witch

Heard from a colleague once that when they attacked a witch, ash sprayed out. Another one said that when she killed a familiar, it just disappeared. Never had those problems myself.

What had formerly been a vast field of smooth ice had become an endless lake of blood as my knife struck true over and over, rupturing babbling wooden figures on crude ice skates like they were gibbering sacks of meat (though I was grateful they weren’t; the one barrier I’d been in with meat familiars was an experience I didn’t want to repeat). Near as I could tell, there was no end to them – we’d engaged the witch early. Badly. Underestimated it, and V rushed in.

She wanted to get messy. V loves getting messy on a hunt.

It was hard to blame her. It felt good. Too much of our time lately’d been spent training the FNGs, since Touchdown fucked everything up. The whole Corps was edgy, pent-up. No retirements lately, and no retirements meant no fun for the Rabbits. We were only here at all because the Prima realized that some of us were stir-crazy enough to start busting heads in the city if we didn’t get out soon. Not that the city was any safer  if she wasn’t out picking on witches most of the time, but at least this way we got to stretch our legs.

So thanks to V’s blood fetish, we were being gangfucked by pirouetting soldiers and liable to drown in their insides before we cleared enough of them, and every single one we let swirl around for more than a moment pulled a crappy wooden rifle on us that fired crappy wooden bullets that moved at a crappy several hundred miles per fucking hour.

Took about thirty familiars and three shots to the chest before I got sick of that. Don’t like using magic if I can help it – makes the nightmares worse – but in record time I made my way over to V and the latest dismembered puppet she was ramming her scissors into, and I grabbed her arm. Told her we had to haul ass and whipped up a broom. Flying is one of my better tricks, but not my favorite by a long shot. Doesn’t feel all that freeing when you can feel everything of yourself that you’ve managed to hold onto ticking away while you do it. …Actually, it feels pretty much like shit.

So she grabbed onto me and we took off like bats out of hell. I could feel her soul gem resonate as she switched right to cover fire, a minefield of furniture and small objects – dressers, mirrors, and knives, mostly, with the occasional teapot and a clock now and again (and once or twice I swear she pulled out a soda machine) – that began to shake and hurtle toward the familiars below like so many shooting stars. A number were blasted off-course by their godawful toy rifles, but that didn’t matter. It was as much a bunch of shields as anything.

Once we were off the plateau of ice, it was easy to spot the witch, a tiny, misshapen creature like a colorful octopus with long, sickly-looking limbs stretched in all directions, whirling and juggling arenas like the one we’d just escaped to a merry-go-round tune. The sound was distorted, like it was being played from a shitty radio from the 1930’s. It tossed its huge landforms around as though they were paper plates - that was how it got us before. All it had to do was land a hit and it’d send us to the surface of one of those things again, for another bloodbath and another assload more magic use than I wanted to deal with.

I bolted for the main body as quick as I could force my little broom to go, and as we’d expected – and feared – its attention turned from its harmless spinning to our asses. The first swing I managed to skirt by a hair, and the second was held back with a deluge of objects just long enough for us to slip by. The third…The world melted around me as I summoned my stoplight, right on the edge of my broom. Everything took on a dull, fleshy tint, and I squeezed my eyes shut as the light flicked from green to yellow. That was enough. That would be enough to get us through, I hoped. …Any further and it’d have to get uglier than I liked to go.

There was a whoosh overhead, the sound of us narrowly avoiding its swing, but we’d barely gotten a breath before an impact sent us tumbling down, the broom and light both vanishing as soon as I wasn’t focusing on ‘em. The witchtopus had split down the middle, and the figure of a thin young woman made of the same prismatic jelly emerged, her head tilted unnaturally to the side as it shared neckspace with thicker, stronger tendrils. I guessed one of those was what dismounted us right before I hit the ground with an uncomfortable gloop.

It wasn’t an ideal landing, but I had it better than V. She didn’t scream – I knew she wouldn’t – but V, it had caught. It was afraid of V, V could have stopped it. On her way down she’d scissored right through a couple of its limbs, I think, and it was returning the favor. It even dropped its shitty arenas to latch onto her with more of its limbs, one to each of hers, with another around her waist and another around her neck.

I couldn’t hear the noise it made when it ripped her arm off, and I’m sort of glad. I couldn’t help her there. Couldn’t get to her fast enough.

Not sure yet how I feel about that.

It was then that I heard the Prima. She said later she was worried about us, about how long it took. That’s why she’s the Prima, I guess.

The air filled with noise, when the Prima would transform. It was like hanging around Malal, sort of. Didn’t make my teeth itch, but it did…something. Seemed to make everyone sick in a different way. The world would twist when she used her magic, like it didn’t make sense anymore. Like seeing in three dimensions was no different than looking at a painting of a sunset, and realizing that there was no depth to it. To say nothing of the…things, just playing around at the edge of your vision. It was horrible the first time and it never really got better. Most people start crying. Or throwing up. Usually both.

She didn’t seem to care about anything that was going on as she walked along the gooey ground. The witch’s whole barrier seemed to shiver as it took on that painting-like quality, and it dropped V like a sack of bleeding stumps (which was shockingly close to an accurate descriptor). There was a gleam as the Prima whispered to her patrons, the gleaming, golden scythes she’d recently taken up. I couldn’t hear what she said to the witch before she leapt on her, but I knew. V did too, and without even thinking, we mouthed the words along with her:

“Die for me.”

---

Fear isn’t something the girls of the Wonderland Corps, the Rabbits,  feel anymore. It’s something bred out of us by experience, something stolen from us by our demons. To some of us, becoming magical girls was our only chance to save ourselves from our own darkness. To some of us, it was the chance to rend and slaughter, to devour our enemies. To give in to our anger and our hate, to unleash our terrible beasts. To most of us, though…it was both. We threw away fear long before we became Eversors. We were monsters long before we were magical girls.

I like to think that’s what brought us all together. Why we all gathered around the Prima…around Annie. Our Lady. Our Alice. The Eversor Prima of the Eighth Officio Assassinorum, as well as its Equerry. She called us Rabbits, her heralds, the hounds of her war against the things no human should know. We were first response for anything worth worrying about, hopping down the rabbit holes and running like hell to break up the tea party before anyone’s head had to come off. Before Annie and her fucked-up Wonderland arrived.

The dead and the damned are the only ones who can walk away, once she does. The only ones who can sleep again, seeing what she sees.

---

“…You don’t look so good.” Eve’s quiet tones invade my thoughts as I slide in next to her at our local Burger Suplex (located across the street from a particularly crappy apartment complex – ‘secondary personnel housing’ my ass). She looks like she’s seconds away from throwing up, but then, she always does when I come back from a hunt. And then we always come here.

Don’t feel like eating much – I don’t eat all that much, anyway – but I know she’ll throw a fit if I don’t eat something, especially if I look as shitty as I feel. …Even I can’t deny the food here’s good, though. Good enough to vomit back up again, worse comes to worst. Wouldn’t be the first time.

I grunt at her, hoping she’ll lay off for a change. Eve is a smart kid, but she can get pretty nosy. And she’s a dour little thing, reminds me of myself when I was that age.

That’s not good. At all.

“…You’re upset. …Everyone came back, right?” As always, her voice is completely even. …If I hadn’t passed up Ol’ Batshit’s offer before she left, Eve’d probably be my second-in-command in the Callidus Corps. Only ever saw her cry once, and she joined this shit way younger than I did. Used to think there was something wrong with her, but she’s just…tough as hell. Tougher than me, probably. Not a fighter, or a killer. Not even a psychopath. Just…tough.

“…The Prima had to step in.” That’s enough to make Eve wince. “Almost lost V. Got her arms ripped off. She was still throwing a tantrum when we dumped her off in medical.” Alright. A large Hassy and a Hurricanrana combo. Guess I can eat something.