Chapter 3 — Magical Girl Gunslinger

I could feel my breathing pick up as I wondered if I had finally lost my mind.

“What… what are you?” I whispered, my voice quivering. It paused for a moment, then an ear twitched.

Recognition dawned on me. MGs always did seem to have weird little mascot animals that got advertised with them. Even the few Magical Girl shows I’d seen had featured weird but cute looking creatures who ended up giving the girl their power.

A flare of pain brought me back to the moment, and I suppressed a shudder. I was starting to feel cold, and I was covered in a sheen of sweat from the fight and pain. I looked back at the rabbit.

“I don’t understand,” I whispered. “Why me? I… I’m not special, or strong, or anything like that. So why me?”

The Familiar’s fox tails swished back and forth.

“Oh…” I replied weakly. The pain in my stomach was growing, sending sharper spikes through my body. The adrenaline from the fight must have been fading too, because exhaustion was starting to pull at me, and a nap sounded

It… all of it was so sudden, it felt surreal. No fanfare, no gradual buildup, just

The Familiar, however, was right. I didn’t have much time to think through this. I was lying on the ground, helpless and bleeding with monsters roaming about. If I wanted to survive, I would just have to accept this as reality and move on.

So I bit my lip, and forced my brain to work through the situation.

Oh, and I would survive my mortal wound too, according to the Familiar. As far as sign-up bonuses, that was pretty good.

Naturally, seeing only benefits, I knew there had to be a catch. Nothing was free. Nothing.

“What’s the catch?” I asked in a whisper.

Her words made me shiver, eliciting an accompanying wince and hiss of pain. I rolled the words over in my head quickly, only taking a second to consider them. It was such an easy decision, and I felt a sour taste rise in the back of my throat when I realized why.

“Alright. Next condition.”

There was a pregnant pause, and I looked back to the Familiar when it didn’t immediately reply.

“I

Tears began to blur my vision, and I clenched my teeth.

“Every day, it’s always the same thing over and over again. Take the hits and just roll with them. All I’ve ever managed to do is just survive. I even tried to stand up for myself, and it only made things

I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting against a rising hysteria. How many times had I lied to myself that things were okay? That one day, things would change? That I would eventually stop feeling utter disappointment every morning I woke up?

“I’m just so

The fox tails behind the Familiar lowered down to the floor, and it gave a slow dip of its head. I wiped my eyes on my sleeves, and after a few seconds of silence, it continued in a somber tone.

“That’s fine,” I shook my head. “Wasn’t planning on world domination anyway.”

I blinked. Did it just… wait how did it even know about-

Reasonable. Just… yeah. All of that sounded like bad news anyway.

“Okay… I’m fine with all three of the rules.”

“Wait, what do you mean, ‘we?’” I asked. “What exactly happens after the contract is formed?”

“Oh…” I said, a sudden paranoia rising in my chest. “How much do you know about me exactly?”

There was a pause, and I felt my throat grow tighter.

Anger and panic rose in me at the thought of them spying on me, but the Familiar’s voice quickly continued.

I swallowed. I… really didn’t like that the thing seemed to know so much about me, but it made sense. How else were the Zenith supposed to determine if people met their criteria? It made me uncomfortable, but in the end, it didn’t matter. If the Familiar really promised to respect my boundaries…

“Fine,” I whispered, wincing in pain. “I guess that works.”

The creature’s head bobbed up and down.

I took a deep breath as I met the Familiar’s eyes. I could feel fear inside me, but I couldn’t quite figure out why. I ignored it, knowing that it didn’t matter anymore. I’d made my decision, so I gave a serious nod to the creature offering to change… well,

“Yes,” I replied.

And then I fell through the floor.

I yelped as the sensation of dropping sent fear into my throat. Shadows enfolded my vision as I plummeted downwards into absolute darkness. My back hit something painlessly, and there was a shattering sound. I saw glass shards glinting in the shadows as they began to descend with me, only for everything to come to a jolting stop, frozen mid-air.

Then I began to fall back the way I came. Instead of flying through the hole I smashed through, I splashed into lukewarm water face-first. It was only about an inch deep, and there was some kind of featureless ground beneath it. I sputtered as liquid filled my nose. Pushing myself up, I coughed a few times, trying to get my bearings. All I was able to make out was darkness, and as I stood on my feet-

My eyes widened, and I quickly looked down at my stomach. There was no wound in it, and even my clothes seemed utterly devoid of damage. Frowning, I gently touched my belly, but felt nothing amiss. I took a few tentative steps forward, the gentle swish of water parting around my shoes the only sound. There was nothing around me but an endless expanse of emptiness and shallow water.

A second later, there was the crackle of electricity, and a sudden purple light bloomed in the shadows with the intensity of a lightning flash. I brought a hand up, shielding my eyes as they adjusted. Squinting, I was able to make out a vague pillar shape of harsh purple light rising from the water and into the sky. Something about the light called to me, beckoning me to ignore my confusion, and so I made my way towards it.

My vision adjusted as I neared, and I saw the pillar was created from strands of electricity shaped like thorned vines. The energy had a pitch black core with a violet outline, giving it an unnaturally eerie look. While the frozen, perfectly sculpted lightning was beautiful, something about the thorned vine shape each electrical arc had gave me a deep sense of… isolation, maybe? Emptiness? Tightly entangled as the vines were, it almost felt like they were trying to keep something away.

I peered at the amethyst lightning-vines, and I found myself slowly moving around the pillar-like shape they formed. Even though they were thickly intertwined, I could see through portions deeper into its column, and an oddly colored shape poked through the holes. I finally got to one portion where the vines hadn’t bunched together as much, and I peered inside the small window formed by their absence.

My heart stopped.

Suspended several inches above the ground and wrapped in the tangle of thorned electricity was a young girl. She was naked, showing a petiteness that edged on dangerous. Her skin was smooth and pale as a porcelain doll. Even though she wore nothing, the lightning entangling her somehow provided the perfect amount of modesty, as if artistically placed. Her hair was raven dark, falling in straight, silky tresses down to her hips, and it framed her too-soft sleeping face in a dark veil.

I stared at the girl, wondering what I could do to get her out of her prison. Suddenly, she took a sharp, shuddering breath. Her body spasmed slightly against the vines, but they held tight with an electric crackle. Slowly, her eyes fluttered open, meeting my own.

Heterochromatic eyes of azure and scarlet met mine, and I realized the girl I was looking at was a reflection of

Her pupils. They were shaped like crescent moons, the darkness of them drawing me in.

Suddenly I was lying back on the floor of the mall. Sharp, silvery pain exploded through my skull, and I let out a groan as I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to will it away.

The message that visually appeared in my head rang out in discordant voices, followed by the Familiar’s feminine voice in an excited tone. For some reason, its words also appeared at the bottom of my vision like subtitles.

As the pain and messages in my head faded, I looked to my left to see the Familiar still sitting in the same position. To my surprise, its pure white visage had changed. Near the tips of each of its tails and ears was a swath of black fur that formed a ring. Between its eyes, more black fur had formed the symbol of a crescent moon, and its previously heptagram-shaped pupils had changed to match.

There was silence, and I raised an eyebrow as fear rose in my throat.

“What?” I asked in a panicked voice. “How bad is it?”

I felt my heart rate lower, and I glared at the creature for nearly giving me a heart attack. It didn’t seem to notice.

“Sure?” I furrowed my eyebrows. “But what do you mean by purchase?”

“Wait,” I stammered. “Quests? Defeating monsters? And didn’t that notification earlier have a level on that Anathema I killed? Isn’t this just like a video game? ”

Two minutes!? That wasn’t possible! We’d had a whole conversation, and the explanations hadn’t been

“O-oh,” I stammered. “That’s… actually incredibly useful.”

“And how exactly do we do that?” I asked. “Do you teach me a healing spell or something?”

I raised an eyebrow, curious at my Familiar’s excited tone.