girl, to doing this instead of me... I can't do that. I won't. But then... is there no other way?
She realized she was shaking. She'd managed to keep her emotions under control all day just by focusing on that one aim of finding out how other people who'd escaped had done it, forming a plan. Maybe there was still a chance if Illaria of the Void would share more information with her, but still, what if there wasn't? She'd been naive. If there was an easy way out then the people who worked at Calibre Academy would have found a way to seal it shut by now. She can't have been the first girl to wish for it.
She felt like she might cry, but she bit her lip and looked up at James with what she hoped was a calm face, willing him to go on with this story of whatever soap opera bullshit had gone on with these girls she didn't know. What did it fucking matter? She wanted to scream. What did it matter who fucked whom, if at the end of it you still had to go and risk your life fighting monsters?
But he didn't continue with Courtney and Jacinta's story. He'd already told her the important part anyway. Courtney was powered by the love of customers, because her best friend and h
er lover had both betrayed her. It only made Kitsuna feel more bitter. Wasn't that just a lovely story about how fucking great it was to be a mahou shoujo?
"I think I understand," he said, softly, reaching forward and taking hold of one of her trembling hands.
She wanted to rage at him, tell him that he didn't understand at all, but what stopped her was that deep down she knew that he did understand. Maybe he had pleaded that his sister shouldn't have to do this. Maybe he'd even begged to be allowed to do it in her place. Maybe he'd watched dozens of girls, some just kids, try and fight it, just like she felt compelled to. And he'd never been able to change a damn thing.
"I just... I really thought I would find a way... I know it was wrong to pretend I wanted to learn from you when I just wanted to know how to retire, I just... It was all that kept me going, after Soren said someone - Jacinta - had retired early. I thought I might have to do something unpleasant but that I'd be willing to do, you know? I even... I even thought that if I had to get injured badly, I might be able to hurt myself... But I noticed as soon as I transformed, even in my shitty weak transformed state, nothing hurts, I can't even feel the old ankle injury I've had for years from spraining it playing soccer. I bet even if I cut my fucking arm off it'd grow back just in time for me to go and do my hero duties..."
"Well, actually it would, and that's the first time I've seen anyone bring up the physical healing factor of the transformation as a negative," he said with a gentle chuckle.
"So, you have to fight until you have a child, or you die..."
"No, it's not as bad as that. You can also earn retirement by fighting in five hundred storms. That was a rule brought in by one of the old mahou shoujo who came up with the rules about motherhood. Not all women could, or wanted to have children, she reasoned, and those who had become veteran mahou shoujo are often reaching an age where it may be better to let younger girls take their place. That kind of retirement was supposed to be seen as a great honor, and the point where a mahou shoujo would get her freedom back. But, well, organizations like Calibre Academy which sprang up to enforce the rules and support the girls in the newer, more structured age, they decided that instead of retiring from this world altogether, it was a better use of these veterans to have them coach current girls. That's what happened to Rayna and Jacinta's team mate before Courtney, Beatrice. You will, no doubt, have classes with her once the semester starts."
As soon as he'd said the number Kitsuna had started doing the math, but given up quickly. Even if there was a storm every week it would take a decade. And then they'd still own her. She would be giving these people her youth, whatever happened.
"What about if you get sick? I know the healing factor doesn't cure cancer, or my mom would still be alive."
"It would have kept her cancer at bay until she stopped transforming. In fact, many retired mahou shoujo are able to survive a little longer and with less pain if they become terminally ill, or even just start to physically deteriorate from old age, just by transforming for a little while every now and then. It used to be that once you retired you had to hand over your wand, and could never transform again, but when we realized that it could be used in this way that rule was changed. But when a mahou shoujo isn't actively fighting storms anymore, her transformed state becomes weaker and weaker. It can give someone a few extra years of life, but nothing more. I'm sure your mother used it as well as she could to stay with you..."
So that was how her mother had lasted so much longer than the doctors had said. Kitsuna had always fancied that she was just that tough, and loved life that much. But how could she have loved her life? All of her happiness, it must have just been making the best of the hand this crapsack world had dealt her.
"I don't know what to do, James. I really just... don't know how to do this."
"I can tell you one more thing about your team mates that might give you a little bit of hope, you know. Not hope of not having to fight - I honestly would tell you if there was a way out of that, just like I would have told my sister fifteen years ago if I could have, and there is not. But hope that this may not be the horrible fate you think it is."
Kitsuna had given up on expecting any new information to bring with it hope, now, but she shrugged at him to go on.
"Rayna has been an active mahou shoujo for nearly ten years now, and in that time she has fought five hundred and seventeen storms."
Kitsuna looked at him in confusion.
"She should have retired seventeen storms ago?"
"Yes. She asked for permission to stay in service, and because she's still young, seeing as she was such a young starter, the powers that be were delighted to give it to her. She loves being a hero. She doesn't want to teach others, she wants to be there in the action, cutting down the enemies of humanity and defending our world. So one day, you may realize that you do too. That you have an important and incredible calling, and that the normal life you'd chop off your legs for now wouldn't be anywhere near as good."
Kitsuna couldn't imagine it, and instead was more willing to believe that Rayna was just an even weirder person than she'd already thought. But still...
It's going to happen. I guess the only choice I actually do have is whether I keep on complaining about how unfair it is or whether I start taking it seriously. Maybe I've been a real pathetic bitch about it all so far...
"I guess I need to find a solution to get stronger then, don't I," she smiled weakly, "I don't suppose I can let Rayna down if she's that gung ho about the whole thing."
"Maybe you should pick that wand up, then, she would probably hate that you've left it on the floor like an old takeaway carton," James said, gesturing to the platinum-and-pink wand, where, he was right, she'd left it, neglected on the while tiles.
She nodded and stood, noticing again how good moving felt. Maybe it wasn't even that hard to fight the creatures from the Big Emptiness. She did already feel like she was a hundred times more athletic than usual, and that was just with her, by all accounts, completely shit first transformation. And if there was that powerful healing factor too, was there really even that much danger? If the earth had somehow created mahou shoujo to protect itself, and they'd been keeping the Big Emptiness at bay for centuries, then surely they genuinely were made to be strong enough to easily survive these fights? Maybe she shouldn't build it up in her head to be some life threatening undertaking until she'd even seen what she was up against. After all, of all the mahou shoujo she'd heard about from James, none of them had died in the storms, had they?
The wand did look far too beautiful to be left ignored on the ground like that. Was it really made of platinum that she had somehow called into existence with her powers? That in itself was pretty incredible.
She was just reaching for it, wondering how much it would be worth to a jeweler, when a wave of dizziness rushed up from her stomach and to her head, and she felt herself falling.
The last thing she noticed before she blacked out was the sound of James leaping from his chair, and the feel of his arms around her.
Chapter 10
"Hey, it's alright," she heard James's masculine voice, soft, but close to her.
She realized he was cradling her in his arms, as she opened her eyes. The physical contact felt overwhelmingly good, causing a wave of emotion to rise in her chest. Maybe she had been craving having someone hold her and tell her it was going to be OK ever since she'd found out she was a mahou shoujo. Maybe she'd felt lonely for longer than that, even. She didn't know, but she felt at the same time relaxed, and also a bit like she wanted to cry.
"Did I pass out again? Is that normal?"
"It was just your transformation wearing off. It doesn't usually make people faint, but I think given the strength of the platinum magenta power, and the comparative weakness of your own mahou shoujo power, it took a big mental toll on you."
"The weakness. I was going to look for an answer to that, wasn't I..." she said, noticing her own voice sounding sleepy and dreamlike, as
if she was high or something.
"I want to help you..." he said, and she felt him tenderly brush her hair away from her forehead.
"Are we on the ground?" she asked, still in a haze.
"Yeah," he chuckled softly, "I managed to catch you before you fell, and then I sorta lowered you down in my arms, and... I just stayed."
"Thank you."
"I'm just glad you don't think I'm taking advantage or something."
Her eyes became more in focus, and she could see his face, concerned, and still so handsome. Being this close to him she really understood what he'd meant about people of the mahou shoujo bloodlines having their special pheromones or whatever it was that made them more sexually appealing. It had been the same being next to Soren on her bed last night. The heat from these men’s bodies, the smell of their skin, it disrupted her thoughts somehow and made that little spark of arousal and desire, the little spark that under more romantic circumstances would probably feel like a full blown inferno.
And I guess I must affect them the same way...
"Do you want me, James?" she asked, a little afraid of what might happen, but knowing that he was trying to offer her the solution to her weakness. Trying to offer her some form of love.
"If you're going to be that direct about it... Yes. I can't help that. I was trying to be professional but... Well, I find you irresistible, if I'm honest."
"But it's just because of what I am... Right?"
"How is that any different from wanting someone because they're your type in any other way? I don't know if it's fucked up, because I've always been this way, but you do something to me."
"We all do, though, right?"
Her voice was thick. It made her heart pound to hear him say such things, especially after he'd been acting so seriously before. But it confused her. And what would it mean if she admitted she felt it too? She wasn't able to commit to him, it wouldn't be right. She felt such a strong pull towards Soren too, after all, and she hadn't even had a chance to see how it felt to be this close to him yet. Making a choice would be hard, but she didn't think it would be fair on them or her to make one now just because she was swept away in the moment, and feeling vulnerable. Or because she'd just been told she needed someone to love her, or at least want to fuck her really badly, to get the power to fight inter-dimensional shamblers.
