TWI ENTERS.
Ahem. Let's get the intros out of the way before I actually like, make characters and shit.
Spooky, anthropomorphic machine resembling an AC-130U, designation ######, is still in the Australian Air Force. She may or may not have some upgrades. Aside from a taste for classical music and hunting salt-water crocodiles, she doesn't have much of a life outside of soldiering, but she's well taken care of. She also buys Selina's art, for some reason!
Marie Hel has started a consulting firm. The whole 'nightmare trade' thing got a lot less profitable when it got regulated, but the eternal Mission Control nightmare is in high demand for her knowledge and research abilities. She's well fed on her usual pizza, and may even have Richard along, eh, darling? Or Tori, eh?~
Stella Watters has stayed in Cambridge, and perhaps might run into Lizzie one of these days. She's active in a small magic club, nothing too special though. Also, she finally got to chat with her parents! Thought they didn't exist, did you? Nope, they're both doing well in the US, living out in the Midwest where nothing ever happens.
Hannah Bismuth has settled down and made herself a home with her lovely earth golem, Neferis. Where, I'm not too sure. But she's happy, wherever it is, and she's even learning to be actually competent at modern chemistry, albeit slowly. It'll take a while before she gets a decent intelligence score, though.
It's been five years since Constanza Ruiz felt emotion. She may imitate the mannerisms of people who love and hate and cry and rejoice, but she is nothing like them. There is only one of her, and she needs to keep that one self safe at all costs.
Professor Ruiz has recently co-authored a paper on the feasibility of establishing floating colonies on Venus, using simple balloons to keep the structures at an altitude where temperature and pressure are not so different from Earth at sea level. It's an idea that's been around for a while, but the magic, science and advancements in general make it much easier. The article then goes on to propose several ways of putting a permanent end to Venus's hellish state- locking the atmospheric gasses up in 'soil', teleporting parts of it to Mars to equally help terraform the frigid and thin climate there.... all very promising, no doubt.
She was also listed among the first authors of a months-old paper on the solutions to the massive explosion in debris orbiting the Earth. Kessler syndrome is exacerbated when you only need teleport to altitude and burn/magic/accelerate/ionize/thrust to orbital velocity. The only way to properly regulate international space, according to the article, is an international organization, a space agency transcending the world's current cultural and geographical boundaries. In low earth orbit, it takes less than two hours to circle the tiny blue dot that many intelligent species call home. It's less of a scientific paper and more of a consensus opinion on the need for some god-damn regulation up there.
It would help if she could deal with that aggressive character in Africa. Murder Night. She knew that name all too well, but although she did what she could, there was only so much one woman could do. Even so, that other woman was a threat to the already fragile stability of the world.
There was another issue, though, one that she had been facing for years. She wasn't the only person who was trying to guide the world from behind the scenes. Someone else was doing it too- and in many cases, doing it better. They had covered their tracks better than she could and seemed gifted with foresight, or perhaps simply predictions she could never hope to match. She was only human, but this figure wasn't. As human processing power paled before the calculations of computers, her own forecasting was nothing before this person's abilities.
It took years of hard work and investigation for her to realize that a potential answer had been in front of her all along. She knew of someone with superhuman deductive abilities, someone from five years ago, someone she hadn't quite expected to see again.
William Warren. Friend of the Northsdale Five, eternal rival of Kyle Johnson, and one of the people who had responded to her own premier incident. What she had wasn't conclusive, but the little evidence she could gather on this mystery puppeteer all fit with him. Like herself, Will didn't appear to use his connections to destroy, but was focused mainly on helping the species. Well, that was false. She was focused on protecting herself, who just happened to be a human being too.
Perhaps she could reach out for him. She could learn much from someone of his caliber.
And so it was that on a cold Brazillian night, in an office buried deep underground, one reserved for her clandestine activities, Constanza Ruiz sent Will an email. An anonymous email that bore only a picture of Dumah's sigil, the words "I found you," and a return address.
...Joan L'Flamme walks into a bar in Brisbane. Or is it a Subway? I forget at this point.
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Topic: Rise of the Magic Girls v3 IC: Poof. (Read 759683 times)