Uneasy Stalemate Side Story: Genesis

Within the Void, a fragment of reality drifted amongst the nothing. Too small and incomplete to earn the title of universe or world, it was more of a mere idea or dream. Or perhaps to call it a dream would be too kind.

A better description might be a nightmare.

This nightmare was to a conventional reality what a virus was to a bacterium. It was not self sufficient. On its own, it could not grow or evolve, frozen in perpetual changelessness. Like any parasite, to truly be considered 'alive', it needed to invade a host. The nightmare needed to hijack the reality of a real world.

And now it had found one.

In the Void, watched by existences too old and alien to care about the affairs of mortals, the parasitic fragment of reality drifted among a cluster of worlds. It focused on one in particular. One whose compatible mythology created a weakness in its walls—an opening for the nightmare to exploit. One undefended by gods or magic. A reality ripe for the harvest.

Realities collided, and, where they touched, a passageway opened. A rift between worlds.

But the nightmare had erred, for it had not truly understood the myth it had exploited. While the myth provided an opening, it also enforced rules. Ideas flowed in both directions, and the nightmare found itself chained and restricted.

And worse, the world that had previously been undefended suddenly found itself with a powerful defender indeed. The myth required that the invaders would lose.

A consciousness that spanned a planet stirred, forced into existence by the invading reality and yet, somehow, despite this being the first time it had awoken, once it was awake, it had always been there. It knew itself, and it knew its duty. It perceived its invaders, those from outside reality who sought to take what was not theirs, and it knew what it must do. It looked for those compatible with its power—a power that was shaped by stories rather than physics—and it acted.

In a certain town, where the walls between realities were weakest, a tree blossomed out of season. A single bud grew upon its branch, quite unlike anything that belonged to the species. The bud opened, expanding into a massive white flower, in the centre of which a white, winged kitten opened his eyes.

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Natasha sat at a desk in her bedroom glaring at her maths homework, hoping that if she stared hard enough, the paper would burst into flames. A regular girl might have stared hoping that the answer would come in a moment of inspiration, but Natasha was not one to cling to impossibilities.

"What I need is a super intelligent friend," she declared to the homework. "Someone willing to sit with me and help explain things to me, and, unlike a private tutor, who doesn't charge an arm and a leg for the privilege."

"You already have someone like that; your maths teacher!" shouted up her father from below.

"Stop listening to me moaning!" shouted back Natasha, jumping up from her desk, stomping over to her bedroom door, and slamming it shut.

When she turned back around, there was a white kitten sitting on her desk, inspecting her homework with apparent interest.

Natasha rubbed her eyes, but when she reopened them, it was still there.

"Are you an angel sent by god to help me understand algebra?" she asked.

"If that is your dearest wish, then I have good news and bad news," answered the kitten. "The bad news is that I have no idea whatsoever what all these squiggles mean, so if they're 'algebra', then no, I can't help you with it."

"Aww," said Natasha. "So, what's the good news?"

"This entire planet is about to be swallowed up by an eternal nightmare, the sun extinguished and all life consumed to feed the eternal hunger of an invading reality, so unless the due date on that homework is really soon, it doesn't matter if you don't do it."

Natasha blinked. "Most people would not consider that good news," she carefully opined.

"Most people would not have engaged in conversation with a talking kitten," pointed out the talking kitten. "At least, not without a lengthy process of incredulity, questioning, disbelief and probably extensive screaming beforehand."

"I was desperate," pointed out Natasha. "Besides which, you're white, have wings, all the doors and windows are locked, and I had, seconds earlier, prayed for help. Angel seemed like a reasonable explanation."

"I'm not sure how I should respond to that, so I'll just move onto a question of my own. Would you help save our..."

"Yes," answered Natasha.

"... I hadn't even finished asking the question!"

"You don't need to! Seriously, what sort of selfish bastard would hear that the world was in danger, then, when asked to help save it, would say no?"

"Most people, actually, if providing the help would inconvenience them in any way. Not to mention that most people wouldn't believe that the world was in danger in the first place."

"Well, most people are poo-poo heads, then."

"Once again, I'm not sure how I should respond to that. You are certainly an interesting individual."

"Thanks!"

"That wasn't... no, never mind. If you're really willing to help save this world, despite the danger, then repeat these words after me."

And so the girl repeated the words, her bedroom filling with a mystical light as magical girl Gentle Breeze made her first appearance upon the Earth.

And, upon the desk of the magical girl sat a photo frame of the girl when she was five years old, posing on a beach with laughing parents behind her, her bright yellow eyes staring straight into the camera.

Eyes that—prior to the arrival of the nightmare—had been the brown shared by both her parents, in respect of conventional genetics. But, as with the Will of the World, once the myth had gained a measure of reality, history had been twisted. Yesterday, her eyes and hair had been brown, but today, they had always been yellow.

"Oh! This is so cool! I'm, like, some sort of transforming super-heroine!"

"It's not 'like'. You are one. I don't suppose it's too much to ask that you start acting like it?"

"Uh... I'm not great at acting, but I'll try. I do have a question, first, though," declared Natasha, who had been carefully inspecting her yellow dress and noticed one or two rather important lacking details.

"Yes?"

"How do I pee in this thing?"

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"Oh? So you're the invader?" asked magical girl Gentle Breeze, peering at the three metre tall monstrosity with undisguised disgust. "You certainly look the part."

Hatred, the first Bane to have stepped through the rift, turned to look at the colourful human who dared interrupt his meal—the unconscious man still held in his claws.

"And just who, exactly, are you supposed to be?" he growled.

"Magical girl Gentle Breeze, here to deliver justice to evil monsters everywhere. Put that man down gently, and I promise not to hurt you. Much."

"I realise that he's the one with the unconscious victim in his hands, but the way you're speaking makes you sound like the villain," said William.

"What do you want me to say? Put him down and I'll let you off with a light spanking? You said I needed to destroy them, not tell them off."

"Great. Now you're making me sound like the villain."

"Perhaps I should have asked what you are supposed to be," spat Hatred, then he threw his meal straight at the magical girl.

"Eep!" exclaimed Natasha as her magically bestowed instincts kicked in and pointed out that should she dodge, the poor victim would splatter against the wall behind her. Instead, she made a desperate move to catch him, the force slamming her into the wall herself.

"Pathetic," snarled the Bane, his maw curling into a sneer as he brandished his claws. "I wonder what magical girls taste like?"

"Disgusting, I'm sure," exclaimed Natasha as she hurriedly dropped her catch and evaded a claw swipe from Hatred. "That could have killed me! He's trying to kill me!"

"..." replied William, who once again had no idea how to respond, this time left speechless by Natasha's apparent assumption that someone she had explicitly stated her intent to 'destroy' would not fight back.

Another swipe came, and this time Natasha, off balance from her previous evasion and unused to her new powers and instincts, failed to dodge. She grunted as the claw caught her in the stomach, launching her sailing across the street, where she slammed into the opposite wall and crumpled to the ground.

"... Ouch," she complained.

Hatred stared as she dragged herself back to her feet. "Why are your guts not spilling onto the pavement?" he demanded. "Why are your bones not crushed to powder? There's no way a mere human can still stand after that."

"Hah. As if a super-heroine like me could be hurt by the likes of you!" laughed Natasha.

"If it didn't hurt, why did you go 'ouch'?" asked William. "Also, the correct term is 'magical girl'."

"Is it? Does that mean I can do magic?"

"How do you think a thin layer of silk just blocked a claw-slice that should have bisected you?"

"I assumed it was made of kevlar or something."

"What's kevlar?"

"Will you two shut up!" yelled Hatred, hurling a parked motorbike at the talkative magical girl.

"Eep!" exclaimed Natasha, dodging again. The story of magical girls once again flexed itself in response, overriding mere physics and causing the motorbike to explode in an implausible fireball. A single tire, miraculously surviving the blast, went bouncing comically down the street.

"If you want to see some real magic, shout wind blade!" exclaimed William.

"Wind Blade!" exclaimed Natasha, once again moving according to instincts she didn't know she had and thrusting out a hand.

An invisible blade of wind fired itself from her, slicing through a lamppost and blasting a chunk out of another structure.

"Wow!" exclaimed Natasha.

"That was a good start," said William slowly. "Why don't you try it one more time, but this time aim it at the enemy!"

"You didn't tell me what was going to happen!" argued back Natasha. "How was I supposed to know it needed aiming?"

"I think, in the circumstances, the fact that it was an attack should have been obvious."

"How was that obvious?!"

"Can you two not stop talking for one second?" exclaimed Hatred, who had picked up the severed lamppost, swinging it like a club.

Natasha limboed backward, ducking under the swing. Alas, she was still standing quite close to her previously impacted wall, thus smacking her head into it. The wall cracked behind her.

"I suspect there's a hard head joke in there somewhere," muttered William.

"Wind Blade!" shouted Natasha, who was, for once, paying attention to the enemy instead of her mascot.

The blade of wind sliced through the air, impacting Hatred in the stomach.

"Eww," commented Natasha. Then she threw up.

It turned out that watching guts spill out was not a pleasant sight, even when the guts involved were not her own.

Thankfully, the guts of the Bane soon decomposed into black dust, blowing away harmlessly into the air. Without the life to hold it together, the foreign body was rejected by the universe, which wasted no time in purging it.

"Well, after that little display, I have come to a conclusion," said William.

"Is it about how great I am?" asked Natasha, wiping her mouth.

"No. No, it is not. It is, in fact, the opposite. For the sake of this planet's continued survival, I have decided that you need teammates."

"Hey, I won, didn't I?"

"The invader is dead and you are not, so it's true that you have, by that definition, 'won'. However..."

William looked around. Windows were shattered, walls were cracked or smashed. A number of vehicles had been totalled. A fire hydrant was throwing water into the air. A lamppost had been cleanly sliced through by Natasha's magic, which had gone on to tear into the structure behind, the gash in one wall leaving it in imminent danger of collapse.

"Uh... I don't think I get enough pocket money to pay for that..." said Natasha carefully.

"Let's just get out of here," sighed William.

"Oh, I've just had a good idea!" exclaimed Natasha, perking back up as if the previous few seconds had never happened.

"Whose definition of good?"

"When you find these new teammates, how about one who can help me with my homework?"

William sighed. Despite having only just been born, he decided that the end of his mission could not come soon enough.