Make some excuses, saying that I'll just look out at the water for a bit, and head down in the direction I'm feeling the despair flowing.
You make your excuses, and your friends accept them without
much complaint, continuing on their way back home. You walk in the opposite direction, following the general flow of despair, and pull your club out of your backpack as soon as you round a corner. Just in case.
[Creativity]
You break into a run soon after, rushing towards the source of despair as fast as you can. You
think it's coming from somewhere a bit farther down the coast, so you take a path mostly parallel to the ocean, hoping you can close in on it from the city. At first you pass a lot of people, most of whom pay you no mind as you speed past, but as the feeling of despair thickens, the crowds thin, until the streets are empty. Within a few minutes, the despair is already just as heavy and suffocating as it ever was around the last witch, and you're sure that you must be right on top of the labyrinth... but there's nothing mundanely unusual around, aside from the lack of people. Last time, you followed a wire to the labyrinth itself, but you're not finding anything like that.
At a loss, you continue forward, but you stop when you nearly run into a man calmly talking on his cell-phone as he leans against a closed storefront. He idly shoos you away before returning to his call, and you examine the aura of despair again... it's definitely gotten weaker, which means you went too far. You growl a little, then turn around and rush away from the man.
You spend the better part of an hour running back and forth across the abandoned area of the city, trying to find something--
anything--that could help you find the labyrinth. You
know it has to be somewhere within the city proper, because you checked the docks and there were a lot of workers, but that still leaves a lot of empty city to search. Empty city, which, frustratingly, really does seem to be devoid of magical phenomena!
You finally spot something out of the ordinary in the middle of a leap across a concrete flood canal. There's a shabby-looking person sitting down at the bottom of the slope, just at the edge of the thin strip of flowing water. You focus on your magical sight, and immediately confirm that you're still deep within the area of despair--and you also notice that the person is glowing much more vividly than any human you've seen before.
But before you can decide on what to do, you hear a loud
"Allliiidaaa!" from your left side, and spin in place to intercept the pouncing tiger before it crashes into your chest. You deftly catch Pumsy, and hold him at arms' length in front of you while he tries his hardest to look adorable. You're about to ask him what he's doing, but he preempts your question:
"Hi Alida! I brought you help!"You look behind the tiger, and see that Russian girl from before step out of an alley. That's some help he brought...
"Pumsy, midnight won't come sooner if we hurry! If I want to fight witch, I'll need proper weapon. It's just going to take moment, but it could be difference between surviving or not! C'mon, follow me!"
I need to go to my hidden sanctuary and retrieve my weapon! Ask Pumsy to follow me then go back there and grab Grandpa's gift. After I recover my weapon, sneak out of the house from the window inside the sanctuary.
Pumsy excitedly runs towards the front of the mansion as you leave your grandfather's room, but you don't follow him, heading up the nearer set of stairs. He runs after and starts
loudly complaining, but you shush him and tell him to be quiet, you won't take long. Surprisingly, he actually listens, and follows after, though he clearly doesn't understand what you're doing. He seems to catch on just after you crawl through the hole that leads into your Sanctuary, as he immediately races over to firearm, enshrined atop a pile of blankets and pillows.
[Innocence]
Pumsy complements your foresight as you reverently lift the weapon, and then lower the dust cover and chamber a round just the way your grandfather showed you. You let out a long, shuddering sigh, and pull the rifle's sling over your shoulder.
Now you're ready. You open the single window, and carefully climb out onto the roof, making sure to let Pumsy out before you close the window. Then you carefully slide down to the edge, above the porch, and take a deep breath as you prepare to drop. You've done this a bunch of times before, as a way to escape Anton and Zakhar on the occasions they've been brave enough to torment you
and smart enough to be systematic with their searching, but you've never done it carrying the rifle.
You carefully drop down onto the portico, and land surprisingly easily. Then you crawl over to the sagging edge, and easily hop down onto the ground. A moment, later, Pumsy drops down next to you, then excitedly tells you to follow, before he races off down the street. You run after, excitement building; you're finally gonna get to see magical girls in action!
And you might even be able to help out!
Pumsy takes a very strange route on his way into the city, turning frequently and often cutting through backyards and other private properties. You get kinda worried someone will catch you trespassing, but luckily you don't meet anyone while off the well-traveled roads, and even the few people you do pass seem to be really out of it, too preoccupied to even notice you. Eventually, even those intermittent pedestrians disappear, the city seemingly empty. A horrible sensation of unease gradually washes over you, and you begin to feel like all this is a really big mistake. You follow Pumsy anyway, too stubborn to chicken out.
After about twenty minutes spent following the cub, you're getting close to the waterfront. Pumsy suddenly speeds up, rushing out of the alleyway he was leading you through, and darting off to the right, out of sight. You hear a loud
"Allliiidaaa!", followed by a girl grunting in surprise. You race around the corner, and see Alida--now in a colourful sailor outfit--not ten feet in front of you, holding Pumsy at arms' reach and glaring daggers at him.
"Hi Alida! I brought you help!"She looks at you and raises a doubting eyebrow.Asha thought, "What... should I do? I am... hurt?" Pumsy's words worried her, but she still felt too disconnected to properly feel even her own emotions. Ultimately, she decided to trust Pumsy.
Not knowing if he could hear her or not, she thought: "Guide me Pumsy..."
<Umm, okay... Your body is really hurt, you need to heal yourself, then I can let you have it again! You can do that, right? If not, I could try to get Mina, or maybe Tooru?>You're not sure. You could fix the other girls, but you're... different from them. You feel like it won't work, but you guess you can try. You focus on the indistinct light of the other girls around you, as reference for where you are in the real world, and then you direct your magic downward, where your body
should be... Nothing happens, it's like there's just empty space there. You'd sigh if you could, though you didn't really expect that to work. You can heal other people, not yourself, trying is pointless and probably just wastes your magic too. The images of the other girls' souls fades out of view as you lose focus, and you return to blindly floating in the sensationless void.
...Less than two minutes of silence later, you reverse your opinion. Even if it's just wasting your soul, trying to cast something at least isn't
mind-numbingly boring. Worse than boring, it just feels unpleasantly
wrong, you can't even feel yourself breathing, or the cloth touching your skin. You try and think of a different way to call upon your healing powers. When you healed the other girls before, they sort of looked like unwoven sheets of magic, so maybe if you imagine yourself as a magical weave that will work?
You try it, and almost immediately it starts to work! Except, unlike with the other girls, where you were looking at how they were woven as a whole, from the outside, it's like you're viewing from the center of an impossibly massive and complex knot of soul strands. You
are very different from the other girls after all, your soul is
enormous by comparison, like a mansion compared to a shed! More than that, you could always get some sense of how their soul worked, but they still felt very chaotically designed in some ways; in contrast, your soul is designed flawlessly, with everything placed
just right for it to work with the greater construction. It's truly amazing to see, and you almost forget that you had a purpose in doing this. Almost.
After you start to get over your own magnificent weave, you focus on searching for your soul's representation of your body's damage. It's surprisingly minor, just a couple of weakening strands that are stretched taut, they're not even particularly important parts of your soul. It's amazing that such a minor flaw could cause so much pain, but you don't spend long dwelling on it.
You take in the surrounding structure, and easily find a structure that's strong enough to endure a little extra stress; you unbind a strand from it, and reinforce the tiny weakened elements of your soul. Then, job finished, you let the magic fade.
You wake up in bed, opening your eyes to see Pumsy's glowing eyes above you.
<...So, can you help fight the witch now?>
Soul Gem: Glowing with a fading light.
Form and location: Medallion, pinned to her left breast.
Age: 14
Hair Color: Salt-stained blonde.
Health: Fine!
Inventory: One club. She also has a boxed pair of new shoes in her backpack.
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
Painless Lvl2
Effigy Lvl1
Soul Gem: Glowing with a Shining light.
Form and location: Ring, worn on her left ring finger.
Age: 13
Hair color: Ashen
Health: Fine!
Inventory: A ribbon, which she was unconsciously holding in a deathgrip.
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
Soothe: Level 3
Flagellation: Level 3
Memento: Level 1
Soul Gem: Glowing with a bright light.
Form and location: Ring, worn on her right index finger.
Age: 14.
Hair Color: Bright green.
Health: Fine!
Inventory: Nothing of real value, but she does have a zillion selfies on her phone. Silly girl, she should forget her body, and embrace her inner fleshorror!
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 fading light.
Form and location: Necklace, worn around her... neck...
Age: 13
Hair Color: Bright scarlet.
Health: Fine!
Inventory: Nothing interesting!
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: Vulnerable and a little scared!
Inventory: A loaded AK-47, slung behind her back.
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 149124 times)