We are a few weeks later, I am in my room back at home, observing myself in a mirror while in my magical-girl form. The full body mirror is a new addition, something mom insisted upon, saying that every young woman should have one in their room, and since I would be one part of the time, it applied to me.
While nobody would be able to deny mom and I are related while we're both in our magical-girl form, it's not to the point I look like a younger version of herself. While my mother's magical form look like a sexy milf with big knockers, mine is more of the sporty tomboy. If I didn't know better I would swore the girl in the mirror train regularly, my physique clearly suggesting that I would still be able to run, jump, kick and punch even without the ‘natural’ enhancement common to all magical-girls. (Albeit probably not to the point of jumping from rooftop to rooftop.)
My uniform seems to follow the same logic as my body, with enough to evoke my mother's own uniform, while still being uniquely mine.
I have the same boots (but sized for my feet and legs), then a short black leather pleated skirt on top of ice blue boy-shorts, and some sort of sleeveless crop-top leather vest zipped-up only to mid-chest, revealing an ice-blue sport-bra underneath. I am glad to see that even transformed my nails are still short and unpainted, and I don't seem to wear make-up. (The very idea of my magical transformation could force make-up on me… Yuck!)
Speaking of my head, I also inherited the ice-blue cat-like eyes of my mother and, while my black hairs are in a pixie hair-cut, I also have an ice-blue, shoulder-length strand on the left side of my face.
As I am looking at myself in the mirror, I was remembering the previous day's events.
- – — – -
Rather than taking me back home by car, with dad and my brother, mom decided it was the perfect time to teach me roof-jumping. I did say to mom I wanted to be a battle magical-girl, like her, and roof-jumping was one of the most basic skill needed on the job. It took a bit of time for me to learn, but far less than I would have expected.
Then, out of the blue she said "Follow me, I want us to visit an old friend of mine" and, not waiting for my opinion, started going there, letting me with no choice but to follow her. After catching up to her I asked who was that friend, but her only answer was to stay silent and continue on her way.
We finally arrived to a roof with a big roof window open white. Mom entered through it and I hesitantly followed, only to be greeted by Dr. Judy Hall. The two adults acted like they were old friends, which I hadn't expected. They were hugging, the doctor saying it was good to see mom back in her magical form, before they released each other and Judy looked at me and said "And I see you were able to bring my latest patient with you, good. Follow me, we have a lot to discuss."
She guided us to the basement, where she opened a secret passage to a second, underground level of said basement. It looked mostly like a small secret, underground clinic. I knew magical-girls tended to like their privacy, but I never suspected it was to this point. No sooner did I think this, that Judy opened another secret passage, escorting us to what I guessed to be a conference room nobody should know about. Somehow, mom wasn't surprised by this, like she knew of this room all along.
Dr. Hall gestured for us to sit, gesturing to a large, ancient looking round table. (Probably not that round table.) Mom took the nearest chair, and I took the one next to hers. As soon as we were seated, small part of the table transformed, making nameplates appeared in front of us, both with a big "Yuki" written on, with a smaller "Create and manipulate ice" underneath.
I expected Judy to sit too or, failing that, see her go out and more magical-girls to come in. Instead the Caucasian doctor was engulfed in light, replaced by an Afro-American looking magical-girl. She sat down in her own chair, but I didn't need the nameplate appearing in front of her to know her name or her powers, since she was the magical-girl from recent History the most studied in school: Lumina.
Lumina is part of a rare sub-category of battle magical-girls known as "healers", which alone would have been enough to make her famous. While, as their name suggest, healers are mainly known for their ability to use magic to fasten and improve healing, most people forget their catalogue of powers include all kinds of support magic, the kind of thing video games call "buff" and "de-buff" magic. But while this is enough to make her famous, it's not enough to make her enter History. No, what make her an historical figure is how she reacted when people tried to dissuade her from following her dreams of becoming a doctor, claiming her powers were more efficient than medicine. (When in reality healing magic can't cure everything, so doctors and their medicine would still be needed even if healers weren't so rare.) She was starting to believe to the point she tried to cure her mother's cancer with her powers, making it evolve faster instead.
At the time Lumina was still a kid, and as such didn't think to discuss using her powers on her mom with the doctor in charge. Said doctor didn't loose time in laying the blame solely on the poor girl, which nearly caused even more tragedy. Feeling cornered, Lumina screamed that every adults around had said her powers made doctors useless, that she only wanted her mother back at home as soon as possible. She then used her powers to teleport a scalpel in her hand, cutting herself where her magical-core was while screaming she was an idiot to trust adults when they said her wish to become a doctor was stupid, and she would rather die than having such useless powers.
And since she was trying to remove her magical-core while still in her magic-form, on top of not having any medical knowledge, she could very well have died. But someone was able to dissuade her, the reports don't precise who. Some think it's the doctor, while other say it was her father, attracted by the commotion, who saw what was happening and convinced the young healer to keep on leaving and use her powers to close the cut.
Lumina wasn't heard of since. Since rumors claim she swore to never use her powers again, most peoples believe they faded over time. Clearly, they are wrong. "You must have heard of me, judging by your face," said the infamous healer in front of me. "But I fear all you heard is mostly cover-up stories and unfounded rumors. First, my mother had been injected with demonic cells, which invaded her body, slowly turning her into a demoness. In the first stages it look like a cancer, but by the time I tried to cure her change was too advanced and it killed her."
"How did she end up with demonic cells in her body?" I asked, curious.
"We're not sure how or why, even if we have strong suspicions, but we know her oncologist was a complice since he let her change progress, all while claiming she had a cancer. After I tried to cure my mom, he tried to harvest my core, so it might have been his motive…
And before you ask: It was the ‘good’ doctor who cut me open, not myself."
I had another question for Lumina. "If it had been cancer, would you have been able to cure it?"
"No. Because of it's nature, trying to cure a cancer, any cancer, with healing magic will only make it grow faster. On that, your textbooks are actually right. But you don't ask the most important question: Why is the truth hidden?"
"Because some peoples don't want the ‘rabble’ to know the truth?"
"That too. But mainly because the governments want to manipulate us. And by us I'm mainly implying magical-girls, even if the ‘rabble’, as you put it, is a secondary target. How can you convince people that all demons are pure evil in need to be killed, if some of them might have been human in a point of time? Especially when most of those former-humans happen to be political-dissident, like my mother?"
"I was the one who rescued Lumina. I was only in my early teens back then, but I already had sufficient support to sponsor a young orphan in pursuing her dream of becoming a doctor. But before I explain why I put so much effort to help a total stranger, I have a question: What do you know of the Morigan legacy?"
My mom's question threw me for a loop. What was the link between the Morigan line of magical-girls and her desire to protect a fellow magical-girl? Still, I answered. "The Morigan legacy is one of the oldest line of magical-girls still active. Their uniforms generally evoke a crow, to the point they look more like witches than magical-girls. A fact not helped by their familiar, who just happen to be an albino crow. There is some ridiculous rumors claiming the first Morigan was, in fact, a demon-in-disguise who got its magical-core stolen by a little girl it was trying to corrupt. According to those rumors, said little girl made the core her own, becoming the second Morigan."
"Then let me tell you a story. It start a long, long time ago with a young shape-shifting demoness tasked with a mission: Go to the human world and learn about their societies. The world had changed a lot since the last mission of this kind and hell greatly needed to update their data to corrupt us more efficiently." The best way to go unnoticed is always to hide right under the nose of your enemies, pretending to be their friend. As such, she used her shape-shifting powers to disguise herself as a one of humanity's protector: A battle magical-girl."
Mom took a moment to breath and continued. "What no demon could expect, was how love affect a magical girl. And I'm not speaking of romance here, but love in general. The love of a friend, of a sibling, of a parent, of a fan even. Any kind of love, as long as it's directed toward a magical-girl, it help her become stronger. An effect amplified if she reciprocate. Or, there was a team of magical-girl that had unknowingly adopted the demoness as one of their members, loving her as a dear friend and, before she could notice said demoness came to love them back. Feeling guilty for lying to her friends, she decided to reveal the truth, offering them the impossible spectacle of a crying demon."
"Convinced her friends would reject her, the demoness expected to die then and there. Instead, she found herself in a group-hug, to her bewilderment. Her friends and teammate didn't care that her birth-form was demonic instead of human, they felt her love for them and humanity grow over time, to the point they hadn't felt the difference with an actual magical girl."
"The story could have stopped there, but it was only a question of time before hell noticed how bogus the reports of the demoness had become and sent someone to punish her. By that time she had found love, was married and had a lot of half-demonic daughters. Alas, it made our demonic-protector easier to find for the demon hunting her. We don't know all the details, but her husband ended mortally wounded. The demoness used her shape-shifting powers to save him. Because of all the blood he lost, she was forced to shift him into a smaller form. Her husband was now a white crow. But her powers weren't made to change someone else, and now she was the one dying."
"That's the scene as seen by one of her teammates, who had come with an old friend with her own daughter. Furious, said magical-girl plummeted the hunter, deliberately making him suffer for as long as she could. Meanwhile, the little girl was scared. Her mom's friend was on the ground, clearly not feeling well, with a lot of blood near her. Then the dying demoness cut herself open, grabbed her magical-core and asked the little girl “Please, hold onto my legacy. There must… Always be a Morigan to protect humanity.” Somehow, the near-by cries of pain from the hunting-demon had attracted peoples from the nearest town, who came just in time to see a little girl take what looked like a giant black pearl from a bloodied demoness, which then got absorbed by the girl's body, turning them into a magical-girl looking a lot like a younger version of the local hero. Then they saw other demon-looking girls and, deaf to the magical-girl's word, attacked. Most of the demoness' daughters were killed by the angry mob before they could understand what was happening."
"The few who survived got into hiding, helped by their mother team and the young girl who had inherited their mother's legacy. As generations passed, our demonic blood was diluted more and more, until it didn't show in our appearance anymore. Or only slightly for the ones becoming magical-girls, and only when being magical-girls. Alas, the same happened to the help our family had to hide, dwindling as time passed."
"Are you saying…" I hesitantly interrupted, "that we're decedents of the original Morigan?"
Mom simply nodded. "That's why we have cat-like eyes, or why our uniforms look more like something a demoness would wear. Although yours is halfway to being a proper magical-girl's. Probably proof you have even less demonic DNA than me."
"It's probably also playing a part in you being able to become a magical girl, even if you were born a boy" added Lumina.
"Yuki," called mom, looking serious. "You can't tell anyone about our demonic ancestry. The many governments of the world are still hunting and exterminating anyone with the slightest drop of demon blood. They don't care that it's so diluted we're perfectly human, don't care we love humanity and want to protect it. Just like they don't care that injecting demonic-cells in a human will only change their body, not their mind, nor their souls. Eventing our family's secret wouldn't just put you and me in danger, but your brother too."
— – - – —
Lumina explained that, if I ever needed medical attention, I should come to her. Followed by mom explaining that, as a battle magical-girl I would probably have to go under-cover from time to time, which made a good idea to have some feminine clothing for my magical-form. As such, a shopping trip is planned, which mom also intend as a mother/daughter bonding experience.
At least I don't need to renew my whole wardrobe, like mom. She might be happy to be a magical-girl again, she's also locked in her magical-form, just like when I was born. So none of her current wardrobe fit her right. And even if she still had her everyday wear from back before loosing her powers, it had long come out of fashion.
All in all, I am both anxious and exited for my first shopping trip as a girl.