Chapter 1: Who's that Magical Girl?

The Fool Arc

Somewhere in darkness, there’s crying. Not loud, attention-grabbing sobs, nor the wailing of pain. The silent, pouring tears that only end when the body is too dehydrated to keep going, when each breath is rasping from dry throat and chapped lips.

Someone looking for help.

♥ Magical Girl Rinrin ♥

“Bringing Peace and Powerful Punches, It’s Magical Girl of Hearts, Rinrin!” I throw in a small and cocky hip out to my side, place my hand in front of my face in a sideways “peace” sign, and give a cocky wink. Or at least, try to, I’ve never been good at winking.

The eyes of the three down below turn to face me. Weird, malformed, shadow-faces, gaping holes instead of mouths. Their jaws unhinge unnaturally wide.

“Here. To. Punish. You!” I call out, leaping forward towards them, my leg kicking out. My foot lands with elegance and grace, smashing into the face of the shadow-creature as it gawks and stares at me. One comes in with some sort of bizarre hug-like attack and I slam my fist hard into its neck. As it flies over me and lands hard on the pavement, its form dissipates into a black mist, swallowed by the ground. Good. Two more.

After the flurry of motions, movements, kicks and punches, easy strikes against slow and grunting enemies, the world returns to that sizzling cool-calm, the air after a big confrontation, a big event, that fulfilled emptiness.

“You know that they can’t understand you, right?” A small voice comes out of my pocket, deflating my mood like letting air out of a pink-frilled balloon. I dust my hands off, looking at the last of the three turn into mist and ash on the wind.

“...Doesn’t hurt to show off.” I poutingly pick up the handbag that the woman threw at the creature, place the items inside carefully, and slide it over her shoulder.

“...That speech was pointless, too. ‘Peace and powerful punches’?”
“It’s poetic!”
“...You ever actually read a poem?”

I roll my eyes in response, looking at the woman frozen in terror. No, literally frozen. Her body is unmoving as if someone hit “pause” which, in retrospect, is basically true. She’s middle-aged, looks like an office lady type. I step around and adjust the scene, before reaching into my pocket and releasing the fairy from within.

“Looks good. Disturbance dealt with in record time. At least you’re good at something.” The little fairy nods approvingly. At first glance, it’s like a little glowing ball of light, flitting here and there in a gentle white colour, but looking closer reveals a tiny humanoid form. I grab it out of the air and smoosh my thumb into its little face.

“Heeey!” I glare as it squirms a little.
“Alright, fine! You did good, now lemme finish!” The voice whines indignantly. This fairy was the first glimpse I ever had of the magical world that exists above ours. When I first heard that, beneath the glitz and lights and fast-pace of Tokyo life was a world of magic, my heart thrilled- I’d always believed there was more, that life could be more. Maybe I’d always wanted to be invited to be a part of that world.

He took the form of a flitting humanoid with butterfly wings- glowing faint white as a bright light only perceivable by the magically-inclined and those who wished they could see something beyond what’s there.

The Fairy- I’d given him the name “Nyamu”. He objected at first, but seemed to silence those objections and go with it after I ran through a few of my other ideas. I thought they were all brilliant, but the expression on his face started to resemble Dad when he got called into work too early.

I looked at the sight, the woman now with her bag back, the vanquished monsters, and watched Nyamu do his job. He floated a distance away, and began glowing brightly, causing glowing magical orbs to rise from the areas where the vanquished foes of the night had sunk into the ground, as if pulling them out and purifying them into orbs of pink, yellow, green… all vibrant colors.

I reached my hand out to each, and they responded to my touch by popping like bubbles, absorbed into my skin. Each one felt energizing, like chugging a cola after a hot bath. I mentioned it to Nyamu.

“Well of course. It’s pure energy.”
“Really!? Like an energy drink?” Now that comment was met with a blank stare. The sort where a parent is wondering how their child could be quite so…
“No.” His response is curt. I rub the back of my head and offer a grin.
“Eheheh… Well.” I feel a raindrop dot on my face, and realize time is slowly unfreezing. I pick up the woman’s phone from where it hangs in mid drop, place it back in her hand. Once adjusted, I give a nod and kick up with my feet, landing on a nearby rooftop.

The woman back in the alley blinks a few times, like air is blowing in her face. Terror becomes confusion, her scream cut off before it starts. She shuffles awkwardly, checking her bag, her phone, then adjusting her jacket. Her cheeks are the pink of someone who scared themselves while staring too hard into an empty shadow, her heels clip-clopping as she continues safely on her way home. Her memory might retain some glimpses of a blur in white-and-pink catching her phone from mid air, but that would be all.

Time unfreezes after the Emergence is dealt with. That's one of the first things you need to know, it keeps people safe, and keeps the magical world hidden from view. Time comes back slowly, going from slow motion to full speed, giving enough warning signs to get out of there before you're spotted. Only beings of magic can move within, or even perceive, these bubbles of frozen time. Everyone else will find their eyes drifting away, or their mind focussing on something else. Nyamu says it’s like when you’re walking home and out of nowhere your brain starts considering what’s for dinner, and you don’t even remember the rest of the walk when you touch the doorhandle.

As I dance and run over the rooftops, laughing with each leap and graceful landing, Nyamu begins his lecture once more.

“Emergences are caused when too much negative emotion wells up in a location and allows the Belowlings to walk among us.” He explains as I pause on top of one nice outcropping and look across the rooftops. Sitting down and dangling my feet over the edge, I take a breather and look over my town.
“As a Magical Girl, a Mahou Shoujo, your duty is to find and eliminate them before they pose a major threat.” He continues. I’ve heard this before, and the respite gives me time to think.

It hadn’t even been a week since…

*     *     *

“Don’t feel bad. Everyone cries.”

He’d said those words when he flew into my room, as I sat with my head against the wall, staring out at the rooftops. A glowing fairy appeared in my room, defying all logic. With croaky grunts, surprise forcing the little air in my lungs to voice questions, I’d asked what he was, why he'd come to me of all people-

“Your heart ached.”

The explanations didn’t make much sense back then, but now I know more. They were beings, see? Beings from two worlds. A world above and a world below. Below went the dark feelings, the anger, jealousy, pointless hostility of the every day, coalescing in the earth to create a shadowy realm of miseries. The world above was full of hopes, dreams, it was where the wishes of people went when they grew so large they had to be shared with the universe. Honestly, it sounded a little cheesy, but I didn't say it at that moment.

“And… it needs your help.”

I’d stared. I tried to laugh, but it came out as raspy and choked gurgles. My world was a mess, and it was a world I thought I understood. How can I help another world? One that, until this moment, existed only in print-pages and the images of a TV screen?

“Your heart is strong. You have within you the power to protect others.”

Surrounded in brilliant light that seemed to emanate from my body, time slowing around me as a beautiful outfit, skirt, boots, all in a white-pink colour scheme that made my heart thrill the way it did watching those girls on TV as a kid.

“As a Magical Girl, you must keep the existence of the Magical World a secret. Never let people know. You’ll be an urban legend, a dream, something seen only by children and kind souls.”

The birth of Magical Girl Rinrin, and the starts of our long nights patrolling the rooftops, looking for Emergences.