>Holly Ward
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wC59fiT3Ek

Transformation Phrase: "Day or night, fight for what's right, and burn away the dark! Let lightning strike! Justice smite! And spread hope's light anew!"


STR 4
VIT 4+1=5
AGI 4+2+2=8
MAG 4+1+1+4=10 (Gold)
LUCK 4+1=5

Age: 6+1=7 (Silver to 15)
Development: 12 (Average)
Power: 9-1=8 (Silver -1) Lightning (+2 Agi, +1 Mag)
Weapon: 14 (Magic, +1 Mag) Lightning Rod (http://i00.i.aliimg.com/photo/v2/123128536/ESE_LIGHTNING_ROd.jpg)
Outfit: 17, Uniform- a cross between a uniform and an old fashioned aviator's costume, complete with cap and jacket. (+1 Vit)
Power: 7, Focused Assault
Perks:
+2 Agi
Closure (+1 Luck)
Training (Play Guitar)
Get Out of Jail
Big Backpack

After the usual early hiccups and traumatic incidents, Holly settles into her new role as a hero of justice surprisingly well.

Short and somewhat scrawny, Holly's chipper, argumentative, and vocal. Quick to action, quick to break out the magical lightning when she sees a problem, and all around quick, she's just as fast at getting herself into trouble or saying too much. Most of that's from the personality changes, but throwing herself into her duties as a magical girl and the power at her fingertips makes it easier for her to ignore the shadier aspects of things.

Holly's somewhat scatterbrained when it comes to details. She sees herself as a superhero(ine)/monster hunter. She's likely to cause herself plenty of problems when she's blundering around on her own, even with a bag full of money to start with and the ability to literally get out of jail free. At the start, she's pretty much on autopilot while trying to get to grips with what just happened. For her transformation phrase, Holly'd probably want to rip off "Shazam" first, then the green lantern oath, before making up something a bit more original, if stupid-sounding.

She has no idea at all why she's suddenly a prodigy at the electric guitar. She didn't even like that kind of music much before.



First Time On the Job

I glare at the condemned building's front door, lightning rod clutched tightly in one hand and pocket dimension backpack. It doesn't noticeably react. Maybe the faded white paint on the wood panels flakes a little more.

I can sense the monster inside, vaguely. It's like squinting but using your "third eye", whatever Puuchu meant by that. In actual terms and not magic ESP bullshit, it's like seeing a blob of malevolence and evil out of the corner of your vision, except that it's actually right in front of you and a bit to the left.

Point is, it's there, so am I, and it probably isn't going to come out and leave quietly if I knock.

"Come on, Holly." I mutter to myself, head lowered and voice coming out as more of a shaky, quavery mumble. There's nothing wrong with the magically implanted name- my name, now- but I still haven't managed to shake that momentary disconnect where I feel like I'm giving the wrong answer by using it. Not that I was ever quite comfortable saying my own name even before things went upside down, but that wasn't the point- I didn't get saddled with my old name for running some poor kid over.

I'd known I wasn't exactly going to NASCAR anytime soon with my driving skills, but I never thought my shit driving'd make me a murderer.

Not helping. One problem at a time. The door. The monster inside this abandoned old house. Stopping it before it hurts anyone. Superhero stuff. I force myself to push away memories of seeing that kid's body crushed under a wheel- the first and only dead body I've ever seen- and rub my hands together, shifting from foot to foot. It's just a door. Breaking it down is going to be easy. It's not really breaking and entering.

"You've got this." I tell myself, voice still quiet. "Think superhero thoughts. Superhero."

That helps, a bit. Superheroes. Do-gooders. That puuchu thing said I had to take the girl's place for...killing her, and even if it's a pink rat with no fashion sense, it has a point. I did kill someone. Murder. I guess that means I'm getting off lightly by being turned into Captain Marvel or whatever. Or should that be that Ms Marvel? Pretty sure Captain's DC and she's Marvel anyway.

Head lowered and looking down at myself, I have to admit that "kid Amelia Earhart" meets "schoolgirl uniform" wasn't quite the first thing to come to mind when I thought "superhero", but hey, close enough, right? And between this and wearing a cape with my underwear on the outside? This is slightly less embarrassing to walk around in. Slightly. I wouldn't have turned down body armor instead even if it isn't "heroic". Or keeping my original body, for that matter.

That's not helping either. I need to focus. That monster's probably still in there, and Puuchu says it'll EAT people if someone doesn't do something. And considering I've already killed someone and my entire life's been unwritten, I really don't need to know that I let that happen when I could have done something.

Enough stalling. It's showtime. Think superhero thoughts. Superhero. Holly Ward, Superhero.

I pull down my goggles. Yes, goggles. Don't laugh, they really do work. The world takes on a faint yellow tint, but details seem slightly sharper and clearer.

"O..Okay...jackass! Hope you're ready in there! Because I'm coming in!" I start to say, managing to force myself to yell as loudly as I can manage. Which, judging by the way the shouting echoes up and down the street, is actually pretty loud. Huh. Good thing this neighborhood's one where you don't want to draw too much attention to yourself, and no one's around to hear it. Or maybe everyone in the area's been been eaten already.

I'm not really trying to give it a warning so much as hype myself up, but it's not really working. Screw it, enough mind games. Let's get this over with.

"Knock knock!"

I kick the door. I'm not sure why I thought that was a good idea, since the door's still there and now my foot hurts. A lot. The next three seconds are spent hopping on one foot, making incoherent pained noises.

The second time, I do the smart thing, step back, and just blast the door with my magic. There's a crackle of ozone and a zapping noise, and the door vanishes in a cloud of black smoke and splinters as a bright fork of lightning burns it away. My goggles mean I don't need to look away, but a gulp of the black smoke sends me coughing.

As soon as I'm done hacking up my lungs (paint and smoke taste vile, by the way), I'm rushing in before nerves can kick in, bag and lightning rod in hand. I drop the bag just inside the door, and grip my magic focus tightly as I stumble over debris in the dark and down the hallway towards the pulse of dark magic. If this works, I'll pick my stuff up on the way out.

For a welded-together clump of tarnished metal that I can wield one-handed, the lightning rod Puuchu called my focus packs quite a punch. Puuchu helped me practice for a while. Wonder how they'll explain away the craters in the car park pavement? The practice was actually pretty fun, but the important part is that I'd figured out how to zap things and leave craters in them. Hopefully, that'll at least annoy whatever this monster is.

This one's the right door. The signal's so strong that I can feel it pulsing, constantly. Feed me. Hate. Kill. Burn.

I push it aside, with some effort, and get ready for the fun part. No more games. No more screw ups. I'm going to stop my first monster and do it right.

I take a second look at the door, point my lightning conductor at it, and yell out my party trick's nickname.

"St Elmo's Light!"

A ball of blue lightning streaks out of the rod, crackling and burning as it explodes against the door, burning it away and flying into the room inside.

There's a scream inside, and for one second my blood freezes as I think I've made a horrible mistake just days after the last time. Then the scream continues, the pitch too high and inhuman to ever have come from a human throat, and carrying on for far too long. My legs shake, and for a second, I want to run. If you want to judge me for that, you should try listening to one of those things sometime. Humans just KNOW that something like that shouldn't exist in their universe, and it spooks them. Magical girls aren't entirely immune either.

The monster scuttles out from out of the darkness before I can do anything but stand there. I hurt it, I think. It's scuttling along on jointed, clockwork legs, but two or three of them are hanging limply at its side. It has someone's half-eaten, visibly-gnawed head in its hands, so savaged I can't even tell who it might have belonged to. I notice that detail last somehow. I won't even think about it again until much later.

It's wearing a grubby, off-white shawl that has some nice singe marks after my door call, and its still visibly smoldering. It has two crab-like pincers that looked like metal, but one of them's missing its claws entirely now and is a useless stump. That's the good news.

The bad news is that its still alive, its angry, and it wants to kill me. And in this narrow corridor, there's no room for me to duck. Puuchu'd said I was only slightly more durable than "normal". I got the impression "normal" meant more "Olympic athlete" than "average human" from what I'd learned about my new body, but I definitely don't want to test that durability, especially if it means going to the hospital or worse.

In short, I should probably run. The monster scuttles closer. It looks like a person, if a person was made from clockwork cogs and cloth, had eight mechanical legs, and had a porcelain mask where its face should be. Blood's dripping from the mouthpiece, and it's still wailing as it scuttles forwards. Probably not a monstergirl. Just a monster. A "normal" monster.

Good. I'm here to kill monsters.

"Hi! I'm the exterminator!" I smile brightly, and raise my rod. I don't bother with a called attack this time. Just regular lightning, and lots of it.

The air splits open, and blue-white arcs of magical electricity surge into the creature. It jerks, flailing wildly. I have to duck under a spasm of its crab clawed arm, and feel a tug at my head. I don't have time to worry about that now. I need to kill this thing, fast.

I throw myself back with inhuman speed as it starts to recover, slamming into the hallway at my back. It's still twitching when I start shocking it again, faster this time. It hasn't stopped screaming since the first attack.

"St Elmo's Light! St Elo's light!" I scream right back, then add a phrase that seemed fitting just because. "POWER! ABSOLUTE POWER!"

The clockwork drider twitches, its spasming becoming continuous, then slower. The air's suddenly filled with a foul, plastic smell that has nothing to do with the ozone. It's shawl is on fire now, and its stopped moving. There's a loud pop, and the porcelain mask shatters to reveal half-melted clockwork underneath.

Abruptly, I feel my magic run out. I waver, then collapse against the wall, panting for breath. I struggle to look up. If the monster's still alive...If it can still MOVE...

It's not moving. It's in a gently steaming pile of gears and ashes on the floor. As I watch, there's a liquid, sloshing noise, and the heap collapses into formless, black sludge...and then nothing. It's gone. It's dead. I've done it.

Holly Ward's just killed her first monster.

"Ha! Not...not so tough now, are ya?" I gasp, trying to cheer. It feels righteous. Justified. Like I'm doing something that matters.

Its a good feeling.