A dark storm blew overhead that no one seemed to notice.
"It's a MG-Hunter! Listed by the Ten Runes under the code name 'Sentarus'! If you fight it and win, we're still screwed!"
"What do you mean?!"
"Twist the bottom of your scepter!"
A blade popped out of the bottom, clearly made for stabbing.
"You see those dark stains on the ground around us? Nine of them? Stab them quickly!"
Deena Happy knew better than to argue, and stabbed each stain on the ground, they vanished.
"NOW BOTH OF US GET OUT OF SIGHT!" Deena Happy dove for cover, Milly Huggles following.
Purple lightning struck down, sucking in the light around it. A large figure materialized, decked in dark crimson, almost black armor with a long black cape. It visor was shaped like melted upper case 'T' and the only thing visible as a crimson light. It's left arm ended in a series of gun barrels and canon turret. It's right arm looked relatively normal but held a sword that looked to have multiple segments to it. Only its head moved as it slowly looked around, a crimson beamed scanned the surrounding area, passing over humans, plants and animals without any harm or reaction.
"Whatever you do, do NOT let it see you!" Milly hissed.
It marched about for a while longer, then vanished into burst of purple lightning, and so did the storm above, no one seemed to notice.
"WHAT WAS THAT?! You said 'low level general!'"
"It was. That's why you need AN ARMY of magical girls. That thing is explicitly created, or maybe a better word is 'evolved' or 'adapted', who can say? But it exists to find any source of white magic and obliterate it. And magical girls are the biggest source of white magic you can find. If things got dicy, I could have used myself as a patsy, it would think I had destroyed the 7th Tier, and killed me, and left, case closed, and they NeFiends wouldn't give this town a second look, allowing you enough time to actually have a defense ready!"
"WHAT?! Just get yourself killed?!"
"I'm your familiar, I'm more replaceable than you! IN PARTICULAR that we're supposed to have an army of magical girls ready by the time we faced that thing, so if you died, one of your students could pick up the staff and succeed you. You, me, the wand, we form a trinity of sorts, any one of us can recreate one of the other, though, I don't mean to sound cold, but recreating the staff takes more fuss and muss than transforming someone into a new familiar or magical girl. Basically, I'm more disposable than you."
"You're my FRIEND Milly!"
"And we're fighting a WAR. This isn't a recruitment drive we're running," Milly Huggles reminded her. He, she, whatever Milly was, assuming Milly even HAD a gender being a Familiar. "It's a draft. If someone is able to resist becoming a magical girl, it's means their soul is rancid to the core. And are likely infested with a Nefiend, either attracted to how awful they are, or they were slowly corrupted to be that way.
"Let me spell this out for you. The NeFiends more or less OWN the world. They do it via the shadows. Since normal humans can't be aware of them, but they can still manipulate human actions. Earth is their exclusive cattle pin and free range hunting ground. Human corruption, human cruelty, human greed, hedonism, sadism, etc, they're all food to them, so the more selfish or deprived they can make a human, the more negativity that can milk off of them!
"Do you know what that MEANS Deena Happy? You're raising an army in an occupied country!
"Those things were just a patrol. 7th Tier, though that's just how the Mystic Ten-Runes organizes them. Since you're the Magical Girl Matriarch, you're stronger than your 'daughters' will be. But you can't handle AN ENTIRE ARMY, which is EXACTLY what they'll send after you if they figure out where you are!
And if those scouts didn't report in, they were going to know someone with magical power who can perceive them is about. Which means somehow making it look like an accident, or making a magical girl explicitly to take the fall-"
"That is not happening!"
"Sorry. It's listed under, 'In case of premature exposure to enemy.' Seriously, THE PLAN is for the enemy to not even realize YOU EXIST or that your Academy exists or your students to be exist until we had a large enough number of them to have a full on conflict, and be able to expand our numbers beyond the town! The Mystic Ten-Runes list it under 'RED ZONE!' level bad!"
"Oh."
"The destruction of nine, 7th Tier NeFiends we can cover up. But something like Sentarus? We WILL have an entire army of NeFiends descending on us!"
"So what was with the stabbing of the stains?"
"That erased those NeFiends from existence."
"WHAT?!"
"Not so loud! People can still hear you ya know! Look, it can ONLY erase creatures that's are NOT native to this reality. That means you and me, humans, etc. The NeFiends AREN'T native. By stabbing their remains out of existence, you made it so Sentarus just randomly came here for a look around, then left this no place, no face town and the Controller level NeFiends will bother thinking about this place again for a while. Which is a GOOD THING!"
Deena Happy sat back down, hugging Milly Huggles. "Ya know... ya sure exposition a lot."
"I'm magically wired into a mountain of magical and tactical knowledge, sorry. Spouting it out at length like that I think it's just my nature now. When you're in immediate danger, I can keep things short and direct however, and no, that ISN'T permission for you to hang on the edge of a railing to get me to be a quick-fix information search!"
"I wouldn't dream of it."
"Ugh! This thing happening on a long weekend is the worst thing imaginable!"
"I remember... students and students are to be my recruits since I don't have a job. But it's not like I could recruit my parents. If reality is changing, wouldn't I cease to exist if they were never around to give birth to me?"
Milly Huggles folded one of her ears and tapped her chin. "Hmmm. MAYBE. They'd become your magical girls. Or you may become your grandparents' child. Depends on what changes and what doesn't. The entire idea like I said is so humans don't panic or call the cops when they spot a magical girl doing her thing. The more magical girls they are, the more reality will change to accommodate them. And the more they're a natural part of reality, the more the NeFiends won't notice us until we're actually ready! If they'd realized you were here? They might have destroyed the whole town and everyone in it just to make sure!"
"But you said they didn't normally kill humans!"
"One bad apple can spoil the bunch."
"... I guess I better start finding draftees."
"You think?"
"So, the less they're like a magical girl to begin with, the less of who they are afterwards remains?"
"What part of 'this is a terrible task and we do not pretend otherwise' didn't you hear?"
"A lot of it, remember? And anyone I love would be a primary target if I'm found out?"
"Oh most definitely. They'd be the first ones targeted. They'd be deemed 'infected stock'."
"Okay, just checking Huggles... ya know, it's kinda stupid, Magical Girls aren't supposed to have emotion struggles only mid-way or near the end of their quest. Not right near the start."
"Just worry. Magical Girls have a way of perking each other up. It's your nature. Just like it's my nature to make sure you stay on task while at the same time not going out of control. That's why you decided for us to continue to remember our past lives even if those normally recruited it'll become less than a dream."
"They're making a great sacrifice that, like you said, they aren't getting a say in, the least I can do is remember transforming them to help save the world."
"Sooner than later, you'll need to delegate the power ot make more magical girls down to the lower ranks, otherwise it'll take FOREVER to change everyone at the school and beyond."
"I gotcha Milly. So, wanna play video games later tonight?"
"SURE!"