Teaser Chapter: The Apocalypse Maidens, Prologue

(if you haven't read the short story "On-Site for the Apocalypse" you may be missing some details)

Shortly after the final battle...

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THE APOCALYPSE MAIDENS

Second in The Ethical Magical Girl

Prologue: Cleanup

"What the hellam I supposed to do about this?" Agent Dana Kisaragi demanded of the universe around her.

Twin Pines Mall, a two-section strip mall along Route 4, was a disaster area. Not a single store was intact, and some – like DIY Home, the immense home-repair depot store – were utterly destroyed, crumpled masses of tangled steel and concrete, shattered glass and broken boards. The expansive parking lot was cracked and gouged and torn up across most of its length, with one section literally stripped bare to the earth and stone underneath as though by some rampaging bulldozer the size of a skyscraper; the blacktop that had covered the area was piled in a jumbled berm forty feet high, mixed with dirt and boulders and a few scattered cars that looked like they'd been put through a junkyard crusher.

And it's not just broken and crushed, Kisaragi noted. In some areas, pavement and sand had melted, burned and fused; in others, concrete had shattered like glass, or been cut with terrifyingly precise force that left the edges of the cut as smooth as a still pond.

That wasn't the worst part, of course. That was reserved for the more bizarre elements – like two trails of ripped-up pavement that ended in the unmistakable imprints of boots, or the bowed-in blacktop with the perfect impression of a person in some kind of armor.

Thank god there aren't many casualties. The only people they'd found at the site were unconscious – five boys from one of the local high schools, mostly badly injured. Hughes went with the ambulances; he'll try to arrange the interview and containment, but…

She couldn't restrain a resigned laugh. There was no way to contain this. The whole worldhad seen the impossible today, and Kisaragi's team had seen enough to know what had caused the reality-warping, mind-bending terror of those moments: a battle between two forces of supernatural power, only one of which she could put a name to.

The Apocalypse Maidens.

The name was vaguely funny, a sort of modern memetic joke, made worse by the individual names of the Maidens: Princess Radiance Blaze, Princess Tsunami Reflection, Princess Temblor Brilliance, Princess Tempest Corona, and Princess Holy Aura. But,thought Dana grimly, there's nothing actually funny about them.

It had been bad enough when it had just been Holy Aura; that had been enough to send the OSC ("Obtain. Secure. Counter.") into fits, with her demonstrating enough power to threaten the entire Capital District of New York, and facing adversaries that were as monstrous and terrifying as they were powerful, but then one enigmatic magical girl had become two, and then suddenly five.

I suppose I should be grateful that it didn't continue that way, or I'd have nine thousand teenage girls throwing around WMD levels of power with ridiculous-sounding attack names. "Gilbert, what've we got?"

Warren Gilbert glanced up and gave a weak grin, mopping perspiration from his face. "About what we expected, boss. Even the residuals on the metawave readings are off the charts; if metawave energies were radiation, we'd all be walking dead." He held up a metawave meter, whose display showed absolutely ridiculous numbers. "See that? Residual readings are still over twenty thousand. We can't even hazard a guess as to what the active numbers were."

"What about events? Can we at least get a handle on what happened, even if we don't know how it all worked?"

He nodded towards Owen Marsters, who was sitting at a wobbly folding table in the hastily-erected pavilion currently serving as a base of field operations. "Check with Owen and Miller, they were working on pulling all that together." He then held up a sample vial, inside which something glittered a royal purple. "But I amgetting some really interesting samples."

"Keep it up," she said, forcing a smile. "I'll go see what the others have for me."

Agent John T. Miller looked quite a bit less the classic Field Agent today; his suit jacket was off, hung over a nearby folding chair, his tie was loose, and so were the top buttons of his shirt, which all made sense in the unseasonably hot March sunshine. Owen Marsters was his usual slightly-disheveled self, staring at the screen in front of him; Miller was leaning over his shoulder.

"Agents," she said as she came up. "Have you got anything for me?"

"A whole metric buttload of anything," Owen said proudly. "Not that I can say what it all means, mind you."

"We're getting a handle on sequences of events," Miller said; his tone, at least, was as precise and professional as she'd come to expect, after she'd hammered him down once or twice for stepping on her toes as Agent In Charge. "It's… well, I'd say it's what we expected, but that makes it sound so ordinary."

She understood the bemusement, with a plaintive edge, in Agent Miller's voice. Even the OSC, the agency that handled all the things that went bump, screech, or slobber in the night, had a certain routine, a certain set of expectations, a certain confidence in the way in which anomalies in reality would be encountered, analyzed, and dealt with.

All of which were utterly inadequate to dealing with the appearance of literal mahou shoujo senshi – magical girl warriors – in the middle of upstate New York. "I know what you mean, John," she said quietly. "Just walk me through it."

"All right. Just before the real action started, we got those reports of all five of the Maidens, plus two men, crossing the street to Twin Pines. Most of the recordings were badly scrambled – no surprise there – but we did manage to pull a couple clear images up, including one that shows another group waiting in the parking lot, about there." Miller indicated a location not too far from where Gil was working. "Best guess from the witness statements so far is that there was a confrontation, talking didn't work, and they threw down. Multiple combatants were involved, obviously – more than usual."

"So not just the Maidens and one or two opponents?"

"More than that," Owen said with certainty. "Battle went in stages, but even at the beginning I make it even parity – each of the girls had an opposite number."

"The five boys we picked up?"

Owen glanced at Miller, then shrugged. "Could be, but unless Hughes gets something out of 'em, that's just a guess for now. It's for sure they weren't wearing any fancy armor when we found 'em. Anyway, there was also one big opponent – we got a couple of his footprints over there, and I'd put him at nine foot tall and probably close on a ton. Not human, either – broad feet with webbed toes."

She frowned. "One of the Deep Ones? Here?"

"Not a standard Deep One," Miller said. "Those aren't much bigger than human; whatever this was, it was big. Maybe line of Dagon, not sure."

"That'd be a good first guess, though, because if we're reading the trace, he took on more'n one of our favorite girls at once. Also at least one of the others – we got an impression and trace in the ruin of Fashion Post that didn't fit any of the girls. But he got taken down – lost an arm, looks like, although we didn't actually find the arm."

Owen grimaced. "Gets confused at this point, but we know that something bigstarted to come through over there," he nodded towards a circle of crumpled pavement sixty feet across, "and the five girls surrounded it at some point. Don't know how or why it didn't finish coming through, or where they went after that."

Miller had gotten a call and was listening. "Got it," he said. "We'll expect you." He put the phone back into his pocket. "Agent Kisaragi, my people have got the cleanup crews en-route, but we all know how much good that'sgoing to do."

Kisaragi sighed. "Yeah. Not that we've been able to keep much of a lid on it since after the disaster at that football game. I'll call Central; my job."

"Better you than me," Miller said.

No kidding.The enigmatic leader of the OSC, Sir John Covenant, seemed to be positively disposed towards her, but that didn't take the sting out of his critiques. And telling anyone at Central that it was impossible to contain an event was an exercise in nail-biting terror, no matter how justified you were. She went to her car – which had well-concealed but effective measures to maintain security – and dialed a number that was never recorded anywhere.

The phone rang only once before it was picked up. "Covenant here."

"Sir John, it's Agent Kisaragi."

"Agent!" Sir John's voice, usually as imperturbable as his classically British accent implied, was both tense and pleased. "I am very glad you called."

"You must have expected –"

"Oh, I certainly expected you to call. But given the circumstances, I have awaited the call with, I confess, somewhat less than my usual patience."

She restrained a grimace; Covenant couldn't see it, and it wasn't professional. "Because of the magnitude of the disaster I'm handing you, I suppose."

"Agent." His voice had returned to its controlled English drawl. "I am fully cognizant of the utterly impossible situation you are in. Do me the courtesy of acknowledging that I won't blame you for failing to accomplish the impossible; I merely want you to achieve the nearly impossible regularly."

An unexpected chuckle escaped. "All right, Sir John. I admit I was calling to find out just how much of this impossibility I was expected to hide."

"As much as you can, Agent, no more, no less. You have full authority – amnesics, point or cloud-dispersed, mnemorphic treatments specific or general, whatever necessary. But…" A quiet laugh. "But be reasonable; we haven't a hundredth the teams needed to quiet everything around the world, so whatever you do, make sure it fits with what is inescapably known."

Dana began to breathe easier. "Understood, sir. There are still many elements of the situation we can obscure – and we might be able to use all the confusion of the situation to our advantage."

"Precisely. The existence of the so-called Apocalypse Maidens is not possible to obscure. But much about their abilities, their adversaries, and so on can be, and mustbe."

She hesitated. Positive relationship or not, it was not always safe to question the head of the most secretive and dangerous organization on Earth.

On the other hand… he was the head of that organization, and as such, even his subtle cues were intentional. "Sir, did I hear a particular emphasis?"

"You did, Agent." A pause. "There are elements of the organization who are, shall we say, less willing to accept that there are things that the OSC cannot do. I have these elements under control." Another pause. "For the present."

Now she regretted asking, as a nauseating tension settled into her gut. "Understood, sir."

"Excellent. With that understanding – I look forward to your detailed report. Covenant out."

She lowered the phone slowly as the truth sank in. Sir John Covenant had been the head of the OSC for decades. His direct, incisive leadership was absolutely keyto the efficiency and responsiveness of the organization. He had, she now knew, personally directed that she be inducted into the organization, and kept outof particular elements of it. He was probably the only man who couldkeep the OSC running the way it did.

And if she dropped the ball on this one, both of them would pay the price.