Tooru nodded hesitantly. "I promise I'll do better with it." She brought the Seed to her own gem, hoping that it would be enough for Alida once she was finished.
You hold the corroded brooch up in front of you for a few seconds, admiring the craftsmanship that its shape implies. It's horribly corroded now, only a slight gleam visible on the front edge, but the wing must have been a beautiful piece of artwork, once. You wonder what will happen when you use it.
Back when Asha used the last soul gem, she had seemed to just pass out with a stupid smile for a few seconds. You sit down, not wanting to fall over if you pass out too, and hold up your soul gem next to the seed. A deep breath, then you softly
press the two together, and pure joy flows into your soul-as you peek over the edge of the balcony. The asphalt of the little roundabout in front of the mansion, three stories down, is barely visible in the starlight. The only light down there is a circular patch of stars in the middle, the reflection of the cloudless sky in the fountain's calm water. It's maybe a foot deep, and fifteen feet ahead; it certainly won't break a fall. You take a deep breath to steady your nerves as you slide your helmet on, being careful not to unseat your headphones, which barely fit under it. This is a bad idea, you keep telling yourself, even as you climb up onto the railing. Still, you don't feel afraid--you feel giddy if anything. You reach into your largest pocket, click a button to start the music, and your favorite song begins. Perfect. You screw your eyes shut, letting the music get going, and then you step forward, falling into the empty air.
Your heart jumps for a moment, and then you're firmly jerked upward by the metallic harness as your new wings automatically spread to catch you. You cough slightly even as a massive smile spreads across your face, and you open your eyes to see a blur of black shapes across the ground. You look up, towards the sea of bright lights that is the city, distant but racing closer already, and you laugh out loud. It actually worked! You look to your side, at the long panes of stained-glass that form one of your new wings, the rainbow of colored fragments ordered to resemble a bird's plumage. You stretch one arm out underneath, fighting the driving wind, and stretch your fingers wide. It's freezing, the cold air bites into your skin, but the sensation just emphasizes the magic. This shouldn't work, glass wings are crazy, and yet--you look back towards the city lights, already looming massive ahead of you--this is really happening!
You want to go higher, and as soon as the thought surfaces you're yanked upward suddenly, the wings flapping of their own accord. Then there's a moment of weightlessness as you draw your freezing arm back in against your jacket, followed by another yank as the wings flap again. Each flap launches you higher into the sky, making it harder and harder to make out the lights that are already racing along below you. You always thought the city would look like a starscape from above, but it's more like a rubbed-out smudge of light, ugly and disappointing. Then the periodic yanks stop, and the world begins to shift and roll as the wings naturally bank to the side in a turn. For a few brief seconds your view is split in two, the night sky above, and the chaotic mess of lights below, and then you level out, the wings flapping and driving you higher again, but this time back away from the city.
Up ahead the mountain you live on looms, a dark monolith blotting out the otherwise clear sky, with just a few scattered lights spread across it and giving it texture. You're already so high up, you had never expected the wings to be this good. You immediately feel a need to see just how good they are, and they comply readily, the steady pattern of upward jerks being replaced with an almost-constant pull as they... glide upward? You gradually tilt further and further back, until you're almost vertical, a sensation that already feels almost alien despite your short time spent flying. You rapidly lose speed, but you're already higher than the mountain's peak. It seems so small from the air, it's really just a particularly impressive hill, a singular tall mound among an army of shorter piles of earth.
Another upward jerk interrupts your thoughts, and then another almost immediately after, a constant rhythm which leaves you feeling unbalanced. You instinctually raise your arms up to balance, and suddenly realize that the wind is mostly gone; you're hovering, somehow. You look to your sides and watch the glass wings as they rapidly beat up and down. It's hard to see in the starlight, but you can just barely make out how the glass actively shifts and rearranges itself as the wings flex. It's unreal, and you intuitively know that this shouldn't work, and yet you're still hovering here, so high above the world. You look up and laugh in disbelief, you almost feel closer to the stars than the dark terrain far below.
Keeping your eyes on the constellations, with music flowing through your ears, you begin to tilt backward. It all feels so natural, even as you start to fall backward and begin sliding through the air upside-down, it just feels right. The wind buffeting you, cold even through your heavy jacket, the stars which don't move even though you can feel how fast you're moving, even the strange sensation of falling upward, you couldn't have even imagined it before, and yet it feels more normal than the ground did. You distantly recognize that you can't stay up here forever, you'll have to go back home and figure out how to land, but you want to stay here, drifting below the stars.
The song ends, and reluctantly you try and look at the ground, behind and below you, though your wings don't comply. You can't recognize any of the terrain below at all, you're not at all sure how you'll even find your way home. You sigh, your smile dimming, and turn to look back up at the stars. You reach into your pocket and start the next song, deciding that you'll deal with that problem later
Unmarked. Both of your hands are entirely unmarked. You've been going over the fight in your head for hours, ever since you got back home, but only now does it occur to you that you weren't hurt, at all, despite the constant danger. The... witch, Pumsy called it, it was trying to kill you, by the end virtually the entire labyrinth was on fire, but you're fine despite it all. At the time you'd been terrified, even now you feel chills thinking about it, but in the end you fought the witch, killed the witch, and you weren't even harmed in the process! You let yourself smile a little, recalling Pumsy's surprise when he saw you. You did better than he expected, too.
"D-4" Izzy says, breaking your thoughts for a moment. You look up at your little sister from across the top of your Battleship set, her usually-bright face twisted into a frown. She knows how the game is going. "Miss" you respond, and Izzy sighs, already knowing that you'll call "G-9". You do, and it's a hit, of course.
Returning to your thoughts, you won the fight, but you hadn't really known what you were doing. You clearly have a talent for being a magical girl, but you can do better. You were practically blind at first, in that darkness your safety was up to luck, if you hadn't seen the straw golem... thing first, then you might not have made it out. And really, you didn't need to attack it immediately. You could have sat back while it passed by, then continued sneaking to the witch. If you had snuck up on the real monster without it being warned that you were coming, you might've been able to end the fight with just one glownade. Attacking the familiar lit everything up, but that meant that everything could see you, too. If any of their attacks had landed, you might've lost, and then you certainly wouldn't be here with Izzy, now.
"...E-3" she says, suddenly continuing the same pattern she's been using, and missing. Took her long enough. You immediately target F-9, and she morosely announces that she's lost her submarine.
"It's stupid that submarines get hit too, they're below the water." she says.
"I guess," you say, "but the game would never end if you couldn't shoot them."
"Well, yeah, but... maybe they should hide during some turns, and to be fair they can't shoot back if they're hiding?"
"I don't think submarines even have guns on them, they can't shoot anyway. Come on, take your turn, you've gotten three of my ships, you have a chance."
"But Lucyyyy," she whines, before pausing, and sighing. "F-4" she answers, eventually. A miss.
You pick E-9, knowing that it will miss and give her more time to hit one of your ships. Surprisingly, it's actually a hit, which Izzy announces with an annoyed complaint about how you couldn't have known her destroyer was there. You shrug, and wait for her to choose her next move. You drift back to thinking about the labyrinth as the game continues, not having to really think about your moves. You should bring tools with you next time, like a flashlight. Maybe rope too, being able to tie things together might be useful... if only there were some way to make a distraction for after the monsters know you're there. Maybe if you brought a speaker with you, you could just leave it somewhere with a recording of you singing, or something. Some kind of shield would be great, in case you couldn't dodge some kind of attack, or, hmm. Maybe not, a shield would be heavy. You did really really well dodging, and you don't want to get hit even if it's through a metal plate or something. Still, more stuff would be good, the only things you can create yourself are wings and bombs, and that's not enough.
"I guess we're done, then." Izzy says, quietly.
"What? Why?" you ask, surprised.
"You sunk my destroyer. I don't have any more ships. You won."
"Oh."
The two of you pause and just stare at the plastic toys. You start packing your box up, and Izzy follows suit, announcing that she's going to write some new rules for the game, to make it better. You laugh, and wish her good luck with it, then get up, telling her that you've gotta go and prepare some... other stuff. When she asks if you want help, you tell her that you're fine, and that you look forward to seeing what cool new rules she comes up with later, suggesting that you can try them out with Mom when she gets home later tonight. She reluctantly agrees, and says that she can probably finish before then.
"Oh! Lucy, if I finish quick I'll come help you out!" she chirps happily.
"Okay, but don't rush yourself." you respond, forcing yourself to reply with the same chipper tone. Maybe you won't have that much time, you can't exactly tell Izzy about the magical girl stuff. She'd probably insist on following you in, and that would go... badly
...but before it can launch acid at you, the familiar is consumed by a massive detonation, identical to one of your glownades... though you never threw one there. Then, one of the bright angels that Izzy summoned streaks past, dropping a pair of glownades below her as she cackles excitedly. You pause, hovering in the air, and watch as the two magical bombs fall down in front of the stalagmite. Tens more of the bug-ape creatures are swarming up the stone, trying to get closer to you, but most are consumed in twin detonations a moment later. Of the few remaining, they're too far down to be any threat to you; you twist in midair, rolling and pitching backward until you're heading in the exact opposite direction.
You're getting better at manuevering quickly through this cavern, filled with a forest of floor-to-ceiling stalagmites, but you deliberately slow down and pay more attention to your surroundings. There's still the seemingly endless horde of familiars swarming across the cavern floor, but even though every stalagmite has more crawling up it, none have gotten even close to your altitude, despite the long fight. You turn to avoid one of the higher groups anyway, but keep your eyes on it as you pass by, and sure enough, another of the angels streaks by, dangerously close, and tosses a bomb at them, instantly annihilating the topmost creatures and sending the rest tumbling. You pause again, hovering in midair, and just look around the labyrinth.
There's no danger, you realize. The familiars simply can't get enough height to reach you before one of the angels swoops by and drops yet another bomb on them. You don't think any individual one of Izzy's angels could compete with you, alone, but together they can drop more than enough explosives to keep the endless swarm in control. If you were here alone, it would be a terrifying experience, weaving between columns of stone while twisted insectoid monstrosities constantly spit acid at you, but with Izzy's support, you're entirely... safe, to do whatever you need to do. Which, really, is finding the witch. That's the only target that actually matters, as soon as you kill it, Izzy can stop spending magic on fighting the familiars with her angels.
An angel streaks past you, and you dive after her, using her as a guide to find a safer route while you scan the cavern floor for hints of the witch. Once you start looking, you notice a sign within seconds: the majority of the familiars are moving in from one singular direction. You bank hard, splitting away from the angel and turning to follow the monsters to their source. The stalagmites are denser in this direction, and you have to pick your way between them slowly and carefully, but the creatures haven't even begun to climb the pillars in this area. It occurs to you that the witch might have chosen to have them fight in the more open area, despite your advantages, to keep you away from their boss.
You slow down and nearly crash into a stalamite, spreading your wings wide at the last moment to arrest your momentum, before you reach out and grab a crack in the stone. Your wings fold up behind you as your feet find purchase, and you hang there, silently surveying the floor once again. The swarm is much thinner here, despite the more crowded area. They must not be coming from a single source, but from the entire area, somehow. You start to climb around the edge of the stalagmite to get a different view, and after you're about a third of the way around, you spot the answer. There's a deep black hole in the stone, nestled between the bases of two stalagmites, and more of the familiars are crawling out of it. It's just a little larger than the creatures, not enough for two to go through at once, but perhaps large enough for you to slip in above one. You close your eyes and listen to the slow music that you constantly leave on, letting it steady your mind. You let go of the stone, and fall into a slow glide towards the mouth of the tunnel
<Lucy, where are you going?! It's more dangerous over there!> Izzy's voice cries, into your mind. Still smiling, you grab your brooch with one hand, the twin wings of your soul gem and Izzy's mirrored wing filling you with confidence.
<I'm going for the witch. Keep the angels distracting them, you're doing good!>
You close your eyes again as you dive into the pitch-black tunnel, trying to focus the loose spatial sense you've developed since the last labyrinth. You have to slow down a lot, but you can just barely sense the walls and corners before you reach them, and you only pass by three familiars, easily gliding over each of them without even being noticed in the darkness. Izzy's voice cries out in your head, but you know what you're doing; you tell her to just keep herself safe, you'll be done in a moment. You see a light ahead, and speed up as you fly towards it.
You pass through the exit of the tunnel and find yourself in another, smaller, cavern. This one is lit with glowing pink fungus, and every surface swarms with even more of the ape-bug things. At the very bottom, below and ahead of you, is what you can only describe as a giant humanoid maggot, a disgusting bloated creature with similar proportions to an enormous baby. The monster is crying, the disturbingly humanlike sound loud enough to be audible over your music. It's probably crying because it knows what's about to happen. You laugh, and tear your brooch off, holding it out at the witch triumphantly.
"I win! Starfall!"
Power flows from your gem and through your body, filling every part of you from your skin, to your glass wings, with pure glowing energy. The pink light of the fungi is drowned out by your orange sunlight, and the bug-covered surface of the cavern seems to melt away from you. You dive directly for the maggot-baby witch as you feel the explosion building within you, and it goes off before you're even halfway there, the blinding light blotting out everything, and burning away even the air around you.
...the light fades, and for a few seconds you fall through pure darkness, nothing nearby... and then you slam facefirst into a hardwood floor. You groan, rolling onto your side and clutching your bleeding nose. It's in agony, which is only worsened when you reflexively grab it. "Lucy!" you hear Izzy shout, rushing over to you and falling to her knees beside you. She's panicking over your injury, but you can't make out most of her words over your music. You reach in to your pocket and mute it while sitting up, your magic already curing the pain in your nose. You grin at Izzy and say that you're fine, though her face just looks worried.
"Come on, cheer up! This is only your first fight, and you did great! You should be happy, Izzy, come on! Stop frowning!"
Izzy doesn't respond, but she does relax a bit, sitting back and just watching you sadly. Your smile fades a little, but you're determined to cheer your little sister up. You might've stolen the real glory at the end, but you don't think you would've managed nearly as well without her angels supporting and protecting you.
A groan off to your side attracts your gaze, and you look over to see one of the angels laying against a wall. She was clearly hit by one of the familiar's acid sprays, and you're suddenly intensely glad that you managed to dodge every one of them; her right arm is outright gone, along with her right wing and much of her torso. Indistinct red mush leaks out of her, marking the angel as an inhuman fabrication, but her helmet is gone, revealing her pained grimace. Once again you find yourself very disturbed by how close she looks to you. She's a bit slimmer, and her hair is longer than yours, with a truer, brighter copper color, but it's still like looking in a mirror. A mirror that shows you suffering an agony that you can't even begin to imagine. The last of your smile disappears.
The angel begins to fade, Izzy dispelling it, and you turn to look at your little sister. She's still staring at you, silently crying with tears running down her face. It strikes you that she almost certainly can comprehend the pain the angel was in, she said that she's linked to them like they're a part of her. You can't imagine what that's like. You have no idea what you can say. Instead, you lean forward and wrap her in a tight hug, feeling tears of your own starting to You wake up slowly. You feel like you've slept for days, perfectly rested and full of energy, but still just a little groggy. All your wounds and pains are gone, too. You blink and sit up, looking at the other girls around you--they're all dirty, wet, and tired. The drab concrete trench you're all standing in, with murky water slowly flowing along the bottom. You feel like you've woken up from a beautiful dream, into a different dream, one with all the wonder sucked out of it. You look down into your lap, at your brilliantly shining soul gem, and the grief seed... Lucy's grief seed?
Her soul gem...? It's smaller now, half of it seems to have broken off and disappeared while you dreamt, and the last remainder has no shine left, but you're pretty sure it's the same metal as the brooch you grabbed at the end--that
Lucy grabbed at the end, it's confusing. You feel like all that happened to you...
Alida clears her throat, and you look up at her. She seems exhausted, but expectant.
@KingMurdoc,
if you're still interested in the game, Tooru gets +1 levels to put in ANY Equanimity or Joy powers, and +1 level to put in any Joy power. Yes, any; Lucy had levels in every Joy power. You'll get an additional three Eq/Joy levels later, standard for surviving a labyrinth. Yay.
((Next update... I dunno, I'll go with Monday 15th, since that's the next day that I have off. I'll try and work on things before then, though, and set another deadline if I miss it. Because they work, somehow. Oh, and if you like updates, thank Devastator for this one.))
Soul Gem: Glowing with a shadowed light.
Form and location: Medallion, pinned to her left breast.
Age: 14
Hair Color: Salt-stained blonde.
Health: Her left shoulder is dislocated.
Inventory: A magically-lengthened club.
Totem: A fishing club.
Stats:
Bravery: Talented~
Joy: Skilled!
Innocence: Amateur...
Purity: Amateur...
Mercy: Skilled!
Creativity: Cursed ;-;
Love: Cursed ;-;
Abilities:
Mobility Lvl2
Close Combat Lvl3+1
Totem Manipulation Lvl2
Berzerker Lvl3 (Active (Bloodied); One less cheap cost per turn!)
Painless Lvl2 Active; Cheap cost per turn!
Effigy Lvl1
Soul Gem: Glowing with a warm light.
Form and location: Ring, worn on her left ring finger.
Age: 13
Hair color: Ashen
Health: Wet, ashy, and with a bunch of glass and gashes in her right hand. Has a fair bit of living clay on her, mostly her clothes and right arm.
Inventory: Nothing of note.
Totem: A Ribbon. The one her late sister wore.
Stats:
Bravery: Skilled!
Joy: Cursed ;-;
Innocence: Cursed ;-;
Purity: Amateur...
Mercy: Talented~
Creativity: Amateur...
Love: Skilled!
Abilities:
Mobility: Level 3
Close Combat: Level 2
Totem Manipulation: Level 1 (+1)
Heal and Steel: Level 2 (Active; Next attack rolls on Mercy)
Soothe: Level 3
Flagellation: Level 3
Memento: Level 1 (Given to Aleksandra)
Soul Gem: The light is gone.
Form and location: None...
Age: 14.
Hair Color: Bright green.
Health: Dead and gone...
Body Modifications: No longer matters...
Inventory: Shattered souls hold nothing...
Totem: A halberd.
Stats:
Bravery: Amateur...
Joy: Skilled...
Innocence: Amateur...
Purity: Skilled...
Mercy: Cursed ;-;
Creativity: Talented...
Love: Cursed...
Abilities:
Mobility: Level 2
Close-Combat: Level 2 (+1)
Regeneration: Level 2
Sixth Sense: Level 3
Semblance: Level 2
Projection: Level 2
Soul Gem: Glowing with a Radiant light!
Form and location: Necklace, worn around her... neck...
Age: 13
Hair Color: Bright scarlet.
Health: Fine! ((Random rule patch I'm making right now: Grief Seeds are a *physical* full heal, in addition to the soul-heal.))
Inventory: Rubbery ribbon thing.
Totem: Ofuda talismans, primarily thrown as manabolts.
Stats:
Bravery: Cursed ;-;
Joy: Talented~
Innocence: Skilled!
Purity: Amateur...
Mercy: Cursed ;-;
Creativity: Amateur...
Love: Skilled!
Abilities:
Mobility II
Mana Bolt III (+I)
Regeneration I
Totem Manipulation II
Invigorating Passion I
Outburst II
Duet with Reality II
Ward: Glowing with a foolish light!
Age: 12
Hair Color: Black.
Health: Fine!
Inventory: A cute blue ribbon tied into her hair. She's wearing Alida's coat, now soaked with water, and clutching her grandfather's AK-47.
Stats:
Bravery: Skilled!
Joy: Skilled!
Innocence: Talented~
Purity: Amateur...
Mercy: Cursed ;-;
Creativity: Cursed ;-;
Love: Amateur...
Author
Topic: Pumsy's Seeds - A ~MAGICAL GIRL~ game inspired by PMMM (Read 149665 times)