Case Log - 20XX (about two years ago) - Kharn

This was the place. Room 312 of New Hope Hospital, a relatively new building off in the high-end district of Mitakihara. The night air crept in through the window behind me; I didn’t really bother to close it, ‘cause I’d be leaving through it anyway. I guess it depended on whether the staff would be around, but the room was unoccupied anyway.

 Even I would have felt crazy bad about breaking in if there were anyone in here. Sneaking into a hospital wasn’t really something I liked doing anyway, y’know? But like I figured it would be, the door was closed. Probably locked, too, after they let the girls from QB Heavy in here. This was the sort of problem only a magical girl could deal with, after all.

This was a witch’s barrier.

The way she’d put it, it was bad. Really super ultra USA bad. This little barrier was enough to get the Ninth Officio to send in some really heavy artillery, some of their best. Witches in hospitals were basically the worst thing, she said (in not quite so many words), with plenty of weak, desperate, people to feed off of. Scary stuff. It kinda made me glad I never really got sick.

The thing…the marking, or the entrance or whatever, was plain as day on the wall, a sigil that crappified the very air around it. The wall it was sitting on looked years older and kind of unwashed, and it tainted the whole room with a sick purple-black. I just…I just had to touch it, right? Touch it and also not get debrained by bad witch mojo. Nothing to be scared of.

Totally fine, nya. Completely safe.

…I took one last look at the window. There was still time to turn back, and it was probably safer and smarter. Kaneda would be pretty mad, if she was here. I mean, she’d still go in, but she’d wanna do it alone, and I’d probably just go in after her anyway. And then one of us would get hurt, and we wouldn’t be friends for like two weeks, but I’d be there anyway to make sure she didn’t sneak out of her stupid room, or she’d show up to lecture me about just staying at home if I was just going to do dumb stuff, or…

…Ugh. It didn’t matter anyway. I was pretty much being handed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity on a silver platter – the Warmaster was in there right now. A goddess of battle, I heard, who danced in the blood of the fallen and picked the flesh off of their skulls with her teeth so that she could make stylish office furniture. Also she was some kind of sex dynamo? Those things seemed kinda mutually-exclusive to me, but sparklies get off to weird stuff.

My hand brushed against the sigil on the wall, and I took a deep breath as the world around me shimmered. It swelled for a long moment, everything did, and I felt as though my insides might explode out in a glorious shower of truth and gore. Then, all at once, it squeezed together. I felt a flash of phantom pain, something that really should have hurt and didn’t, and the world turned white.

This would be worth it. It had to be worth it. If I made it through this stupid barrier and got through the interview with Warmaster Kharn mostly unmolested, this would be such a big scoop I could already taste it in the back of my mouth.

Wait, no. Wait. That was still the hospital smell. Ew.

---

I thought for a second that I might have died, with the white light there. Like, gotten squished into nothing - an inglorious and pointless end for our charming heroine. But as I scooped myself up off the ground, it became abundantly clear that this was just a THING here. The world around me – the sky, at least – was all a bright, blinding white, with the ground under me a stark and abyssal black. With a glance, I checked my body, too – a dark grey, just barely distinguishable from the ground, just barely shaded in. A sleek and alluring silhouette in somebody’s low-budget sex scene.

With some deliberation, I trotted over to the edge of the black building. It was…odd. A little hard to move anywhere else, like invisible, intangible walls blocked me in, forcing me along one path. When I peered down off the edge, all I saw were more pillars – buildings, I guess, each curved and distorted in its own way, from what I could tell. A mock-up of Mitakihara in shadow, twisted from a young girl’s perspective and crowded around a colossal statue with its arms outstretched. It clutched a torch in one hand, the only dot of color in an otherwise silhouetted world. The whole city seemed to be bowing to it, or at least it felt that way when I stared at it long enough, and it made me kind of uneasy.

…Well, I didn’t have too much time to sit and think about it, and I was kind of grateful. They were probably almost done already. I kept it to a minute or two of footage of the place and my own commentary, although it felt like I could barely get the words out here. I was sort of surprised my camera worked her at all, but I figured I could probably just leave it running for now. I guess even if I didn’t catch the Warmaster in time, this could still make for a really, really cool article.

---

I pulled myself up over the edge of another building, the third one in the last five that’d been higher, almost too high to work my way up. This place wasn’t THAT much harder to get around than the real city, but I could barely get handholds on these buildings at all. The sides were almost completely smooth, aside from deep gouges here and there I couldn’t even make out in the silhouettes. I kind of wondered if the Warmaster had made these. …Actually, I really really hoped the Warmaster had made these, because I didn’t want to meet what else might have. Or maybe it was just symbolism or something. I couldn’t really say; witches are weird.

Truth be told, I wasn’t really moving all that quickly. This whole place, even if it was basically leading me in one long, wobbly line toward the statue in the center, was a real pain to navigate. I could make the jumps down to lower buildings, sure, but the climbing really broke my pace, and the air here felt really, really thin. Even breathing as deep as I could manage didn’t feel like nearly enough, and stopping to try and rest only seemed to make it even harder, like I was just sucking all the oxygen out of the entire barrier.

Sometimes it really, really sucks being a normal. As if to really hammer that point home, the building under me started to ripple – no, it was like it was quivering. Shaking a little bit, as it forced…something out, just a few feet to my side. A giant snake, at a glance, or the shadow of one, unnaturally thin and swelling near the top. It ended in a parody of a wolf’s face with awful, empty eyes I could see the blinding-white sky through, and strings of I-don’t-even-know. It wasn’t quite right, it wasn’t quite at an angle where I should have been able to see what I did, I think, and trying to think about it hurt my brain. Not that I had a ton of time to think – the moment we locked eyes, it swung down at me, its mouth open wide enough to swallow my head.

Nooope. Nope nope nope. I kicked off in an instant as its jaws closed in on where I was just a moment before. It didn’t make a sound, but I could sort of feel it… screaming – and as I looked back, I saw them. Legions of them that had emerged from the buildings I’d passed, sprouting from the tops, twisting around the sides. Snakes or…worms, or villi or something, each with an animal head, some growing out of each other, some diving into the buildings again. I hoped that just meant they were leaving.

Eyes front, I told myself. I wish I hadn’t, it was just more bad news – a whole forest of them, already rising between me and the next rooftop. Fast. Gotta go fast. No problem. Yeah. Fast was what I did, and a bunch of stupid…heady…necky things were nothing compared to slipping out of a warehouse full of pissy magical girls, or even one or two friendly ones on a bad day. My chest burned as I forced my legs to go go go, whirling around a lion, diving between a some kind of bastard rabbit and a Salvador Dali rooster. The roof ahead of me seemed to drop off into nothing. Good. Jumping was way easier than trying to clamber up one of these buildings. It was probably only a story or…or two.

I could manage that.

My confidence drained as the edge drew closer and closer, and a knot welled up in the pit of my stomach. That was probably five or six meters easy, and they were already down there, waiting. And the next building was a climb. A short one, but it was probably more than I could get up in one go. …I was really in over my head. I was probably going to die, and the world would be denied its most awesome teenage reporter. …I jumped anyway. Well, I had to, right?

Deep breaths. You’ve done this a thousand times. Make sure there’s as much horizontal momentum as you can when you jump…no problem. Done. I was basically a freakin’ blur, here. Lean in, keep your knees bent so they absorb the impact instead of snapping like twigs. Land on the balls of your feet-

The shock of the next roof came all at once, but I was ready. Thousand times. Done it a thousand times. The force of impact jolted through my legs as I threw myself forward, tucking my camera in close as I whirled through the air. The back of my shoulder hit cold, black not-cement, and I rolled off to the side before kicking off again. …I was gonna feel that in the morning. My legs didn’t even want to cooperate now, and my stride turned heavy and uneven.

I lurched out of the way of another lunge, forcing my stupid, dumb, aching legs to move. Just like thunder, Izumi, come on! The world around me had become a jungle of black, with only flakes of white from the sky to show me where to slip through. My lungs were burning. My legs were numb. It was like my silhouette was fading into all of theirs. A strange sound, a buzzing noise, started to tear at my ears growing louder and louder as I neared the edge of the building.

I heard a voice, I thought. One I hadn’t heard since middle school. A familiar, sweet scent filled the air for just a moment, and…I guess it cleared my head. Took some of the ache away. With a new spring in my step I broke through the last line of creatures, ignoring a heavy thud behind, me, and my eyes flicked up to the roof of the next building.

“You idiot!” crackled a voice above me – a motorcycle helmet attached to a small shape leaning over the edge of the roof. “What the hell were you trying to do? Die?” I didn’t bother replying. Instead, I leapt at the wall, dug my shoe into it and kicked off, up toward Rank Leader Malal. She held her crowbar out – just within my reach, just barely – and I grabbed on. Like we’d done it a million times. She grabbed my arm and hauled me up, cursing the whole time.

It wasn’t a silhouette for her. I guess she could just ignore that with Super Culexus Powers or something.

“You said to haul ass.” It was kind of familiar, somehow. I could still feel her glove on my arm – she hadn’t let go right away, and she was digging in hard. “I wanted to see this, so…”

“I didn’t mean…Look, I could have gone out and gotten you. You’re USUALLY right where it’s the least convenient, so… …so this is really no exception.” Her grip on my arm loosened, then she let go. “…Might want to get that camera going, those things aren’t going to last for very long.”

Those…? I scooted back over to the edge again, and in a flash I brought my camera to my eye.

It was…it would be a bloodbath, if, I guess, these things had blood-oh. Oh, they did. Wow. Blood or some kind of goo, hard to tell. Either way, in those few moments, the Warmaster - nothing but a monster’s dark silhouette with hair floating gracefully behind her – had turned the entire roof into a mess. I mean, I couldn’t tell? It was all totally black. But as her chainsaw sword roared, the impression of a sound echoing through the whole barrier…chunks of things flew in arcs of ichor, shooting stars in the white of the sky. Shaped like animal heads.

And, uh, chunks. I guess that’s a shape.

“This is probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Also kind of gross!” I chirped to Malal after a couple of minutes – when they’d been more or less cleared out – but she just grunted (I think that’s what it was) and kept fiddling with her tablet. And once the Warmaster was on her way back over to us, she stood at length and held out her hand.

“How are your legs?” Good question. I wobbled a little as she helped me up, and my knees still hurt a lot more than I really wanted to let on. I was…probably not going to school tomorrow.

“Not broken!” It was all I could promise, and she nodded, as if to say ‘good enough’.

---

It was a relief, being able to breathe again. Malal could ward off the worst of the barrier’s effects on me if I stuck close, I guess, and I could even see a couple of my colors coming back. Which was great, I was sort of used to those. We were perched on one of the statue’s arms, now, as the two of them dragged me through the rest of the maze. Mostly Malal – I wasn’t sure the Warmaster had even noticed me in whatever blood-haze she was in.

While I was finally starting to become more than an obscenely cute shadow again, the Warmaster didn’t bother. Or couldn’t. Or just didn’t need to. She was pretty easy to make out anyway, even among the mass of familiars. She was the one that hadn’t gotten ripped apart by a chainsaw yet, an almost skeletal-seeming figure of eerie grace, moving from one familiar corpse to the next.

It was the witch she was fighting now. I’d never seen one before, and I was kind of surprised. She almost looked normal, almost looked like one of us, but ragged. Miserable. Trying to watch her kind of hurt my brain, so I wasn’t looking forward to the footage later; no matter where you turned, it was always a side view, always a silhouette in two dimensions of a girl with her hands clasped in prayer, her familiars – along with trees that seemed to sprout out of nowhere, spawning more and more branches to try and skewer the Warmaster, or block off her movement, or delay the inevitable face-sawing.

It didn’t work for very long. Even when she landed a branch, or her familiar got a hold on Kharn, it was glancing. It was on her freaky gauntlets or her weird monster legs, or it was caught by her sword and whatever it was just got shredded anyway.

…I kinda felt bad for the witch, though Malal just kind of snorted when I told her. When Kharn caught her, it was…not fast, and it was not kind. Well, she probably meant to be fast, and it was probably kinder than it could have been, but I saw her buzzing bastard sword dig into the witch, then sink into its body, teeth gnawing at it from the inside, hurling shadowy ichor everywhere.

With a jerk of her arm, she ripped through the rest of its body, and with another, she removed its head. A practiced motion, it seemed like – she caught it, even as the witch’s body started to fade, and she flicked black blood off of her sword as though it were second nature, and the world started to disappear around us. My organs seemed to swell again – did this happen to them? Did you get used to that? – and for a moment I blacked out as everything crashed together.

---

“Malal, you brought me a present!” Her voice was loud and powerful, and it just about made me leap out of my skin as an ice-cold metal hand clamped onto mine, followed by a leather glove on the other. The two of them helped me back up, and all at once the ache in my legs returned.

…I didn’t mean to. I really didn’t. But I sort of fell into her arms. Into the Warmaster’s. Her chest was soft, inches from my nose, and just slightly exposed, and I could smell-wait, wait. No. I’m not getting into that.

I yanked myself away, my eyes drifting from her chest to her face, to a stunning (but kind of scary) grin, and eyes filled with excitement and an almost childlike joy. I opened my mouth to speak, but my words died on my lips. I wasn’t sure how to feel. I was definitely…kind of terrified, but something about her was kind of intoxicating, too...My face started to heat up, and she grabbed my camera strap, practically holding me in place as a steely, sharp finger played its way under my chin.

“Kharn. Kharn, stop it. NECO, stop it. I’m not saving you again tonight. She’ll break you.” Malal glanced up from her tablet, but didn’t really do much more. …She sort of sounded like a pet owner whose cats should know better.

“Oh, this is NECO? Well. I am wondering now if I can make you purr…” My knees wobbled under me, and all I could do was nod.

“Dammit, Kharn, she’s not here for that.” This time she pushed her way between us, prying the Warmaster’s hand off of my camera strap in the process. I clutched it myself and looked down, like I needed to toy with my camera. I just…I just had to stop looking at her. She was a sparkler. She was like, the sparklest. She probably had mystic eyes of enchantment, or something weird like that. That was it.  I wasn’t…I wasn’t even interested in girls like her. In girls.

“But…Malal, isn’t there a Japanese saying for this? I am sure I have heard it before.” I looked up just in time to see her adorably nibbling her lip. I could barely believe this woman was the killing machine from like…five minutes ago? Ten?

“No. There wasn’t. Aside from maybe ‘don’t molest reporters, it’s terrible PR’.”

“No, no…it was ‘A cat is also fine’. Yes, I am sure that was it.” She beamed, and my knees buckled under me. I instinctively pulled my camera out from under me as I was falling, and then everything went dark.

---

It was just exhaustion. Malal dropped me off at home and told me to stay off my feet for a few days. She stressed that they wouldn’t be around to check on me, so I’d better listen the first time. And that I was lucky Kharn didn’t take me to her rape den, whatever that was. …It sounded really familiar. Except the rape den part. That didn’t usually come up much. But at the time, I was really too tired to care…