Samantha Rye and the Magic Girl High

The next day started mostly routinely. I got out of bed and used the choker to switch over to the sundress outfit. I checked myself in the bathroom and felt a little depressed that the makeup had not faded at all. I walked through the cleansing portal thingy and then went straight to my first class. I skipped breakfast as I had plenty of apples left.

Despite being early I still didn’t get much time to talk to Miss Wintry. She was almost late to class herself and seemed overly distracted with another matter. After class we made plans to meet after school go out. I wanted to get more information about the faculty and who was friend or foe.

Weapons training went smooth and I ended up going over some strategies with Green and Blue after running through my daily form exercises. Miss Aurach was still apprehensive of me so I decided to get on her good side and ask her for some pointers even though I was pretty sure she had nothing new to contribute. She surprised me by pointing out a slight flaw in one of my steps which turned into a constructive conversation on balance and power.

As the next bell rang, the students around me began to get giddy. A sick twisting punched me in the gut. I had thought long and hard about how to react to Miss Puffin’s influence. It was time to put my theories to the test.

She walked in as she had the day before. Today she was wearing a forest green gown with fake ivy all over it. Her pink hair was done up like a giant rose petal. She strutted in with her two suitcases and opened them before the class. She repeated her welcome from the day before and once again like some sick ritual the class shouted as one.

The class dove into the glamour kits as I sat back in my desk concentrating on attempting to spin my pen through each of my fingers and back into my grip. After the class was fully engaged, Miss Puffin walked back to greet me personally.

‘So how was your day of embracing your femininity? Did you learn anything?’

I remained focused on the pen, not giving her any direct attention. I could still feel a pull toward her in my peripheral vision, but not as overwhelming as it was yesterday.

‘Honestly, it was exhausting. How do you have so much energy to put into this with monsters and stuff on the loose?’

‘I do this precisely because of the monsters and…stuff. Our lives are tied to our fairies. If they are not happy then our powers grow weaker.’

She reached for the pen but I maneuvered it around my hand to avoid her grasp. She clicked her tongue in annoyance. Her gaze was now fully captivated by the pens movements.

‘But I don’t have a fairy. I have absolutely no reason to participate. Why do fairies even care about how you dress?’

‘Fairies are primal creatures that like to live the most beautiful of nature’s spaces. The more we emulate these places, the more the fairies feel at home.’

Miss puffin reached for my hand to attempt to stop the pen’s movement. I flipped the pen into my grasp and rapped her on her hand with it. She winced in pain but continued watching as I started the movements again. I restrained a chuckle. She was like a cat.

‘As for you, my job is to prepare you for when you do make that bond so that it may become strong.’

I thought of Apocolyptia and what she would think of me all dressed up. There is no way she would care about what type of makeup I wore. And she would probably prefer some fantastical armor to some fluffy dress. A smirk escaped my lips at the thought.

‘There is no way she would want something so fancy.’

Miss Puffin’s gaze immediately snapped from the pen to me. Gone was the playful cat, to be replaced with the stalking lioness. I immediately felt the crushing power of her gaze and my mind muddled a little.

‘Oh, what type of cloths would you fairy prefer then?’

‘A..armor…sss…something more practical, maybe?’

She leaned in and looked at the side of my head. I dropped the pen and stared down at my desk. She snapped her hand and a student brought her something but I didn’t dare to look.

‘Then your assignment for the rest of the week is to design an armor you think your fairy would like.’

A drawing pad and art pencils fell onto my desk in my line of site. She placed her hand on my arm and I feel a rush of energy and a flashing green light. I looked down and realized I was back in my uniform.

Elated, I looked back at myself in the mirror. The makeup was all gone. All that remained was the ties in my hair. I inspected my body for any other lasting effects and found a small peacock feather tattoo on my left wrist.

‘What’s this?’

‘Consider it a gift. If you ever want to use that outfit again, just activate the tattoo. It looked so cute on you; I couldn’t possibly take it away. At any rate, if you are not going to participate in the dress up, then your task is to get in touch with your fairy and design an outfit you will have when you are bonded. I’ll be checking on it periodically.’

‘But I can’t draw.’

‘Just trust me and try.’

That was asking for a stretch. I decided to open the art pencils and doodle a stick figure. To my surprise the picture came out exactly as I had pictured it. A few test pictures later and I found that either the pad or the pencils had the ability to let me draw whatever was in my mind. This could actually be useful.

I spent the rest of the class not paying attention and drawing pieces of my memories in the apple grove. This could become a diary of sorts to reflect upon. I tried to draw the woman in my dream but came up short of features.

The bell rang and I walked with Blue to the front of the school. We parted ways after she made me promise to eat lunch with them tomorrow. She walked toward the cafeteria and I decided to get a daytime view of the guardhouse before heading to the Forge again.

As I exited a patch of trees and the gate came into view, I heard the sound of a crash followed by the sound of a large tree falling. A shrill scream came from the other side.

‘Open the gate now!’

The gate swung open giving a better view of the battleground on the other side. Trees had all been knocked down onto the road and huge chunks of ground had been uprooted. I heard a crash and a blur flew past me and smashed into the tree next to me.

I looked next to me to see a transformed Sable crumpled on the ground. She looked up at me but her eyes said that she was barely hanging on.

‘Can you try not to die every time we meet?’

‘Shut…’

She dematerialized in a burst of black energy. I looked up to see Blue and gang running my direction from the cafeteria. I thought of the barrier around the complex and wondered why they were so frantic. If something could attack then they wouldn’t have opened the gate.

Just then, I heard a roar. The sound penetrated my soul and felt like it directly assaulted the Veil. Under its bone crushing pressure I felt the Veil crack once again.

-

I examine the magic circle etched onto the wrist of my exosuit as I check my heads up display. Three hundred MU wasn’t a lot or energy to go on but I would have to make due. A yellow indicator signaled that my armor had taken moderate damage in the previous fight with the mutant swarm, but it was nothing that my nanites couldn’t repair in time. I heard my coms click on in my helmet.

‘Magus, do you copy?’

‘Loud and clear.’

‘Alright. We’ve got a six man team sweeping the city. Whatever it is, it’s a big one. Take the Dragoon and comb west of First Street. Report back if you find something.’

‘Roger that.’

I looked over at the Dragoon as he readied his massive gauss rifle. He stood a good foot and a half over me and his bulky exosuit left an imposing figure next to my suit which was tuned for mobility. He nodded to me and we continued into the city. We talked through coms as we scouted the sector.

‘So you’re a Magus? Never seen one in action. You look like a Reaver could sneeze you to death.’

‘Some of us rely on more than just armor plating to protect ourselves.’

‘You mean Mana?’

‘When available. Actually dodging helps too.’

The Dragoon snorted a laugh and shot a round down the road, obliterating two mutants in a single shot. It always surprised me at how quiet a gauss rifle could be even at its massive size. I saw movement on my radar and broke away from him running toward a store front. I jumped over the wreckage of a hover vehicle and then dove through the shattered glass of a display window.

Inside were six mutants waiting in hiding to ambush us. I quickly dispatched five of them with my sword and then the last with my sidearm as he ran away. As I walked out of the store I took a plush manticore from the shelf. As I walked out I tossed it to the Dragoon.

‘Got you a gift.’

‘Aww. You shouldn’t have.’

He used the convenient clip to attach it to his gun. We continued like this, sweeping and clearing the area. At one point we decided to split up and clear separate streets. I was dispatching a few more mutants when I heard a terrifying roar followed by repeated gauss fire. I took off as fast as my exosuit would carry me.

I turned the corner to see a large creature slam the Dragoon into the side of a skyscraper. The shock wave sent a ripple up the building causing any remaining unbroken windows to shatter and rain down shards of glass on the road below.

A Troll. The creature was as rare as it was formidable. It stood sixteen feet tall with a gorilla like frame and giant forearms that almost touched the ground as they stood. They had four eyes and massive lower canines that protruded from their mouths like tusks toward the sky. The scariest thing about trolls weren’t their size or strength. It was their near instant regeneration. 

The dragoon was in poor condition. He was missing one arm and was frantically firing his rifle point blank into the monsters body, which was closing up almost as quickly. Before I could close the gap, the beast grabbed his helmet and squeezed and the Dragoon went limp. The monster threw his lifeless body to the side and turned to face me. My radio squeaked.

‘Magus! The Dragoon’s life support just went dark! Report!’

‘We found a Troll.’

‘By the Goddess!’

I lowered my form and held my hilt in one hand and my sheath in the other. The beast smashed the ground and roared again, causing icy pins to trickle down my arms as my nerves fired. It then began its charge. Three hundred MU is going to go too quickly.

-

‘Tidal Wall!’

Splash!

I snapped out of my flashback to see a transformed Blue and the gang in full combat with a Troll inside the gate. How did it get in? A swirl of confusion and fear welled up inside as I tried to process my memories along with the combat unfolding in front of me. Kat yelled in my direction.

‘Sam! Snap out of it! You have to get out of here!’

I forced all of the emotions into a bottle and focused. This was no time to sort things out. The Troll they were fighting was smaller than the one from my memory, but still terrifying. Blue was taking a beating and any damage the other girls dished out was just instantly healed.

I turned to run, but then something new welled up inside me. The hate I held for Victoria and the school was a lake compared to the ocean I felt toward this creature. That thing didn’t get to live another hour. Not on my watch. I pulled out my sword from my locket and joined Kat in the back.

‘This is crazy! Sam! Get out of here while we can still hold it off!’

‘Just listen! I know how to kill it. Just do what I say and we can bring it down.’

‘How!?’

Blue was sent flying back leaving a line in the dirt as she maintained her stance. She created another wall of water to distract the beast. She and the other girls exchanged a concerned look and then she looked in the Troll’s direction.

‘Alright, what do we need to do?’

‘Great. Now listen up because we might only have one chance at this…’