Author: Hardguy Title: mahou (Work in Progress) Summary: The following story is a work in progress and is presented as is. It may be unformatted, contain misspellings, poor grammar, half constructed thoughts, and continuity errors. Story title may be misleading, as the plot may change during the writing process from the initial inspiration. If anything, it is presented in an effort to gauge reader interest. Keywords: g, anime, fantasy She threw a series of punches at her foe, and just narrowly ducked away from the sharp blade that was aimed at her neck. An upper cut? No. Sweep the legs, take it down and attempt to finish it there. With the grace of a dancer, she did just that, and then leaped backwards and pointed her Bureau issued disintegration wand at the 7-foot tall hairy insectoid monster she'd just knocked on its ass. She cocked her head so that the small window of her headset was centered on the beast. Its energy levels were low and there were high levels of bleeding among its internal organs...or whatever that purple fluid was that seeped from one of its severed limbs, which was already beginning to regenerate. It was now or never. Lucy Kessler, or Mystic Knight Lu-Ke as she was properly called at the moment, closed her eyes, pictured her foe in her mind's eye and silently mouthed the incantation. She felt the burning in her abdomen as her power built up and she steeled herself for what came next. She had vanquished countless foes before this one in her brief career as a Mystic Knight of the Earth Defense Bureau, but the release of her energy never failed to make her blush bright red, especially when she fought in public. She shuddered as what felt like a little ball of heat dropped from her belly and exited her body to be soaked up by her outfit as a paper towel would soak up a drop of water. Had she not been wearing what the other girls at the Bureau jokingly called their 'lightning panties,' a bright golden light would have shot out from under her little skirt where the golden circuitry of her tight fitting body suit radiated from. Instead, all that a witness to this event would have seen was light racing up the exposed portion of the suit at her waist, only to disappear under her jacket and then reemerge at her wrists where it would then fan out to the golden tips of each of her fingers before being drawn into the wand that began to glow with a bright blue light. This took less than a second, and when Lu-Ke felt the last of it slip from her body, her eyes opened and she screamed. "LIFE BURST FORTH!" It wasn't really necessary to cry out the name of the spell as it erupted from the crystalline structure at the tip of her wand, but it helped her to focus on the task before her and to block out all distractions, including the pleasurable sensation that the spells she wielded often produced. Her disciplined mind and concentration did not fail her and the bolt of energy engulfed the grotesque form that lay on the pavement before her. So intense was her stare in the task at hand that she almost did not see the flash of sunlight upon the metal blade that shot out of her enemy's melting form at her midsection. She was forced to break off her attack to avoid being impaled by this final strike, but she held her form a split second too long and suffered a deep gash in her side, inches above her hip. Lu-Ke cried out in pain as she tumbled to the ground, clutching at her sliced open side. This was no time for licking wounds though, as her job was not yet done. Even when she had clenched them shut in pain, her eyes remained fixed on her target to ensure that it was destroyed and no longer a threat to the Earth. She heard it laugh, a sort of ragged rasping cackle that seemed to linger even after the last wisp of blue light had faded away and the battle was won. It was only then that she was able to relax and could turn her attention towards herself. The wound was as though a semicircle of flesh, roughly the size of a tennis ball, had been torn from her side. It was not a mortal wound, and in truth not the worst she had ever taken, but she knew that if it had struck its target, even if she had survived it, it would have meant the end for her as a Mystic Knight. "Are you alright?!" asked a bystander who rushed to her side and helped her to her feet. "Yes, thank you," she responded through gritted teeth. She gave the man a smile, as she had been trained to do, but the shrill screaming of a woman behind her, caused that smile to fade from Lu- Ke's lips. Her waist burned in agony and bled like she was being torn in two as she turned to see what had happened. Her jaw dropped, and she felt so numb that not even the gash in her side hurt anymore when she saw the body being cradled by the shrieking woman. "N-no..." she sputtered in disbelief, tears washing over her cheeks. That blade had been meant for her, and though it had bit into her side, it had continued on until it found the head of a man who had taken cover behind a park bench. She shrugged her way free from the man who had helped her to her feet, but a single step from the leg on her wounded side was like being stabbed all over again and Mystic Knight Lu-Ke, trained Life Mage of the Earth Defense Bureau fell to her knees and blacked out to the sound of grief ringing in her ears and somebody yelling, "The little knight girl fell down, call an ambulance!" Lucy was only 11-years old. *** She came to suspended in a pod of regenerative gel at the Bureau's medical center. She sighed, annoyed at herself for collapsing like that in front of civilians. She was a Mystic Knight, a prestigious role in this new age of humanity where the Earth seemed to be under frequent attack by external forces, and with that role came an image that she was charged to uphold. Fainting was to Lucy, not at all acceptable. Closing her eyes, she saw once again her failure and heard the woman's cries echoing from the memory. There was no point in dwelling in the past, and so she opened her eyes and looked around the recovery room for something that was more important to her now. To her left she saw it displayed on a monitor, a system by system account of her injuries. There had been minor digestive system damage done, but her eyes didn't even pause to peruse the details. She heaved a sigh of relief when she found the entry for her reproductive system. Green. No damage. Her career could continue. She closed her eyes again and counted her blessings that she had dodged that blade. It surely would have pierced her womb, and though it would not have killed her had it done so, her days as a Mystic Knight would have been over. She remembered the day she had been implanted. She had been fearful but proud as she was strapped onto the table along side her fellow recruits and received her Gift. Her stomach had been full of butterflies of excitement and fear as she watched the girls before her receive theirs. Nearly all of them had giggled at the application of lubricant to their privates, most yelped in pain upon penetration by the wand, and every one of them screamed in agony when that same wand forced its way past their cervix and implanted the Gift into their still premature uterus. Lucy had tried her best not to cry out, and nearly succeeded, but she too was reduced to tears from the experience. Throughout it all, her mother had stood by her head, stroking her cheeks, wiping away her tears and sweat, and telling her how proud she was that Lucy had made the choice to enter the service. That had been 5 years ago when Lucy was only 6. Most girls were given their Gift as soon as possible, to prepare and train them for when their bodies would start to mature and their mystic powers would be strong enough to be deployed in the field. Also it was to weed out the girls who's bodies would reject the Gift. There was a marked difference between girls who were Gifted young and those who were Gifted in their teens and later. Some believed it had to do with the body maturing around the Gift being in place. Others felt that it was because the younger girls were trained and prepared to use their powers better. The fact was, nobody really knew, and for all the medical science that had developed around and resulted from the Gift, so much of it remained a mystery. What was known was that when the Earth had faced the Crisis, four girls from different parts of the world had come together to save it with their powers. They had had no wands to hold and aim with, no skin tight body suits to draw out the energy from their wombs, and no tissue regeneration technology to heal them if they were hurt. They each assumed names taken from flowers: Red Rose, Blue Iris, Yellow Sunflower, and Green Ivy. Together they succeeded in repelling the Crisis, but gave their lives to do so. Blue Iris had been the last to fall, having dealt the final blow, but lingered long enough to ask that her body and the bodies of her Sisters, as the Mystic Knights now addressed each other, be studied in the hopes that should the Crisis occur again, there might be some measure of defense available to the world. A jewel was recovered from within the wombs of 3 of the girls, and it was from them that the Gift came. Red Rose, however, did not have a jewel within her body. No matter where they looked, her body was simply that of a young girl, naturally gifted with power. She was the first Natural. Rumors soon spread across the globe, as dozens of young girls would report having seen Red Rose come to them in dreams, visions, or even as an apparition. What they described was always the same. Red Rose, her hands resting upon her abdomen, much as an expecting mother would place her hands upon her belly. Once she lifted her hands and held them out to the girl, a light would be upon the open palm, as thought it were being offered to them. If awake, the girl would typically faint or pass out, and if she were sleeping, then she would remain asleep, not waking for several days. Regardless of their age, they would enter puberty almost immediately, experiencing menarche on the spot. These girls too would become known as Naturals, all of them just as skilled as those who had saved the Earth without need for training or instruction. Lucy was not a Natural, she was augmented like so many other little girls who showed promise following tests that so many of them underwent. It wasn't shameful to be augmented of course, but it certainly didn't carry the prestige of being a Natural. Those girls could do amazing things without the use of assisted tools. They could heal each other, shoot bolts of mystic energy from their finger tips, and even control the minds of their enemy, though even for a Natural that came at a drastic, near fatal burst of power. Only Yellow Sunflower had been able to do it with little cost to herself, and of course she had her Sisters there to back her up through it all...and it was made even stronger when she did that... A rosy blush came to Lucy's cheeks when she thought about the power boost that all Mystic Knights could receive, but only the Naturals could do more than once. It had been Blue Iris, the most science minded of the Sisters, who first raised the question: since the source of their power seemed to come from within their reproductive system, then what would happen if they had sex? Yellow Sunflower found the answer. Though she was the youngest of the group, and also the most reckless, she endured the pain that any 10- year old girl would feel having intercourse at that age. When she joined her Sisters in combat, she hadn't taken the time to dress or clean herself, a mix of blood and semen staining her thighs and privates, but she was able to single handedly defeat their foes that day. Of the 4, only Red Rose abstained from boosting her powers through sex, and many believed that was why she had been the first to fall in that final battle. It had been speculated that was also why she did not have a jewel within her womb, but all the Naturals who followed, and used sex to their boost their powers, never developed jewels within them. The first augmented Mystic Knights also attempted to boost their powers, but every one of them died, as the Gift within them reacted violently to the semen. It was good for a sort of suicide attack though. A Mystic Knight named Mother's Breast was the first to survive such an event, though she lost much of her lower body to the intense heat that grew inside of her. She explained that though it had been the best feeling she'd ever had, far better than the usual orgasm that typically occurred, it was also the most painful and it felt as though her own soul was being ripped from her body. The action soon became forbidden to all but the Naturals to perform, but once medical science had developed organ replacement technology it was permitted among the Mystic Knights as a last resort only. Lucy's own mother had been driven to that desperation once, and spent a month within a pod of regeneration gel as her lower body was rebuilt, and then it took nearly 2 years before she could walk again without assistance. Lucy had been terrified when she had first learned that she was a candidate for Mystic Knighthood, but it was the stories her mother would tell her about how she had saved lives and defended the Earth that calmed Lucy's fears. She remembered asking her mother why she was no longer a Mystic Knight, and with a sad smile her mother replied, "because I did what I needed to do." It had been during the last great alien incursion that Lucy's mother, a veteran Mystic Knight, 17-years old, nearly lost her life in protecting the inhabitants of a small town. The massive landing pod blocked out the sun as she and her fellow Mystic Knights who were dispatched to stop the latest in a series of invasion attempts. Their commander, a 14-year old Natural, had already been seriously wounded attempting to employ their usual tactic of arrayed spell blasts aimed at the core. This time however, the attack was repelled and shot right back at the unlucky girl. Reporting to headquarters did not result in any alternative strategy, as this one had always just worked easily and simply. Lucy's mother was not the first to volunteer, but she watched as 3 other Knights offered themselves to the men of the town, but individually could not succeed in their final strike. In the end it took 6 girls, ranging in age from 12 to 18, to combine their powered up assaults to vaporize the invaders. Three did not survive. The advances in medical technology were truly amazing. Almost any body organ could be repaired or regenerated if it was damaged, but it was never as robust or stable as the original one was. Mystic Knights seemed to be an exception to that though, as their magical abilities enhanced the degree to which they could be repaired. Only injuries that caused death could not be healed. Lucy closed her eyes and swore silently as she thought about that bystander. She could have taken the hit more directly and spared him. What was her ovary compared to that man's life? It was her duty to protect him, and she had failed. Another inch and he could have lived. Her hipbone could have deflected it. She wouldn't have walked for a month, but he would have lived. Tears came to her eyes and she let them stream down her cheeks. Failure always frustrated her, because she pushed herself so hard and had achieved so much. Not every Mystic Knight got to go on solo deployments like this had been, but Lucy had proven herself through numerous encounters in her junior squad and then again when she been partnered with an older girl. She was top of her class and in was ranked in the top 10 every year since she had entered active service. Now though, she felt like that had all been a dream. The door of the recovery room opened and in walked an adult woman in a lab coat and a young girl dressed in a cadet's uniform under a lab coat similar to the woman's. The doctor and her trainee assistant, no doubt, thought Lucy. She noted the girl, who was likely no older than 7, had a round stomach as though she was pregnant. She wasn't of course, but it was a side effect of the Gift implantation that typically lasted a few months before returning to normal. The doctor looked up at Lucy and smiled, while the cadet snapped to attention as she had been taught when in the presence of a Mystic Knight. "You've awoken. How are you feeling?" the doctor asked pleasantly with no ceremony. "I feel fine," Lucy said without hesitation. She wanted to wipe away those telltale tear streaks from her face but could not since her arms were submerged in the regenerative gel, which was currently in a hardened state to prevent movement while it worked its magic. It wasn't so much the doctor she wanted to hide her tears from, but the young cadet, who despite her rigid pose at the moment, was looking curiously at Lucy's face. "What's your name, cadet?" Lucy asked, sounding as authoritative as she could. "Sunshine Daisy, ma'am," the little girl responded crisply. A flower name. Lucy stifled a smirk. Cadets were not required to assume code names, but they often did so anyways, and generally most of them took names that emulated those of the first Mystic Knights' color-flower combinations. Once they entered service though, they often changed to a different name. Lucy had not done so herself, and had used Lu-Ke from the very start. "I don't know how much you remember," the doctor said, "but you took a wound to your waist, just a few inches above your hip bone. The majority of the damage was done to your large intestine, specifically the descending colon. Recovery time will take a few days, and until then you'll be put on a liquid diet so as not to put too much stress on your digestive tract while it heals up. Do you have any questions for me?" Lucy couldn't think of any, though she wanted to hear it from the doctor directly, not just read it off a screen. "My reproductive system is fine then? How soon before I can return to active duty?" Lucy was all business, and had only one thing in mind. The doctor cocked an eyebrow at the question, turned to look at the monitor that Lucy had already read the answer to her question off of, and gave it only the briefest of glances. "There was no direct damage to your ovary, but other local tissues will require a few days-" "A few days then. Thank you doctor," Lucy abruptly cut her off. The woman narrowed her eyes for a moment in annoyance, and then her expression snapped back to the same pleasant smile it had been when she came in. "Sunshine, could you step outside for a moment? I'd like to speak with the Mystic Knight alone." The little girl nodded and waddled her magically pregnant body out of the room. The doctor walked up to Lucy, who was stoically looking straight ahead at the medical monitors, her face trying to conceal the turmoil of her failures in the battle earlier. "It's ok," the doctor said, reaching out to wipe the tears from Lucy's cheeks. "She's outside, you can let it out now." Her touch was gentle and kind, and as hard as Lucy fought, she broke down and wept openly, ashamed to be doing so. "I failed him. I won the battle, but I lost a life I had sworn to defend," she said through the tears, her shoulders now slumping. "You're not the first Mystic Knight to experience civilian casualties during a battle," the doctor said. "Even Red Ro-" "I know already! Her entire village was wiped out, her own parents crushed before her own eyes! I know the histories, you don't need to-" "You know I need to," the doctor answered calmly. "What you can do, what all Mystic Knights can do, is nothing short of miraculous, but you can't go thinking you are infallible. You are only 11-years old, by so many standards still a little girl despite your power. You aren't perfect, no matter how badly you want to be." "I could have saved him though," Lucy protested. "If I hadn't have moved my hip, it would have hit the bone and...and..." Her sobbing over took her, and she could not say any more. "And he would be alive, and you would have lost every major organ in your body that had been pierced by bone fragments from your hip, your uterus included most likely," the doctor stated. "You would recover physically in just under a week, but your life would never be the same again. It happened to me. It will happen to little Sunshine Daisy out there, and it will happen to you some day, be it from a wound taken in battle, a personal choice to return to civilian life, or from the natural maturation process. You can't stay a Mystic Knight forever, Lu-Ke." The doctor inspected a readout on the side of the regeneration pod and pressed a button causing it to tilt and recline. "You need to rest now," she told Lucy. "I'm going to induce a mild hibernative state so that you don't move too much. You'll awaken on your own, likely in a few hours, and somebody will come by to check on you. If all goes well, you'll be out of here tomorrow and you can begin your home recuperation for the next few days. Is there anything I can do for you?" The words 'Call my mom' made it as far as Lucy's lips, but she did not speak them and only gave a curt shake of her head. Moments later the world faded out, and she was asleep. *** Pain. A dull aching pain. Where was it coming from? Lower, down there, on her...her? Yes, that's right, she was a girl, and her name was...was...Lucy! Yes, she was Lucy, and she hurt. She was warm too...warm and dry. Fabric...dry fabric, not clammy gel that had been all over her in the pod. It was so dark...why? Her eyes, she needed to open them, but they felt so heavy. "Lucy?" A voice. She knew that voice, knew it very well. "Lucy, honey? Can you hear me?" Mother? Yes, that's who it was. Her mother. "Lucy, sweetheart, I'm right here with you." Movement, a touch, a sensation on her body...not where the ache was, no...it was higher, up on her face. Warm. It was so warm on her cheek. Warm on her cheek and warm on her back and warm on her feet and dry everywhere. Dry and soft and yielding to her body, not molded to her hips and legs and waist and chest like the gel became. A bed. She was laying in a bed. Where was she? She needed to open her eyes and see. "I'll be right back, baby. I need to tell the doctor you're with us again." Gone. The warmth on her cheek was gone. Her mother's touch was gone and there was only the ache in her hip. That's right, she had been hurt in battle, and had been put in a gel pod to recover. Then why...? "Lucy? Honey, the doctor is coming. Can you hear me, sweetheart?" Yes, mom. I hear you. Can you hear me? Wha-what is that noise? A groan? A moan? Was that...was that her? Mom? Yes, it was her own voice, or her attempts at using it. Eyes are so heavy, but they need to open... No! No...too...too bright. It was too bright to open her eyes. "It's ok, honey, it's ok, don't force yourself. Just take your time." "Muuuhhh...muuuhhh..." "That's right, honey, it's mom. I'm with you." "Ms. Kessler?" "Oh! Doctor, she's waking up. She can't talk yet though, and she can't open her eyes either." A doctor... Was she sick? Did she not recover in the gel? Why wasn't she in gel now? Why a bed? "Muuuhhh..." "Lucy? Can you hear me? You're in the recovery ward. You've been asleep for 4 days. Do you understand what I am saying?" F-four days?! Wha-What had happened to her? Open those damned eyes! "Muuuhhh...whuuuhhh..." Bright light flooded in from small slits, and she had to squeeze them shut once more, but could flutter them open more and more. Washed out shades and blurry objects gradually resolved into color and faces. Her mother's face. A doctor's face. "Whaaa...mooom...wheeereee...where...why..." Her mother could only respond by clutching her hands and crying happily. "Good morning, sweetheart. Good morning." "Lucy Kessler," said the doctor, the same one she had seen in the regeneration room, her smile still neutrally sweet, but somehow more serious now. "How do you feel?" "Wha...what happened?" She tried to sit up, but every muscle ached, and her hip hurt. "Sleeping? I was...sleeping?" "That's right. You were asleep for 4 days," the doctor repeated. "Do you remember anything? Have any dreams? Did you dream of anybody?" "N-no...no dreams...why..." "Lucy, honey, you," her mother's voice caught, "you had...you had a period, sweetheart." "I...I can't mom...I can't..." She couldn't understand what her mother meant. She'd been implanted with the Gift, and that meant she couldn't menstruate as her reproductive system was put into a sort of suspended animation by the mystic forces at work. She couldn't have a period, she just couldn't unless... "N- no...no...that...it can't...I...I can't..." She looked from her mother, who could only cry to the doctor who could only smile. "D- doctor, it's...it's still there, right? It's still inside me, isn't it?" "I'm very sorry, Miss Kessler, but your body rejected and expelled the Gift that had been implanted inside your uterus. Menarche followed soon after and your reproductive system resumed natural function for an adolescent female." She slid a hand into the pocket of her lab coat and produced a small translucent box from it and placed it on the table beside the bed. From within glistened a small diamond like jewel. Lucy could only stare at it in stunned disbelief. The doctor then cleared her throat and straightened her back and turned to address Lucy. "Lucy Kessler, code name, Lu-Ke, Mystic Knight 3rd Class, Type Red, of the Earth Defense Bureau, it is my duty as a senior medical official of the Blue Iris Research and Medical Center to inform you that due to injuries sustained in the line of duty I am hereby honorably discharging you from service in the name of all mankind. On the behalf of the citizens of the planet Earth, I thank you for the sacrifices of your youth and wish you a long and healthy life." It sounded so cold, so rehearsed. Lucy herself had heard it a half-dozen times before while visiting others in the recovery ward or while she herself was in recovery, but never had her own name been a part of it. She tore her eyes from the inert jewel on the counter to look at the doctor. Her kind smile was gone, and she was herself fighting to keep her emotions in check. It was only when she turned to leave that Lucy saw Sunshine Daisy outside the door, clutching her notebook to her faux-pregnant belly and crying. She felt her mom squeeze her hand tighter, but Lucy just turned her head to the side and stared at the one thing that had defined half of her young life. She did not cry. *** The medical report detailed what had happened, and it was just as full of questions as Lucy had been after being told. As she remembered, she had been put into mild hibernation to assist in the healing process of her injured hip. It was only supposed to cause her to sleep for the next 12-18 hours, at which point she would awaken naturally and then be discharged to her home where she would rest for 3 more days before returning to duty. When she had been asleep for 21 hours, an attempt was made to awaken her, but she remained asleep. It was thought that she was experiencing a gel coma, a condition where the regeneration gel would cause a person to sleep an abnormally long time. Lucy had experienced a gel coma before, and slept for 57 hours while undergoing reconstruction of her right hand and forearm. As per procedure, she was moved from the gel pod to a recovery room with the expectation that she would wake with in a day. Less than an hour after she had been removed from the gel, a nurse responded to an alarm indicating a major bleeding event detected by sensors in the bed. Upon pulling back the sheets, it became obvious why. A scan of her uterus showed no sign of the Gift within it. A pelvic examination found the Gift gem in the vaginal vault, lying just outside her cervix. Hormone tests were performed that indicated that a menstrual cycle had begun. A passive mystic aura test, similar to the one initially performed on all Mystic Knight candidates when they are young, was performed on her body, and no reaction was observed. Lucy was now simply a normal 11-year old girl. Spontaneous rejection of the gift wasn't unheard of, but it was rare, particularly at Lucy's age. Generally a quarter of Mystic Knight candidates would reject the Gift within a year of implanting, but of the girls who retained their Gift, less than one percent would reject until their late teens, at which point the rejection rate went up exponentially. The oldest Mystic Knight to retain her Gift had reached age 31, but paid for it with a great reduction in her life span, passing away less than a decade following. That was a side effect seen only in those who kept the Gift for over 20 years. Every girl who lost their Gift around age 20, the most common age of rejection, lived an average lifespan. Only once before had rejection of the Gift resulted in the awakening of a Natural, and that girl, Summer Calm, had been the greatest Natural of her generation. That was over 60 years ago though, and had coincided with the start of the Third Great War, exactly when a warrior with her strength was needed most. She was able to lend strength to over 100 Mystic Knights and keep them alive through repeated sex enhanced strikes. She herself, at only 9-years old, body weakened through exhaustive use of her powers, fueled by almost 36 straight hours of intercourse with over 20 men, dealt the final blow to the invaders, wiping out over 2/3rds of their fleet of spaceships. Her body was never found. Summer Calm joined the small list of Mystic Knights who's deeds and abilities wrote the pages of history, and the birth of the next Great Natural was awaited, and feared, by all. There was no direct evidence for it, but the strongest girls in the 200 year history of the Mystic Knights had a habit of appearing just when they were needed most. There was never a way to predict who or when it might happen, or by what method. Some girls would just pass out and awake days later. Few would already be implanted, and then reject their Gift as they became Naturals. Once in a great while a girl would simply be born a Natural. Emotional or physical distress had also been known to trigger it. One girl even had her powers show themselves while she was being raped, causing the demise of her attacker almost immediately. ***This marks the end of current progress on mahou, as of 25 February 2014.*** Current word count: 5,491 Current page count (in MS Word): 11