Milly Huggles breathed in a pain filled breath, shuddered, and let it slowly.
"Deena, don't meddle. If we help my parents, how many are we sacrifices for the sake of them? I... This is my purpose. I can't betray it, even for them. We'll deal with them once we have the Academy up and running. The NeFiends won't kill the geese laying their golden eggs."
Deena Happy sighed. "Is that really your final choice?"
"The only other option is to create a magical girl to save two people, and then have them a sacrificial lamb, or me."
"I'm NOT making Magical Girls just to die. And YOU aren't dying either! Understand?!"
"Isn't making magical girls just to die what we're doing?" Milly asked darkly.
"No! Teaching them to be prepared to die, isn't the same thing as sending them off to die!"
"... Good. Don't forget that. Ever. A Magical Girl's greatest power comes from her fellow magical girls, her friends, and if they start treating each other as expendable, then that power lessens."
"Which is WHY I'm not treating YOU as expendable bro!"
"Glad to hear it sis."
"Do you HAVE TO call me 'sis'?"
"Have you looked in a mirror yet?"
"Quite a few times, and I've liked what I've seen... touche."
View Marissa and Observe Patricia looked at each other, and with a simple swipe of their fingers set the system on 'autopilot' for the moment, and ran over to Milly. View Marissa hugged Milly, while Observe Patricia hugged Deena Happy.
"We're sorry Milly!"
"We're sorry Deena!"
"We know it must be hard." They echoed.
Deena knelt down hugged them back. "It is hard... but as long as you're here, it's a little less harder, than you."
"Welcome!"
"Hey," She smiled, "I said quit it with the echo thing."
"Sorry." They looked at each other and giggled at the same time.
"We'll try a little harder." Said View Marissa bowing since she didn't hurt a skirt to curtsies.
"I think we better go to bed."
"Do you want to hear about the three viable canidates for mass magical girl recruits first?" View Marissa asked.
"I'll look them over in the morning." Deena yawned. Milly was right, she was no robot that didn't need rest.
"We'll keep-"
"-watch." The twins said.
"Door night dears."
"Good night Matriarch!" The twins waved her goodnight. Deena gave them each a kiss and went back to her bed room.
"If they've already found three locations for us to add to our army, we could be ready before we even go to School the day after tomorrow, well, technically tomorrow, it's past midnight."
"I know." Deena yawned again, suddenly feeling quite tired.
"The good news is that once we have enough places transformed they can act as safe zones for our magical girls to form raiding parties."
"Milly... is there was a way to... undo a magical girl transformation?"
"... Even if they don't die, who they were before is never coming back, win or lose... it's actually not that different from what mundane armies due to their recruits."
"Milly... are we the good guys?" She asked him.
"If you can still ask yourself that, that's a good sign. Conviction is one thing, but never fall into the trap of 'I'm doing it, therefore it's right.'"
"Are... are my parents' souls still in there?"
"Yes. Their love for each other, and you, are still in there, they've been reincarnated into another way of expressing it. If there's one thing it's IMPOSSIBLE for your magic to do, it's destroyed love or friendship. No matter how much a transformation changes someone, the magical girl they become will still care for the people they cared for before, willing to love them or die for them. They just understand that this draft is being done for the sake of everyone else, and if they don't become what they've become to free humanity from the NeFiends' control, then someone else will have to fight and possibly die in their place. So yeah, they accept when someone they love is made part of the Magical Girl Army too. Never forget Deena, they will ALL unconditionally love you! And as their Matriarch, your unconditional love is one of the few rewards they'll get for this."
"I know... they'll MY babies... we have a war to fight, but I'll make sure as many of them come back alive as they can. So if Sentarus had stuck around, he'd have evaporated too?"
"No, I said the WEAK ONES can't survive in this reality for long without a host! The stronger ones can survive on their own. The weak ones bond with a host because that's the most efficient way of feeding for them. The higher rank ones just have the grunts bring food to them for them to feast off of or have means for storing large amounts for later use."
"I thought you said this invasion was recent."
"It's recent only in the terms of humans aren't completely selfish jackasses only interested in their own pleasure without a drop of imagination, society only held together by a mix of intellect and self interest and the NeFiends themselves keeping the population from dying off and destroying themselves. Trust me, there are worlds where the NeFiends have been in control for so long, that if they were driven off, their cattle would likely kill each other, or become listless and drive less. You should be happy that humans aren't that far along... yet. So it's recent in the sense that the human species as a whole isn't better off being zapped into something furry and innocent and starting over. That HAS happened on worlds where the NeFiends had gained terminal control of world."
"Well... at least we're safe for now... even if I missed two... I'm still alive, so that means they don't know about me."
"I... I'm honestly surprised those two parasites DIDN'T report back.. then again... they MUST NOT have seen you... or they'd have high tailed it back to their masters,and informed them that they saw you, and you'd have the entire NeFiend army on your doorstep. So yeah, once the battle starts, you CAN'T let them get away!"
"... Kill or be killed huh?"
"Welcome to war."
"That I'm going to lead being fought by super powered little girls."
"If this was a problem that could be solved by aiming a six shooter at it and pulling the trigger, it would be a much more simple and direct solution. But sadly, humans armies, no matter how advanced, can't fight something that's literally outside their perception of reality. If you tried to tell the media about them, not only would you instantly be a target, but the NeFiends would either wipe everything you'd done from people's minds, or make them think it HAD TO BE A HOAX even if they'd just seen their car blown up in front of them."
"So we're the only way."
"It's why the wand was sent this way instead of trained and experienced off-world magical girls being sent. You're NATIVE to this reality, we were born here on Earth, well, today. This gives you a natural advantage over them. And it keeps the NeFiends lulled in seeing humans as a non-magical species who are just cattle to feed off of, and so aren't preparing to fight a magical girl army. Like I said, the more magical girls you give birth to, the more reality will change, and less likely the NeFiends are to notice us or places we'e changed."
"I don't supposed I could just 'storm the castle' and demand the NeFiend King leave Earth alone?"
"Remember I'm using terms that you have words for. Even the term 'monarchy' isn't like a king or queen, and not like the queen of a hive either that lays eggs, it's... complicated. Their level of intelligence and free will goes up the higher in the pecking order is.
"The good news is, once the Academy is fully transformed, any magical girls within will be complete undetectable to NeFiends and their slaves as long as the MG's inside. The protective and camouflage becoming stronger the bigger the place gets... so yeah, eventually changing the whole town might have an advantage if we turn the whole place into a Magical Girl commune... but like I said, BEWARE of getting greedy, or we'll end up transforming every human on the planet into an MG... and kinda defeat the entire purpose of the Magical Girls to begin with. So sis, it's kinda important you keep your head on your shoulders and don't let the power go to your head."
"Marissa and Patricia are my girls now, like you said. If I become a nutjob, I'm hurting them too."
Happy Deena looked at the bed... sighed... and touched the base of her dress. The wand became the size of a pen and formed into a cord around her neck, while her magical girl dress into a simple but comfortable night gown.
"Nice to see you have that trick down."
"I'm guessing that's magical girls 101, I love the outfit, but would be annoying if I had to sleep in it."
"Are you going to change this room at all?" Milly asked looking around by the moderate pigsty.
"Hey, just because I've been given magic, an overwhelming purpose by the gods themselves, and traded my Y chromosome with an extra X, doesn't mean by tastes have changed." She flipped through a manga without much plot and plenty of busty fan-service. "Though I will admit, I don't feel a thrill for these like I did before."
"Well, remember, you're a ROLE MODEL now to every magical girl your create, they're going to look to YOUR example of what being a magical girl of Earth MEANS. That is something you CAN'T just magical implant. You should give this place a clean up something."
"Maybe one of my converts will be a maid-type magical girl."
"I'm going to pretend you were just joking."
"Well, gonna need someone to keep the place clean, unless you wanna put on an apron."
"No thanks. But hey, if it bothers you that much, I do know a place that sells comics for the ladies to get a thrill if you want. Just don't let your little girls see them."
"Hey, even Old Me wasn't THAT stupid!"
Milly thought about how much Deena seemed to enjoy her own reflection, but no magical girl was perfect, and a little vanity and being sloppy in her house keeping wasn't that bad, and flaws were what kept Magical Girls from being perfect little identical robots. Even Marissa and Patricia weren't flawless.
Milly insisted on staying away until Deena had fallen asleep. Once she had, Milly's body stiffened, and entered 'recharge mode' Milly had the choice between mundane animal, plush, or statue... she decided on plush in case Deena accidecanlly swatted her off the table or something.
Milly stood there with his eyes open, unseening, unblinking, his entire body perfectly still as her mind slept, the pink jewel in his forehead giving off a pink glow.
When Happy Deena awoke the next morning, the first thing she did was check on View Marissa and Observe Patricia... she found them, having fallen asleep at their stations.
Deena smiled. "Busy as bees my little ones." Using her rainbow bridge magic, she levitated the girls out of their chairs and back upstairs back to their bedrooms. Milly said reality changes would become more intense the more magical girls there were... she wondered if that meant Marissa and Patricia as they were now would eventually replace the pictures of how they were before.
Either way, she entered their bedroom. "Magical Girl Matriarch Override." She touched her costumes, and Marissa's leotard became an orange night gown, while Patricia's became a blue one. She lowered them into bed, covered them up, and kissed them on their forehead. "Sleep well my dears." The two snuggled with each other as Deena changed their bed into something more proper for a pair of little girls, then left to wake up Milly.