Ai Senshi: A Magical Girl Joint

Here at Ai Senshi, mascots don't get free rides.

[♡] Phone Alice to snatch the box while you tie up the baddies


You kinda want to knock Melody Kumatora off her high horse. They say you cut the head off the snake and the body will die, but she's not a snake and you've got a bat. Not quite the same thing, metaphor or not.

Your hunch is still that box she's got is some kind of MacGuffin, even money says it's the Raising☆Heart you came here for. Nabbing it is high priority.

Getting it is going to be a bitch though, what with the kaiju bear and all. Even if you climbed up the Superflat Superbeast, you'd still have to deal with Melody, who's much handier with a blade than you expected.

As you think through this, weaving through the rending claws of Yukiko-san while doing so, an idea hits you.

Also the debris from the impromptu excavation job its misses make.

Chunks of dirt, metal and stone bounce off your still-active diamond bod, as you bat away a looping smash. The satisfying smush of your trusty nailbat's studs sinking into Yukiko-san's paw makes you smile.

+Yo Alice,+ you ping as you swing.

+What is it, love?+ She responds.

+How're the normies?+

+Safe and secure!+ She pings with a hint of pride.

+Sick. Got a plan for you.+

+Hopefully it's something reasonable.+

+I've IDed a magical artifact, but-+ You smash away an overhand right with a cheerful growl. +One of the baddies has it. You come up and snatch it, I'll keep the baddies distracted.+

You can hear Alice gulp in your mind. +I-I've never directly engaged with a bogey before...+

Melody Kumatora shoots a web of red string at you from atop her bear. You flash step back, narrowly dodging them. Glittering ruby dewdrops from the webs splash onto your shoes, showing how close you were to getting caught.

+No time like the present, yeah?+ You ping Alice. She doesn't respond right away.

In the meantime, you make a finger gun and empty a clipful of your Will at Melody. She flattens to dodge your hot pink bullets, a few catch her hood. She tosses more webs at you while Yukiko-san endeavors to turn you into the world's sassiest stain on the ground. You dance just out of Yukiko-san's range, juking and jinking along the increasingly webbed-up shrine grounds.

Finally, Alice responds. +...I'll be right over.+

You grin for reasons other than nerves or bloodlust. +Hell yeah.+

You turn your attention back to Melody, leap away from a belly flop from Yukiko-san. The whole shrine rocks from the flop; you hear wood groan and stone shatter. They're clearly aiming to kill you here.

Which is why, naturally, you turn your back on them. With tongue out and bat slung over your shoulders, you waggle, then slap your ass in their faces.

"C'mon, try and get me! The ground didn't do shit to you and that's all you're hitting!"

Melody bites her thumb. "You damnable little...Yukiko-san, no mercy!" She whips her bear into a death frenzy, you notice her eyes are glued to your ass.

You pull down an eyelid with your middle finger to put some 90s anime spice to your shitposting, then combat roll away from the double-barrelled grizzly magnum aimed your way.

Yukiko-san swung so hard on that one, it's claws are embedded in the dirt. It growls, leopard-wet, as it tries to pull itself free.

+How much longer 'til you're here?+ you ping Alice.

+I'm going as fast as my tiny limbs can take me, love!+

You snerk. +Ping me when you're here, then. I'm about to do some dumb shit.+

+Oh bloody-+

You ignore the rest of that ping and run up Yukiko-san's still-stuck arms. Melody Kumatora looks at you first with confusion, then with rage, before firing an Itano Circus of red string at you. You leap and twist, frying strands that get too close to you with your blazing maiden's spirit.

She growls and tries to slash your eyes out with her whip; you close your eyes and let the whip crack over your magically strengthened skin. Momentum has carried you too close for her to reel back for another shot.

With a mad grin and the force of a goddess, you full twist swing your trusty nailbat at the top of Melody's head. She blocks it with her whip arm, you hear cracking bones and pulped flesh.

Even so, she doesn't let go of the box.

You can almost taste the power inside the thing; more and more you trust your hunch is correct.

You land on top of Yukiko-san's head, stanced up in front of Melody Kumatora. "Pretty 'armless now, yeah? Be a good scene kid and hand over the box."

She scowls at you, hugging the box closer to her body. "I'd rather die. Yukiko-san!"

With a commanding roar, Yukiko-san frees itself. It swats at you, nearly blindsides you.

"Shit!" You backflip off its head just in time, its paw passes millimeters under your nose. The rot-matted, purple fur tickles the tip of your nose.

You land on its snout and sneeze, before leaping over a swipe at its nose. "Persistent sumbitch, huh?"

It's next swipe is met by one of your own. The clashing air pressure almost blows you away.

+I'm here, love.+ Alice pings you. +...By Jove, that's quite the Youma.+

You leap back up, parry a one-two from gargantuan paws, then spin into a Rider Kick aimed at Melody Kumatora's face. +Yeah, shit slaps!+

+Well then.+ You can feel Alice's bewilderment through the ping. +Glad you're enjoying yourself.+

You play coy. +Awww, thanks. You ready to snatch this box?+

+At your signal, I'll try my best.+

Your grin grows a little wider. +Alright! Ready...steady...go!+

Once you give the signal to Alice, you snap a kick at Melody Kumatora's face. She blocks with her good hand, shuffles the box under her bad arm. With a pained grunt, she pushes you away and into the air. The heat of a new cut spreads along your cheek, she managed to toss her kukri at you while you were catching your footing.

And completely missing the white cabbit scampering over her dead arm.

Alice clutches the box and screws her eyes shut. "Geronimo!" She bounds off Melody Kumatora's bum arm and into your waiting ones.

You snuggle Alice close, so she doesn't see the fist of an angry bear approaching. "Good work, partner." You pump more Will into your diamond bod, enough to make your skin sparkle. "Now hold on tight!"

Fist meets flesh and flesh meets ground; you grit your teeth in a wild smile and brace for impact. Your whole system shakes as fur and air flatten you against cracked stone. The punch leaves an honest to God crater, pushing you underground with the moles.

Alice shivers in your grip, unharmed.

You cough up spit and pink sparkles, thankful it's not blood or bile.

Yukiko-san looms over you, its rainbow oil-slick spit dripping all over your face and body. Now that you're stuck in the ground, it looks like it wants payback.

"I'll take the Raising☆Heart from your cooling corpse, you mangy thing!" Melody Kumatora says, panting raggedly. "Yukiko-san, exterminate them!"

Welp, at least your hunch was right.

You protect Alice with your arms and brace for a world of hurt.

The snicker-snack of a beam katana presses pause on your getting pulped.

Yukiko-san howls in pain and despair as it collapses, blood and fur spraying gratuitously. Getting cut off at the knees will do that to you.

You sit up in your crater and see the skull-helmed masked rider from the warehouse, electric blue beam katana held at the ready. Acrid smoke and burning oil sizzle on its blade.

How nice of Iron Beetle to show up so fashionably late.

"A shrine is a place for revering the gods," Iron Beetle says, voice rough with vox-corruption, levelling their blade at Melody Kumatora. "Unless you wish to offer your life to them, defile this place no further."

Melody Kumatora blanches, then hisses."I will remember this."

Not wanting to die just yet she pulls a white fox charm from her hood. She rubs blood from her mangled arm onto it; it bursts into blue foxfire, consuming Melody Kumatora and Yukiko-san in the blaze. They disappear in the flames, then the flames disappear.

"Damn," Iron Beetle spits. "Teleportation magic." They haven't seemed to notice you.

Or the miko, who's no longer cursing.

Or moving.


[What do you do?]
[ ] Get the miko.
[ ] Get Iron Beetle's attention.
[ ] Get out of Dodge.

Omake time!

---

If someone told then-sixteen Reina Ichigo that five years later she will be a Shinto shrine maiden watching a life-and-death fight between strangely punk looking magical girl and patchwork bear demon while hanging on a tree, her reaction would probably be somewhere between incredulous laughter, concern for the speaker's sanity and a little bit of worry that this is a very specifically worded prediction. She would probably then ask her father what was the meaning of "Shinto shrine maiden" and brace for a lecture as considerable as only ethnographer specializing in Japanese folklore could deliver.
Those were probably not the usual thoughts someone was supposed to have while bleeding on a tree, but Reina held 'the usual' in mighty, if quiet, contempt. She was, probably, as far from 'the usual' as was allowed in almost Stepfordian reality of around Las Brujas. She was a daughter of Japanese ethnographer and Mexican electrician, a double-whammy of 'foreign' genetics if there ever was one, she wore earrings with likeness of Tezcatlipoca (an heirloom, and one she made sure was allowed), she was trilingual (while technically her parents were born in US, her grandparents were pure and proud scions of Nippon and México, so she was the first generation to truly start assimilating) and by the age of twelve she could swear punks twice her age into stunned silence and pale face (she had learned from her mother, who was even more skilled in that area, saying in half-joking tone that Spanish was a very graceful language to cuss in and Mexicans had a lot of things to cuss on, so such proficiency was only expected).

Oh, and on her eighteenth birthday a fox spirit manifested in her bedroom and told her she had been chosen as shrine maiden for Mikazuchi shrine. That resulted in some screaming from her family and a lot of hasty explanations, father's lectures and mother's inquisition (hell truly hath no fury like woman scorned, and concerned Mexican mum was a close approximation), but the result was never in question. Her Mexican family weren't technically what West called 'neopagans', but they held to some traditions of pre-Christian faiths – namely, that man and spirit were supposed to live by reciprocity and mutually agreed sacrifice, man offering to spirit what spirit needed and vice versa – and so did she. When she understood what was required of her, she agreed. She soon grew to like her position. The shrine was truly a magical place, she knew even before it was impressed on her just how important was the power of that place. Like a home away from home, she felt safe there. And perhaps most importantly, it was her own – not completely, the will of spirits of course reigned supreme, but in the physical world she was the mistress of this place. She could truly be Reina Ichigo there. This is where she came when she learned her grand uncle Manuel was taken to prison. Manuel was brother of her abuelo Pedro and the first of the family her grandfather managed to bring to US after settling down. But where Pedro managed to find his place, with his professional credentials and iron will, Manuel ended up snatched by one of many scammers preying on fresh migrants, and when he tried to do something about backbreaking labour recycling electro-trash for few dollars a day, he soon ended up with charges she didn't even care to remember besides each of the being false. Courts did nothing, of course. A few months later, someone stuck a knife into his stomach. She cried a lot that day. The shrine was her sanctuary, one of the few places untouched by corrupt system of 'American dream' (yeah, she did have a chip on her shoulder, so what?), where she didn't have to hide her contempt for all the wickedness of the world, where she could rest from the self-imposed burden of being perfect prim and proper straight-A schoolgirl with a Plan. She made an oath long ago, after the bullies broke her first phone: she will take vengeance in the most effective way possible. She will reach the top, the image of perfection, and then she will shout all the bile and sickness out, throw out the cover of deniability and silence, roll out all the twisted hypocrisy and brainless cruelty to the daylight, make them finally see!

Her head swum. Gosh, she was reminiscing. That seemed like a bad sign. She was, after all, bleeding out.
Her eyes grew foggy, but she still saw flashes where the magical punkess was duking it out with capital-B witch that assaulted her shrine. That was, on the other hand, a good sign. She wasn't even too miffed at delayed rescue – she would appreciate not dying, of course, but the spirit impressed upon her the value of the artifact it guarded. She assumed the girl knew of it as well and did not blame her for focusing on it. Well, not too much.
She gathered her strength and let loose another string of curses at the villainess. She was not sure it did much, and a voice in the back of her head insisted it was a bad idea to waste her almost exhausted energy reserves like that, but she couldn't stand being helpless. Not here. Not in her place.
She let go of her breath. Her vision was failing her. Not good.
Against the dark, she saw a white fox. That one she saw clearly.
"So, that's it?" she asked "The end? Not bad, all in all. Just one question: can you make sure I'll stay here at the shrine? You know… after all this?"
"Well, you're close," the fox replied "but not yet there. And if I have anything to say about it, which I believe I do, it should not be over yet. Keep fighting"
That, Reina thought with a smile as darkness came over, she could do.

---

A.N. So, a couple thougts. First things first: if there is anything I wrote that is inaccurate to RL cultural or spiritual reality, I apologise. Normally I'd do better research, but then this text would be ready next month, if not later.
Second things second: an outside perspective on how I wrote our miko. So far Ana's circle of people seems to be mostly consisted of people who desperatly want to be something more than they are - and she's good at finding what this someting is, she even cracked through the personality of supposed villainess back in our first action. So I wanted another person like that, but not like that. Her Mexican ancestry gave me idea where to go - she has a big chip on her shoulder regarding the system, and understandably so, but unlike our girl, she keeps it hidden. She doesn't have her anger issues, so she has a mask of perfection while preparing to tear down the facade. I guess she's a Count Monte Christo to our D'Artagnan. Her attitude towards spiritual is inspired by how Scion 2e describes modern Aztec pantheon - they keep the sacrifice, sometimes even bloody when necessary, but their whole deal is reciprocity - take what is given and offer of yourself in return. Mexican side of Ichigo family does it, albeit small scale - I wanted to include how she used to start and end each day pouring one out to the divine, but couldn't find a place to fit it in. And if we have any Mexicans here, I'm sincerely curious what you think about my bit at proficiency in cluster swear bombing I ascribed to Reina.
Cheerio!