1.x For Yuri, I Sell My Soul to Aliens

After I’ve had my fill of the snow and trees, I fly back to Forks and figure out how to retrieve my phone from wherever it goes when I’m transformed. I swiftly navigate to the private server where all my internet friends live and start posting. It’s still early afternoon, and everyone in our server is based in North America, so they’re all online.

Alexandria: alright you shits listen up

Alexandria: big fuckin announcement

Mike Trout: Oh shit

Mordacity: you finally butched up and told the girl you like her?

Alexandria: maybe the biggest

Alexandria: SHUT

Alexandria: silence 5, a 10 is talking

Mordacity: so you pussied out. again.

Alexandria: i am going to beat you with hammers

Mordacity: with what arm strength

Mordacity: jacking it to gacha girls doesn't make you ripped and I know you've never stepped inside a gym of your own free will

Alexandria: i play them for work!!!

a single femur: She’s muted. Stop stalling and say your announcement

Alexandria: thank you

Alexandria: you will be spared

Alexandria: okay gang this is the big times, this is it, the big shit, the real shit. i, the Alexandria you all know and admire…

Mike Trout: did you finally install rainbow six?

Alexandria: oh for fucks sake

I snap a photo of myself and upload it. In the photo I’m transformed, obviously a witch, and floating high above even the tallest tower in Forks, the city sprawl laid out below me. My friends have never seen a picture of me before now, so I guess this is my official face reveal.

Alexandria: check this shit

Alexandria: I. AM A MOTHERFUCKING WITCH!!!!!!!

a single femur: Nice Photoshop

a single femur: My phone autocorrected that capitalization, I do not respect adobe as an institution

Mike Trout: Siiiick

Mike Trout: I totally believe you

Mike Trout: So are you up for siege or not? femur, siege?

a single femur: Sure, I've been looking for a new excuse to lobotomize myself

Alexandria: you shits

Mordacity: democracy dies in darkness

Mordacity: your fascist suppression of my free speech has been noted

a single femur: Okay ancom

Alexandria: does trust mean nothing to you people

Mike Trout: Democracy reference! Changing my vote to helldivers

Mordacity: it has also been noted that none of you have the social literacy to tell when a joke would be out of character

Mordacity: @Alexandria do a video call you dumb bitch. hop in vc and stream

Alexandria: oh right

Alexandria: shut up

Alexandria: i would have thought of that in a second

Mordacity: keep telling yourself that

a single femur: Wait are you being serious

Alexandria: yes

Mordacity: start the fucking stream

I move to the voice channel and hit the stream button. Mord was already in the channel, waiting for me, and Femur and Mike join quickly.

“So, I think some groveling is in order,” I say with a smirk as I wave at them from a thousand feet above street level. The audio quality is probably jank, but I’m far enough up that the sound of city life doesn’t reach me.

“I'm exempt from groveling,” Mord says smugly. For all that she memes and shitposts with the rest of us, her voice is always carefully measured and controlled. There’s a sharp edge to most of what she says, and there’s an almost lilting way to how she shifts between tones.

Femur has a tired voice, like he’s always running on too little sleep and too much stress. His English is accented, having grown up in India before moving to Toronto for college like I moved to Forks, and it lends an odd warmth to his speech. “Holy shit. You weren’t kidding.”

Mike says, “No fucking way. Duuuude. This can’t be real.” We like to joke that Mike is the zoomer of the group, despite all four of us being Gen Z, because he’s got the most energetic voice and the youngest sense of humor.

I preen at their reactions, excepting Mordacity and her usual bite. “It’s real. Just a few hours ago, everyone’s favorite Alexandria became a genuine bona fide witch. I have magic now. Take a look.” I conjure green flame in my free hand, then cycle it to purple before putting it out. I make sure I get clean video, holding my phone steady. “I can turn people into clay golems, copy any object I can fit in my hands, and ‘upgrade’ objects with transformation magic.”

They all start talking over each other.

Femur asks, “Did you have to kill someone for this?”

“How fast can you accelerate? Can you hit Mach speeds?” That one’s Mike.

“Do you have a name yet?” asks Mordacity.

I roll my eyes, but of course I’m still reveling in the attention. “Okay okay, all of you shut the fuck up and wait your turn. Mord, you earned the first question.”

“Do you have a name yet?” she repeats. “I saw your fight with Thunderthighs, you’re already making waves. You should be figuring out your brand before social media decides it for you, A. You don’t want to be another Brickhead.”

I wince. “Yeah, okay, good point.” Poor girl. “Kinda still processing that this actually happened to me, so I hadn’t gotten that far. Uh, any suggestions from the peanut gallery?”

“Blaze!”

“Sandbox? Dollhouse?”

“Murder Death Kill!”

“Fire Angel. Wings Girl.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Kiln? No that sucks.”

“Alexandria.”

That last suggestion is from Mordacity—her only suggestion. I frown and consider it. “Mord, walk me through that one. Why Alexandria? Just ‘cause it’s my handle?”

“You have personal attachment to the name, which might matter if the theories I’ve read are accurate. And it has a heroic history, which contrasts with ‘Strix Striga’ effectively translating to ‘witch bird.’ You’d be positioning yourself as a foil, if interacting with Striga is a goal.” There’s a knowing tinge to that last line. There’s no way she knows the true depth of my feelings, but sometimes she gets scarily close.

I picked the name Alexandria for my online presence after I dropped out of university. The library of Alexandria famously burned, and I’m a college burnout. It’s not a bad pick. However, “I don’t think it’s a good idea to give out such a big hint to my secret identity. I don’t exactly blab about my IRL situation, but I’m sure someone could get some clues to where I live if they scoured enough of my posts, veil or no veil. Also, my roommate knows my handle.”

“I would think that last one would be an upside,” Mord says dryly. “But your argument is persuasive, so I’ll retract the suggestion. You should probably think on it overnight rather than listening to our inane ideas.”

“Me next!” Mike butts in. “You gotta give me those numbers. I am dying here not knowing how your average velocity compares to the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird which flies at 2,200 miles per hour and was never destroyed due to enemy action.”

“Nah. Femur, you’re up.”

Femur, having waited patiently for his turn, asks me, “Do you know what your limits are, morally speaking?”

I sigh. I really should have seen that coming from the philosophy nerd. “That is way too heavy a question, man. I don’t know, I don’t want to kill anyone? Steal from the billion-dollar company, not from the mom-and-pop? I can just figure it out as I go.”

“That’s the kind of thinking that leads to you having a freakout because you killed a dog or something,” he argues. “‘Figuring it out as you go’ means figuring it out when you fuck up and traumatize yourself—or someone you care about.”

“That’s life,” Mordacity says dismissively. “People hurt people all the time. What matters is the optics of how you hurt people. Your trick with Thunderclap was a good start; you’ve demonstrated restraint toward one of the people who matter in the eyes of the public, which is more important than how you handled the civilians—though I assure you, I do have notes on that side of your performance.”

“This is not the time for your edgy sociopath roleplay,” Femur insists with real heat in his voice. “I’m not going to let my friend become a murderer because she thought she was playing a game where consequences can’t happen.”

Mike adds, “Yeah I’m kinda with Femur on this one, gang. Like, real talk, Lexi: are you okay? This shit is crazy. You’re a witch now. Why?”

I shift uncomfortably, wishing for a moment that I could cut the video stream without that raising more questions. I’ve shared a lot with these people (especially Mord, who I knew in college when I was having my breakdown) but there are some secrets that just aren’t mine to share, like Sophia being Striga. “The opportunity came knocking. That’s all I’m willing to say. And Femur, look, I’m not going to murder anyone, okay? I played it safe today and I’ll keep playing it safe, because I’m not stupid. I don’t want a Vanguard hit squad hunting me down. We can sort out the morals later. Yes, I know how that sounds, you don’t need to point it out.”

“Fine,” he relents, “but I am going to pester you into reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics if it fucking kills me. No more excuses.”

“I’ll do that.” I will not do that.

“She’s not going to read that,” Mordacity drawls. “Show her Feldman instead, it’s more suited to her frame of reference.”

“I hate the both of you,” I say with affection. “Mike, ask me some nerd shit.”

“I want to know everything about your powers. Can you break the sound barrier? What’s the heaviest thing you can lift? We have to get numbers, Lexi please give me numbers.”

So we get him numbers.

The glue of our little group is a fixation on magic. Femur cares about the implications of magic’s existence and what people are doing with it in the broader world. Mordacity is a wargamer interested in how mages fight and how they can be beaten. Mike is a physics nerd who wants to model magical abilities with scientific equations. And I’m the fangirl who loves everything about mages and devours anything to do with them.

The mechanical stuff is largely outside Femur’s wheelhouse, so he mostly tunes us out and works on homework while Mordacity and Mike give me tests to run, take measurements as best they’re able, and do the math that brings it all together. Very exciting in theory! In practice…

“Okay, I’ve got that in the spreadsheet. Two more laps and we can move on to the next set of landmarks.”

“Is this really necessary?” I groan, unmuting again now that I’ve come to a stop. Turns out high speed winds are nightmarish to listen to. “The numbers aren’t changing.”

“Of course it’s necessary,” Mordacity says with an edge of insult. “You can’t perform an experiment once and call it definitive. Science is built on replicated results.”

“Also it looks super cool when you zip across the sky,” Mike adds. “Though it would be cooler if you could reach Mach speeds. We gotta do more limit tests.”

I’ll spare you the fine details. Under their instruction, I fly all around the city and back and forth between the coast and the mountains. We measure how long it takes me to fly from skyscraper to skyscraper, from one district to the next, and so on. It took me three minutes to cross fifteen miles when I went from the city to the beach, which gives us a max speed of 300 miles per hour. That holds fairly well across the other tests we run, though a fair few come in much lower. When I’m deep inside the concrete jungle, I fly slower even with buildup.

“It’s the preservative impulse,” Mordacity explains. “We see this kind of behavior all across the spectrum when it comes to magic powers. I’ve seen speculation that magic doesn’t like harming its users, but that’s assigning more intent than I’m comfortable with. Practically speaking, magic modulates away from actions and events that would disrupt its continued use. Going top speed in the middle of downtown would result in a whole lot of crashes into buildings, so your speed gets handicapped until you’re out in the open air with a clean line of travel. Theoretically you can override that limit, but I’d advise against it unless you really need to.”

When I do have a clean line of travel, I can reach my 300 number in under ten seconds of acceleration. That’s fast, but not particularly exceptional by the standards of magical girls, and distantly below what modern aircraft are capable of.

Mike has the reference points, of course. “Commercial airliners like Boeing’s 737 and 777 cruise at over 500 mph, and the 787 almost reaches 600 mph at top speed. In ideal conditions the F-22 Raptor hits 1,500 mph, and the Blackbird tops out at 2,200 mph. Realistically you’re like a high end racing car that can fly; those models start in the 100s and hit their limit in the 200s, so you could crush an F1 race or IndyCar if your magic cooperated.”

“And if the organizers allowed it,” Mord comments dryly. “Regardless, we shouldn’t take the current measurements as immovable fact; magic is not science, and your limits right now might not be your limits in a fight, or when you’re angry, or any number of other random bullshit variables that seem meaningless to us but mean the world to your powers. Don’t get complacent, A.”

Complacent, she says. Well, I guess I’ve been called worse. “Yeah, yeah. We’re done with flight testing, right?”

“Should be,” Mordacity says. “I want to test your regen rate next. Thunderclap barely touched you in that fight, so I’m lacking in data.”

“I’m not stabbing myself for your amusement, dickhead. Suggest something else.”

“Arm strength!” Mike shouts. “Lifting force! I want to know how much you can bench. Lexi you gotta hit the gym now that you have magic so you can get buff like me. If I had magic they’d call me Gains Man because I’d be so good at lifting.”

I roll my eyes. Mordacity cuts in before I can. “The link between physical exercise and physical ability is inconsistent across mages,” she argues. “Besides, her powerset doesn’t seem physically-oriented to me.”

“That basically matches my impression, yeah,” I agree. “It’s—” I hesitate. I know I’ve already told them my big secret, but it feels wrong to share the name of my power. Witches and magical girls never share that, or at least not that I’ve heard—I didn’t even know for sure that powers had names until being told my own. But these are the only friends I have. It feels like paranoia not to trust them. “It’s called Prometheus. My magic, I mean. It told me its name.”

“Now that’s interesting,” Femur chimes in for the first time in most of an hour. “That’s a very big name.”

“Holy hell,” Mordacity breathes. I can practically hear her salivating. “Oh, that’s very interesting information. This has massive implications for our theorycrafting. Okay, no, setting that aside for a moment. A, do you know anything about Prometheus?”

“And if you do,” Mike adds, “let’s pretend that you don’t and still need it explained.”

“I don’t know much,” I admit. “Something about stealing fire and making clay people?”

“A gross oversimplification,” Mordacity grumbles, “but fundamentally correct. Greek stories aren’t monolithic; what we call Greek mythology was the living religion of multiple cultures that evolved and changed over hundreds of years. The version of Prometheus that survives, broadly, is this: he was one of the old gods that predated the Olympians—Zeus, Hades, and the rest—but managed to stay on good terms with them during the big war that put the gods we know in charge of the world. He made the first humans out of clay, then stole fire from the gods to give to his creations. For this trespass, Prometheus was bound to a rock and had his liver eaten by an eagle every day before regenerating overnight.”

“He’s very culturally significant,” Femur attests. “There’s a reference to Prometheus in the title of Frankenstein, and in the title of the biography for the man who built the nuclear bomb. The motif of stealing fire appears in a number of mythological traditions. It’s the original ‘spark of invention’ moment; the vast majority of human technology can trace its origin to early humans mastering fire.”

I hum. “Okay, that’s a lot. I definitely need to read a few books on this, or at least a few Wikipedia articles. And I want to experiment more with the limits of my powers, and how all this ties together. But, I also need to eat something because holy shit it’s been like six hours or something.” It’s been maybe three; the sun isn’t even setting. “I am hungry, gang.”

“Ah, but what if instead of eating—”

Femur kicks Mord from the voice channel. “Go eat.”

“You should eat,” Mike agrees. “We can play Rainbow Six later. And also the magic thing.”

“Later, nerds.”

I leave the channel, put my phone back in the weird pocket dimension where the rest of my stuff goes when I transform, and go looking for lunch.