"I can't believe we're doing this," grumbled Lee Chin. "Seriously, a bus? We have to take a -bus- to get to our mission?"
It was sad but true. Miracle Mary had explained to them that the I.L.M.G's more advanced means of transportation were reserved for actual emergencies. Yes, they could have gotten one of the elite magical girls to teleport them, but Mary was of the opinion that the long ride would give them time to bond and contemplate their future.
Being the slowest member of the squad to transform, Lee Chin/Kodachi currently looked like a 14-year-old androgynous kid attempting a Chun-Li cosplay. "This stinks." She played idly with her nunchuks, whirling them back and forth with expert ease. Stella looked forward to seeing what Kodachi could do with her combat skills. She'd heard that the enchanted nunchucks could transform into a myriad of weapons, from vicious sai to bō staffs.
In her previous conversations with Chin, Stella had learned that Chin's mother was a Japanese masseuse and his father was a Tai Huen Chai Triad drug smuggler from Hong Kong. Born into a rough childhood in San Francisco, Chin had learned martial arts to defend himself, only to eventually use it to bully and intimidate people when he got recruited by a local gang in exchange for forgiving his debts. Given that they were both former small-time street thugs, Stella felt a certain special connection to Kodachi. It was poetic that their first act of redemption would be to take down gang members.
Keith Hanson, now starting to get used to the new name Kinetic Keira, had progressed rapidly in the past two days. She brushed her dark bobbed hair back, staring quietly out the window.
Her outfit consisted of an angular bronze breastplate, a silver chain-mail skirt, heavy leather boots, and a translucent pink silk scarf covering the lower half of her face. She looked like some sort of exotic warrior princess. While her masculinity had vanished in almost record time, her age regression was stabilizing at around the age of 15.
For an inmate who had tried so desperately at first to fight the warden, Keira's resistance had undergone a stunning reversal. Stella wondered if it had something to do with his friend Angel Afriel, or if there was something deeper going on.
In the seat in front of Keira sat Moonlight Maria, née Maria Rodriguez, gazing curiously at the gauntlets covering her hands. Perhaps because of her cool demeanor and lack of a gender swap to rebel against, Maria hadn't regressed much either. Given how she was still well into her teenage years, she seemed to treat the change as a source of amusement rather than a threat to her identity. She was dressed like a gothic lolita, sporting a frilly black dress, long striped socks, and a large red bow in her hair. She experimentally raised her fists, and suddenly her stylized gauntlets transformed into oversized plush cat's paws, complete with protruding claws.
She stopped chewing on her gum and flashed a feline smile. "Wicked," she murmured.
Maria remained an enigma to the rest of the group. She spoke rarely about her past, but the little Stella knew about her was that she was a hot-blooded brawler to the core. It seemed her history of violence had been out of a genuine love for fighting rather than on behalf of a criminal group. It made Stella uneasy. She'd dealt with people like that in her days as Sam Payne; they had to be kept on a short leash or they'd start unwinnable feuds.
Matt Nickson, currently known as Magma Madeline, was now a fussy little dragon-girl no older than nine. Though she was getting calmer, she still had nasty outbursts. She was warned that her anger would cost her even more years of her age, and she had responded by literally kicking and screaming her puberty away. It had also warped her appearance even further from normal humanity, with her hair turning a bright hue of violet and two tiny red dragon horns sprouting from her head. Her golden armored bikini might have been stunning if she had been ten years older, but now it just looked laughable on a body that wouldn't develop curves for years. After the latest tantrum, she had regressed so quickly that the outfit couldn't catch up, and she had to keep hitching up her bottoms until they magically shrank to fit. Lily Lilith almost bit her tongue off trying to keep from laughing.
Madeline's face and abdomen remained human, but the ruby dragon scales were steadily creeping along her arms and legs. Given the general lack of anthropomorphic creatures among the magical girls she had seen, Stella assumed she wouldn't transform much further. Still, the age regression was proceeding at a dizzying speed. It was becoming a running joke among the prison's staff that Magma Madeline might end up as a toddler.
They sped along Interstate 30 in an aging green motor coach driven by a cowgirl-themed MG named Sweet Susannah. The gang was treated to every agonizing detail of the surprisingly mundane events that led Sweet Susannah from a life as a female rodeo clown to a rural defender of justice.
Moon Beam, the dorky cabbit, did his part by nodding after every sentence while watching an anime show called Mattu-kun is Kill on his tablet computer. Curious, Stella peered over the cabbit's shoulder to witness a cartoon astronaut shrieking hysterically while pursued by hordes of acid-spewing salarymen. Stella vowed from that point onward that she would never try to understand Moon Beam's taste in media.
One small comfort was that the bus featured tinted windows, a bathroom, and even a mini-fridge filled with energy bars, so there was no need to expose themselves to the public in their weird outfits. Stella longed for the days when she'd finally be taught how to freely transform between street clothes and her magical girl getup, rather than be stuck as Stella the Preteen Witch 24/7.
Speaking of which, she was acutely aware of the changes wrought on her since the fight with the Derelicts. Though her attitude adjusting nicely in the eyes of her seniors, for some reason the Star Stone had decided Stella could stand to lose a few more years. For her part, Stella was growing resigned to the concept, now that she was more of a girl than a boy. She'd checked her lower parts earlier that morning, and was unsurprised to discover there wasn't much left down there. Two extremely subtle swellings on her chest testified that she at least wouldn't have to worry about breasts for a while.
They spent the night at a rest stop, snoozing in sleeping bags set in the aisle between the seats. Then they were back on the road by 7:00 AM, munching on granola bars and drinking orange juice.
Kodachi had chosen to sit next to Stella, a first for her. "So we're going up against your old rivals. 'The Warriors,' huh? Like that Walter Hill movie?"
Stella smiled bitterly, remembering how The Warriors had lured him into a setup under the bridge. "If only. These guys aren't underdogs, they're scumbags of the lowest order."
"Even lower than us?"
Stella fixed Kodachi with a hard stare. "These guys go to old grannies who own bakeries and threaten to burn the place down if they don't cough up enough cash. They sell tainted drugs. They terrorize kids. They're petty, stupid, and evil little men. I did a lot of bad stuff when I led the Royal Paynes, but I wasn't a psychopath like Tommy Barnett. I didn't make anything worse than it already was."
"Can you be sure about that?"
"Look, I'm no hero, alright? You aren't either. But at least I'm trying to clean up after myself. Guys like Tommy just let the filth pile up, and laugh at anyone who tries to make them stop. I couldn't be happier we get to ruin him."
"Speaking of fights," Kodachi said, easing back in her seat, "what happened with you in that arena? I heard something about 'Derelicts' and you kicking some kind of freaky gladiator duo's butts. What did I miss, and how do I get a turn?"
"I...really don't know what to say, dude. Lily shoved me inside, and I somehow passed the test."
"An impressive feat indeed," Moon Beam suddenly chimed in. "New recruits have about a 1 in 20 chance of beating the Derelicts. Normally they end up either needing to be rescued by the guards, or sent to the nurse's office for a good dose of healing magic."
"Geez...what are the Derelicts, anyway?" Kinetic Keira asked. "Do you guys seriously keep Shattered Ones in your own base?"
"Yes and no," replied Moon Beam, clearly relishing the opportunity to be an expert. "Right...so you know how most Shattered Ones are pretty dumb, right? Beetles could outsmart the basic ones--Embers, we call 'em. While they're physically powerful, they run the risk of hurting each other in combat or easily falling into traps. So hence they need someone to direct them when, where, and how to attack. We know there's a central figure at the top of their hierarchy, but it seems direct control is delegated to intermediaries. In the past this was done by higher-ranking, more humanoid Shattered Ones we called Vicars and Clerics, but those things are rare nowadays.
“Three decades ago, we discovered a completely new rank of the Shattered Ones, much more disturbing than the others. We deemed them 'Apostates.'"
"More disturbing than giant scorpions?" asked Magma Madeline, her voice quavering. "Sorry...I just really, really hate bugs."
"Apostates are unique because they're human beings corrupted by the Shattered Ones," Moon Beam went on. "Unlike lower-ranking forms, Apostates can be 'purified' by sufficiently powerful magic. Sometimes they can return to a relatively normal life after purification. But other times...it's a lot uglier. The 'Derelicts,' as we call them, are Apostates that can't be completely purified, despite hundreds of attempts. They drift back and forth between their corrupted selves and their former selves, sometimes cursing us for taking them from the Shattered Ones, sometimes begging for our forgiveness."
"So you use them for training?" asked Moonlight Maria skeptically. "That's pretty messed up, even in my book."
Moon Beam sighed. "It's troubling, I know. But Derelicts could never function in the outside world. They would either become social pariahs or they would try to rejoin the Shattered Ones. We use them for training because it's one of the few ways they can have productive lives--and in their lucid states, they say they understand.
“We've been researching if there's a way to cure them, but so far even our best healing magic adepts have made scarce progress. Until then, we're left with no easy answers.”
There was a long, sober silence. “So, you've told us how Derelicts came around. But what about the Apostates? How did they get started?” asked Keira.
“The Shattered Ones warped the minds of their victims before granting them supernatural abilities. You heard Venatrix ranting about the 'Broken Prism,' right? That's a universal element in every Apostate's story. They all started by dreaming about an artifact that showed them maddening visions of metaphysical reality. Eventually, they meet a figure that convinces them to abandon care for the future in favor of chasing selfish desires in the present. They are told they matter more than the rest of humanity, and are granted special boons. They always know that the gifts demand eventual suffering, but it never stops them from accepting them."
"So...they're like a demonic credit card company," said Stella.
"Hm, not a bad comparison. I'll have to bring that up when Lily works on the next Powerpoint presentation...where was I? Ah yes. The Apostates are the Shattered One's counterpart to magical girls, and you guys especially. You were all going down a bad path, right?”
There were grudging murmurs of assent.
“What's puzzling about the Apostates is that none of them were 'bad' people before they met the Shattered Ones. They had good prospects for success. They had friends. They had families that loved them. Seems impossible they'd want anything from the Shattered Ones, right? Venatrix, for instance, was a well-regarded religion professor. Venator was a gentle giant who worked as a software security expert.”
“Why would they give it all up for some creep they met in their dreams?” asked Kodachi.
Moon Beam shrugged. “Like I said, someone offered them something they wanted more than anything else. More than their loved ones. More than their own futures. That's the part we still don't understand. If you ask me, I think it was a lot more than just a few neat powers.
“If you want to get philosophical, I'd say everyone has a certain dark spot in their souls. Something that can take good people and turn them into monsters. It's definitely happened before without help from the Shattered Ones...but don't think of me as a misanthrope.”
Stella studied him curiously. “Yeah?”
Moon Beam rolled onto his back and stretched his limbs. “There's still enough joy in the world to keep my species around, after all. And more importantly, I've seen that heroism can come from people everyone else wrote off as villains.”
“You're just saying that to get a tummy scratch, aren't you?” accused Magma Madeline.
“No. I do want a tummy scratch, though.”