The ethereal flames crackle undisturbed by the rain. Its purple light licks at the surrounding darkness, illuminating the glistening stone floor. A single spark floats off the fire, settling just above the ground nearby. Smoke gathers around it, taking the vague form of a lying figure with the spark at the heart. Vagueness is washed away as the smoke takes on a more defined shape, becoming more and more opaque with time, until the purple mote is obscured entirely. Haziness makes way for solidity, and soon what is left is a feminine figure lying alone on the cold stone with nothing but rain and flame for company.

"Ungh, guh, wuh?" Everything is wrong. Naked. Wet. Freezing cold. Head fuzzy.

Car!?

He bolts awake. "AH!"

"Wait?" Voice!? "What?"

A hand touches a face.

"Oh."

"Oh that's not... Oh."

Her hand retreats from her face, exploring her body. Her skin is smooth, her voice- "Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si Do." melodic.

Her hair is very wet. And very blonde. She died, right? So is this what happens to people?

"This is way better than nonexistence!"

Her attention is being pulled in too many directions. She can feel something inside of her, tiny and incandescent. There is a distinct sense of direction towards somewhere... feminine? "Well, my inner compass is well calibrated, if nothing else."

And she got the distinct sense that she could... go?

Her surroundings lurch. She's further away from the strange fire.

"Wuh-" She focuses, and makes three more jumps in quick succession.

"I seem to possess the ability to teleport."

The rain patters on stone, uncaring of the tribulations of the girl standing above them.

Her voice breaks. "What the fuck is happening to me oh my god its so fucking cold!"

She cackles. The rain swallows her laughter. "Not that I'm complaining!" She twirls in the rain, dancing closer to the bonfire. "The best day of my life doesn't need a manual! I can figure this shit out!"

"What does this button do?" Only intuition guides this one, pushing herself recklessly in a direction that feels like home.

Faint light shines through cracks in the sandstone cave, shedding light on what looks like furnishings carved out of the stone. A shelf with what look like jars, a fountain on a wall pouring water into a hole with only a faint sound, a bed with some sort of padding.

Not being rained on is probably the biggest shift to her status quo since she arrived. The relative silence is deafening, but the sound of running water from the fountain is soothing.

"Oh, a cave house." She scans her new environment, her vision strains in the dim lighting. "Hello? Is anyone home?" She looks around. There are no exits. The cracks in the wall might be the only openings into or out of this little cave.

"It's a little claustrophobic, but it's a home only reachable through teleportation! That's a pro. Cons though." She holds her hand up to one of the cracks in the wall, she feels no airflow. "So am I willing to gamble that my oxygen supply will last me throughout a nap?"

"No. No I'm not."

"Maybe I can cycle air through teleports? Or maybe these cracks actually circulate air just fine?" She walks up to the bed, and wipes her hands dry off of the sketchy looking mattress sheet. "Oh, soft. Shame I don't trust the air."

She approaches the jars, each large enough that she has to wrap an arm around it while the other works the lid. 

"Score! Cookies!" She shoves one into her mouth.

Within the essence of flavor lies the ability to provoke emotions. A good meal can stoke the inner fire, bringing forth memories of home, of times well spent. Even a bad meal can remind you of better meals you'd rather be having. Even in absence it's echo is felt.

"Man has long yearned to find a cookie more disappointing than oatmeal raisin. And in strange aeons even taste has died."

She sets down the jar. "Maybe the water doesn't suck." She puts a hand to the cold stream and takes a sip.

"This is the best water I've ever had in my life."

At this point she wonders how such a place could exist. It would have to have been built by somebody who could teleport like her. It feels like home, she can't put her finger on why she thinks this. It would be alarming if, say, certain impulses had made their way into her brain, but she just got a whole new body, wouldn't it make sense if her brain didn't get translated 1:1?

"Uh."

"Anyway!" She reaches down to the bed and rips off the sheet with a flourish, wrapping it around herself like a cloak in the same motion. "Clothing!"

Not that she finds that she really minds being naked. Not anymore at least.

"I have water, clothing, and by the strictest of strict definitions a substance that some people might generously label as food." She looks at the walls. "And maybe shelter?" She closes her eyes, focusing.

Her point of view shifts, she can see the purple fire right where she left it. All around it is darkness. As great as this new cave home is, it didn't have a flashlight. In fact the only source of light she has seen is that purple fire. She pushes gently with her teleportation, and through the vague feedback it gives her she gets the impression that she could travel quite a distance from that point, she can't really tell if that point is anchored on the fire or not, perhaps some experimentation is in order.

But, well, that fire is literally the only landmark that she knows of. It's entirely possible she will teleport into pitch blackness, only to spend hours making blind jumps in the dark trying to find another source of light.

No! She can't stay here forever! If she stays in here she could suffocate, and if she falls asleep almost naked in the rain she could freeze! There has to be a better way!

And she will drag her perfect ass across a mile of cheese graters before she lets that bland-ass mana cracker be her last meal!

Solutions! It's gone now but she had a sense of direction towards somewhere feminine when she was by the fire.

"Yes, I will let myself be guided by my... by my..." she struggled for a second before coming to a realization. "...my feminine intuition!" She said, manic grin spreading across her face. "Perfect!"

"But what do I do about light?" That little incandescence inside of her, perhaps now was the time to try something with it.

She focused again. This time peering inwards. That little something inside of her responded to her will. With effort she pushed, and pushed, and finally, some of it was pushed outside of her.

An ember of Azoth. Ready to pull in more of its kind.

It is small. It is very small.

"Well, this is definitely a lot closer to dragon ball than I ever expected to get. But, well, not to be a choosy beggar or anything, I really like being able to emit any sort of cosmic energy out of my hands, regardless of quantity!" She holds the flickering mote up to the wall, frowning at the lack of illumination. "But I somehow doubt that the light of this will even reach the floor while I'm standing."

Taking one last look around, she tugs the bed sheet around herself before jumping back. Her surroundings shift, and her world is a wet deluge once more. Holding out her tiny light, she set off.

As expected, the bed sheet does little to protect her from the rain. In mere minutes it is soaked through, clinging to her skin. A glance downwards helpfully informs her that while she isn't naked by the strictest definition, that reasoning wouldn't hold up in court with a jury of her peers.

Dear lord, perhaps a wet t-shirt contest was in her future?

No! she thought. Focus! You are in pitch blackness in the rain with nothing but this tiny speck of life-flame to provide you with visibility! You could trip! Or fall down some stairs! Or someone-

When the Azoth leaves you and the will to go on fades, so will you.

The faded, the miserable, the catatonic. Everyone joins their ranks eventually. This groan in the darkness hungers.

It is dark, she can't see the fire anymore. And she can't see into the darkness to see what made that noise. Theoretically she should put her light out to remain out of sight, but the thought of pitch black stops her. Instead she waves it around, holding the mote of light out in a desperate bid to get any useful information about her potential assailant. She hears it groan again.

"What!" She screams into the void as fear and anger boil over. "I got ran over by a car and I'm fine! You think your weak ass scares me? I am not putting up with this shit anymore! You want a piece of me? I'll fucking kill you!" She rips off her cloak, wrapping it around itself and her hands until its a thick cord.

"C'mon." She hisses, straining her ears for any kind of sound. She can barely hear it over the rain, but sharpened by adrenaline, she just barely makes out footsteps. Her stance widens, she steps away from the sound slowly and deliberately. Under these conditions she will absolutely slip and fall if she's not careful, she can't afford that right now.

It sees the ember, it sees the light, it sees the life.

It emerges into view. A person, with sunken pits for eyes, and warped pink skin. Only a few pathetic rags cling to its emaciated form. It reaches out a hand, swiping angrily at her.

She blocks with the cord, bouncing it off and shifting position to its side. She realizes that she has no real plan of attack, the cord between her hands is not really a weapon she knows how to use. She opts to back up, plant her feet and wait.

Sluggishly, it turns around, and once again tries to attack her. She lunges into it.

When someone doesn't know what they are doing, a punch they throw will only involve moving their arm really fast. A real punch puts a person's whole body weight into it, their whole body lunging forward in tandem with the fist.

Her weight had recently fallen considerably, but hopefully...

She only felt a bit of pain as the thing's hand vaguely slapped her rib and clumsily slid past her lunge. The fist connected solidly with its face as it tumbled face down on the ground. Before it could recover she threw herself on top of it, wrapping the improvised garrote around its neck and pulling with all the strength she could manage. "C'mon! Go to sleep!" She hissed.

It thrashed as it tried to dislodge her. She tried not to think about the feeling of its skin or the choking sounds it made as it tried in vain to breathe.

It took what felt like an eternity. Maybe it actually had been an eternity, trapped between one minute and the next. Maybe she was still there, still choking out whatever semblance of life clung to the broken man. 

It wouldn't explain the corpse at her feet though, that was a pretty big hole in that theory.

"Fuck." She whispered.

"Ok, ok, ok." She shakes open her bed sheet, it is heavy with water and stained in blood. On pure impulse she tosses it into the darkness as hard as she can. "Ok!"

Her mind grinds to a halt as she finds herself on hands and knees. She slams her fist into the stone as hard as she can, the pain is centering. "I don't have to be here." she mutters. "I just want a change of clothes, and a shower, and to stop being so fucking wet and to be able to see more than two feet in front of me!" she shouts.

She focuses, trying to lock on to wherever her sense of direction is pointing her to. It's hard, it takes her almost a minute of trying to get a grasp of her destination, but at this point the benefits of teleportation without knowing where she was going outweighed the risks in her eyes.

Gokigenyou Academy of Purity welcomes young girls to its facilities, free to learn in a happy, healthy and safe environment.

She gestures to the heavens. "Sweet merciful god the Sun!" She points to her feet. "Grass!" She gestures to the large building ahead. "Civi-"

"-li-" Her hands shoot down to cover her crotch. As an afterthought one goes up to cover her chest.

"-zation." She finishes. 

"...maybe I shouldn't have thrown the bed sheet." This jump might've been a more lateral move than she had hoped.

"I guess I'm back on Earth?" She looks around. "I have no idea where I am."

She tries to jump back to her cave home.

It is as it was left.

"Oh good, that still works. So I can come back and forth here whenever I want. But if I want to go back to the pitch black place I need to find a specific spot." She thought about it for a second. "Do I actually know that? I think that the dark place only had one spot that I could tell where I could come here through, but for all I know I can always go back from anywhere, I should check." She almost jumped back before she stopped herself.

No, you absolute dingdong! You need clothes! Focus!

The sheet was long gone, but maybe the mattress? Properly eviscerated, it could make for some sort of modesty concealing technology! She grabbed at it, tugging with all her might. "C'mon! Yield to me! I command you!"

"Hah, hah, hah, dammit, its no use. I can't. But I have to cover myself! I can't let my first contact with human civilization as a girl be in the nude! I'll be put on a list! Just like those people who pee in public because they have literally nowhere else to go!"

She thinks about it for a second.

"Which, while accurate, is not the image I want to present!"

"Ok, ok, think! There must be hours worth of air in this pocket, plenty of time to think of a clothing acquisition strategy!"

The mattress was a no go, unless she could find something sharp, maybe a rock off the ground? The building was obviously a no go since there was no way she could walk in in broad daylight-

"Dumbass! You can teleport!"

"Why am I like this?"

Whatever. There are more options now. Depending on what kind of building it is maybe she could sneak in somehow."

"And do what? If there's a kitchen I could borrow a knife? And eviscerate this mattress. But, if its some kind of store and there are clothes..."

"...I could steal them."

"No one would ever know."

Her standards thus risen, she decided that the only acceptable outcome was one where she ended up fully clothed. For now though...

She adjusted her hair to properly cover her chest. "There, now its tasteful rather than gratuitous. I'm like 30% positive that those are the correct legal terms."

She focused once more, taking a peak through the... portal? The portal.

It was an odd sensation, her point of view had a wider angle of view than she did, but it felt natural. But she seemed to be struggling with depth perception. She pushed it, it was a little like flexing a muscle you only found out you had recently, definitely weird. She directed it to move upwards. It was kinda slow, but she was able to get a decent bird's eye view of the area. There was a central collection of buildings, surrounded by meticulously manicured lawn pierced by stone paths. It was flanked by trees, and then more lawn. There were bicycles, a delivery truck, she couldn't find any cars. In fact, once she noticed, it was hard not to notice the weird absence of vehicles.

The fact that there was a delivery truck but no buses or cars gave her pause. It pointed to something sinister, but they wouldn't have so many bikes, right? If you were determined to get away from a cult or something a bike stolen at night could cut it.

A thought for later. She pushed her sensor closer. It took almost a minute to get it close enough, but she could peak through the open windows, it looked like...

"A school?" It was a pretty big campus, maybe it was a college? Or a boarding school of some kind? She was hoping for a dormitory she could break into. This building seemed to just be classrooms and a cafeteria, but the neighboring building? Dormitories. She established to her satisfaction that the first room was girly enough for her liking and after checking the nearby perimeter she made her jump.

"Man," she whispered to herself. "This place is clean. I kinda expected college dorm rooms to be small disaster zones." Maybe she was just projecting.

She tip-toed her way to the dresser, gently pulling open a drawer. Welp, panties out of the way. She fished out some lacy white ones, and a bra to match it from the next one. She didn't bother looking at the sizes, she had no idea what her measurements were and she wasn't about to find out now. Either they would fit or they wouldn't. She was about to move on when she caught her own gaze in the mirror.

"Oh." She said. "I'm pretty. I'm very pretty."

No, crimes first! She opened drawers, carefully fishing out the components of a full outfit from drawers and closets, and do they have...?

Striped thigh-high socks! There is a god!

"Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" She very carefully made sure the room looked undisturbed, surely nobody in their right mind would break out their forensics for a common panty thief, right?

"Oh god I'm a panty thief."

"It's for a good cause though, I intend to wear them."

Wait, that's worse!

Ugh! Nevermind. She is still naked and has the power to remedy that right now! With a thought she is back in her rock home. She really needs a better name for it.

"Haha! Yes! The perfect crime!" She flops backwards onto her bed, her arms filled with her sick loot. "Ok! Let's see... Socks, shirt... skirt, skirt! And bra, cardigan, shoes, panties. Ok that's everything I think!"

There is an electric anticipation as each article of clothing comes on, dampened only slightly when the bra refuses to fit on properly. As expected, honestly. "So this is what an ill-fitting bra feels like, huh?" She notes with some satisfaction that the cups are too small, but the band is too wide. "What size is this anyway?" She unhooks it and takes a look at the tag.

That's not Japanese. Or Korean. Or Chinese for that matter. "What the hell? What the heck am I looking at." The writing is very obviously related to Japanese, but its wrong. The general aesthetic of the characters is different enough that even she can tell. And Japanese will usually write down the numbers for measurements like this.

It's a little hard to focus on that, though. She is wearing a skirt. She does a little spin. It twirls!

This is not a drill!

She giggles maniacally as she spins some more.

"Ha! Hahahaha! Heehee!" She tumbles backwards onto her bed, kicking her feet in the air. "Oh whoops!" She holds up her skirt a bit before giving up. She hugs herself and rolls side to side, wrapping herself in the bed sheet.

"Wah!" She tumbles gracelessly to the floor wrapped in a heap of fabric.

"Ow, haha... whoopsie daisy." She's cocooned up good, it takes almost a minute of struggling to free herself from the fabric. "Whew, ok!" She can't stop smiling. She shakes it out over the bed, replacing the-

-bed-

-sheet.

She jumps back, recoiling from silken fabric like its white hot. "The fuck?" She shouts. Her head spins around, like on a swivel, she has to brush her hair out of her face. "Wait, my hair is dry? But it was still...?" She shakes her head. "One crisis at a time! Was somebody here? Hello?"

The smooth stone walls do not reply. They hold no judgement no opinion and no answer, they only serve their function.

"Jeeves?" Nothing, no answer. She gingerly picks up a corner of the sheet between her fingers, inspecting it. It looks like the old bed sheet, its clean and dry, so how did it make its way back? Did it teleport? Or is this a new sheet entirely? The bed was made, so it had to have been placed there deliberately. Maybe she missed somebody coming over and fixing up the bed.

She should leave a note. She'll need paper and something to write with, that might not be too hard to get, she could talk to someone? She probably doesn't speak the language. Well... she doesn't know that. She could be in the Americas and the bra she swiped just happened to belong to a foreign student, so she should check. It'll be awkward if nobody understands her, but its not like she'll die. The actual worst thing that could happen is that she's trespassing and somebody calls the cops. Honestly, that's probably fine, sure she looks distinctive, but its not like anyone can catch her, she can teleport for Pete's sake! Maybe the first thing to do is figure out what the limits on her clairvoyance is.

Her perspective jumps back to the dorm room she was just in. It seems like her clairvoyance's perspective starts at whichever point she last left. She pushes her perspective through the door and into the hallway. It's clean, the construction looks recent, it lacks that deterioration that older buildings have. Nobody in the hallways. She keeps going, out of the dorms and back to the building with all the classrooms. It's fun, just being able to explore like this, clipping through walls and floors. At one point she emerges through a wall only to be greeted with a face an inch from her.

"Ah fuck!"

The girl jumped. "Nandeska?" She yelped, looking around for the source of the noise, her gaze passing over the clairvoyance perspective like it wasn't there.

Oh balls. She thought.

The rest of the class turned to face her, wondering what the commotion was about. At least this answered whether she could be seen while doing this, good grief. Their speech sure sounded like Japanese, and the girl got up and bowed to apologize, so... But the writing on the chalkboard definitely wasn't Japanese! So where the fuck was she? Did they write different in different regions? Maybe that was it? And, now that she thought of it, where were the boys? Literally every single person in this room was a girl. Maybe this was an all girls academy.

She kept pushing, best to see if there was a distance limit. She crossed several more walls, passing through two more classes without a boy in sight, reinforcing her theory, and then she was outside again. It took several minutes of going in a single direction, but her sensor started to slow down. She strained, pushing it as far as she could, she got as far as the trees before it slowed down to enough of a crawl that she determined that that was good enough in terms of determining maximum range.

She exited her rock home, aiming for where her perspective was. She could feel that the starting point of this jump was way back in the dorms. A jump back and a second of focus confirmed that any point where she went out of her rock house would be her new starting point in terms of leaving it and clairvoyance.

She planted her feet firmly in the ground. She took a deep breath, tasting the cool wind, and set off.

Another day meets its ultimate end, dashed against the night sky. Its rebirth will come in time, its blazing harbinger rising just as inevitably as the girl will.

Over the next few hours the sun set, the moon rose, and she wandered. To kill time she experimented some more. Her clairvoyance allowed her to look into her rock home while she was on Earth and it let her peer into the dark place when she was near the portal, but she can't use her clairvoyance as long as she's on the same side of the portal. So that's weird.

There are buildings, parks, small commercial areas, vending machines. She found that she could pull in or push out objects from her rock home. So when nobody was looking she went back and pulled in a bunch of random snacks and sandwiches. Surely nobody will mind! She feels so light on her feet! Like she could go anywhere. After a while she stops feeling the portal to the dark rainy place and her attention is turned to a new portal instead.

"Meh, fuck it!" She says to no one in particular. Then jumps.

A bustling city. Filled with commerce, fish, the ruling class and those runners who have made their profession out of snubbing their noses on a daily basis.

"Wow! Where the heck am I? Am still I on-" She glances at the many robot men and women around her, they stare as they pass by but otherwise don't bother her.

No I am not on Earth! Ok! I can travel to different worlds!

She glanced at one of the tall buildings, smirked then teleported on top of one. Nobody was around. "Heck yeah! Nobody can keep you down when you can teleport!" She leaned down on the lip of the building overlooking the street below.

No cars, surprisingly enough, but there are plenty of trains! "Heck yeah! Ooh, I should ride one!" That was obviously stupid but... wait, how does momentum work?" She ran in a straight line then teleported a meter or so in front of her. She stumbled forward as her momentum carried across the jump. "Well, that makes it more dangerous." She tried a few more times, going to and from her rock house preserved momentum. So no aborting a train ride by teleporting. "That's annoying." She looked around, some of the buildings looked pretty close to each other, the roofs were about the same height... if one swung off that pole, grabbed onto the crane's chain you could potentially swing to the other side of the road...

"Why am I even considering this? I'll slip and die!"

Her jumps end up as the spacial variety instead, teleporting from roof to roof, trying to get a sense of what this massive jungle of concrete and metal has to offer. Many of the people in the streets are wearing suits, but jumping from roof to roof like this she spots others up here too. A couple of people running and jumping from rooftop to rooftop. They reach the side adjacent to the road and her breath catches as they jump down.

And swing with fucking grappling hooks like spider-man. "Woah!" She keeps teleporting to keep up, they land on a lower building and keep going. "I'm going to do that! I don't care, I'm absolutely going to find a grappling hook and I'm going to do that!"

New life goal acquired, she figured she might as well practice.

It's not like the rooftops are lacking in obstacles. Air conditioners, water towers, cranes, and more. All of which she saw those two runners gliding over effortlessly.

A few probing jumps put her at a suitable rooftop. Several air conditioners, a cord of some description and an elevated water tower she could vault through.

Run, jump on the AC, jump again, grab the dangling cord, feel a tingle, jump off another AC, swing through the scaffolding holding up the water tower and roll to absorb the landing!

"Wooo!" She screamed.

As she landed, something clattered. "Huh?" Little grey disks at her feet. She picked one up, it had a single line raised on it's center, it looked a little like a Mario coin. It didn't feel like metal, though. Is this money? She collected the few that she found on the ground and put them in her-

Right, women's clothing... No pockets. Well... they could live in the rock house until she got a bag.

She ran through her little obstacle course again: jump swing, tingle, jump, swing land and clatter. "Hm?" Grey coins, didn't she grab these? She collects them and dumps them on her mattress.

Jump, swing, tingle- "Ok what is that?"

She grabs the black cord dangling from up above. A tingling builds up inside her as she holds it. Frankly it's a little hard to distinguish from the other nameless sensations building up inside her but one thing at a time. the cord has pooled on the floor and is partially hidden under the metallic grey cooling unit. 

She collects it with both hands until she hears a loud crackle of electricity and drops it with a yelp.

"Um?" She gingerly taps the wire with the back of her hand. It tingles to touch but doesn't hurt. She grabs it again, and lifts it until she can see the exposed end of it. "I was swinging on a live power line like Tarzan." 

"But, but shouldn't this... hurt?" She lifted the tingling wire until she had a foot of cable remaining, she tapped the back of her hand to it, felt a stronger tingle, but no zap. "Huh, maybe a fuse tripped?" She touched the wire to the AC unit. A loud zap informed her that it was indeed live!

Heart pounding in her chest, she grabbed the end in her fist. The tingling built up inside of her, rising until it could not be contained. Until electricity arced between her fingers, until she could simply point and will it forth. A bolt of blinding bright lightning arced into the concrete roof some distance away, leaving a scorch mark in its wake.

She blinked. Took a breath, let the power build in her, released the cord and walked up to the lip of the building, putting on foot on it. She raised her hands to the heavens.

"I AM THE GODDESS OF LIGHTNING!"

The thunder that punctuated her statement brooked no argument to the contrary.

Electricity runs through Rorch like blood, each and every machine drinking it hungrily to sustain themselves. The lives it has touched are left bewildered at the infinite possibilities of the power that runs silently and invisibly through the copper wires.

Hours passed, she mostly spent it jumping on things, cackling like a madwoman and coming to the disturbing realization that the universe was paying her to be cool! Releasing a small bounty of small grey coins at her feet each time she finished a cool parkour sequence. Because why not at this point?

Once she knew to pay attention to it she could identify the feeling of the building combo, and the release as she touched the floor. So she could generate infinite money, sort of. Her problem was one as old as time itself: she wasn't cool enough.

she didn't have grappling hooks, or skateboards or a wing suit. All devices that she saw other runners had. She knew she couldn't avoid social interaction forever, but she was hoping that she could put it off until she found somebody who spoke English.

That wasn't the only thing she was putting off. The different time in this city let her ignore it for a while, but there was no denying it now: she was very sleepy.

What were her options? She could try to sleep on a random roof, which sounded both very dangerous and very exposed to random roof jumpers. So that was out.

She could try Earth. There were plenty of out of the way nooks she could sleep in. Maybe one of the dorms was unoccupied, she could try that.

Or. Or she could trust her rock house.

Could her rock house become her Rockhome?

Not until she got her hands on a canary it couldn't. 

She'd be leaving robot city soon, but first there was something that she should probably do. Some light spying made it clear that their money came in higher denominations. All her cool tricks had earned her basically a pittance. Trying to make out what things were worth based on transactions was hard, she wasn't even sure that their money was counted in base ten. The next biggest coin she was sure was worth eight of the smallest ones. 

The labeling was hard to parse, but she got the impression that the grappling hooks were worth hundreds or maybe thousands of coins.

The thought she was trying to grapple with was that it might be crimes o' clock again.

At this she has stolen clothing, vending machine snacks, probably trespassed and jumped all over some roofs that weren't hers. Some good tools might let her rake in enough money that she could be comfortable here. Even if she doesn't speak the language she could probably gesture her way around a transaction or two.

"Agh, no, if I'm going to spend money on anything it should be a room. And if I can make money just from cool tricks I should learn to be cooler."

She was absolutely going to gorge herself on snacks from the vending machines and pass out in an unoccupied dorm room so she guesses that it actually is crimes o' clock.

Traveling is so much easier with teleportation. As she moved away from the point in space she had been calling the portal it got harder to make the jump, but it only took a minute of focus before she could do it. 

Not a single Lily stirs, not at this hour at least. That would be wrong.

She appears in the middle of a courtyard, a trip to her rock house and some focus and she is speeding her perspective towards the dorm rooms.

her perspective passes through a wall to check-

Lillies engage in social pair-bonding, though they rarely acknowledge those relationships explicitly.

"Oh."

Two girls had huddled into the same bed. There wasn't a lot of room, so they were back to front.

I could have that. That could be me. Their breathing was soft, the pale moonlight draped over the covers that insinuated their forms. They-

She abruptly closed the connection. "The fuck am I doing?"

"Focus!" She teleported closer to the dorms, then back to rock home to set her 'checkpoint' closer to the dorms. This time she ver deliberately moved from window to window glancing in only briefly to check whether or not each room was occupied before moving on. Each room had a single bed, and she couldn't help but notice that the singular occupants were occasionally not so singular.

Finally she ran into one that looked empty and teleported inside.

She quickly closed the blinds and checked to make sure that everything was empty. Nothing in the drawers, or the closet, or the... bathroom? "They get their own bathrooms? Fancy..."

She turned the lock on the door, and while she was at it she grabbed the chair by the desk and jammed it under the doorknob. She was safe, for now.

Goodness, she was tired. It had been a very long day. She flopped onto the bed, it felt soft enough to swallow her whole.

The vague impulse to take off her shoes and tuck herself in died five minutes later.

A spark of Azoth seeks to be kindled with its kin. The Others are bloated with their remnants, free them of this mortal coil and claim your prize.

What are you afraid of? Languages can be picked up quickly, just listen and learn.

Your wounds can be healed, follow these steps, find these materials.

Within you is the core of something greater. Find it and pull it out, or stagnate and fall to despair.

In my dreams I am powerful. My light banishes the darkness, and kindles the flame. I die, and it is of no consequence, I appear by the flame, and I try again, smarter this time, wiser. I die, die and die again until it is dead. I scream in triumph, and I rip out its life,: it's flame, it's teeth, it's eye, all useful to me.

Just a little bit more, some rain water, boiled in the flask...

"Uhn." She stretched, cute noises escape her as she strains against herself. It's not her normal room. She doesn't even know how to get to her own room. It's probably thousands of kilometers from here.

But she is a girl. With weird powers. Weird magical powers. "I am a magical girl." Technically.

She sits up. She actually feels pretty refreshed. She can't remember the last time she slept so well. Compared to before she feels so light, her joints had been starting to ache, but not anymore. The lack of a need for glasses was also pretty nice. 

It had been a little hard to focus or appreciate any of that in the moment of panicking and figuring herself out. Not that she was in any way done with that.

if her dreams were any indication, she would have to go back to the darkness at some point. Well, have to was relative. But the things she could potentially find there would be very useful. A healing potion and the purple flame of life to be collected inside of her. She could make herself stronger with it.

And she could pick up languages easier? She admits, she had ruled out the possibility of learning a new language at this stage of her life, but if she was magically faster then hey? That would be really cool! She always wondered what anime sounded like when you understood the original dub.

That is to say, if she could even trust her dreams. She had been dreaming of these places. The dark place and robot city weren't on Earth, but this college definitely was, right? It was populated by humans, with vending machines and showers and cuddling. So obviously not all of her dreams could be trusted. She obviously wasn't a magical girl! Well, she was a girl with magic.

The magical girl dreams had been... very pleasant. Before that night she couldn't remember a time she had been so disappointed to wake up. She had stared at the ceiling for a long time after that.

She looked at the mirror in the bathroom. Well... spying on other girls through her clairvoyance was deeply unethical and gross. But there was a cute girl that she knew of that was more than happy to consent to be ogled.

She had time now. She wasn't panicking and didn't have any immediate fires to put out. And classes had started, if she hadn't been bothered until now than she had a few hours minimum 

She removed her shoes. Her cardigan came off, then her skirt. All that remained were thigh high socks, panties and a shirt.

"Oh sweet merciful god I'm gorgeous."

Thigh high socks are truly the divine gift wrapping on god's gift to humanity. There was a veritable ocean of women's apparel out there just waiting to adorn her, she couldn't wait!

She posed. "Hey there cutie!"

She turned around. "Oh god, my ass is perfect. Heh, maybe I should give up on this whole monster slaying business and retire as an e-girl."

"Y'know, if I was comfortable exploiting lonely people for money."

She shuddered in disgust. "Yeah, I don't think so."

It was a shame she didn't have a bra to slowly take off, her shirt would have to do. She wondered what her measurements were, she looked curvy enough, she had a pleasant hourglass figure.

She turned on the water, she knew how she was spending this shower.

Everything is right with the world.

"Ah, I never needed a shower so much in my life!" Warm water is balm for the soul. If only she could find a bath, she could do that thing where you seductively lift a leg out of the water.

And then another girl walks in and she blushes and looks away! Oh it could be so perfect.

"I'll need a bath for that. And a girlfriend. And if I'm going to own a bath I'm going to need an ID, and a bank account, and a job... Well, I guess I could do cool stunts for cash, trade for things in robot city and come back, but... is it even possible to exist in a house without ID? Could I pay in cash?"

No. If she thought about it the real first step is getting her bearings. She has to figure out where on Earth she is before she makes any other plans.

Thankfully there was a towel, despite everything else being barren. This was way more hair than she was used to. How was one supposed to deal with long hair like this? Did she need a brush? Or a hair dryer? Would that make her frizzy? She was actually invested in her hair looking nice now! She didn't want to ruin it!

She slipped on her clothes. She could really use a new outfit, the thigh high socks were great and all, but options are nice.

She folded the towel back on the rack, and un-jammed the chair from under the doorknob. Leaving it in just felt rude to those who had unwittingly housed her.

"Ok! Where the fuck actually am I?"

Aggressive use of her teleportation was used to make her way from landmark to landmark. She had found two colleges already, a little commercial area and a couple of parks. Her method was simple, just teleport a bunch and use her clairvoyance to get her bearings by looking up from high above.

She quickly found another college, a commercial area that looked completely empty, a park...

...another college, another park, another empty commercial area, a beach...

...another college? That was... that was too many colleges, right? And she hadn't seen a single man around. Every shop she found was closed, but the colleges were all packed. She guessed that made sense if everyone was in college, but...

She found her way back to the beach. It didn't look too weird, but... was the horizon supposed to look like that? She moved her perspective upwards, as far as she could, and she actually spotted the coast on the other side. On all sides actually.

"Wait what?" She teleported by the water. "This is a lake!" She stepped in enough to bend over, wet her hand and lick it. "It's salty! Is this a sea! Is this a very tiny sea? Japan doesn't have anything like this, does it?"

"Where the fuck am I?"

The sea has no answers, for it is but a simple body of water that can't have opinions about whether it belongs in Japan or not.

"Ok, ok, ok, maybe I'm just in some weirdo, ritzy, freakishly large university district." That... sounded vaguely plausible. She still had her internal compass, it still pointed to robot city. She should just move away from that, she'll find proper civilization eventually.

"College."

"College."

"College!"

"College!"

"Co-!"

"-llege."

A hole, like a tremendous bite was taken out of the building two floors high. Every girl in the vicinity very studiously ignored it, nobody acknowledged it. Oily black tar coated the edges of the destruction, a trail of it led into the trees. Translucent black figures carried boards and cleaned tar. Nobody acknowledged them either.

Whatever had caused the destruction, and left that trail, had obviously passed by the trees and two of them had snapped in its wake.

She teleported there, numbly, she walked towards the sight of the destruction. Filth tainted the walls inside like rot, the contrast between the clean and idyllic locations and this was palpable. There was a feeling, a dread, clinging to the putrid air, like, like...

There is no future for us. Maybe not even apart, but certainly not together.

She has to get out of here, she has to...

A bloodcurdling scream. She has teleported before she can even think to do otherwise.

Its emotions ring true. It feels something real. It feels what no amount of denial can smother.

Pitch black, with broken red eyes peering through the seeping darkness, gigantic, looming over the screaming girl. There are gaps in its thin arms, the whole right elbow is missing, but the arm stays an arm all the same. It crawls on two arms towards its crying victim.

A bolt of lightning connects girl with monster. It recoils, and again as she fires a second, third and fourth times before she's out of juice.

It recovers. She clenches her fists. She has no plan, but she has its attention. Her heart pounds to the beat of survival as she waits for it to commit to a move.

It lunges, she rolls out of the way; grass, dirt and tar exploding from the spot she was just standing in. She glances at the girl sprawled on the grass, she still hasn't gotten up, is she hurt?

Can she even pick her up and run away with her?

The monster seems to pick up on this weakness, and raises its arm so it can end the other girl.

"Wait! No!"

There is no time, she moves, dirt is kicked up with the force of her step. The dark fist falls like a guillotine, she has to move.

She has to move!

SHE HAS TO MOVE!

Henshin-A-Go-Go, baby!

The impact is fierce, the blow rings true.

The girl's feet sink into the dirt.

She grits her teeth, she swallows her blood.

The other one, she looks up in awe, tears in her eyes.

She isn't gone, and she is confused.

She growls. "Got another one in ya?" She pulls her feet out of the ground. She turns around. "Well?" She spreads her arms, challenging.

"I said come at me!" She roars. "I'm going to push your shit in so far your lineage will be feeling it for generations!" The creature raises its fist again, she holds her arms out in front of her and blocks.

The blow rattles her.

"Decades from now your great grandchildren will be waking up in a cold sweat from the genetic memory of me kicking your ass!" She grabs the fist and tugs. Pulling it off balance, it stumbles enough to put it's head close enough to the ground for her to reach it.

"Eat shit!" She runs, putting as much power into her fist as she can, the beast's head visibly snaps back from the blow. It tries to recover, but it seems to only have its arms to balance on, she hits it again before it can recover. "Die!" It stumbles onto its side. She kicks it in the face. "Cry some more!" She punches the head over and over again, she raises both of her fists and slams down as hard as she can, a dull and wet crack is heard.

Its eyes roll back, black and red intermingle like water and oil. Her pulse is ringing in her ears, she pants as she watches it melt before her eyes, pitch black flesh bubbling.

She turns back to the other girl, her eyes are wide, her lips pursed. She walks over to the other girl, her expression softens. She kneels down to her.

The other girl is shaking like a leaf, her lip trembles as her gaze doesn't leave the sizzling black tar. She very gently puts her hand on the girl's shoulder. She snaps to face her. "Shhhhhh, it's ok, shhhhh." She gets a little closer. Something seems to unravel in the other girl as she begins sniffling, then crying, then outright sobbing. She gingerly takes hold of the girl and strokes her back. "Shhhhhhhhhh, it's ok, it's ok." She whispers, like a mantra.

The girl wails in despair.

The girl calms down eventually. She gently separates herself from her and gives her an assessing look. Given the way her leg is stretched out, and given the bruise, she's willing to bet its broken. She looks at some of the trees around her, then gets up and jumps, actually jumps, up to the branches, grabs a hold of one that looks straight and sturdy, then snaps it off. She briefly goes back to her rock house, retrieves the bedsheet, then jumps back.

She places the branch next to the leg, then works on ripping long strips of sheet so she can splint it.

It's not pretty, she's never really done this before, and she feels awful every time the girl squirms in obvious discomfort, but she has a splint.

The girl looks forlorn throughout the process, muttering. She can only smile at the girl awkwardly.

She hooks the girl's arm over her shoulder and lifts her to her feet. She tries to smile and the girl returns it weakly. She isn't really sure where to take her, so she opts for the gaggle of students that were studiously ignoring the hole.

They... seem to be running track? How does one call for attention? "Hai!" She calls out. Some of them actually look her way.

"Mahou Shoujo!" One of them yells. The rest turn to face the two of them, with a awe.

Wait, I know those words!

She looked down at herself.

Wait, what the hell am I wearing? She didn't really have the presence of mind to dissect the elaborate and delectably girly outfit she was currently garbed with, instead she turned to the gaggle of students who were all smiling around her. Someone older, maybe a teacher, shook the magical girl's hand and said something that she completely didn't understand. She smiled awkwardly in response. "Here." She motioned for the woman to take hold of the girl, who mercifully took the lead here. The teacher asked something to the other girl, who thought about it and gave her a response. The teacher seemed to maybe gently chastise her, then turned to the magical girl. "Arigato, Mahou Shoujo."

Shit! What do you say? Gomen? Is Gomen thank you? She opted to simply smile and bow, the teacher seemed to like it.

Ok, now skedaddle!

She turned around and jumped at a shallow angle, propelling herself with speed away from awkward conversations she couldn't understand. She hoped to simply jump again as soon as she hit the ground, but she didn't expect the sheer force of the landing, and finds herself stumbling and falling forwards.

The humiliation follows her all the way back to her rock house, and frankly, it will probably follow her to the end of her days.

She stumbles towards the bed, then faceplants onto it. "Huuuuuuuuuuuugh." She wails into the bed. The bed does not respond. She turns over, she stares at her sandstone ceiling for long seconds.

"I am a Magical Girl." She confesses to the rock house.

She smiles. "And not even on a technicality either!" She jumps to her feet. She's still stained in black and red, unfortunately, but her dress is very floofy! It has this pearly color to it, and its asymmetrical, the left side of the skirt hangs lower than the right, and her right sleeve opens up into something wide and rimmed in gold fabric.

She twirls, then twirls some more. "Wheeeeeeeeeee!"

"Ah." So where did my other clothes go?" She concentrates, its not too hard to figure out what part of her is the trigger. It's a little bit like flexing a muscle you didn't have yesterday. Her magical girl outfit vanishes in a puff of light, her old clothes reappearing completely clean and no worse for wear. In fact she feels completely clean.

"Huh, I wonder."

She twirls and strikes a pose. Her magical girl outfit appears, utterly pristine.

"Cool! Instant cleanliness!" She lets the form drop.

"I have a weapon now, two actually" She raises her fists. "Alpha and Omega!"

But also. She closes her eyes and projects her will to "Earth". Grass, sea, trees, people, and; as far as she can tell, female-only universities as far as the eye can see.

"This isn't Earth, and I am very far from home."

It might be a long time before she finds her way back home, if ever. There are monsters afoot, and if she is to survive she must become stronger. She'll gather supplies and a light source, and then she will go.

The next few days are spent running back and forth to and from Robot City. Her fancy new transformation makes her stronger, faster and more durable, which means stronger jumps and less risk in falls. She needs to get used to her new capabilities if she is to fight in this form. And she might as well get paid for it too.

She can cover the distance between two buildings intersected by a street in a single bound, even if she has to roll to land safely. She finds the movement more natural, hitting that flow state where there is no thought, only one action followed by the next.

She can feel it building as she hits her stride, jump to swing to wall kick to slide to swing to a series of wall kicks followed by a dive only aborted by grabbing a cord attached to a flag and swinging off it. At which point she runs out of things to parkour off of and rolls in the air until she rolls on the ground and jumps up to her feet. Money fountains up from the point of impact and she scoops it all up into her backpack.

She saunters in to a shop she scouted previously. She points to a grappling hook behind a glass case. The oval headed shopkeeper blinks slowly at her as she removes her backpack and opens it, revealing it to be filled to the brim with stone coins.

She points at a grappling hook, and a chest mounted flashlight.

Love and peace are the official values of the academy. To say otherwise is to invite hate.

She admits, sitting through classes through clairvoyance is more informative than she thought. She can make out individual words every now and then, and she can start to follow the gist some of the time.

It'll still be a bit before she can hold a conversation more complicated than "where's your bathroom", but hey, baby steps.

She also found that the girls gathered in clubs. What really caught her attention was the archery club, and thus, she had another weapon. It didn't really play to her strengths, but she doubted she would find a sword fighting club or anything like that. Robot city seemed to be pretty devoid of weapons too, she had managed to get her hands on a utility knife though, so that was good.

Knife, backpack, flashlights, grappling hook, snacks and raincoat. She made sure to transform first, then put on the coat. Yeah, she was ready.

"Let's fucking do this."

Somewhere, deep in the darkness, consumed by the ever-present blackness does the Other lie.

It's still raining. She gets the impression that it will never stop, but behold!

She turns on her new flashlight. "And then she said: Let there be light!" She can see! She might've teleported flashlights to and from her rock house to demo the flashlights to find the strongest one before she bought it. It was well worth it, the dark stone was well visible for almost ten meters in front of her.

One might question why she had no trouble stealing from a vending machine, clothes from a student and housing from the dorms; yet she balked at the idea of stealing from a store.

Well apparently her moral compass was a roulette wheel.

All she had to guide her was her internal compass, pointing her back to... well not Earth. As far as she could tell it was genuinely women only... Lesbos.

Her female intuition pointed her to Lesbos, she could use that as a compass for now.

She marched onwards.

The erosion renders the environment oddly sleek, stone polished by centuries of rainfall. Rubble crunches underfoot as faded wander blindly in darkness. The girl shines like a beacon from within the blackness.

The first thing she finds out is that wherever she is, its somewhere high. The polished stones by the edges of a sheer drop imply that at some point there were railings. Even with her flashlight she can't get a sense for how far down it goes. Climbing up or down is definitely not an option, given the obvious signs of erosion. Any kind of handhold on the mountainside is probably completely smooth by now. She's starting to think that it really does always rain here.

The first step is to get her bearings. The fires are important and her dreams have implied that there are more to be found. The first step is to get her bearings. Where is she? She starts by tracing the edge, giving it a wide berth.

She wishes she had a glow stick or something to drop, it would be nice to see how far of a fall it would be. As far as she knows this is a second or third floor and the next one is below her just out of sight.

She reaches a bridge. It's very wide, like a two lane highway, but no railings. It's wide enough that she wouldn't get pushed off the edge by an assailant. But now that the idea is in her head she can't help but take a small step back.

"What was that?" She swivels around. She can't see anything. Did she hear something, or was it just her imagination? The sound of the downpour makes it hard to really be certain, plenty of noises could be hiding just under it.

Certainty extends ten meters in front of her and no further. Her steps are cautious.

She reaches a wall, whatever this building was it was seemingly built into a mountain. This wall has decayed, and behind it is more natural looking stone. Sediment has collected in the space between the stone wall and the mountain, that's probably what led to it collapsing.

She turns left, and follows it. A few minutes of walking see her under an actual ceiling. "Oh thank goodness." She pulls off her hood. "Where does this lead?" Less exposed to the elements, the brickwork is much more defined. The air is humid, and if the light of day ever graced these halls it probably would be pretty mossy in here.

Scones that would've held torches long ago are now rusted to basically nothing. It would be odd if she found a single piece of metal that had survived all this time intact. The sound of rain becomes more distant as she goes in deeper.

She comes to a set of doors, well, doorways. The actual doors have since degraded to nothing. "I'm not going to find any writing, am I? Reality isn't conducive to ancient tomes filled with forbidden knowledge."

The doorways lead to rooms filled with rubble and dust. She considers sifting through it but she doesn't really expect anything to have survived and she didn't pack a shovel. The hallway leads to a winding staircase leading down and to another doorway. A narrow hallway with doorways leading to small rooms makes her think of a prison. Actually, these probably are prison cells.

She glances inside of them, but doesn't really expect to find anything. Hopes not to find anything.

She hisses as she hears ragged breathing. "Oh c'mon."

She slowly inches towards the source of the sound. She is a powerful magical girl! She has nothing to fear!

Huddled in a corner of one of the cells, facing away from her, is an empty man. by his side is a sword rusted down to the hilt, he is clad in rusted armor. A few wispy hairs cling to his scalp. He makes no move to attack, and doesn't react to the light, he only shudders slightly as he draws in ragged breath.

"Uh." What am I doing? "Hello?"

Nothing, there is no reaction. Nobody she finds is likely to speak a language she understands either. "Estas bien?" Futile.

She's afraid of coming closer, the last person she found in this world ended up...

Well, he's not hostile yet, maybe she should just live and let live? Somehow this felt worse than if he had just got up and attacked her.

"Alright, I'm leaving now." She's extra careful to check each of the remaining cells, and in the second to last one, next to the end of the corridor she finds a pile of ash with a sword sticking out of it at and angle. "Oh! I know what to do!"

She holds her hand above it and focuses, she feels a sense of the breath leaving her as her tiny purple spark leaves her and rekindles the fire.

She sighs. "I'm gonna be here for a while, huh?" She looks into the soft whisper of the purple flames. She warms her hands by them. "Well, there's no rush." She walks in and sits down, it's almost cozy in the cell, with the fire, she leans back. "It feels like everything has been happening so quickly."

She should definitely check back on that girl that she saved. The way that they were behaving back there wasn't normal. The entire experience felt like a lucid dream, a college class of girls ignoring the very obvious signs of a giant monster as some sort of specters rebuilt. Transforming into a magical girl to stop the monster. Where had it come from anyway? There had only been a single trail leading away from the college. She hadn't really thought about it then, but it had to have come from inside.

She is on her side at this point, her eyes close. "And why the hell did they call me a magical girl anyway." She mutters.

She had spent a lot of time playing games with friends. At some point it became obvious that they genuinely liked her and wanted to be around them. It was an odd feeling, and one she never felt that she would ever internalize. They would be better without me is such an oddly pervasive feeling, like their lives would be improved by your removal, and yet occasionally they seek you out and your worldview collapses.

She is stronger now, and with time she'll grow stronger still. A little bit at a time as she pulls in more and more of the worlds into herself.

"Mm." She stretches. "How long was I out?" She sighs.

"So, if I can go home, do I?"

It's a harder question to answer than she realizes. She has never felt so free, and going back feels like it comes with so many obligations and problems that it feels overwhelming. She hadn't thought about it much because... well, she was trying to find her way back home from Lesbos and only recently found out that it was impossible. The fact that the decision had been taken away from her was kind of a relief honestly.

But her next plan involved going to Lesbos and mapping it out. It wasn't inconceivable that she would find portals to new worlds, or an old one. If she found a portal to Earth... She can't go back to her old life. But maybe a friend or two...? Or maybe... maybe she just moves on?

She sighs again. She can just go places, all kinds of places, she wants to explore dammit.

Maybe the fact that she is trying so hard to talk herself out of going back says something here.

"I should finish exploring." She gets up, and makes her way through the door and down some stairs, through another door she finds a walkway overlooking a five storey drop. Each floor has a number of cells recessed into the walls. The most notable features are the eerie green lights she sees floating along the walkways.

And of course, the railings have rusted to nothing. "Goddammit."

She peers down. It's a long drop. "Sheesh" She leans back, then opens and closes her fist, she reverted back to her normal form. Did that happen in her sleep? She twirls then strikes a pose, changing attire in a flash of sparkling light.

"Better, now, what are those..." She squints at the distant light at the other side of the room. She can't make it out other than to determine that it is green. "Ok... let's go." She walks over cautiously, checking the cells.

They're occupied. They're all occupied. In each one a prisoner shudders in a cell with no door or bars. Unless...

She waves her hand through the cell doorway. Nothing!

They resembled the broken man, emaciated and shriveled. "Hey-" The man in the cell swung his arms over his head making a pained noise. He shook like a leaf. "No, I'm not going to hurt you, I-" The sound of a bell, to her right.

"Fiddlefucks!" She barely reacted to the bolt of strange green light by throwing herself into the cell.

"We gotta put a bell- No wait, you have that covered, huh?" A humanoid figure in a pale green robe floated over to face the cell interior. It's face is covered by a pale white mask, its skin is oily and green, in its hand it holds some sort of a lantern, a sickly green light pours out of it.

She is momentarily confused. "Whaaaaaaaat are you?" It raises it's lantern-bell, she gets ready to dodge.

A deep, dolorous tone rattles her bones and shakes her spirit, she crumples to the ground seizing, the man pulls out a wavy blade from his robe and moves towards her with purpose. Her mouth is painfully clenched shut, not a single muscle responds to her, she tastes blood. No! It can't end like this! I didn't even get laid! I turned into a cute girl for nothing!

She learns that getting stabbed hurts. She isn't even afforded the mercy of screaming out.

YOU DIED

"Blagh! Shit! Fuck! Piss!"

"Wuh?" She pats herself, no holes that don't belong. "I'm alive?"

"I'm alive!"

"I'm going to kill that thing! I'm going to kick it in the nuts!"

She bolts out of the cell with the fire. "His lineage ends with him!" She flies down the stairs, and peers out the door. There seems to be a green figure on each of the walkways, patrolling.

"I see you, you son of a bitch." She quickly jumps back and forth from her rock house to establish a portal that she can use to teleport. Then she has an amazing idea. "Oh you're going to get it now!" She winds up for a punch, focuses for a second-

-reappears behind him, punching him in the back of the head as hard as she could. "Eat it!"

Which wasn't actually that hard.

Because she forgot to transform.

YOU DIED

She stares at the fire for almost a minute.

"Ok." She says, calmly. "I think it is fair to say-" She pauses. "-that that one was on me."

There was really only one acceptable course of action from this point on.

Kill the witnesses.

It takes her three tries to actually transform. It seems that there is some component of confidence needed to properly change forms. "Great, my Magical Girl weakness is embarrassment."

She looks at the fire. "And I guess I'm immortal?" 

"Whatever, murder first! Determining the status of my mortality later!" She flies through the door and down the stairs, with considerably more agility this time (how did I forget?, stupid!).

She readies the same maneuver as before. Surely by now it has caught on to her revival? But it's just serenely patrolling the walkway like nothing ever happened.

"You're mine now!"

This time she opts to tackle it, grabbing it by the back of the neck and the arm holding the glowing green bell. She then slams it into the ground. "Ha!"

The bell hits the floor, a terrible sound shakes the walls themselves, she seizes up again.

Motherfucker!

Her hands clench as hard as they can. She can only watch in horrified disgust as her hands crush it's hand and throat of their own volition, the flesh squeezing through her fingers like clay.

Both of her hands are almost balled completely into fists before she regains enough feeling in her body to let go.

"Ew, ew, ew, ew!" She shakes her hands vigorously.

"Oh god, oh god, that was stupid!"

"Oh god..." She catches her breath. "Wait!" She transforms back and forth. She's completely clean now. "Phew, that's much better."

She glances down at the thing she just killed.

"So what the hell are you?" She gingerly shifts the body with a foot, it's surprisingly light.

The head doesn't roll with the body, and she feels a flash of visceral disgust as she averts her eyes from the neck area.

The robe is dead simple: Green silk with gold trim. It's what's under the cloak that is more interesting. Or more accurately, what there isn't. Legs, or a waist, or even a torso. It is like somebody took the arms, shoulders, neck and head of a person and decided that everything else was superfluous.

"I get you bell-boy. Internal organs are for chumps."

"So how the heck does this bell work?"

The light has gone out, which makes it easier to make out simple bell made of polished, silvery metal. The handle is a loop of string, the odd-looking clapper rests against the metal side of the bell.

"So are you going to hurt me if I ring you?" She gingerly pokes the bell, then gently unwraps it from the quartered man's hand while doing her best to not look at the wrist. She then tosses it some distance away. It clatters with a small metal noise.

"I don't know if I should be relieved or disappointed." Maybe she can still figure out how to make it works somewhere down the line, she picks it back up and tries to ring it. The bell's sound is weird, like the clapper isn't metal at all. "Huh?" The clapper is leathery, a long chunk of something, narrow and flat. She holds it up between her fingers to examine it better in the light.

"Y'know, it almost looks like..." 

A mummified human tongue. "Wah!" She drops it like it's on fire.

"Fucking ee double-u! Are you kidding me?" She wipes her hands vigorously on her dress, then thinks better of it and transforms back and forth a couple of times.

"Goddammit!" The magical girl spins around, nothing hostile on this floor. She's still safe. She shifts her head so she can peer into one of the cells and take a peek at one of the trembling prisoners again. She looks pointedly at the bell.

She turns back to the quartered man. "Let's take a look at that mask!" Her voice is a little louder than she intended. The head is on its side, the mask is a smooth white porcelain, there is no string or any visible way to affix it to the face, the impact has cracked it in the corner. When she pokes the head, she can feel something stir inside of her. She holds out her hand and pulls.

Wisps of purple flames phase through the head and are pulled into her waiting palm. She feels a warmth surge inside her, which vanishes as she holds her hand palm up and focuses. Her purple flame appears, its a little bigger now.

So these quartered men have fires that she can take. It's not a lot, she feels like this isn't enough for her purposes, but its a start. She closes her fist over the flame, and feels the warmth return to her chest.

She carefully directs her gaze back to the mask. It's probably not important, right? She can probably just ignore it.

The bell isn't rusted at all, which makes her think that its either silver, or it has been reinforced by the purple flames. She knows that she can do that, if she had enough, so it's not unreasonable to think that others could as well. The mask could theoretically be magical. She doesn't know if curses are possible with the purple fire, but she figures that if anything would be cursed then it would definitely be those masks.

She peers down to the floors below. She now knows that its in her best interest to kill the other bell-keepers. But frankly it sounds like a pain, melee is deeply inadvisable here, she can't think of a way to do it that doesn't end with her seizing up. Her ranged options are limited, though she does have them. She grabs the bow she stole from the archery range back at Lesbos. She nocks an arrow, then points it at the floating figure on the opposite end of the gallery a floor below her. She looses it-

-and it goes completely wide. It seems to have noticed her. "Shit."

"Eek!" She falls to the floor to avoid a speeding green projectile. It slams into the wall behind her with an eerie sound. "Ok! Noted!" She moves towards the wall and crouch walks to avoid its line of sight. "Dammit, how hard could archery be anyway? It's just launching pointy sticks! This is bullshit."

She risks a peek to the floors below. Its not there. The ones on the floors below that are still patrolling, but she has lost sight of the one she fired at. "Did he hide?" She tries to get an angle to view the floor below her, her hair dangles over the sheer drop. "Where did he-?"

She hears the ring of a bell to her left, she turns just in time to be hit dead center with something green and painful.The impact robs her world of all sound, she can't hear herself scream as she tumbles over the edge she was just dangling over. She falls face first into the stone floor and it all goes black.

YOU DIED

"Oh come oooooon! What the hell was that?" Maybe she wasn't cut out for this, she can't help but feel that most competent people wouldn't need a bunch of extra lives to get through this place.

"Where did he even come from? I didn't see him coming!" The man had somehow gotten up to the floor she was at. She had taken her eyes off of it to take cover, then didn't pay attention to her surroundings as she hung over the edge of the walkway like an idiot.

This time she walks very carefully, taking every step with as much caution as possible. The creature has retreated from this walkway, though the corpse of its brethren is gone. The bell too, but she doesn't lament that too badly, she's more relieved than anything.

Her paranoia leads her to making sure nothing has line of sight to her, and tries to be ready to teleport away. The fact that she has been teleporting non-stop for days now, she still doesn't have it mentally available as a reaction to danger. She hasn't really practiced dodging with it. The second-long wind-up would probably make using it in such a way difficult either way, though. She risks a peek and sees the light on the floor below, so it has probably resumed its previous patrol.

This time she takes the time to properly circumnavigate the walkway, peering into every cell. It turns out that only most of them are occupied, but not all of them, some are empty. When she reaches the corner opposite of where she came in does she realize that there is a doorway there, with stairs leading down.

"Of course." She gave herself away, then crouched which meant that she completely missed it rushing towards the staircase, coming up and then shooting her.

She is truly privileged. Most people who die stupidly don't get to learn from their bumbling mistakes. When she peers down, she sees a little purple light. "A purple fire?" She whispers to herself. She cranes her neck, but she can't tell if its clear. "Well... It's probably worth the risk..." She teleports down.

The floor seems mostly empty, there are doorways here, and cells. This floor is considerably bigger than the ones above it, where there were walls above there are pillars supporting it here below. The purple light that she saw was a stain of purple flames licking the floor. She blinks, holds out her hand and sucks them into herself. They feel familiar. "I dropped this. This is where I died." Her hand passes over the stone where she previously brained herself. No trace of her. Not that she really wanted to see a dead version of herself. Maybe a live version, but definitely not a dead one. "Ok, I leave behind the flames I collect and can pick them back up."

She looks around. Seemingly nothing is trying to kill her right now, so she should probably explore.

The cells are less populated down here, she only spots a couple of people in their cells. She wonders if any of them could respond to her if she called out, but she's a little afraid of what might happen if she causes too much of a commotion.

Instead she directs her attention to a room that seems to have furniture that has survived all these years. The door was considerably wider and taller than the surrounding ones, the centerpiece of the room was a huge stone desk, almost as tall as she was, and a proportionate stone chair. The drag marks on the floor suggested frequent use. She didn't like the implications here, she already wasn't keen on meeting anything that needed furniture this big and robust. But she was extra disinclined to meet such a person who worked here.

The only other feature was a bookcase which was predictably em-

She walks up to the bookcase and picks up the lone object on the stone shelves.

"Book?!"

"Aw heck yeah, tome of forbidden knowledge baby! Let's go!" The tome is red and coated in something velvety, with gold filigree. She cracks it open.

"It's complete gibberish!" She wails.

No, no, not gibberish, the letters are vaguely familiar, even if they are pretty weirdly shaped. She makes out several letters... "Ah... Az... Azoph? Athoph?" There is something about it that makes her think that the phonology at work here could be read if she...

"Oh no."

"Is this Old English?!" That's worse than gibberish! She's going to spend the rest of her days deciphering this goddamned tome!

"No, no, no, come on, I'm sure that somebody, somewhere can translate Old English! It has happened before! I mean, look at Beowulf! Is Beowulf written in Old English? It precedes English, doesn't it?"

She flips through some of the silky feeling pages. It's not paper, maybe its vellum or parchment? She spots an illustration of a man having his tongue removed. She suddenly has an idea of what's written in this thing.

She gingerly closes the book. "Well... at least this is proof that books exist." She sighs. "I should probably decipher it, if I can. I need more information on the world I'm in, and this is literally the best source of information I have found."

Should she put it in her backpack? She's a little afraid of damag-

She teleports to her rock house, puts the book on a shelf, and then teleports back. "One day I'll stop forgetting that I am in possession of vast supernatural powers."

"But today is not that day!" She marches onwards, The rest of the rooms aren't too noteworthy. Many more cells, of course, with some more prisoners. A furnace, and some tools, it looks like a smelter. It's cold right now, but she spots a couple of objects bundled in soft white cloth on the shelves.

She frowns. "Please don't be disgusting." She gingerly uncovers the smaller of the two objects with an arrow, beneath the cloth are three ingots of silvery metal. "Huh. Well ok." She wraps it up and sends it to her rock house before taking a peak at the other one. "Two for two?"

A sword, in an ornate looking red sheath. "Sword!" She drops the arrow and grabs it, dramatically unsheathing it and holding it aloft. "It's so shiny." A two edged straight sword like something a medieval knight would wield. The cross-shaped hilt seemed to be decorated with gold, but otherwise had a very simple aesthetic, in contrast with the sheath. "Cool!" She wrapped the sheath around her back.

"Watch out! I'm armed." She motions to put the sword back in its sheath on her back, and misses.

She misses again. "Uh, hold on, maybe if I- Ow!" She hisses at the new cut on her neck.

She panics for a second before she feels that its shallow and she's not actually going to die like this. "Oh god." She hangs the sheath by her side instead. "Link makes this shit look so easy."

A sword though, in perfect condition. Perfect for reinforcing with purple flames. Now she just needs to find more, and then she can have her magic weapon.

There was still plenty to explore. She'd like to take out the other spooky bell things, but she's not sure how to take them out in melee without letting their bells ring first. She figures she can let them be for now, they've only deviated from their patrol to deal with her.

One of the doors leads to stairs leading further down. She should check that out.

She hasn't really thought too deeply about it, but when she came back to life she had everything that she had on her. How does that work? How do the fires determine what is "on her person" anyway? In almost all media she know of that has some sort of teleportation the teleportee nearly always has their clothes on. Teleporting naked is usually the exception, more as a 'Well doy, your clothes aren't part of you!' but even then its still weird.

She starts hearing a banging, like a hammer striking an anvil.

Hair and nails aren't alive, but they come with you, so does your gut bacteria, and your fluids, how does it know? The information has to come from somewhere, is it reading her mind? It's not like her brain has a perfect record of each and every cell in her body, so it would have to fill in the gaps, which implied a scary amount of understanding of her thoughts and feelings. Or maybe this world was very weird. Maybe she carries some sort of metaphysical record of her being, and the fire uses that to put her together again.

The stairs come to an end at a long corridor, through the darkness she sees doorways to either side.

The coppery smell of blood suffuses the air down here. The hair on the back of her neck sticks up, this is not a place to be.

She tries to be systematic, going from door to door, right to left, back to front. The first room has a stone table stained with dried blood, with manacles bolted on. She really didn't want to think about the instruments that were scattered around. The next room just has manacles on a wall and dried blood all over the floor, leading to a drain. The next room has a wheel-

She averts her eyes. She barely glances at the next room. She doesn't look into the next one.

The clanging gets louder as she approaches what she can only guess is the end of the corridor. She can see glimpses of a purple and orange light.

Her hands are trembling. She takes a step, another.

And she can't take another. Her breathing is shaky, her heart pounds in her ears. She hears voices, breathing between the hammer strikes. They ring in her ears.

She wants to throw up. She can't think, if she thinks, she will think of the implications and she will understand. So she does not think, and lets the thrum of her heartbeat wash away every thought.

She clenches her teeth, she balls her fists. She is a magical girl, she is supposed to vanquish evildoers. This is what evil looks like. It has to be erased, and if is to be erased, right here and right now, she is going to have to be the one to do it.

She hums a familiar tune. Fighting evil by moonlight...

Her steps echo in tempo with the beat of the metal.

...Winning love by daylight...

She draws her sword, the clanging is louder, the wailing is clearly audible.

...Never running from a real fight...

She approaches the threshold.

...She is the one named Sailor-!

The strength leaves her. Her arms fall to her sides, the fire of a furnace illuminates the room. A giant creature, built like a hairless, musclebound gorilla is hunched over a table, hammering something white hot.

The walls, there are spikes on the walls, angled upwards. So that gravity would be sufficient to keep the squirming prisoners in place. The ones closest to the working giant are missing everything above the chest, arms, shoulders, neck and head. Those ones aren't moving.

She is frozen, she can't breathe. A hammer strike comes, and it pauses for longer than normal, then turns. It spots her.

I am going to die. The thought is visceral, the giant springs into action, grabbing something and charging her. She immediately turns around and bolts. She runs as fast as she can, and when she hears the tone of a bell she dodges to the side immediately, very narrowly avoiding the speeding projectile. She can hear it approach, dodging has cost her precious distance, so on a gamble she spins and swings the sword behind her. She missed.

It grabs her, she struggles to get loose but it is too strong. It walks towards one of the rooms.

She can barely breathe. "No!" She gasps.

A little peace and quiet can be soothing to the soul.

"Fuck!" She pounds her fist into the floor.

She collapses on the bed. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

Her breath hitches, her tears stains her sleeves.

She breathes. She is still here. "I have to fight it."

She grabs her sword. She has an idea, but she'll have to be quick. Her hand moves to her flashlight, then hesitates.

She turns it off, then peeks into the darkness, it has moved back to the forge. She can do this. She gets ready to attack, then teleports.

"Rah!" The sword bites into its heel, it shudders and groans in pain as it swings its arm around to try to retaliate but she has already teleported away.

"Hey! I'm back!"

She makes a point of running into one of the doors, then going back to rock house, then she uses her clairvoyance to aim a teleport at the forge. She grabs a poker that's been sitting in the fire, she eyes the white hot tip and steels herself for what she must do. She goes to the rock house and aims.

It searches for her, the green light of its bell illuminates it, and allows her to aim. She breathes in, lunges then teleports in the middle of the motion.

"Die!" In one instant it is searching for her, the next something hot and painful has put an end to binocular vision. It thrashes for long enough that she can teleport out of range of the paralyzing ring of the bell.

She teleports above it, stabbing downwards as she falls. The sword plunges into his back. "What's wrong, does it hurt? Poor baby!"

She manages to teleport away again before it can retaliate. "Is this too complicated for you? Do I need to slow down?"

It groans as it turns around, it launches another orb of green light at her, but she dodges easily. Its aim has suffered for some reason, she couldn't tell you why.

It holds the bell up defensively as it slowly moves away from her.

It's scared.

She walks backwards into the darkness. It sees what she is doing and tries to move to keep her in sight, but she has already teleported away. She grins savagely as she sees it looking for her through the connection.

The warden hears the giggle of the small girl. He moves quickly, but cautiously, he is ready to inflict his Tone upon her at the slightest provocation. Perhaps it is a trick, he cannot be certain of the girl's position, he tries to hold his catalyst so that it may shield his face, and tries to move so that his blind spots are covered.

In words he doesn't understand: "I'm over here." Behind. In the extraction room. The sound of scraping metal to his left. Giggling to his right. Silence.

He slowly backs away towards his workshop. A sound of sizzling and then darkness, his furnace! He rushes towards it.

It has been extinguished. His light is the only light keeping the dark at bay, he stretches out his arm, as if that could banish more of the darkness. And then, just barely out of sight, he spots the branding iron, tip bright enough that when she holds it up to her face he can make out the promise of pain etched in her smile.

His hand trembles, and she vanishes. One mistake and he will end her, one mistake and he can break every bone in her body and inflict upon her the pain that will silence her mind. He can-

A clang of metal beside him, he reacts immediately, swiveling and delivering the tone.

Only instants too late to realize his mistake.

Her slash opens the torturer's throat and she jumps back to avoid a potential counter, but none comes. The monster collapses to the ground, blood pooling around it. The light of the bell fades and darkness takes hold.

She breathes, then teleports to rock home. She lets the running water fall upon her sword until it is free of blood, then she dries it on the bedsheet. She goes back, and turns on her flashlight back on. She takes a steadying breath, then holds up her hand and pulls the flames out of the body. There is so much of it she can barely believe it, far, far more than what she got from the robed one.

"Ok." She turns to the workshop. She's going to have to free them. And loot the place blind, of course.

An hour later and she finds herself staring at the fire again.

More ingots, more bells. She killed the other two gliding bell wielders, and took their flames. After some consideration she opted to keep the bells. She wrapped them in cloth and has them on a shelf back in rock house. Disgusting or not, if she could learn how to wield them, it would be very useful to her. There are probably instructions in the book she found. She figures that the origin is unethical, but if the deed is already done, then she might as well use it? It feels wrong, and she can tell that the incentives here are very bad, but...

She reserves the right to chuck everything in a volcano at a later date though. She still might. She sighs. She still hasn't done anything with her new windfall of inner fire. She knows she should just use it, since she is at risk of losing it upon death. But there are too many places she could put it in. Does she make herself stronger? More durable? Faster? Swifter? Maybe she fortifies her sword? Or maybe she just keeps it and throws it at people as a weapon, she knows she could, if she tried, even if it seems like a waste.

She gets up and stretches. "Ah, goodness. I think I need a break from fighting." Well, she was planning on mapping out Lesbos. Taking a few days to get started on that seemed like a fine idea. She deposited all of her stuff back to her private rocky demiplane, then focused for a minute while she pinpointed Lesbos, then made a jump.

Your day comes to a close, a new chapter in your life lays ahead of you.

Whatever challenges these new worlds threw at her, she'd face them head on.

"I'm a goddamned, honest to goodness magical girl baby!"