Magical Girl Home Base Quest

Consolidating the pile of supplies together into a neat pile, you scraped off some butcher paper and junk from your desk before starting to sketch madly. The girls had started departing last night to their deployment areas, watches synchronized and lunches packed by an increasingly nervous Chris while you shoved potions into skirt-tails and issued duct tape and boiled rags for bandages. The silence was driving you mad, and it was with a grim heart that took solace in the pile of logs and brush the 'wild' girls who had started to settle in your area had brought back in exchange for food. Fear was the order of the day, it seemed, and as you pulled on your leather gloves with three fingers pinned back, it seemed inescapable to everyone present.

Throwing a rack of rebar into the ovens, you built a great fire inside, and started sketching out a circular diagram on the floor. Above it, your hands slowly assembled a wooden desk-top, and copied the circle over it. Then, after coating it with wax, you began etching the same pattern once more into a metal sheet to place over and make the effect threefold.

The problem with wands was the problem of waste. You worked much material, but about half of any prepared items was inevitably wasted in the process of crafting- either as cruft, or for being too diminutive to salvage for later. With this wand-maker's bench, though, you could cut much of the opportunity cost away from making wands and other magical weapons as the lost materials were captured by the arrays and held steady for you to re-work later. With a new rod and a liberal application of furnace time and bonding agents, you could, theoretically, use that waste material to make a second, lesser wand. Probably.

Let's face it, if you didn't have a mess of kinks to work out of this project it wouldn't be yours.

Once that was done- and while you boiled up some reagents in your potions stand to try and boost it with- you sat down at your desk, and sighed. Protecting people was hard; protecting girls whose first instinct was running and screaming was harder. The solution- some type of armor- was obvious, but the creation of said armor was going to be a headache and a half. Frankly, you weren't really sure where to start. Would it be best to reinforce the material? Design a magical ward and implament it? You weren't sure, but some testing could be done.

Soon enough, you had a pair of test samples put together, and had along the way cooked up a fabric infuser and embroidery stand. It wasn't the neatest of works, but it would get the job done. You'd probably use it more when you got confident in constructing costumes, but for now it would work to help you get test samples done. Actual testing would be a bitch, but, well, them's the breaks.

Once that was all done, a far more important job was on your roster- building urns. One corpse was one too many to store, and you had Work to Do in order to build something suitable. Grabbing your stocks of flat iron and a hammer, you heated the furnace and got to work. Most people would use a ceramic container, but they deserved something finer.

Also you were out of clay.

Your plan, inasmuch as you had a plan, was to create an internal skeleton of flat iron, then treat some canvass and rivet that on over it. A plastic liner would hold the ashes, and the bones would be placed atop them. Once the first skeleton was completed, you whipped up three more- because it was a pain and you'd already warmed up the furnace- and started soaking the canvass. A little bit of paint base, some elemental humor, and you had a canvass to wrap around the skeleton. Maybe, if you had time, you could paint them? A matter for later. You had a bier to prepare.



/-/-/-/-


When the girls returned, it was with a somber mood and piles of bloodstained loot. In the van were two bodies, already shrouded, and Eowyn clutching her hands around a bloody knife.

"Was it bad?" you asked.

"Yes."

There wasn't a need to ask any more. Silently, you worked with her to move the shrouded bodies to the bier, before retrieving the one from earlier. Good thing you'd made extra jars.

Going back into the hostel, you made sure to roust everyone from the building, before snuffing the fires in your workshop and the stoves in the kitchen. Those few panels of eternal fire were smothered as best you could, and a silent prayer went out it wouldn't disrupt the affair. Climbing on to your shoulder, Jocelyn passed you a lighter- a Zippo, old and battered with a clean bottom. Flicking it open, you nodded. The fuel was clean, the wick decent. Tucking it into a pocket, you grabbed a rod of iron, before a soft leg on your face stopped you.

"Do you mind if I decline to attend?" Jocelyn asked, deathly serious. It took a moment, before you nodded. The younger girls wouldn't understand, but the valiant few who had started with you would. She had been The Enemy, once, even if her blood washed that sin away to your eyes.

"Stay in my room." You replied. "They won't come in, and if they do I'll throw them out."

"For me?"

"For the fact I won't bend over backwards for them." You said, the rod of iron long in your hands as you stepped to the main hall of the building. "We're two halves of the same coin, and they have to respect that."

"Thank you."

With your shoulder lighter and your head clearer, you moved back out to the area in front of your hostel, and breathed in carefully. Forty or fifty girls had gathered, the air crackling with tension slowly as your improvised staff struck the ground. Walking a circle around the biers, each step slowly became part of something more. Here, you wrote ritual, consecrating this ground in no name but your own. May it be enough.

/-/-/-/-

The first step of the cremation was simple- to stand in front of each corpse, and bow. They had died in the service of the city and in driving back the dark, and as you placed a coin on each of their chests, there was one last journey they would take. Standing before the leading bier, you nodded once, and then reached down to the bottom. Pine straw and dried leaf litter covered the base, and reaching down you lit a handful idly. Scraping the burning material into a pile with your foot, the next step was to place it on each bier, and to let the flames spread.

Watching this, the Magical Girls surrounding you slowly started to loose focus. A rookie mistake, as you felt the might of the world starting to raise around you in the fires. Flexing what fingers you had left, the fires spread at your command, setting logs and brush to blaze in an explosion of light and heat. There would be no distractions, now, as you started speaking.

"Today, we grieve!" you spoke, the roar of the fires carrying your words to where they were heard by all. "Here lie three, who fought to the last; who gave their all and went above any call that we may issue! None may question if they were worthy, none may shoulder the cost for their lives."

Reigning it in a notch, you tapped the ground, letting your stance grow more open. "These girls are gone now, given magic in false trade for the life they could have lived. None of you have forgotten the burdens given to you with your power, but even as we strive to work together and lessen them, the world is not so kind. Still, we can- we must- take the time to offer one last gift and shoulder one last load."

Now, you walked around the pyres, burning brightly even as the shrouded bodies were untouched. A few brushes with your rod brought stray bits of fuel back into the fire, while your footsteps pulled the power washing about back to an orderly march. These months had honed your talent, taught you much, and given you the life that defied any explination- and now you were taking it back into your hands, every minute and moment, from the second that a'cursed gem so stained with grief crossed your palms one summer day so long ago. Magic was a gift and a curse tied together with the actions of the person who saw the choice come to them- and now, you were going to let that choice be made again.

"All of us posses a soul, a spirit, an anima." You said faux-quiet, the whispering tone breathing as you let the flames lick up the burial shrouds. "In life, it is tied to us, and magic may toy with such a tie. Some things are far more powerful than the work of human hands, however, having powers long since lost to our control. Fire is the oldest and greatest, and long before we could call it to heel we had to suggest, to guide, to offer unto it the choice to deal weal or woe. It broke all bonds before it was convinced to forge new ones, and now it is that first, oldest task I ask it for tonight."

Breathing in, you faced the pyres, and struck the ground once. "Magic is what you choose it to be! In your time among us, you were denied choice, denied freedom, and finally denied life! I cannot strike the circle of life in twain, but there is one last gift I can give! As your bodies fade away and your souls leave this world forevermore, I give you the choice to cast of the magic in you!"

Behind you, a riot of muttering, until a second slam of the rod on the ground silenced everything. "Should you keep magic in death, you will forevermore be tied to such sorcery, choosing to be one who remains with this world. If you leave your magic in life, death will take you with open arms, and never more will you be able to suffer as we will suffer in this life."

Finally, one last time did your rod of iron come down. "When the fires claim your bodies entire, your souls shall fly free. When the fires die, so too will my working. I will stand watch, and so will any who choose to remain. Go now with God, and goodbye."

The first portion of the rite completed, you turned, putting your back to the fires, and sat down cross-legged with the rod of iron in your lap as the fires surged over the corpses. Now came the waiting.

/-/-/-/-

It was a long two hours before you moved again, the fires having burned themselves and their cargoes to ash that slowly whispered away in the wind. Standing, you found the funerary jars at the outside of the circle, which you collected with your rod of iron before moving up to the first set of remains.

The fires had burned well and incinerated the flesh of the bodies, but bones did not burn. Instead, they cracked, splintered, and shattered under the load of the fire- and as such needed to be cleaned up. Pulling a pair of wooden dowls from your belt, you got to work settling the chips into the jar, kneeling carefully in the mounds of ash. There wasn't really anything left of the bodies on a physical level, here, even if the ash still had some symbolic weight. Once the first jar was filled with what was left of the bones, you got a small scoop to collect ash with, filling the jar and locking the lid on tight.

Then you did it two more times.

Carrying all three jars up to the hostel, you bypassed the ground floor entirely, trecking up the stairs to the second floor and the most recently rehabilitated room. You could fork over the cash to get a new coat of paint applied, and probably would at some point, but for now you needed shelves and emblems. Going back to your workshop, you pulled out a piece of reasonably fine lumber, before planning it down to a neat finish and grabbing your soldering iron. Neat fonts or fancy engraving was past your skill, but it didn't matter. All you needed were three names.

Jasmine Bason

Melissa Gors

Bethany Lewis

They weren't the names you'd ever heard given, but they were still the names of the girls who's mortal remains sat not too far above you. A handful of nails and a hammer would serve to affix them to the shelf, and it didn't take too long to find parts for that shelf in your piles of assorted junk. Once that was done, you dragged it all back up the stairs, and started nailing in the braces for the shelf. Other people could see that it was level later- not that you had to check. This was too important to screw up. The shelf itself didn't really need fastening to the braces, but you took the time to place a few nails anyway, and then came the plaques.

You didn't even need to check which unmarked jar corresponded to which plaque. You knew. You remembered.

"Medicine Boy?" a voice asked you. Turning, you thought you saw a barely-familiar girl in the door for a minute, before you blinked and rubbed your eyes. No; just Jocelyn, coming towards you until she stopped, held back by something. Sighing, a memory crossed your mind- the teather. It was almost unnoticeable, a single strand of thread that connected her golem to her body, and you had chosen to make her a spider to have a sympathetic relationship to that thread.

"Mmm?" you asked.

"Are you going to eat anything?"

"Probably not." You said, shrugging. If you looked around, you could probably find the paint-

"Are you feeling alright?"

"Fine, yes." You muttered, standing up and reaching for your rod. It wasn't where you left it, though, and as your back pinged with pain, you had exactly enough time to watch your life flash before your eyes and you fell to the side, cursing.

"Correction, not fine." You gasped, hands scrabbling for something to crutch yourself up with. "What the hell?"

Looking back, you reached for Jocelyn, but she was missing. It was a very painful minute before Rose found you, and picked you up by the arm. Naturally, this prompted more screaming, but your tennant's lead ears didn't care until she chucked you- quite literally- in your room. Moments later, a refilled bottle of sports drink followed you, and a sigh.

"Drink that." Rose said brusquely. "You burned out with whatever you did, and it'll take a few days to get back to normal."

You nodded, eyes wet. As she shut the door and left, your eyes started tricking you again with visions of that almost-familiar girl, before a skittering drew your attention. If it was Jocelyn, you'd talk to her later; if it was a rat, then the alley cat would take care of it. For now, though, you hurt. So much.

/-/-/-/-

It was Thursday that you finally got around to totaling and tallying the loot with the girls, along with what minor acts of medicine you could rally around. Of course, a different problem reared it's head then as well.

"I need one of the scroll." Calypso said, glaring at Homer. "We found the second summoning point, and it needs to go down."

"The scrolls that are highly dangerous and liable to blow you off the map!" Homer yelled back, waving his arms. "I barely managed to get them not immolate the user, thank you very much, and I'm not certain how well that'll hold out!"

"One scroll and we'll be done with it! Nearly halfway to letting things go back to normal, as soon as we destroy the bastard's nest!"

"And we need to save at least one of them for that itself!"

Wincing at the argument, you just groaned. You did not have the energy for this shit. Putting your hands on the table, you slammed it once, before glaring at both of them.

"Calypso, hold a collection." You said, staring at her with an ironclad stare. "If you need it that badly, scrape something up for it."

"You're gonna fuck us over on this?!" she screeched.

"I'm gonna tell you to cough up some shit to help pay for it while I cludge together something to keep the caster from killing herself." You shot back, glaring. "Meanwhile, Homer's gonna look into those piles of swords and amulets to find out if there's some way for me to turn them around and arm the kids with 'em. The sooner we finish this, the safer everyone will be."

And at that, you left the table, stumbling down to your workshop. A one-use protective item? You could do that in your fucking sleep most weeks. Grabbing a reel of wire, you started braiding it, before a bout of nausea struck. Grabbing at your work table, you felt your bile rise, before slamming a hand down and biting it back. There was work to do. Affixing slivers of oak, ash, and hawthorn to what was steadily turning into a circlet, you chucked it into the furnace and lit the beast with a sulphurus spew of words as your back was wracked with pain again. Hauling yourself up, you went over to the wet supply locker, pulling down milk jugs filled with vinegar and spirit of wine. That, with salt and flour as binder, plus two pinch of shaved silver should make an acceptable barrier against some of the other backlash effects. If this was supposed to be a permanent item, a gemstone for rigidity would be the best; as it was, you pulled the circlet and started rolling it in the goo to get it properly coated. A well-used towel was the last step, with the remaining paste smeared into cheque pattern over it and a closed circle at the center.

Once more you threw it in to cook, this time pausing to lean out the window and puke into the flowerbed below. Rose's plants could take it. Washing your mouth out with a liter of water, you finally finished the damn protective thing, throwing it in a paper bag. Pulling yourself out of the workshop, you went back to the mess hall, where Calypso was sitting with a ton of the girls dumping loose silver coins and wads of messy bills into a pair of burlap sacks.

"Take it." You muttered, nearly throwing the bag to her. "Drop the payment off in my workshop. I need… to sleep…"

"You damnfool idiot, you're gonna burn out if you keep it up like this." Calypso muttered. "Go crash for the day- I sure as hell ain't gonna tell the spider-bitch what you did to yourself."

You weren't quite sure about the last part, only that one of the littler girls helped you back to your room where you flopped onto your mattress. To die, to sleep, to dream…

-/-/-/-/

VOTES

Build a Tool
[] [WORK] Trinket
-[] Write in Level, between 1 and 3.
[] [WORK] Wand
-[] Write in Level, between 1 and 2.
[] [WORK] Bomb
-[] Write in Level, between 1 and 1.
[] [WORK] Costume
-[] Write in Level, between 1 and 1.
[] [WORK] No, you want to work on your building instead
[] [WORK] No, you want to improve your workshop instead.
[] [WORK] No, you want to research an item instead.
-[] Write in Item in inventory to Research