Darren, Magical Woman

PERSONAL

Gender: Female

Kit: Eldritch

Location: Uptown Khazan

AFFILIATION

Alignment: Hero

Team: The Sentinels of Liberty and Justice

VITAL STATS

Strength: weak (rank 0)

Agility: weak (rank 0)

Mind: weak (rank 0)

Body: superior (rank 2)

Spirit: (rank )

Charisma: (rank )

RECORD

Fame Points: 405

Personal Wins: 60

Personal Losses: 42

Team Wins: 0

Team Losses: 0

Tourney Wins: 0

Tourney Losses: 0

STATUS

Status: Active

Sir Exal

The succubus was a half-hour late. I don't suppose I should have expected anything less of her. She once shared that she was always late to meetings; it made clear to whomever she met that they were only just worth her time...but we had been friends, after all, or as friendly as one can be in the Marauders. I guess I thought I had deserved a little courtesy, or something.

In any case, she entered, exactly the way I remembered her—leather top, spiked boots, ink-black horns, and not looking a day over twenty. She walked past the line at the counter, winked seductively at the barista without even paying any attention to him, and breathily asked for a large black coffee. She then sat down without another word to him. One perk, I suppose, to being a demon of lust; one never has to pay for drinks.

She sat down across from me, a smile filled with pointed teeth on her face. “Ah, D, so nice to see you,” she said, “Sorry for the tardiness, dearie, it's just how things are when you're as successful as I am.”

I smiled back at her. “Just a honor to see you at all, Miss Smile. You look as perfect as ever.”

I wasn't sure how a creature who can seduce men with a thought could still be so vain as to absorb compliments like she did. “Oh, thank you, dear, you're so right.” She reached across the table and pinched my cheek, her sharpened fingernails scratching my cheek. “Let me look closer at you...I swear, we thought you were dead after that whole...unpleasantness. However long ago that was.”

Summer 2004, not that I can forget. She freed my cheek from her grasp, and I sipped from my coffee as she received hers. “Well, I'm not. Just got away for a while, that's all.

Whiplash's grin vanished, and she frowns as she studies me. “Something's different about you.” Her oviform eyes narrowed in concentration. “Did you color your hair?” she asked. “It looks different.”

I touched my silver-blue hair and smiled. “Or stopped coloring it. I can never remember what my real color is.”

“No, that's not it,” said Whiplash dismissively. She was silent for nearly two minutes more until she sniffed the air and said, nearly astonished, “That's it! Your greed, your lustful ambition...there's so little of it left! You said you were a...'hero,' now, but...”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” I said, quietly studying the grain of the table.

“You...you were one of the best ones! Such avarice, such hate!” Whiplash pouted, leaning towards me. “But...oh, D, don't you remember? You wanted to have all the magical power in the world? Your dreams of magical monopoly! Whatever happened to that?”

I looked up, determinedly met her eyes. “I grew up, Whiplash. That's all.”

 

Whiplash leaned back and, in a tiny burst of anger, threw her coffee cup at the wall. It exploded on impact, splashing coffee on the wall like spilled blood. “All right,” she said. “I can get that. You mortals always have problems keeping your motives for long. It's...unsatisfying, but shit happens; I thought you were dead, after all.”

“But...why'd you have to go and become one of...them?” she asked, her voice giving disgusted emphasis to the last word. “Why'd you have to become a goody-goody? What was it, some...fulfilling your destiny crap, 'cause you were infused with magic and all to be a good guy in the first place?”

“No, it wasn't that,” I responded.

“Oh, don't tell me it's some weird penitence thing! Don't you dare say that it's out of...” She vomited up the final word, “guilt.”

I giggled. I rarely heard guilt and myself mentioned in the same sentence. “Nothing like that.”

“Why, then?!” she yelled, surprising at least two people nearby.

I paused and thought of my old comrades in the Marauders and the LotMU, the revenge-fueled, the covetous, the angry, the anarchy-lovers, and the just plain insane. At length, I finally answered. “You need a reason to be evil,” I said, “you don't need a reason to be good.”

 

Unspoken

     Eldritch Energy: standard (rank 1)

  • Ranged Attack
  • Area Affect
  • Multi-Attack

 

We had met again as she had attempted to thieve from a mages' collective's stash of magical weaponry, scrolls, runic messages, and other assorted mystic-ellany. I answered a magically tripped alarm just as her two dozen demonic minions had opened the vault door.

In my youth, when Whiplash had known me, I had an unholy amount of magical power, much of it simply hoarded, in my attempt to own all arcane power there was.

Even after that week in 2004, I thought I could pick up directly where I had left off, still using magics only archmages and the beings told in tarot cards could equal. As it turned out, there was a reason there are so few 20-something magical girls, and it wasn't, as I though, because they were just dumb enough to die.

The magic leaves you. It's like...Alzheimer's, but only in one facet of your life. I slowly but steadily lost bits of my ability. Spells left me just as I attempted to call on them. I lost my transformation ability. It was...devastating.

I got over it, obviously.

 

Unpowered

     Energy Absorption: superior (rank 2)

 

Without even needing to say a word, unlike my younger collegues, crystalline beams surrounded me, disintegrating some demons on contact, blowing holes in others, occasionally picking up one and throwing him into a wall.

The demons that managed to get the wits to respond lifted their arms and blasted me with ebon energy, eldrich force of the darkest magic.

The energy inside me absorbed it like orange juice.

It was always my trademark ability, to absorb any magic my enemies could send at me, to soak it in and keep it for myself, another tiny step in my desire to have all the power to myself.

As it turned out, having all that magic stored inside me was the only thing that saved me that summer, when countless beings on both sides of the law perished as they unaccountably fought. My enemy at the time must have thought me utterly dead, not knowing all that magic in one place would not allow its vessel to cease to exist. The magic brought me back to life, draining all the power I had accumulated.

At the time, I considered it a boon; I had grown exhausted of the bizarre and intolerable behavior of the other members of the League of the Mentally Insane. I used the opportunity to vanish from sight, to make new plans. Eventually, I returned, but far from the girl I had been when I left.

 

Unused

     Crushing Weapon: standard (rank 1)

 

When the demons were destroyed, Whiplash herself appeared, her whip at her side, whatever it was called, I no longer recall. She struck out with it, cutting me across the arm, then attacked again. I was ready this time. I summoned my own weapon, a magical quarterstaff that the whip curled around immediately. Whiplash attempted to pull her lash back, but found it holding fast to my staff, and my grip unyielding. We were in the standoff for two minutes before she recognized me. “Magical Girl D!” she yelled happily.

When I first was granted my powers, I also received my weapon, an absurd hammer with a ribbed, bright-red top, a heart on every surface. It disgusted me, and I had reshaped and warped it into a scythe I had called Soulbite.

Now, I realize this was as ridiculous as the hammer itself; scythes are tools, not weapons, and I knew nothing about their handling. In the wise eyes of retrospect, I can say it was extremely fortunate I didn't slice myself in half with the thing.

So, with my return, I remodeled the weapon again, this time into a humble staff, no absurd decorations, no overkill-inducing blade, just a simple rod of magical wood. I can feel it suiting me better than it ever has.

 

Unbound

     Binding: superior (rank 2)

 

Whiplash stood up. “Well, D, this has been interesting. But, I must be going. Busy busy.” She took me by the chin, kissed me. Some of her sweet, demonic magic flowed into me. “When you want to come back,” she said, with a grin that said she knew I would, “You call me.” She turned to leave.

“Miss Smile...” I whispered. She stopped, half-turned, to not appear interested. I continued. “ZEMY's been trying to get you for a long time.” One of her eyebrows raised in suspicion. “And now you came here, without any protection.” Her hand grabbed for her whip, but it was already too late. “Beautiful Crystal Restriction.”

Rings of crystals surrounded her, freezing her in her half-turned state. The barista, three patrons, and two operatives from outside surrounded her. “I was wrong, by the way. It really does help to say the words.” As I stood, she looked at me with something I'd never thought I'd seen in her eyes. Fear. “D...” she grunted through a paralyzed mouth.

“I haven't gone by that name for years!” I abruptly yelled. “It's Darren!”