by N X Hunter
"What kind of monster do you think I am?" Rayna asked, with a disgusted expression, "Wow, your mind really goes to some dark places. Nah, what it is, is that we need IV. Eye-dot-Vee-dot. Not Ivy. Ivy just lets us talk to IV. Wait, I can actually see why that's confusing now, I thought it was a really clever name for the cat at the time..."
"What's IV?"
"Not what, but who. Whom. Who? Whom? Professor?"
"Never mind about the grammar, can we just get on with this?" James said, his voice a little weary, as though he was used to Rayna's general weirdness.
For once, Rayna pulled herself back from the distraction and actually explained something useful.
"IV is short for Illaria of the Void. She used to be a mahou shoujo a long time ago, and when she died, there was some kind of magic, she doesn't like us talking about it when she's not here though, so you'll have to ask her yourself when we summon her. She can basically, for a couple of hours a day, come out of the Void - where her soul is in death - and communicate with us by taking over the body of an animal. I got a cat because it was better than having to find a random bug or bird or something whenever we needed IV to come through, and also because I just wanted a cat. And so yeah, sometimes, like last night when you were hogging all the purrs, Ivy is a regular cat, but other times, like when she was watching over you while I was out fighting the storm, IV is possessing her body."
Kitsuna was a bit disturbed by this. When she'd been petting the cat when she first arrived at the apartment, it was actually some dead lady?
"What happens to the real cat when IV possesses her, though? Does it hurt her?"
"Nah, IV said when she takes over an animal she has to kind of agree it with the animal's soul first - I don't know what that even means, but apparently it's part of the magic. Anyway, when we summon her into Ivy she has to sort of tell the cat spirit that it's all good, and then Ivy the cat just sort of goes to sleep until Illaria leaves."
"Oh. I guess that's, well, that's kinda nice then. But, the Void... is that where we go when we die?"
"Like I said, IV really doesn't like us talking about her when she's not here - we have to respect her, man, she's the one that helps us with a lot of things, and she knows more about the mahou shoujo world than probably all the guys who work here put together. We'll summon her to help you make your wand, and then maybe if you need to ask her some stuff you can, but I can't say whether she'll be into answering you. She's probably had to repeat her story for centuries to assholes like us, and it's not really a happy one, so, you know, I can see why she may not always feel like telling us stuff she doesn't think we need to know about her."
Kitsuna was beyond curious - how could Rayna expect her not to be when she'd just hinted that she knew what happened to people after they die?
The Void though... That doesn't exactly sound like a name they'd give to a nice place... If it's like paradise or heaven or something, it would be called something pleasant sounding. Void sounds like... Nothing. But then, is the Void the same as the Big Emptiness?
Is my mom there?
"OK, so back to me and my wand," Rayna said, when no further questions about IV came.
She held forward the thing she had picked up from the table with both hands, almost as if it was a sword, though it was really only as long as a dagger. It was made of some kind of translucent red material - glass or crystal or maybe even just plastic, though it looked far too expensive for that, and Kitsuna was sure that sacred magical items probably weren't made out of the same stuff as hairbrushes. It had a kind of loop at the top, and inside that, a huge ruby, cut in a round shape with facets all around the edges that reflected the light.
"Pretty, isn't it! Though you should see Courtney's - her stone is jet and her color is chartreuse, it sounds weird but it looks so stylish!"
"Where is Courtney anyway? Shouldn't we introduce her to Kitsuna as soon as possible? We don't know when the next storm will come," Soren said.
"Working. And yes, dear brother, I had that planned for tonight. I'm sure you won't mind tagging along if we go and visit her at work."
Rayna poked her tongue out at him.
"Hey, don't lump me in with those lame guys."
"I was merely implying that you seemed to enjoy yourself last time we went."
Soren looked a little bit uncomfortable.
"Well, I'm not made of stone," he mumbled.
"If you are wondering, Kitsuna, our third member isn't here to see your first transformation because she's working at a strip club. It's hilarious, the guys that go there are so sad. You'll see later. Soren pretends he's so much cooler than that but he totally got a lapd--"
"Anyway, let's worry about Courtney later, yeah. Less talky, more transformy?" Soren said, changing the subject, though not quickly enough for Kitsuna to fail to figure out that the last word of Rayna's sentence was going to be 'lapdance'.
Well, it's good to know he's got a healthy sex drive I guess... I think I might get a bit jealous though if I see him leering at a bunch of strippers... Not that I have any right to or anything.
Yet.
"So, here we go. I channel the power inside me, you know, like when martial arts guy use their chi only way fuckin' better, and then - you'll see."
Rayna closed her eyes and Kitsuna found herself holding her breath. The air in the room seemed to have changed - it was the same feeling she got when there was a storm. Instinctively, she looked down at the Talizman on her wrist, but the storm detector was clear.
Rayna, however, seemed to be affected by a different sort of air entirely. There was no breeze in the room, no fans or AC or anything that would cause her hair to be suddenly whipping up around her like that, as though she was standing on top of some kind of vent Marilyn Monroe style. The wand, still held out in front of her chest with both hands began to glow with a bright white light that shone out from inside the ruby, fracturing out into rays of red and white as it split through the facets of the stone.
Kitsuna watched in disbelief as Rayna began to rise off of the floor, her expression still one of serene concentration, as if levitating was nothing unusual to her. Suddenly, she let out a deafening yell.
"Ruby vermilion power - fill me!"
Under any other circumstances it would have been almost comical to see Rayna roaring out such a weird phrase, but nobody was laughing. Soren was looking on in awe at his sister's power, James maintained a dignified air of scientific interest, but Kitsuna could hardly breathe.
Light burst out from the ruby and seemed to go into Rayna's chest, though it was hard to tell what was going on - Rayna's body had begun to spin in the air and there was light and wind everywhere around her, her hair billowing in all directions. For the briefest moment Kitsuna was certain that Rayna was naked - the black of her dress gone from the spinning, swirling vision in front of her - but then red seemed to appear, and something shiny, glinting in the chaotic blur that was Rayna's transformation.
With a final flash of light that Soren and James had the foresight to shield their eyes from, but Kitsuna, of course, had not, Rayna landed on the ground in a kneel, like a footballer taking a knee, only far more graceful. Her hair landed around her face a fraction of a second later, somehow perfectly styled in bouncy waves she hadn't had before.
The whole process from when she shouted out her words to her ending up in her heroic mahou shoujo pose only took a few seconds, but it was easily the most amazing thing Kitsuna had ever seen.
Rayna was wearing entirely new clothes, including a pair of red and white boots that looked like something a particularly flamboyant professional wrestler might wear, long white gloves with red trim around the elbows, and even a little headband with a ruby in the center of her forehead. Her sleek black dress had been replaced by a bright scarlet one with white embellishments, that was as short, shiny and flared as one might normally expect to see on a cheerleader. She looked like some kind of -
"I know, I know, I look a bit like I come from an anime, or a com
ic book, don't I? But actually they just got the ideas for all of those old stories from artists and stuff who knew mahou shoujo. Our transformations wouldn't look so cheesy if those people hadn't copied our sweet style and used it for their famous characters..." Rayna said.
"That's not what she said the first time, by the way, Kitsuna - she thought it was awesome that she got to look like something out of those old Sailor Moon stories our great-grandparents loved so much..." Soren said, leaning in to give her his commentary.
"Well, I was 13! And anyway, I do still think it's a strong fuckin' look, I just think people don't realize that real mahou shoujo are way more badass than the fictional ones!"
"They don't realize that there are real ones, is why... If you go out like that they'll just think you're going to a retro pop culture convention."
"I know - I've done it. Actually, one day we should totally actually go to a convention like that and --"
"I'm ready."
Rayna and Soren stopped their banter, and both looked at Kitsuna. James smiled with soft approval.
"See, I told you it was a good idea to show her how cool transforming is," Rayna said.
Nobody bothered to point out that she hadn't actually suggested that at all, so, she turned lightly around, making her flashy skirt flare out, revealing some bright red shorts underneath, and went over to the table where Ivy the cat sat patiently observing from her carrier. She wheeled the whole metal topped table over to the middle of the room, and Kitsuna, Soren and James stood around it.
"So, are you ready to meet the one and only Illaria of the Void?" Rayna asked Kitsuna.
Kitsuna nodded.
I just have to make friends with this IV person, get her to talk to me, and maybe I can find out the secret to getting out of having to be a mahou shoujo...
Indeed, she knew it was a bit shady to lie to Rayna, James, and especially Soren about being persuaded just by seeing how cool Rayna's transformation was, but she felt like it was the only way she'd be able to move things along and get the information she needed to save herself. Whether she needed to find out how Jacinta had managed to pull off retiring early, or to find some kind of loophole by talking to the long-dead mahou shoujo expert IV, she had realized that nobody was going to give her the information she needed. Not unless they thought they had already done their job of convincing her that there was anything good about being part of this world.
Rayna once again held her wand out in front of her and closed her eyes in solemn concentration. This time there was no flashing, levitation or spinning, but the wand did pulse with a soft red glow.
After a couple of minutes of this meditation, during which everyone remained completely still and silent, not wanting to do anything to break Rayna's concentration, she opened her eyes and gently placed her wand down on top of the table. She turned the switch on the top of the cat carrier, and the metal door clicked open. The cat inside nonchalantly pushed it, and stepped out onto the table. The beautiful spotted Bengal cat sat down, her tail elegantly swishing behind her and her eyes, with that intelligence that seemed far less uncanny now Kitsuna knew she had the soul of a human, fixed on the new girl.
Chapter 6
"So, I can talk to you now, Rayna says. It was sooo hard not to say something yesterday when you were chatting on to me about windows or whatever it was! Well, I assume that was yesterday, time doesn't make a whole lot of sense, or difference, where I am the rest of the time..."
It was as if the words came by telepathy, but Kitsuna knew that everyone else could hear them too.
What was I expecting, her mouth to move and a meowy voice? I don't know... She sounds so young though. For some reason I was imagining her to sound all ancient and wise, but she sounds like a teenage girl.
"It's... nice to meet you. Kinda embarrassing, given I was talking nonsense to you thinking you were just a cat..."
"Actually the cat who lives in this body is pretty smart, we have some good talks. She would have thought you were wittering a load of old crap too."
"Fair enough..." Kitsuna said, now even more embarrassed.
At least I learned something about cats, I guess.
"So! IV. You know why I brought you here. We need to make a wand for Kitsuna, and to make her transform for the first time. We have a blank wand ready to go, and the room, as always, is insulated against energies from the Big Emptiness and, everywhere else except the Void, I guess?"
Rayna looked at James as if to get him to confirm that.
"Yup," he replied.
"Cool. What about you, though, Kitsuna? How are you feeling about this? You know that the important thing, when transforming, is your belief in yourself, in what you are doing, and in those who are behind you, right?" Illaria asked.
"Huh?" Kitsuna said.
That's news to me. What does that even mean, anyway? Is it one of those pithy 'power of love' type deals, that doesn't really mean anything at all?
"She means it's like, you have to know you're a badass, and that you can trust the people on your side. That's how the transforming works. Of course, you're a newbie so your transformed state won't be very powerful yet, which is a total pain in the ass and means me and Courtney will have to carry you for the first couple of storms. You will get more powerful as you start to have success against the monstery things."
"So experience is important - that's to be expected," Kitsuna said.
"It's not really experience, like in a video game or one of those boring job things you love so much, it's more like, you need to know for sure you can do it to be able to do it, but you don't know you can do it until you've done it," Rayna continued.
James looked like he was going to say something, but just shook his head and kept quiet.
"OK, I suppose that sort of very nebulously makes sense," Kitsuna said.
"Don't worry, none of us are going to judge you on what happens here this first time. We just need to find out what your stone and color are, make your wand, and give you the experience of transforming so that you'll be able to do it again, and so that when the next storm comes and it happens normally, it won't be a disas-- I mean, it won't be confusing for you." Soren said, putting a hand on Kitsuna's shoulder and keeping it there, strong and firm, causing a tingle in her that made her blush.
She fleetingly wondered if during her transformation, he would be seeing her naked, as she had thought she'd seen Rayna. She decided she didn't really mind if he did.
"James, bring us a blank wand. Everyone else except Kitsuna, give us a bit of space here, OK?" Illaria of the Void's sweet voice rang through everybody's heads.
The blank wand was, as far as Kitsuna could see, just a clear glass tube, like something that might be part of a light or something. It wasn't heavy and didn't feel especially robust. When James handed it to her, she found it hard to believe that Rayna's gorgeous ruby wand had ever been anything so mundane.
"Now then," said Illaria's voice, "I am going to teach you how to go into the state of concentration you'll need to awaken your powers. You can do this at any time once you've learned, but it takes a lot out of you mentally, so until you are experienced like Rayna and Courtney, it is best not to transform just for fun. You won't need to do this or pay that mental cost when you enter a storm domain - your powers will just trigger automatically without you having to work for it. After all, that is what they're for."
Kitsuna nodded.
"OK, so, close your eyes, and hold the wand in both hands in front of you."
She tried to mimic how Rayna had been standing before she transformed. With her eyes closed, it was easy to concentrate on Illaria's voice, which sounded light and pleasant, and didn't feel as weird when she couldn't see the cat sitting in front of her.
"I'm going to send a little bit of magic energy into the core of you now, and into the blank wand. Don't worry, it's just a little. It's a gift, think of it like that. It is like a little firelighter to help your own powers kindle."
Illaria's voice seemed to gro
w, not quite louder, but somehow more in focus, as if the other people in the room were getting further away, and now there was just Kitsuna's inner thoughts, and the ghost of an old mahou shoujo left in her world. But it didn't feel scary. There was a slight vibration from the base of her spine that ran up and down, putting her in mind of an electric current, but it just tingled, quite enjoyably, actually.
"Good, good. Relax. Breathe normally, but as you breathe in, try and feel yourself inhaling the magic in the world around you, and putting it together inside your solar plexus, making it part of you."
It was strange. Words that would normally sound like some hippy yoga class bullshit to Kitsuna, that she wouldn't know what to do with at all, somehow had a really clear, actionable meaning at that moment. She really could feel waves of energy all around her, flickering against the bare skin on her face, brushing against her fingers. And she was calling them all towards her, drinking them in as she breathed and feeling them dance around inside her chest, before herding them in to join the growing, pulsing ball of pure power she was forming there.
"Excellent. You can feel it now, can't you. You know it now. You know what your color is. You didn't think about it until I said it, and yet, that was what color the energy was all along, wasn't it? Don't tell us what it is, though. You're going to show us."
Everything Illaria was saying not only made sense, but felt like a perfect, calming truth about reality that Kitsuna thrilled at. Commanding this power was so easy, so natural. She knew what to do next without even hearing the words. Feeling as if she was residing on a whole different plane from her body, from the cat and the room mate and the hot guys and the weird, fake college, she focused the energy inside her and sent it charging down her arms, into her hands, and right into the heart of the blank wand.