2.8 For Yuri, I Build a Better Monster

The Blurs live up to their name and reputation. Five seconds into the fight and I’m already on the back foot.

Canary zips from onlooker to onlooker, systematically removing my beloved audience and repositioning them outside the bank. I catch one of them complaining about being taken away from the action, which gets them moved even further away as punishment.

Amaranth, meanwhile, rips into my familiars with frankly unsettling glee. The sidereals really messed up losing this girl to the solars. The magical girl displays an acrobatic sense of movement as she twirls past imps and prances across their spears to deliver sharp elbows to jeering faces and kicks to scaled wrists. She grabs one imp and slams it into the rest of the battle line until its pulped remains burn away, and she just keeps laughing all the while.

“Magnificent,” I sigh to myself.

Azure punches me in the face.

I reel and the hits keep coming. The heroine delivers a flurry of tight, focused strikes, circling me with her impossible speed and landing blow after blow from every direction. My chin, my cheek, my shoulder, my gut, everywhere. Another haymaker fist crunches my nose, and it’s only when I’m bleeding and coughing and clawing at the air in a flash of wild panic that the magical girl stops in front of me, the haze of blue movement solidifying back into a person.

“When will you witches learn,” she asks, voice sharp, “that this was never a game you could win? How many times will we have to break you?”

I spit blood at her, noting with disappointment how she flicker-moves out of the globule’s path without any change in composure. I force another wicked grin onto my face. “Game’s not over yet. I may be new to the team, but I think I like our chances. No, that’s not quite right; I like my chances.”

The heroine bursts into motion again, but this time I’m ready for her.

Like I said before, I planned for all the encounters that I was likely to run into. I’m the kind of freak that simulates these fights for fun, and I’ve had two weeks to get used to my new powers. All through those two weeks, I’ve been talking with my nerd friends and Ferromancer about how I might win against all manner of magical girls. I’ve built a bag of tricks that I’m just itching to unleash.

If you can’t move faster than a speedster, conventional wisdom holds that you have two main options: either restrict their movement to negate their primary advantage, or become so immovable that their speed doesn’t matter. Durability isn’t really my game, but I’ve got a few ways to control the battlefield.

I grit my teeth through Azure’s flurry of attacks and bring my hands together, gathering emerald and fuchsia flame. A new familiar comes to life, founded in cheap plastic and reforged by Prometheus into something infinitely greater: an eye, oversized and bloodshot, plucked from its socket and nestled in a thin membrane of orange-red skin. Two bat-like wings, same as those of the imps, sprout from either side of its unsettling orb.

Azure punches it as soon as the creature is fully-formed, her fist gliding through gelatinous matter and making a uniquely disgusting sound that will haunt me for as long as I live. Then the floating eyeball explodes with her fist still inside it.

Bright red flame erupts from the murdered familiar and washes over both me and Azure—but where the heroine is thrown back and singed, all I feel is a pleasant warmth. I laugh at her misfortune. All my lumps were worth it. Thanks, Ferro. Thanks, Bombshell.

I first stumbled over this property of my magic during a hectic training bout with some of Ferromancer’s holograms, when a stray fireball from an imp struck one of my wings and dissipated harmlessly. Thorough testing confirmed the observation: the red flame—the destructive flame that I can only conjure secondhand through my familiars—has absolutely no effect on me. I can command a whole pack of imps to burn me and I won’t even sweat.

The next step came when fighting Bombshell’s copies. I had this hypothesis that I’d talked over with Mord and Femur, a bit of speculation about the nature of my power and its inherent limits. Everything that I create or transform with my power seems to take from some internal store of flame. I nearly freeze when I summon too many familiars, but I can get my flame back by recalling what I’ve summoned. Our question, then, became, “What else can I do to the flame I’ve parceled out?”

In battle with Bombshell’s clones, I modified an imp on the fly and made it explode when it was struck. The trick worked so well—it was the one round I didn’t lose—that I rushed out to the game shop before it closed and grabbed another figurine for my collection.

And speaking of that modification trick… with Azure recovering from the sudden shock of an explosion in her face, I quickly flick my attention to the familiars that Amaranth is demolishing and command them to change. The grounded imps—all four still accounted for—turn their flame inward, becoming bombs waiting to detonate, while the flying imps—their numbers already reduced to three of the original eight—trade their spears for nets.

That should keep Amaranth occupied for a few extra minutes. As Azure picks herself up off the ground, my brute comes swinging in with its club. Azure dodges easily, of course, but it gets her attention. She retaliates with a flurry of punches while the hulking demon rips its heavy weapon out of the cracked marble floor.

My aches and bruises from Azure’s first assault are already fading, and my nose uncrunches itself. I use the space I’ve so tenuously bought to conjure my bow and nock an arrow, taking aim. Who can I hit?

Azure may be busy with the brute, but she’s still keeping her attention on me. Amaranth, on the other hand, is focused on her battle with my imps. With the nets added to the mix, she’s having to move more carefully and can’t just dance through the melee. That’s an opening.

I do my best estimation of where she’ll be and loose an arrow that explodes into foam just a second too early, creating a blockade in her path that she easily sidesteps, but that puts her right next to a flamer. I loose a second arrow, this one boasting an ordinary arrowhead and aimed at my own creation. Amaranth isn’t expecting that; she leaps on top of the imp, frowns at the trajectory of the arrow, and then shrieks in surprise as the arrow sinks in and the imp explodes into another wave of red flame.

Amaranth is flung from her perch and I command the remaining imps to chase her down and swarm her. When she hits the ground and rolls I already have another foam arrow lined up to loose, but the arrow is caught mid-flight by a blur of yellow.

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“Nasty tricks,” Canary chides. “Let’s see how you like ‘em turned your way.”

With a flick of her wrist she sends the arrow shooting back at me. With only an instant to react, I cross my arms in a defensive pose to protect my face and body, dismissing my bow in the process. The arrow hits, the foam expands, and Canary rushes me to capitalize on my immobilized state.

I take immense glee in the look on her face when the foam vanishes—its conjuration undone by a mere whisper of will—and I slam my fist into her nose, cracking it like Azure cracked mine. “I seem to like them just as much,” I say with the faintest hint of a sneer. Canary reels back, clutching her face and swearing, and I resummon my bow to fire more foam arrows at her.

The heroine dodges my shots, because of course she does, and then she zips over to a nice coffee table, picks it up, and chucks it at me. My own attempt to dodge is much less graceful, and I’m not quite fast enough to take flight before the table smashes into me. It knocks me to the ground, ripping the breath from my lungs, and then before I have a chance to recover I’m being picked up and thrown.

I hit a wall and crumple to hands and knees, wings spread, and then she’s on me again, bashing me with something hard—I catch a glimpse of a table leg, torn from the offending furniture. She brings it down over and over, slamming it into my knees, my back, even my wings. She’s unrelenting. I can take it.

“Damn,” Canary laughs, “guess you were all bark and no bite. You shoulda stayed a nobody, witch.”

Something a little bit like fury starts to build in my chest. I clench my teeth and ignore her taunt, focused on my work. She still doesn’t know who I am. She doesn’t respect me. I’ll make her regret that.

I grit out, “Aren’t you supposed to be all righteous and heroic? Where’s the appeal to my humanity? Insults like those don’t befit a magical girl! Where’s—”

Canary grabs me by the back of my dress and by my shoulder, and she forcefully turns me around to face her. I flex my wings quickly to keep them between her and what I’ve conjured, and then she’s got me by the collar and leans in close, pulling on my choker tight enough to hurt me. She’s grinning. “You’ve got a mouth on ya. I like that, I do. Tell ya what, if you really wanna call it quits, I’ll let you. Surrender, drop the witch form, and you can spend some nice time in jail gettin’ all rehabilitated.”

I raise my hands in a gesture of surrender and say, “Your words have convinced me, truly. I’m choked with emotion. Is this the part where we kiss and make up?”

She laughs. “No.”

“That’s fair,” I say as I fold my wings, and then the five eyeball bats hidden behind them explode, and Canary burns.

The mouthy heroine hits the back of a lobby sofa and crumples, only spared a concussion by the material she impacted—that is, if a magical girl could get a concussion in the first place, which I’m pretty sure they can’t, and I’m really getting off track. Her costume is covered in burn marks, and her face too. She’s out cold, my first K.O. in this fight.

And if I wasn’t fighting a pack of goddamn speedsters, I’d actually have a moment to celebrate that little victory. Instead, because Azure is an incredibly rude woman and a thief, she clocks me with my own stolen club, which she must have taken from my minion like a common brigand. Yeah, I’m so over the Blurs. They’re too annoying to fight!

I dismiss the club before Azure can hit me with it again, rubbing my head and wincing. That hit hurt, and if I didn’t have that baseline level of witch endurance I think I’d be joining Canary on the ground. In the distance, I see an unconscious gunman where my poor brute once stood, and then Azure starts laying into me with her fists.

Punch, punch, punch, is that all she knows how to do? What a wretch. I bring my hands together and summon another exploding eyeball—or rather, I try to, but Azure grabs both my wrists and twists them apart before I can. Her strength is surprising, and I think it’s the result of genuine training, not magical ability.

“No more of that,” she spits. “Amaranth! Get over here and help me finish this.”

I glance over at the pink heroine, where my swarm of minions has been soundly defeated. Amaranth has two of the little demon figurines and she’s mashing them together and making kissing noises, which I somehow hadn’t noticed until now. She looks up when Azure calls her name, sighs, and whines, “I wanted a duel! Both of you got a duel. This is so not fair.”

“I agree,” I add. “For a hero, you have a terrible sense of sportsmanship.”

“Now, Amaranth!”

“Fine, fine. Oh, wait! Now I get to play with her wings. Yay!”

Amaranth zips over, gets her hands around the base of a wing, and starts pulling. A new shot of panic cuts through my mask of confidence. She’s not actually going to rip my wings off, is she? No, she definitely is.

I strain against the hold around my wrists, but Azure is putting everything she has into keeping my hands apart. Damn that woman for figuring out my limits so quickly. With my hands apart I can’t summon familiars fully-formed, and none of the objects I can summon will get me out of this situation. I could try to transform one of the figurines left on the floor, but my left hand is twisted in the wrong direction for that.

My back is starting to hurt where my wing is being ripped from my body. I flap the other wing to try and smack Amaranth’s face, but she just laughs at me and pulls harder, her fingers digging into tender flesh and applying pressure so sharp it stings the hollow bones beneath. She’s loving this. For the first time since I became a witch, I’m feeling pain so powerful it puts the rest of the world on mute.

Azure isn’t even smirking at me, she’s not even smug about this, just serious and dry and so fucking boring. I hate her face. I want to make them both bleed. I feel that just as powerfully as I feel the pain in my back and my bones and my soul. But I’m not strong enough to fight them both off. I had my chance and I wasn’t fast enough, wasn’t clever enough, didn’t make enough bodies to contend with three magical girls working as a team.

Am I going to lose?

I can’t. I can’t! I need to win because if I don’t then it’s one more failure in a lifetime of disappointment. Archon doesn’t fail. Rachel does. I’ve failed so many times and I can’t let it happen again. I can’t disappoint Sophia again. If I lose here, now, to these C-listers, how can I ever expect to catch up to Striga? How can I look Ferromancer in the eye if I lose after all her training? If I lose… I’ll just be Rachel again. And I can’t imagine a worse fate.

I won’t be a waste of oxygen anymore. I won’t be a burden. I’ll be a witch.

Amaranth tears the wing from my back and I turn pain into strength, every ounce of it I can muster, to free my left hand from Azure’s grip. At the same time, I reach into the furnace inside my soul and grab a foam arrow with my other hand—but instead of summoning the whole arrow, I only conjure the payload capsule, which I crush as soon as it appears.

The foam expands, covering my hand and Azure’s, imprisoning us both. With my left hand I pour bright green flame onto the foam, willing it to life. Azure regains her grip and twists my hand away again, but she’s too late; the foam becomes a living thing, another familiar. All my practice pays off.

This familiar isn’t as complicated as the others, and it doesn’t have a stat sheet or anything like that. All it has is a single power and a single command: expand to consume the magical girl. The foam grows and grows, swallowing Azure up even as she tries to speed away, clinging to her body, sticking and hardening, until she comes to a stop completely encased.

I shiver, suddenly cold, and clutch at the bloody wound on my back that still screams agony across my nerves. That took more out of me than I thought. I’m breathing heavy and ragged, almost trembling. But I did it.

Amaranth leans on my shoulder, on the side where she mutilated me, and says, “So, is it my turn now?”