Maidens of Fate (Complete!)

[Sophie ♥]

New episodes are released on Tuesdays at 8pm Eastern Time!

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I know a lot of people are stuck at home without much to look forward to, so I wanted to try something a bit different.  I've been working on this anime-themed story for about a month, and recently decided to release it week by week, as if you were watching it on TV!  That's fun, right?  Not annoying? (Honestly I need about a week to write new chapters and edit them. >_<) 

I think this could be a lot of community fun.  Fan speculation, "next time on"s, stuff like that.  It isn't really an ABDL story as much as it has Little themes?  Though there is light diaper content.  It's much more a mysterious magical girl story.  So if that's your jam, you should definitely follow along.  

Unlike other stories, this one will not be released early on Patreon.  I want to try to keep all the community engagement stuff in one spot.  But when it's over, our Patreon will have the complete PDF and ePub.  I'll also be starting a new story on there very soon if you want to check us out!

Thank you for reading and playing along!

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Special thanks to the following patrons for the extra support: Lil' Erica, Cam, Lizzy, BeelzeDerBock, Lizzie, Phil, Ruka Puddlegum, Selpharia, Scotia3079, Jasmine Starshine, Princess Sarah, Herezulo, Sorka, Keira, and Guilyn. (Honestly, we can't thank you enough!)

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Maidens of Fate
By Sophie (with Pudding's help)

 

Episode 1: A Dark Decade and a Dazzling Day

“We’ve been over this, Midori.” The doll’s lips didn’t move, but the voice came so clearly from her face.  It was old, wearing a tattered blue dress with one missing shoe.  It was the same doll Midori had loved all her life. “You know what happens to people who claim they have an imaginary friend.”

“I never said I would tell anyone,” Midori muttered softly, holding her doll Nari tight against her chest.  Taking a doll to school may have been inconspicuous in middle school, but high school was another story.  If someone caught her, Midori would be the talk of the town.  She didn’t want the attention.

“I feel like people would be more accepting if they knew you weren’t make-believe,” Midori told Nari as she pushed her into her backpack.  Most days, that was where she stayed.  Then there were days like today, where Nari nagged and pestered until Midori took her out.

“It’s important not to stand out,” Nari said quickly, in a voice that was both playfully befitting of a child’s doll, and yet inscrutably stern. “You’ve seen all those things on the news lately, about the girls in America and England?  What would your mom think if you got hurt, or you disappeared?”

Midori sighed and nodded her head.  She had already been born with powdery white hair - the universe set on targeting her.  If she wanted to stay safe, she needed to stay out of the way.  Nari was always right about things like this.

“Okay, you win,” Midori whispered. “Now please be quiet.” She clamped the bag closed.  Nari started to sing inside the bag - something she had taken to doing recently.  She wasn’t that bad, but it sometimes caused Midori trouble during tests.  She wasn’t doing so well in school.

“Hi Midori!” Pandora ran into Midori in the hall and held out a little brochure. “The Music Club is looking for new members.  Maybe you could come by today and see if it’s something you might like?”

“You asked me to join the Literary Club last week,” Midori reminded her. “And the week before that, the Bakery Club.  Why would I join one of these if you’re going to keep switching out of them?” Not that the two of them were even that close.  Pandora moved to Japan from Europe in elementary school.  She was exuberant, with bright blue hair, but Midori and Pandora never seemed to click.  Their friendship always felt like a little too much work for Midori.

“It’s just not good for your academic transcript to have no extra-curricular activities, Midori.” Pandora frowned a little, lowering the brochure.

“Tell her that you’re busy,” Nari called out from Midori’s backpack.  But Pandora - like everyone other than Midori - couldn’t hear her. “You can’t waste your time on things like that.”

“I…” Midori listened to the muffled voice in her bag, but Pandora had a good point.  She already wasn’t doing well in school… 

“I’ll think about it,” Midori finally answered, taking the brochure. “I don’t know anything about music though.”

“Oh, that’s quite alright!” Pandora smiled, her spirits lifted at the possibility that she wouldn’t be refused. “You don’t need to know anything; we can teach you all about it!  Maybe even how to play?”

“You could get hurt,” Nari sighed. “What if a tuba falls on you?”

“R-right… yeah, um.  I’ll look into it.  Thank you.” Of course, Midori knew Nari was right: she couldn’t go frivolously joining clubs.  But the idea of doing something after school other than going straight home was so… interesting.

After classes that day, Midori walked along the edge of the school boundaries with Nari in her hands.  She played softly with Nari’s old dress while listening to her latest lecture.

“I don’t trust that girl, Midori.  She keeps offering you different things to try and join.  Don’t you think that’s suspicious?  It sounds suspicious to me, like she’s trying to entice you to do something bad.”

“But people do things like that all the time,” Midori pouted. “Part of high school is clubs and stuff, you know?  And I feel… I feel like I’m missing out.  Isn’t it a good thing to get some stuff on my transcripts?  I’m already failing two of my classes…”

“You’re doing bad in school because you keep getting distracted!” Nari continued. “You have to focus, Midori.  You want to go listen to them talk about music instead of going home to study.  What sounds like it’s going to be more helpful?”

Midori sighed and looked back at the school.  She should spend her time at home studying.  It just never seemed to help…

“You’re right,” she sighed and held her doll tight against her chest.

“Midori!” 

The voice wasn’t Nari’s.  Midori looked up in confusion to see a small blonde girl hurrying toward her from the school.  Quickly, Midori stuffed the doll in her school bag and buckled it closed.

“Midori,” she said again as she got closer.  The girl didn’t look like she was old enough to be out of elementary school, let alone middle school, and her personality didn’t help the misconceptions about her age.  She came to a halt in front of Midori and waved her hand in the air.

“I’m sorry,” Midori said quietly, “you are…?”

“Kachiko,” she said, taking a moment to catch her breath. “Kachiko Kazumi.  Panda said you were going to come to the music club today!  Did you forget?”

“I… uh.  I was going to go home and study, actually.  To… to try to do better on my exams this year.”

“But Panda said!”

“R-right…” Midori felt like she was at a loss. “Well Miss Kaz—”

“Call me Kachiko, please.”

“Uh… Kachiko.  I’m just not sure…” Midori bit her lip nervously and Kachiko took her hand.

“We saved you a seat and everything.  A trumpet too, if you want to try playing.”

“Tell her no, Midori.” The voice was succinct and stern, emanating from Midori’s schoolbag. “She’s a distraction, and she’s going to get you hurt.”

“Right,” Midori said more to herself than anyone. “I’m sorry, Kachiko, but—”

“Please, please, please!  Just one minute!  Panda will be so happy that you made it.  She thought you didn’t want to come, but I told her you must have just forgotten is all.”

The small pink-haired girl had such radiance in her eyes.  So much energy.  So much life.  Midori couldn’t figure out how she was so… so strong.  Maybe curiosity got the better of her.

“Just a minute, then.” Midori forced a smile and let Kachiko drag her back toward the school and into the main building.  A heavy sigh came from her backpack.  Nari was right about Midori’s schoolwork, but it didn’t quell the ounce of excitement in Midori’s heart.  She had never been to a club before!

The music hall was on the third floor, on the far side of the building.  By the time the girls arrived, most of the school was already cleared out with the exception of the current clubs.  Kachiko was practically effervescent as she led Midori by the hand, but they stopped just outside the door to the music room.

“I probably can’t stay long,” Midori preempted.

“You can stay as long as you want,” Kachiko smiled. “But your doll has to stay out here.”

It seemed like such an odd thing to say - harmless or pedantic - but the voice only Midori could hear didn’t seem to see the whimsy.

“Midori, we have to go!  Right now!  She’s trying to hurt you!”

“Doll?” Midori forced a laugh. “What doll?”

“The one you keep in your school bag,” Kachiko said happily. “Everyone knows you bring it with you.”

Midori’s cheeks burned pink and she bit her bottom lip. “I… well, I can explain that…”

“It has to stay out here,” Kachiko said with uncharacteristic certainty.

“Midori!  Leave!”

“I… I have to go home,” Midori muttered, holding her bag tight to her chest.

“I know you don’t understand, but it’s going to be okay.  Just trust me.” Kachiko put her hand out for the bag and Midori looked terrified.  Why did she want Nari?

“It’s okay,” Kachiko said again, taking a step closer to Midori.  With careful movements and surprising speed, she unlatched Midori’s school bag and pulled the doll out from its hiding place.

“Don’t let her take me!” Nari screamed. “This was so stupid!  You know better!”

Midori felt guilt strike like lightning through her spine.  She snatched at Nari, but Kachiko pulled her out of reach at inhuman speed

“Give her back!” Midori shouted, tears filling her eyes.

“One minute inside,” Kachiko said confidently. “You can have her back after just one minute, okay?”

“That’s… that’s not fair…” Midori shook her head in confusion.  Was Kachiko bribing her with Nari?

“I”ll stay out here and take care of it,” Kachiko said, holding Nari to her chest the way Midori often would. “See, safe and sound.”

“She’s going to take me away from you, Midori!  She’s going to hurt me, I can feel it!  Then she’s going to hurt you!  I can’t believe how stupid you were… why did you listen to her?  Why do you hate me?”

Midori felt sicker and sicker, looking down with tears in her eyes.  She didn’t understand.  Why was Kachiko trying to hurt her imaginary friend?  She felt like she was going to throw up…

“I…”

“Head inside,” Kachiko told her. “You’ll get her back after.”

Midori bit hard on her bottom lip and tried to think.  Nari was a doll.  Even if they were friends, no one else knew about her.  No one could hear her.  There was only one thing to do: Midori had to go inside.  For Nari.

The door clicked behind Midori and Pandora stepped out from the corner of the room.

“You’re in a lot of danger, Midori,” she said. There were a number of other girls in the room, and all of them seemed to watch Midori with worry. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

“I… I’m sorry…?” Midori looked around the music room; the walls were covered in shelves and sheet music.  There were only a few instruments and only four girls.  Two of them Midori recognized.  A taller one stepped between her and the door she came in.  Nari was right.  This was dangerous…

“We were able to get that thing away from you for a few minutes, but it’s not going to last long.” Pandora took a step forward and one of the other girls did so as well.  The taller one by the door, with wavy orange hair.

“I’m Daisuke,” she said calmly.  Something about the way she spoke… it seemed to put Midori at ease. “We have math together, remember?  Pandora is right; we are only trying to help.”

“I know that thing said we were the bad guys,” Pandora said, “but we’re not.  You’re in a lot of danger, but it’s not from us.”

“What… what are you talking about?  You all sound crazy!”

“Crazier than talking to a doll?” Daisuke asked.

Midori blinked.  They knew about Nari?  But no one else could hear Nari.  She was Midori’s friend.  Midori shook her head and shouted: “You’re not making any sense!”

“It’s a parasite,” a new voice said, quiet and mousy.  It was a stark contrast to Midori’s yelling.  The short girl with green hair approached Midori, aided by braces on her legs.  It was clear that each step was a masterpiece of effort and coordination. “You probably don’t remember what it’s like to not feel scared and self-conscious, because that thing has been feeding on you for so long.”

“Nari…?” Midori asked softly.  Everyone looked at her until, finally, Pandora nodded.  Midori shook her head and stepped back, right into Daisuke who was still blocking the door. “Nari’s not… she’s my friend!  You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Nari probably told you not to come in here,” the girl with the green hair said.

“It doesn’t want you to know the truth,” continued Daisuke.

“If you find out, then it’ll lose its hold over you,” Pandora said. “Your grades have been bad for a few years now, haven’t they?  You used to do so well and then one day - like magic - you couldn’t do anything right.”

“That’s how they work,” the green haired girl went on. “But they don’t usually get a hold of one of our own…”

Midori shook her head, trying not to listen.  Tears filled her eyes.  She was so tired, so stressed, and these girls… they were trying to turn her against her doll?  Midori didn’t understand.  It didn’t make sense!  So what if she had a doll?  So what?  She wiped her eyes and tried to push past Daisuke, but the tall girl refused to let her pass.

“Lemme out!” Midori shouted.

“Please calm down,” the mousy girl said quietly. “If it thinks you’re in trouble, it’s going to hurt Kachiko.”

“Like any parasite,” Pandora explained, “it’s going to try to protect its food source.”

“Think back to the first time Nari spoke to you,” the mousy girl said. “How long ago was it?” The room of four girls all had their own ideas.  Midori was positively tiny, her growth stunted, and she was weak and jumpy and lacking in confidence.  She wasn’t supposed to be like this.  Nari must have been latched on to Midori for years…

Pandora went over to Midori and took her hand, smiling as tears rolled down her cheeks. 

“It’s okay, Midori.  Just answer.”

“I… I was six.  It was my birthday.” Ten years ago.  Had it really been so long? “She never talked until then… but… but I always had Nari, since I was a baby.”

Ten years?  All four girls looked at each other - Pandora, Diasuke, the mousy girl, and a quiet girl in the corner with black hair.  They knew it had been a long time, but ten years was unheard of.

“They take the form of something you love,” Pandora explained. “Usually a doll.  Sometimes other things, like a pet or a family keepsake.  Then they abuse you, because your self-doubt is like food for them.” Pandora wiped one of Midori’s tears away with her thumb. “It’s going to be okay.  We’ll keep you—”

A loud crash ruptured through the quiet music room from out in the hall, and then the sound of a young girl screaming.  It was Kachiko’s scream.

“Nari!” In the confusion, Midori pushed past Daisuke and burst into the hallway.  Kachiko was sitting on the floor across from a broken window.  Midori scanned the hall for the doll but it was nowhere to be seen.  She felt a panic rise in her chest. “Wh-where…”

“It’s so powerful,” Kachiko muttered, looking dazed.  The mousy girl with the leg braces arrived in the hall last and Pandora held Midori back.

“It had a decade to feed,” the mousy girl said. “We’ve never seen one so strong before…”

But there were more pressing matters.  Pandora was struggling to hold Midori back from jumping out the window to find her doll.

“Can someone help me with her?!”

Daisuke stepped in and pulled Midori back. “It’s not real, okay?  It’s using you.  It’s trying to hurt you.  Please calm down.”

Midori thrashed against the taller girl who held her back and finally broke free, rushing to the window.  For a moment, it looked like she might jump out of it, but she kept her feet on the floor.  Her eyes surveyed the broken glass, then the ground a few stories down.  No doll.  Nari was gone.  

Why would she do that, Midori thought. Why would she leave me?

“Kuu,” Pandora said sternly. “Go after her.”

“Right.” The mousy girl with braces on her legs pulled a lollipop out of her pocket with a shaky hand and stuck it in her mouth.  The hallway erupted in light and she lifted off the ground.  The braces fell off her legs and onto the tile with a metallic clatter.  A brighter, colored light enveloped the green-haired girl and two large wings sprouted from her back, wrapping around her.  Only a moment later, they spread wide - showering feathers everywhere - and showed Kuu in a very different ensemble. It looked like a junior’s school uniform complete with suspender skirt, glowing green along the trim.

Kuu smiled at Midori and flew straight through the hole in the window - making it much bigger - and showering glass upon the school grounds.  Then she disappeared into the sky.

…

…

…

“Midori…?” Pandora said.

…

…

“Miri?” Kachiko said.

…

“Miss Kaneda?” Daisuke said.

“She just…” Midori’s voice was far away. “She… flew out a the window…”

“Like five minutes ago, yeah,” Pandora sighed.

“People don’t… usually… fly out windows…”

“People aren’t normally like us.” Pandora picked up the complex array of metal bracing that Kuu left behind - the only reminder that she had been there at all before her transformation - and only the feathers remained thereafter. “I bet you’re starting to feel a little better.  The further away it gets from you, the less it drains from you.”

“I… I don’t understand…” Midori felt sick all over.  She didn’t feel better in the slightest.  She felt scared.  She didn’t know what to do.  These girls, and Nari… “She’s… she’s my best friend.  She’s not a parasite…”

“Best friend, Midori?” Pandora asked. “Or only friend?” The wind from the broken window blew one of the feathers into the air, which landed in Midori’s lap. “They try to isolate you if they can; it makes you easier to control.  If they have their way, they’ll feed on you for years and years and years, slowly destroying everything that makes you who you are.”

“She didn’t…”

“She did,” Daisuke said plainly.

Midori curled up, pulling her legs to her chest, before putting her head down between them and tried to hide from the world.  A horrible world, one that would hurt Nari…

“You never had any extra curricular activities,” Daisuke said, “never had any friends.  You only ever had school to focus on and your grades still slipped.  I bet Nari made you feel guilty about it too, as though you weren’t trying hard enough.”

“Daisuke’s sister had one,” Pandora explained. “She’s gone now…”

Daisuke looked away and went back into the music room.  In turn, Kachiko came over to Midori, sitting beside the silver-haired girl and leaned against the wall.

“She… she cared about me,” Midori tried to tell Kachiko, or Pandora, or the black-haired girl who stood in the doorway to the music room.  Anyone who would listen. “Yeah, she pushed me.  But it was a good thing.  It’s good to have someone push me, to do better at school.” Though Midori’s mind did wander to an immutable fact: maybe if Nari didn’t sing so much in class, she would have an easier time paying attention.

“It does its best to make you hate yourself, Midori,” Pandora said. “To make you obsess over a goal and make sure you can never reach it.”

“You shouldn’t be so trusting.” Those were the first words the black-haired girl said, and she said them with venom.

“Naomi, don’t be rude!” Kachiko chastised.

“Ten years,” Naomi said harshly. “How stupid can she be, really?  Is she even fit to be one of us?”

“That’s what the Missive said,” Pandora replied. “Are you going to question the Missive?”

Naomi rolled her eyes and went back into the music room, following Daisuke.  Pandora and Kachiko decided that maybe it was safer in there.

“Come on, Miri,” Kachiko said with a smile, helping the white-haired girl to her feet.  The three of them joined Daisuke and Naomi in the music room.  Kachiko and Midori sat at a table in the corner and Pandora went to talk to her teammates.

Midori nervously played with her fingers in her lap, wiping away the tears on her cheeks.  It took her a while to stop crying, and the tears came back every so often nonetheless.

“She was the only person who understood,” Midori said to Kachiko. “I just… I… I don’t know what I’m going to do without her.”

Kachiko sighed and looked around the room, until her eyes rested upon the violin.  Then she got an idea.

“Hey, Miri.  When you were young, was there anything you were good at?  Like, an instrument or singing or something?”

“Something I was good at?” Midori asked thoughtfully.  Truthfully, she couldn’t remember if she was ever good at anything.  She had always been so unremarkable.  Uninteresting.  Incapable.  But she remembered when she was younger, she would draw pictures for her dad.  He loved them.  But maybe that was just because parents always love stuff their kids draw…

“I think I was good at drawing.  But I stopped doing it a few years ago.  It was just a waste of time.  It was getting in the way of my schoolwork…”

Kachiko’s eyes lit up. “Oh!  That’s perfect!  One moment!” Kachiko got up from the table and went to one of the desks on the edge of the room.  She fished around inside the drawers until she found a few sheets of paper and a pencil.  Then she returned to Midori and set them down in front of her. “Draw me something.”

Midori took the pencil at her hand and looked at the blank page.  White paper was a masterpiece.  Anything Midori could do would only soil it.  She felt sick again and put the pencil down.

“Come on, please Miri?  Just a little bit, until Kuu gets back?”

“I don’t want to make it ugly,” Midori muttered.

“It’s okay if you do,” Kachiko encouraged. “I have lots of paper.”

Midori sighed and started to draw.  Rough lines in no particular order.  Then Midori had a flash of inspiration.  Maybe if she connected the lines like this.  Then put two more lines here, and a circle here…

Kachiko picked up the violin from the corner of the room and began to play softly.  The heaviness of the room began to ebb away, and a gentle joy filled it instead.

Ten minutes later, Midori had finished a sketch of the music room.  It wasn’t amazing, but it was recognizable.  The perspective was impressive.  It looked like something one would draw after a few weeks of practice, rather than the first thing drawn in years.  The pencil shook in Midori’s hand.

“See what you’re capable of?” Kachiko said with a smile, and Pandora and Daisuke came over to see what was going on.  They each took a seat beside Midori.

“Creativity is one of the things it feeds on,” Daisuke said. “Now that it’s gone, you’re suddenly in control again.  Things that might have been so hard before will become natural.”

Midori looked at the paper, then up at the girls.  She felt sick, but at the same time… excited.  It was a nervous excitement that made her ill. “I’m… good at something?”

“You’re going to be good at a lot of things,” Pandora said with a smile. “More than you thought possible.”

“I don’t understand,” Midori said again, though she was starting to understand very well. “Nari was… she was taking care of me.  Or she was trying to.”

“What did Nari do when you got close to someone else?” Pandora asked. “Did she encourage it, or did she find some reason why you shouldn’t be friends with them?  I know I’ve tried to be your friend a dozen times, and that’s just me.”

“Well, she said it’s dangerous.  I mean, it is dangerous!  People get hurt all the time.  And there was a girl in England who died last week for no reason, you know?  If I died, my mom would be alone.  It’s safer if…” But they weren’t Midori’s words; they were words Nari had said to her.

Pandora exchanged glances with the other girls and sighed.  She would have to explain sooner or later.

“That girl on the news was no different to you, Midori.  Nari is a creature that hurts people, and one like her had latched onto that girl in England.”

“We fight to stop them from hurting others,” Daisuke spoke up.

Midori looked at the both of them and then down at her fingers. 

It hurt that girl in England? she thought. Something like my Nari?

“I’m sorry,” Midori muttered.  She felt so pathetic.  So stupid for being tricked for so many years. “I just want to go home.”

“That’s the first place it’s going to look for you,” Daisuke said.

“How about you stay here with us for a little while longer,” Pandora offered. “Until Kuu gets back.  Maybe we can explain what’s going on.” Though that was usually Kuu’s territory.

“There are other people out there, Miss Kaneda.  Other girls and other boys who were victims like you were.  We protect them.”

“Protect them?  Like…” Midori thought back to the flash of light in the hallway, and when Kuu grew wings. “You transform and fight them?”

“Yes,” Daisuke nodded. “We all transform.  And we use that power to save people.”

“The Missive tells us who is in trouble,” Pandora said. “But it told us about you and that you were more than just a victim.  That you were destined to be one of us.”

“I’m destined?” Midori asked incredulously. “How am I destined?  I don’t think… I don’t think I can turn into a bird, if that’s what you’re wondering.” Unless Nari was preventing that, too.  Would I sprout wings now, without her around?  I slid the pencil into my pocket and crossed my arms.

“Kuu isn’t a bird, silly,” Kachiko laughed.

“No, that’s Kuu’s form and hers alone,” Pandora said. “We all take on different forms when we transform.  Our Miko forms bring out our hidden strengths.  Yours will be different to any of ours, just like ours are all different from one another.”

“We apologize if we are explaining this poorly,” Daisuke cut in. “It’s not as complicated as it sounds.  Kuu usually explains this stuff.”

“But she’s busy being a bird,” Kachiko giggled.

“Okay,” Midori muttered, trying to make sense of it.  Apparently Kuu was really good at being a bird, so she became a bird?  Midori didn’t understand.  Maybe she would turn into a pencil or something, since she could draw?  She wondered if Kachiko turned into a violin…

“I don’t know how I feel about any of this,” Midori admitted. “I’m just…” In shock, she thought.

“When Kuu gets back, we’ll talk more about it,” Pandora smiled. “How about I run out and get us a pizza?”

All the girls - even Naomi - agreed to this plan.  Midori put her head on the desk and watched everyone else talk.  Kachiko and Daisuke tried to start conversations with Midori, but neither tried very hard.  They understood she needed time to process.  But it was the first time Midori could remember that she didn’t have Nari to talk to, and it made her uncomfortable.

Pandora returned with pizzas and Naomi left.  She liked to play up the ‘didn’t want anything to do with the new girl’ angle, but Pandora, Kachiko, and Daisuke knew she was guarding the door.  Shortly afterward, there was a sound of swooping wings and Kachiko opened one of the classroom windows.  With impossible grace, Kuu slid inside and landed on her feet in the center of the room.

“I lost it,” Kuu said solemnly. “I couldn’t keep up.  She reached down to the bow on the breast of her outfit and tugged on one of the ribbons.  The uniform dissolved into light - wings and all - and was replaced with the mousy girl in her school uniform.

“I gotcha,” Daisuke said as she caught Kuu in her arms and helped her into a chair.  Pandora brought her leg braces over and Naomi poked her head in from the hall.

“Well?” Naomi asked.

“It got away,” Kuu explained again.

“Great.  We’ll have to hunt it.”

“Tomorrow,” Pandora said. “Tonight we have to talk to Midori about Miko.”

“She agreed to follow her fate?” Kuu asked in surprise.

“I didn’t really agree to anything,” Midori said flatly.  Everyone looked at her, and Midori thought at first it was because she had spoken out of turn.  Then she realized it was because she had never spoken out of turn before.

“I imagine you have a lot of questions,” Kuu said with a smile, pulling an inhaler from her pocket with trembling hands. “Let’s eat and talk, okay?”

Midori watched Kuu curiously.  She was is inelegant now, so different to how she had been only minutes before, and it was hard to reconcile the two as the same person.  Everyone sat and took a slice of pizza and let Midori take her time in asking the first question.

“So, I guess…” Midori started nervously, “what is this Miko thing?  What does that mean?”

“Unmei no Miko,” Kuu explained. “It’s a really old term that means something like ‘Maidens of Fate’.  We’re an order that has existed for hundreds - maybe thousands - of years, all over the world.  We operate in secrecy, getting our instructions from a force called the Missive.”

“Missive?”

“It’s like a magical postal service,” Kachiko explained. “Except the sender is unknown.”

“But you just do whatever the Missive says?”

“It’s omniscient,” Daisuke said simply. “I’ve seen hundreds over the years.  They know things that are happening everywhere in the world, sometimes things that haven’t happened yet.  Some Miko think the Missive is sent by a god, and others think it’s the universe itself speaking to us.”

“No matter what the Missive is,” Kuu cut in, “we use it to protect humans from the Richi - parasites like your doll.  Or at least, we try to.  Whatever the rhyme or reason to what we do, our assignment is too noble to ignore.”

“Richi…” Midori looked at the boxes of pizza.  Normally she had trouble eating in front of people, and a couple minutes ago she wasn’t even hungry.  But now… now she was. “So you’re like… magic?”

“As much as penicillin would be magic to someone three hundred years ago,” Kuu said. “Historically, magic is just technology we don’t understand yet.  But you could say we’re magical, yes.  We all possess a weakness and it becomes our strength when we take our Miko form.”

“I thought your strengths were your strength…” Wasn’t that what Pandora said; something about hidden strengths?  Midori took a bite of pizza and suddenly started feeling much better.  She didn’t realize how hungry she was.

“Well, our weaknesses become our strengths.  For example: ordinarily, I can barely walk.  In my Miko form, I can fly.”

“So not everyone flies?” Midori asked and Kuu shook her head. Midori wondered what her hidden strength was. “So why am I one of these Miko things?”

“Because the Missive said so.  You’ve been suppressed for a long time, Midori; it’s amazing you didn’t become a Hollow as a result.  You must possess incredible potential.”

“Hollow?”

“It’s what happens if the Richi take all the potential from a human,” Pandora said, sitting next to Kuu. “They are like puppets.  If you cut off the Richi after that, the human dies.” 

Midori was starting to understand the gravity of the situation.  She could have been hours or minutes from becoming one of these Hollow things.  She could have died, and left her mom all alone.  To think Nari would do such a thing to her…

“I’m not special or anything,” Midori muttered. “Maybe you have the wrong person…”

“You played host to a Richi for ten years,” Diasuke said. “The moment it was removed from you, your talents started to bubble over almost instantly.”

“Ten years?” Kuu asked dumbfounded.  Everyone nodded. “That’s unprecedented…”

“Tell her the other thing, Kuu,” Pandora said. “About being destined to lead.”

“I wasn’t going to put the pressure on so early,” Kuu sighed. “But yes, the Missive did mention it.”

“Lead?” Like, lead these girls?  Midori shook her head very quickly and waved her arms back and forth. “No thank you!  I’m okay.  I don’t want to lead.  That’s fine.” She didn’t really believe in destiny anyway.

“You’ll be ready when you’re ready,” Kuu smiled and got to her feet, adjusting the braces on her legs. “You won’t be rushed into anything, but one of us will stay with you every night until you decide.  You’re still in danger, as long as your Richi is out there.”

“I’ll take the first night,” Naomi said.  No one saw that coming — Naomi wasn’t one to volunteer for things like that.

“I’ll be fine,” Midori tried to quell their fears, but the girls didn’t seem interested in hearing it.  And though Midori didn’t want to be a burden, she had to admit the magical girls made her feel safer.  If Nari really was the reason she felt horrible, then it was nice to be protected.

It was decided.  After dinner and the sun went down, Naomi and Midori left together for Midori’s house.  She wasn’t sure how she would convince her mom to let a friend stay the night on such short notice, but Midori’s usual anxieties seemed so much lighter the past few hours.  Almost like they didn’t matter.

“You live with your mom?” Naomi asked.  The two girls were halfway to Midori’s house before either of them had said a word. “Do you have any reason to think the Richi is attached your mom as well?  Has she been depressed lately?  Started any new medications?”

“I… I don’t think so.” Midori’s mom hadn’t started any new medications and she didn’t consider her depressed, but her perspective was rapidly changing and it was hard to tell anymore. “Can that happen?  Can it attach to two people?”

“I’ve never seen it happen, no,” Naomi said coldly. “But I’ve never seen one as powerful as yours.  Most people become Hollows after a year or two, and the Richi finds a new host.” Naomi moved with a sort of victorian elegance, her bony limbs in perfect choreography.  She was persistently alert.

“Are you going to be able to tell if your Richi is close?” she asked.

“Should I be able to?” Midori had never in the past felt when Nari was nearby, but she rarely left her alone these days.  And Midori liked having Nari around.

“You’ll feel a sense of apathy at first.  Then you’ll long for it.  That’s what makes it so difficult for you to break its grasp.” Naomi had dispatched a great many Richi herself, even though she had only been a Miko for a few years.  Even so… “Your Richi terrifies me.  I think you should know that.”

“Why…?” Wouldn’t Naomi’s magic be enough to keep them safe, Midori wondered.  The sun had gone down a while ago, but the sky still looked red.  Midori didn’t look at Naomi as they walked.

“Because the Missive says you’re destined to lead us.  This Richi has fed off you for the past decade.  Doesn’t that terrify you?” Naomi was never typically so candid. “But… I will protect you.  No matter the cost.  I want you to know that.”

“Oh, I…” Midori struggled for words.  What was she supposed to say to that?  She played with her fingers behind her back and looked at her shoes while she walked. “I’m not a leader, no matter what the Missive says.”

“You will be,” Naomi said without speculation. “We deal in potential, not in outcome.  No matter how strong your Richi is, you’ll always be stronger.  You just don’t know it yet.  And until you do… I’ll take care of you.”

The two of them stopped outside a pretty little house.

“Is this where you live?” Naomi asked.

“Yes, but…” Midori looked at her house, but something was wrong.  Like the lights were too bright or too dark.  Or the shingles were the wrong color.  Something small, something she couldn’t discern. “This doesn’t look—”

Just as Midori walked past the front gate, in an instant, everything felt heavy.  Little black clouds spun around the property and Midori could hardly breathe.  Whatever waited for the two of them was ready, and it wasn’t holding back.

[Ending Song & Credits]

-------------

Cast & Hair Styles:

Midori Kaneda > shoulder length white hair

Pandora > short blue hair

Kachiko Kazumi > short blonde pigtails

Daisuke > long wavy orange hair

Kuu > shoulder length green hair

Naomi > long black hair

[Pudding]

Oh I vaguely remember some of this now!

[Scarlet]

?, yay!! A Mahou Shoujo story from Sophie! So excited to see it develop. I can already see heavy influences from Madoka, I'm feeling some Miraculous Ladybug too, I mean that technically doesn't count as a magical girl show, it's  a bit iffy. Because it technically has all the qualifications to an extent. Regardless, this is very exciting. I can see some Possible Magical Girl Site influence with the inversion of weaknesses into strengths. Looking forward to it.

[Jayme]

This sounds interest, I wonder how Nori is going to cope with the knowledge she has been given?

[kerry]

I like this one a lot! I don't know a lot about magical girls (basically I think the only thing I think I know comes from a story on DD called "The Too-Late Magical Girl," and I don't know if that is even a decent source) but the whole concept is fun!

[Sophie ♥]

23 hours ago, Pudding said:

Oh I vaguely remember some of this now!

You helped build the world!!  Then you wanted to make everyone pregnant and I told you no. XD

19 hours ago, Scarlet said:

I can already see heavy influences from Madoka, I'm feeling some Miraculous Ladybug too

Definitely Madoka inspired. XD I've also seen a lot of Miraculous Ladybug so maybe that trickled in too!

8 hours ago, kerry said:

I like this one a lot! I don't know a lot about magical girls 

It's a pretty simple idea.  Sailor Moon , Cardcaptor Sakura kinda stuff.  Young girl gets a magical girl form and saves the world from something or other.  

I'm gonna put up a Next Time On in a little bit so people have something to look forward to next week!

[Sophie ♥]

Next time on: Maidens of Fate!

*

“You can’t trust yourself right now,” Naomi told Midori. “You can’t trust your feelings.  You can trust me and only me, understand?” When Midori didn’t immediately answer, she turned around to look at her. “I said, do you understand?!”

*

“She abandoned you, see?" Nari said. "She doesn’t care about you; she just wants to hurt me!  Why are you letting her?  Why aren’t you helping me?  Why do you hate me?”

Tears poured down Midori’s cheeks as she struggled with the ribbon, but it was no use.

*

Midori reached into her pocket and pulled out the pencil she had put there earlier that day, but the moment she did, a tendril of shadow shot straight through her hand and knocked her into the wall.  She let out a loud, sharp scream and blood dripped down her fingers onto the carpet.

*

Episode 2: Home Field Disadvantage

[Pudding]

Eagerly awaiting 8pm! ?

[bbykimmy]

Okay, holy moly.  You've been raving about this story for WEEKS and telling me I should read it, and I finally have the energy to and HOLY MOLY!  This is goooooood.  I love your premise, I love your worldbuilding, I love the flow.  This is my kinda story.  This is more YA/shoujo anime than anything I've read from you before and it's delicious.

I love the terminology you've used, I love the anime tropes that you're leaning on...

But I gotta say... I have never seen an anime where they ran out to get pizza

That's YOU, darling.  YOU eat pizza constantly, not Japanese schoolgirls lolol.

I can feel the Madoka influences on this, and I can't wait to see where you go with it!  Pumped for tonight's episoooooode!

[Sophie ♥]

11 minutes ago, bbykimmy said:

That's YOU, darling.  YOU eat pizza constantly, not Japanese schoolgirls lolol.

They have pizza vending machines, so.  Who is the true pizza aficionado? 

[Sophie ♥]

Episode 2: Home Field Disadvantage

“Is this where you live?” Naomi asked.

“Yes, but…” Midori looked at her house, but something was wrong.  Like the lights were too bright or too dark.  Or the shingles were the wrong color.  Something small, something she couldn’t discern. “This doesn’t look—”

Just as Midori walked past the front gate, in an instant, everything felt heavy.  Little black clouds spun around the property and Midori could hardly breathe.  Naomi pulled her back, so that she could put herself between Midori and the house.

“It’s here,” Naomi said quietly.  It must have been unbelievably powerful for Naomi to sense it.  Though Miko and Richi were natural enemies, detecting one another was a difficult task.  It relied more on intuition than anything else; Daisuke was the resident expert.  For a Richi to exert its power like this, though… Naomi worried she may be in over her head.

“You can’t trust yourself right now,” she told Midori. “You can’t trust your feelings.  You can trust me and only me, understand?” When Midori didn’t immediately answer, she turned around to look at her. “I said, do you understand?!”

“Y-yeah.  I understand…” Naomi seemed unaffected by the weight, but Midori could barely stand up.  She trudged past the shadows and into her house, following Naomi inside.  Midori clutched the door frame and tried to catch her breath.  It felt… impossible.

Naomi was alert, her eyes finding corners of the room like a predator… or an extremely frightened child.  She wished she could have just sent Midori away, but the Richi would only follow her.  She was the target.

“Which is your favorite room?” Naomi asked. “Your bedroom?”

“My mom’s room,” Midori said quietly, pulling herself through the black smoke.  It kept getting thicker and thicker and she would lose sight of Naomi every once in a while.  She held the wall for support, but her knees buckled and slid to the floor.

“You’re going to be fine,” Naomi said, but it sounded strange, like she wasn’t good at reassurances.  Midori started to cough and heave, unable to get a breath.

“Come out here and fight me, you coward!” Naomi shouted through the house.  But it wouldn’t.  It would keep playing this game through Midori, hurting her, making her a liability.  It wanted her back more than it was afraid of Naomi.  But it was time to change that.

The lanky girl pulled a lollipop out of her pocket and stuck it in her mouth and - like before, with Kuu - there was a light.  Tendrils of bright white ribbons came out of Naomi’s hands, crackling with energy as they danced around her and cocooned her entire body like a caterpillar.  And just like the analogy, she burst from the encasement.

Naomi’s new ensemble was different from Kuu’s.  There were no wings, and her juvenile school uniform had shorts instead of a skirt.  Her round collar was adorned in a dark blue ribbon tied as a cravat.  Her hair was much shorter and swept to the side.  Ribbons of light snaked from her hands, and coiled at her feet.

Naomi posed only for a second before rushing over to Midori.  She untied the ribbon from her hand and twirled it around the white-haired girl.  Even after Naomi let go of the ribbon, it continued to swirl around Midori.  The glowing ribbon ushered the shadows away and Midori took a few breaths of clean air.

“Hang in there, cutie pie,” Naomi said with a smile. “You’re strong enough to get through this, and I know you can do it!”

Naomi’s new outfit was a little more childish than the high school uniform Midori was wearing.  But there was something else… something Midori couldn’t put her finger on.  Naomi was definitely different.

“Are you okay?” Naomi asked and Midori nodded. “Then let’s get going.”

Naomi led the way to the stairs and Midori followed a step behind.  The ribbon continued to circle her, cleansing the darkness, as she moved.  She had an easier time walking up the stairs than she did walking in the front door of the house.  Whatever magic the ribbon had, it was working.

“That room is my mom’s,” Midori said. “On the left.”

“I need you to stay close to me, alright?” Naomi’s voice wasn’t short and curt like it had been before - it was warm and caring.  But there was something else to it, something slightly different. “I don’t know if I can beat this one without the others. But I’m gonna try my best!  And you can try your best not to be tricked, okay cutie?” 

Naomi turned and winked at Midori and that’s when the difference became apparent.  Her uniform, her hair.  Her voice, her demeanor.  Her flat chest.  Naomi had turned into a boy.

“Um…”

Naomi readied his right hand - still wrapped in the long ribbon of light, and kicked in the door to Midori’s mom’s room.  There, in front of her, Midori saw her mom lying in bed, hovering just a little bit above it with a familiar doll perched on top of her chest.  Nari.

“it’s right there!  Get it!” Midori tried to push past Naomi to get to her mom, but Naomi held her back.

“Nobody is in here,” Naomi said.  He saw the bed, but no one was on it.  Not Midori’s mom, and not the Richi. “It is playing tricks on you, hun.  Tell me what you see and we’ll try to get to the bottom of it.”

Midori looked frightened and shook her head, pointing desperately at the bed.  Her mom… she had to save her mom.

“Cutie, calm down,” Naomi said sternly, in his slightly deeper voice. “There’s nothing in here.  Close your eyes and count with me, okay?”

“But she’s…” Midori looked at the bed a moment longer and let her eyes flutter closed.  Her mom wasn’t there.  Nari wasn’t there either.  Midori needed to calm down. “You’re sure she’s not there…?”

“Count with me,” Naomi repeated and took Midori’s hands, playing with her fingers. “One little frightened girl, fighting off her fears.  Two pretty ribbons who will fight off what appears…”

Each number he counted was punctuated with a squeeze on Midori’s fingers, until he got to her thumb.

“Five pretty Miko who keep each other safe.  And six, maybe soon, if Midori follows her fate.”

Midori opened her eyes, looked up at Naomi, and then around the room.  Everything was dark, but the swirling ribbon of light kept the darkness away from her.  And on the bed… there was no one.  No mom, no Nari.

“They aren’t here…”

“It’s going to make you see things,” Naomi told her. “Impossible things.  So until I send it, you can’t believe anything you see here.”

Richi were not killed or vanquished or defeated - attempting to do so would be impossible.  Instead, if one was weakened, the Missive would appear with the words needed to send it away.  Kuu had a theory that Richi were unsettled spirits and the girls were sending them peacefully to the afterlife, but Naomi wasn’t sure he agreed with that.

“I’ll try,” Midori said.  But honestly, she felt guilty.  Her Nari… she was so important to her.  And now she was going to go away.  Midori played with her fingers and did her best not to think about it. “We should check my room, if she’s not in here.”

“Help me,” a voice called from the hallway.  A familiar voice. “Please, they’re going to kill me, Midori…”

“Let’s go to your bedroom then,” Naomi said.  If he had heard Nari’s voice, he didn’t give any indication.

“They want to take me away from you… don’t you love me?  Why are you helping them?”

“Y-you’re…” Naomi looked at Midori and Midori fumbled for a sentence. “You’re going to want to go in the door there, on the right.  That’s my bedroom.”

“She’s making you feel sick,” Nari called out from down the hall. “She’s trying to trick you and you’re falling for it.  I love you, Midori.  You’re acting so careless and stupid.  You’re going to let her hurt me.  I thought you loved me.  Why are you doing this?  Take the vase in the hall and hit her as hard as you can!  We’ll run and we’ll be safe.”

“—if that thing is in there, it won’t be happy.  Remember what I said.”

What he said?  It was so hard to listen to two people.

“Thing?  Is that all I am to you, Midori?  A thing?”

“N-no…” Midori shook her head and looked down at her feet.  She struggled to focus. “I… I mean, I forgot what you said…”

“Please, I’m so scared!  Remember all the times you were scared and I cuddled with you and helped you feel better?”

“Midori?” Naomi asked again, but he was hardly getting through.  The light ribbon surrounding Midori caught her by the ankle and pulled her up off the ground, suspending her upside down in front of Naomi. “It’s talking to you, isn’t it?  You can’t listen!  It’s trying to hurt you!”

“She can’t even hear what I’m saying, and she thinks so poorly of me… how could you have a friend like that?”

“He’s not my friend,” Midori answered.  Naomi stared blankly at her, then frowned.  Midori struggled to keep her skirt from falling down as she was held up by her ankle. “Let me down, Naomi!”

“Why?” he said sourly. “I’m not your friend.”

“I… I didn’t mean it like…”

“I’ll handle it myself,” he said coldly, much more like his old self.  The door to the bedroom glowed with energy and slammed open.  Naomi stepped inside, and as soon as he did, sounds of a battle started.  Midori was still left in the hall, hanging by her ankle.

“She abandoned you, see?  She doesn’t care about you; she just wants to hurt me!  Why are you letting her?  Why aren’t you helping me?  Why do you hate me?”

Tears poured down Midori’s cheeks as she struggled with the ribbon, but it was no use.  Nothing worked.  Her hands went right through the ribbon of light, but it held her ankle all the same.

“Naomi!” Midori shouted. “Let me down!  Stop it!  Stop fighting!”

“You were so lucky to have a friend like me and you were so easy fooled by their lies.  You’re a bad friend, Midori.  You’re a bad person.”

Unexpectedly, Naomi was shot out of the bedroom and hit the hallway wall with a sickening thud, then fell to the floor.

“It’s so strong,” Naomi coughed.  Then dark spears of smoke burst from the bedroom and impaled the skinny boy through the shoulders, causing him to scream.

Midori looked at Naomi in a panic and the light ribbon around her ankle snapped.  She fell to the ground and quickly got to her feet.  Midori rushed in front of the door and put her arms out, protecting Naomi.  Inside the bedroom, Nari floated amidst a sea of shadows.

“Let him go, Nari!  Leave him alone!”

“She’s still connected to you,” Naomi said, though the spears of shadows pinned her securely to the wall. “Your confidence is poison to her…”

“She wants you to poison me.  She wants to turn you against me, Midori.  Don’t be weak!”

Midori kept her arms outstretched, the weight of the room pulling her toward the carpet.  She struggled to keep her knees locked and standing.

“Nari…” Midori said. “I’ll go with you.  You and me.  We can go anywhere you want.  But you need to let Naomi go, okay?  Understand?”

“She’ll follow us.  They’ll hunt us, Midori!  That’s what they do!”

“Don’t bargain with it, Midori.” Naomi winced as energy crackled through the spears.

Then there was an arrow - a beautiful lilac arrow - that sliced through the darkness, shattering the spears that pinned Naomi to the wall.  At the end of the hall, with a crossbow in her hands, was Kachiko, dressed in a sailor uniform with a long grey skirt.  The bow around her collar was a subtle yellow and her pigtails were replaced by sensibly pinned up hair.  Most unusual, though - she was wearing glasses.

“Midori,” Kachiko spoke softly, with none of her telltale hyperactivity. “Take the pencil from your pocket and draw something on the wall.  Anything at all.”

“It’s a trick!  You can’t draw, Midori.  They are trying to humiliate you!”

But…

“But I can,” Midori said to her doll with a hint of happiness in her voice. “I can draw.”

Midori reached into her pocket and pulled out the pencil she had put there earlier that day, but the moment she did, a tendril of shadow shot straight through her hand and knocked her into the wall.  She let out a loud, sharp scream and blood dripped down her fingers onto the carpet.

“You betrayed me!  The only thing you ever did right was loyalty, and now you’re a failure at that as well!”

“Naomi, if you would,” Kachiko looked at Naomi and Naomi nodded.  Though he still struggled to move, he summoned his ribbons in the middle of the air.  Kachiko hurried down the hall and drew her crossbow.  With apt precision, she fired two lilac bolts straight into the ribbons.  The ribbons twisted around one another as the bolts bounced off the door frame, ricocheting around the bedroom and binding the doll mid-air.

The darkness whirled around Midori and she slid to the floor.  Everything spun around her as she looked through her hand, through the hole in the center, and at the doll wrapped in ribbons.  Kachiko walked up to it just as the room faded away and blackness overtook Midori.

“I thought you were my friend.  I thought you loved me…”

When Midori opened her eyes, she was in Naomi’s arms.  The smoke around the house was gone and Naomi had wrapped Midori’s hand in one of his ribbons.  It pulsed and glowed, leaving a tingling warmth where it touched, like being woken up by a rising sun.  It started in the wound and spread up Midori’s body.

“Quite a strong one,” Kachiko mumbled.  The bedroom was trashed.  The Cleansers would be there soon.

“I didn’t see a Missive,” Naomi noted.

“That’s because there wasn’t one.” The doll had vanished in a puff of smoke, relieved of its physical form.  It wouldn’t be able to do anything until it found a new host.

“Then where did it go?” Naomi asked.

“We have more pressing matters.” Kachiko nodded at Midori and Naomi pulled the shivering white-haired girl tighter into his arms.  Though the pain in her hand was gone, Midori knew she had very nearly died just then.  If Nari had stabbed her somewhere else, she wouldn’t have survived.

“We promised to keep you safe,” Naomi told her. “And we’re going to.”

Kachiko untied the ribbon on her uniform, which dissolved into light.  Her pigtails returned, along with her high school uniform and her child-like figure.

“Wow!  That was scary!”

The next day, Midori wasn’t sure any of it had been real.  The blood that stained the carpet was gone.  Her bedroom was back to normal.  The hole in her hand was healed, without so much as a scar.  The only real difference was Nari, or a lack thereof.  Maybe it was all a dream…

But as Midori walked out of her house that morning for school, Naomi was sitting by the mailbox.  Had she been there all night, Midori wondered.

“Hey…”

“Morning.” Naomi was back to being both decidedly stoic and decidedly a girl.  She stood up and looked at the white-haired girl.  Naomi’s soft blue eyes were surrounded with dark rings; she had indeed been awake all night.

Naomi started the walk toward school.  Her uniform looked fresh, with the exception of sitting on the ground.  Did transforming back clean her uniform, Midori wondered, or was it spared the damage of the fight since she wasn’t actually wearing it?  Nonetheless, Midori followed behind her.

“I think she went away,” Midori said. “You don’t have to watch over me like this.”

“It wasn’t sent.  You aren’t safe until it is.  Which means - unless you decide to embrace your fate and become a Miko - one of us will watch over you at all times.” The lack of a Missive was news that had gotten back to Kuu, and Naomi knew from the texts she had received through the night that it was a point of concern.

“How’s your hand?” Naomi asked, though she knew the answer: healed, perhaps still tingling.  It was her power.

“Better.” Midori waited a few more minutes before asking some questions. “If it didn’t go away, then where did it go?”

“Kachiko said it abandoned its form, and that’s the only way it escaped.”

“Abandoned its form?  Can Richi do that?”

“Not usually,” Naomi said flatly. “Richi feed on the potential of humans, and they store it like humans store fat.  With enough potential, they can do things that are ordinarily impossible.  Form-switching is one of those things.”

“Like, transformations?” Midori asked.  She was beginning to notice some similarities between the Richi and the girls from the music club.

“Yes.  Miko have extremely high potential, which is how we change into our Miko forms.  Kuu believes the Missive chooses girls with naturally high potential to become Miko.  But Richi - unlike humans and Miko - have no potential.”

“So they steal it?”

“A creature with no potential - human or Miko or Richi - can no longer exist.  That’s why Hollows die if we send the Richi attached to them.”

“So they do it to survive?”

Naomi stopped in place and turned to face Midori. “Richi are not evil.  They manipulate and switch forms because it is effective.  They aren’t trying to hurt people, but they hurt them nonetheless.  They bring misery and death everywhere they go.”

“But what if we could come up with a food drive or—”

“Forget it.” Naomi turned and walked on ahead. “If you want to get yourself killed defending some parasite, go right ahead.  I won’t try to stop you next time.”

Midori followed behind Naomi all the way to school, but they didn’t say anything more.  Midori had a lot of questions about what happened last night, and about what the Miko girls might expect of her moving forward, but it would have to wait.  Obviously Naomi wasn’t the right person to answer her questions.

At lunch, Midori decided to gamble on the music room. She didn’t want to wait until the end of the day to meet up, and maybe some of the other girls had the same idea.  Thankfully, luck was on her side.

Kuu, Daisuke, and Pandora had been working on some strategies to counter any future Nari attacks when Midori walked in.  Pandora moved over and patted the seat next to her.

“I am glad to see you’re okay,” Daisuke smiled.

Kuu looked forlorn as she spoke. “Had I thought your Richi would attack you at home - and so soon - I would have sent more of us.”

“But it all worked out,” Pandora said.

“Because you suggested we send Kachiko for backup,” Kuu sulked.  She was taking this shortsightedness personally.  Strategy was her thing, and she’d miscalculated.

“You must have a lot of questions, Miss Kaneda,” Daisuke changed the topic, then nodded to Kuu.  After all, Kuu was the resident question-answerer.

“Right,” Kuu agreed. “Ask anything you’d like.”

Midori had been formulating questions for the better part of the morning, and she wasn’t sure where to start.  Maybe where she left off with Naomi.

“Naomi said that Nari abandoned her form…”

“Yes,” Kuu said with a bit of anxiety. “We should have seen that coming.”

“So it’s normal?”

“Normal, no.  It requires a massive amount of potential, much more than taking a new form.  But your Richi has a lot of potential to spare.” Ten years sapping potential from a girl who might become a Miko put this situation squarely in uncharted territory.  Nothing was impossible.

“But Nari’s doll form is gone forever?” Naomi wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to that question.  Even before Nari could talk, she was Midori’s favorite toy.  And now, she would never see it again.

“Part of acquiring a form involves destroying the original,” Kuu explained. “Richi join with the host and quickly replace every part it.  Soon, the original is gone and only the Richi remains.  But the process is exhausting.  We should have a few days reprieve - maybe a week - before your Richi shows itself again.” Though Kuu was unsure about that last part.  If Midori’s Richi really did have near-limitless potential, would it need to recover?

“What if it doesn’t find a form?” Midori asked.

Pandora shook her head and fielded this question herself. “Every moment without a form drains it.  You know how Kuu said taking a new form is exhausting?  Not having one is like taking a new form over and over and over and over until it starves.”

“Though this works to our advantage.” Daisuke said. “We cannot locate or send a Richi without a form.  The sooner it finds one, the better.”

“So we are just waiting for someone’s doll to be destroyed or someone’s pet to die?” Midori’s question was rhetorical.  She knew that was exactly what they were doing.

“We don’t have a choice,” Kuu muttered. “The best thing we can do is stop them as soon as we can.”

“What if we made a deal?” Midori offered. “We offer Nari some potential so she doesn’t have to die, and she stops stealing it from other people.  Don’t Miko have a ton of potential?”

“That’s not how it works,” Kuu said sharply. “You can’t make deals with them.  You can’t reason with them.”

“I know it seems like Nari is a person,” Daisuke cut in. “But she is not.  Her personality, her identity, is a fabrication created to convince you to care for her and keep her close.  It is no different than a bug who can blend in with a leaf.  Survival is an instinct it follows, and the rest is adaptation.  Humans respond best to emotional connection.”

Midori looked at Daisuke and then down at the table.  Maybe it was just wishful thinking.

“I understand how you feel,” Daisuke sighed. “My sister had one, a Richi like yours.  Her goldfish.  She won it at a festival when she was eight years old.  She loved it more than anything.  More than anyone.  It got her killed.  Then it moved onto the next young girl.”

“I’m sorry,” Midori muttered, looking down at her hands. “I didn’t mean…”

“I know.” Daisuke smiled. “It will be okay, Miss Kaneda.  This is all very new.”

New didn’t begin to describe it.  For ten years, Midori had felt almost nothing other than anxiety and fear.  In the past twenty-four hours, she felt excitement and terror and passion and anger and admiration and awe.  She was overwhelmed by it.  And now they were asking her…

“Yesterday, you said I was supposed to be a Miko,” Midori started. “The Missive told you that, didn’t it?  But I can’t be.  I have to be here for my mom.  Yesterday, Naomi almost died and—”

“Miko can’t die,” Pandora interrupted.

Midori thought she misheard her, but Kuu stepped in to explain.

“Miko don’t bleed.  We don’t age.  We don’t die in a traditional way.  And we don’t get a choice when to stop.  One day, when it’s our time, a Missive arrives and releases us from our duty.”

“I wouldn’t age?” Midori looked down at her body and patted her chest.  A lot of people would go for that, right?  She would be no older than a high schooler for as long as she could remember.  That made Midori wonder - if the other girls didn’t age, how old were they really? “I’m not sure I like that…”

“That’s common,” Kuu smiled. “But it gives us a lot of free time.  Kachiko has learned sixteen different instruments, and Daisuke knows eight languages.”

Midori spent her entire life unable to do even the simplest thing.  To have time to be good at everything… it was nothing short of a miracle.  But there was still one problem: her mom.  If she didn’t age, her mom would notice.

“I… I can’t do this.  It’s crazy.  And you three, you five honestly, are putting way too much pressure on me!  I can’t lead anyone, and I can’t do anything, and you’re all just…”

“Would you like to see what the Missive says?” Kuu asked. “They come in small envelopes.  They tell us what to do.  This one told us to find you, to save you, and to invite you.  But after we do all that, the card is yours.  And it’s supposed to have a message just for you.”

Invitation Missives were private things, and nobody would be allowed - or even able - to read it.  For Naomi - who had also declined at first - reading her Missive had helped change her mind.  Midori sighed and slumped back in her chair.  It couldn’t hurt, she thought.  It was just a piece of paper.

“Okay…”

Kuu reached down to her school bag - sitting at her feet - and fished out a small, red envelope.  As she flipped it over, it was clear that it had been opened before.

Midori took it and opened it once more.  The note inside - the same size as the small envelope and made of thick cardstock - had gold lettering set into the paper.  Immediately, Midori recognized the handwriting as her father’s.

“Your mom is a strong woman, but she’s not as strong as she thinks.  Please take care of her.  I love you.”

The words, the assembly, the exact structure… it was the last thing Midori’s father said to her, shortly before he died.  Nobody else was present for that, not even Nari, since it happened when Midori was only five years old.  She looked at the card and her eyes watered up.  She wiped them with the backs of her hands.

She couldn’t let her mom down now.  She had to take care of her, right?  And if she died because of some crazy doll, or because of a thousand other reasons, she couldn’t keep that promise.  She had to keep that promise, no matter what.  If a Miko really couldn’t die, then…

“Okay,” Midori muttered through her tears. “I’ll do it.”

Midori would become a Miko, whatever that meant.  She might have some sort of initiation, or maybe she already was a Miko.  Maybe she was one all along.  But more than just a fancy title, more than the super powers she might get, she had something new.  She had friends.  Real friends.

[Ending Song & Credits]

-------------

Cast & Eye Color:

Midori Kaneda > green

Pandora > blue

Kachiko Kazumi > grey

Daisuke > hazel

Kuu > brown

Naomi > blue

[Jayme]

37 minutes ago, Sophie ♥ said:

But more than just a fancy title, more than the super powers she might get, she had something new.  She had friends.  Real friends.

And real friends make all the difference

[Sophie ♥]

Next time on: Maidens of Fate!

*

“When you look at the Missive tomorrow,” Daisuke said to Midori, “it is going to have some words on it you won’t understand.  Then you will read from it and become a Miko.”

“So, my little card just changes?” Midori hadn’t let the small index card out of her sight since she received it that afternoon.  She turned it over and over in her hands.  For paper, the card was surprisingly resilient.

*

She must have been up a while, because Daisuke looked immaculate in her winter uniform.  She handed Midori the little card and Midori read it to herself.  Then her cheeks took on a bit of color and she looked at Daisuke with a pout.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.  No way I’m saying that…”

*

Lightning crackled from her extremities, her fingertips and her toes, and danced noisily along the walls.  It zipped past each girl, who had carefully positioned themselves to avoid it.  When it was over, there were long black burns on the walls, a bookshelf on fire, and hundreds of shredded books settling throughout the air.

And of course, on the table, Midori was dead.

*

Episode 3: The Untimely Death of Midori Kaneda

[Sophie ♥]

2 hours ago, Hopsalot said:

I can’t stop from reading midori’s name as midori Canada though... not a problem, just a little funny 

THEY SOUND VERY SIMILAR!!  Maybe she's from Canada?  Maybe that's the twist ending?  

[Sarah Penguin]

[Pudding]

Is it Tuesday yet? :D

[Sophie ♥]

Episode 3: The Untimely Death of Midori Kaneda

Daisuke was sitting in the grass across from Midori, each leaning against a different tree.  Midori was still under the protection of the Miko, so Daisuke had volunteered to be her sitter for the day.

“When you look at the Missive tomorrow,” she said to Midori, “it is going to have some words on it you won’t understand.  Then you will read from it and become a Miko.”

“So, my little card just changes?” Midori hadn’t let the small index card out of her sight since she received it that afternoon.  She turned it over and over in her hands.  For paper, the card was surprisingly resilient. “I don’t… I don’t want it to change.  Can I get a different one?”

Daisuke shook her head. “I am afraid not.”

“What if I lose it?”

“It will find you.” Daisuke smiled as she watched Midori play with the card. “Nobody can read what’s on it anymore, because it is your Missive.  If you lose it, it will make its way back to you — that is how it works.” Everybody had something personal on their invitation, and often Miko didn’t like to talk about it.  Daisuke had a feeling about Midori, though.  She wanted to talk about it.

“Is it something sentimental?” Daisuke asked.

“Sort of,” Midori said, reading the card again and again. “They were the last words my dad said, before he passed away.” Maybe she could scan it.  Or take a photograph.  But if the words only appeared for Midori, would a picture be able to capture it? “I really don’t want it to go away…”

“There is no way to stop it, I’m afraid.  Not that I am aware of.  Kuu might know more.” Contrary to the others - Kuu with her intellect, Naomi with her stoicism, and Kachiko and Pandora with their limitless energy - Daisuke was very casual about all of this.

Midori decided that even if it wouldn’t work, she would try to scan the Missive either way.  Then she would take a picture.  Maybe she could find a way to transpose it, with tracing paper or something.  Her art skills had improved considerably - maybe it wouldn’t be that difficult.  Above all else, she wanted to hold onto this.

“What did yours say?” Midori asked. “Your Missive.”

“It was a long time ago,” Daisuke said.  Her shoulders lifted in a shrug and she looked up into the trees. “I don’t really remember, but it was gone the next day and replaced with my invitation.”

Although Daisuke seemed genuine in her answer, Midori didn’t think she would have ever forgotten the words on her little card.  It was the handwriting itself she wanted to preserve.

“How long have you been doing this?” 

“A while.” Daisuke at up and smiled. “Some Miko get their release after a year or two, and some take longer.  But truly, I like it.  Did you know that we don’t put on weight?  You could go to a buffet tomorrow and eat a thousand bowls of ice-cream and you’d stay just as thin as you are now.”

“So, it’s more than we don’t age.  We literally don’t change at all.” Midori looked down at her flat chest with a little frown and covered them up with crossed arms. “And the Missive won’t wait a year for some C cups?”

That might have been the first time Midori had ever made a joke around Daisuke.  Actually, it might have been the first time she had made a joke in years.  Daisuke laughed.

“You’re funny, Miss Kaneda.  You should cultivate that.”

Midori nodded her head and looked down at the card once more.  I’m funny, she thought.  No one had ever said that to her before.

“What was it like?” Daisuke asked. “What was it like to be under that thing’s control for so long?  We think of it like a black cloud, but most of us don’t understand.  Even I cannot say I fully understand what my sister went through.  Is it exciting, feeling your own feelings again?”

“Not really,” Midori said. “It feels the same.  I just feel more… roomy, maybe?  Like I’m blossoming.  It’s hard to explain.” All these new parts of Midori were pushing themselves out, and she was becoming beautiful.

“I am happy for you.  I know that thing got away last night, but by this time tomorrow you’re going to have the power to fight for yourself.  And we are also going to help keep you safe.  Kuu has already contacted the other chapters of Miko, so they know what to expect should your Richi show up.  You will not be a slave to it again, Miss Kaneda.”

Daisuke got up off the ground.  Midori tucked the card back in it’s envelope and got up after her.

“Thank you for being so generous with me, Daisuke.”

“We are friends now, and soon we will be Miko together.  That’s like…” Daisuke took a moment to find the right words. “That’s like being sisters, isn’t it?  Naomi is a little less sisterly, but even she cares for us, and you too.”

Daisuke smoothed out her uniform - she wore the winter skirt even in the warmer months - and then pulled her bag over her shoulder.

“Miko Midori,” Daisuke said. “It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

Midori walked Daisuke to her house and invited her in for tea, which was the kinder of the things to do.  Daisuke didn’t wait out by the mailbox.  Midori decided the best thing to do was to ask her mom if her new friend could stay the night.

“Are you from the music club too, Miss…” Midori’s mom blanked on the name.  Truthfully, Midori hadn’t told it to her.

“Hidoki,” Daisuke smiled. “But Daisuke is fine.  And yes, that is right.”

“I had no idea my little girl was so musically inclined,” Midori’s mom gushed. “After all these years!”

Daisuke looked across the table at Midori’s burning cheeks before speaking again. “Actually, she’s quite talented.  More so with drawing than music, though.”

“I’m not exactly…”

“An artist?!  That’s so wonderful!  I would love to see some of your work, Midori.” 

“Sure, Mom…” Midori felt silly at the mention of her single talent.  What did it matter if she could draw stuff?  It wasn’t that impressive, was it?  She played with her food while she ate.

“She’s really come out of her shell these past few days,” Daisuke explained. “Joining our club, showing her drawings.”

“I was so worried.  All Midori wanted to do was be alone in her room.  She was still playing with dolls at—” 

“Mom!”

Midori’s mom blushed a little and looked away with embarrassment.

“I don’t think she’ll play with dolls anymore, Ms. Kaneda,” Daisuke encouraged. “She’s focused on other things.”

“I just don’t think it’s proper to play with dolls at her age,” Midori’s mom said, ending the conversation.

After dinner, Midori led the way up the stairs to her room.  Daisuke followed behind.

“Not proper to play with dolls,” Midori grumbled. “I don’t think anything is wrong with dolls.  They aren’t all evil…” Midori still had problems believing Nari was evil, but a cursory glance at her right hand always reminded her.

“Our line of work may teach you differently,” Daisuke smiled.  Not all Richi took the form of dolls, but children were juicy founts of potential.  Often girls were more controllable, so dolls and cats were the most common targets.  Speaking of Richi and Miko… “If you want to do something about your Missive message, you will want to do it before you go to bed.  It will change before morning.”

“Right…” 

Midori pulled the extra futon out of her closet for Diasuke to sleep on.  Then she went to her desk and fished around for some tracing paper.  She still had some left over from when she was a kid - it’s not like she ever used it.  But despite her newfound artistic ability, she couldn’t seem to copy the handwriting very well.  She tapped her pencil against the desk, the same pencil she had used in the music room.  The same pencil Nari shot out of her hand.

“Don’t get flustered,” Daisuke told her, sounding much more confident than Midori. “You are so used to giving up on things that are challenging, because of your Richi.  But you do not have to give up.  You can keep going at it until you get it right.”

Daisuke sat beside Midori at her desk and gently rested her hand upon hers.  Almost instantly, with Daisuke beside her, she started to feel much more sure of herself.

“Go on,” Daisuke encouraged. “I’m with you all the way.”

It took nearly two hours until Midori was happy, happy enough that it looked just like her dad’s.  She pinned it to the cork board on her wall with a thumbtack, next to pictures of an elementary school field trip and some A+ math tests.  She hadn’t redecorated since she was eight or nine years old, and the whole room looked strange for a teenager. 

“I’m so proud of you, Miss Kaneda.” The fact that - after all this time - Daisuke could still be proud meant a lot to her.  She was very instent on never losing sight of the things that mattered most to her, even if some of those things were insignificant to other people. “Now you just need to fill all your walls with pretty drawings.”

Midori was exhausted; she couldn’t help it.  It had been a long night after a long day.  She crawled into bed with a little smile and pulled the blanket over her.  Then she looked down at Daisuke, lying on the floor beside her bed on the pull-out futon that hadn’t been used in ages.  The blankets were a little small on Daisuke - as tall as she was - but she looked comfortable all the same.  Midori couldn’t remember the last time she had someone sleep so close to her, someone who wasn’t Nari.  It was… comforting.

“Goodnight Daisuke.”

“Goodnight Miss Kaneda.”

The next morning, Daisuke was awake before Midori.  By the time the white-haired girl sat up in her bed, Daisuke was already sitting at Midori’s desk with the Missive in her hand.  

“Good morning, sleepy Miko.  You can read it now if you want, but you might want to wait until we get to school and we were all together.” She must have been up a while, because Daisuke looked immaculate in her winter uniform.  She handed Midori the little card and Midori read it to herself.  Then her cheeks took on a bit of color and she looked at Daisuke with a pout.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.  No way I’m saying that…” This has to be a practical joke, she thought.

“What does it say?” Daisuke asked, then followed up with a quick stipulation. “Don’t say it.  Just paraphrase.  I’m interested.”

Midori didn’t tell her.  She climbed out of bed and got herself ready for the day.  She went downstairs and made a quick breakfast for her friend.  Then a strange thought occurred to her.  She was hungry.  She slotted a second slice of bread into the toaster.

“So you mean,” Midori said, passing Daisuke a plate of food, “your Missive wasn’t like… embarrassing?”

“Mine?  No, not at all.  Why?  Is yours?” Daisuke sat at the kitchen table and graciously ate her breakfast. “It means a lot to Kuu that you read your Missive with everyone present.  You wouldn’t want to disappointed our chubby-cheeked friend, would you?”

“I’m not saying it in front of anyone,” Midori said flatly, stuffing a piece of toast in her mouth.  Her uniform was wrinkled from the day before, but she had bigger things to worry about.  She tied a handkerchief under her hair and tied it in a bow on top of her head.  All her life, Midori never put any stock in her appearance.  She never cared what she looked like, because she thought there was never anything that could be done to make her look better.  Maybe now it was time for a change.

“That’s cute on you,” Daisuke said.  Midori was such an ordinary girl; it was interesting and endearing to see her growing into herself. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life, Miss Kaneda.  Are you excited?”

“You could say that…” Nervous was a better word, though.  All the time they spent walking to school together, she only grew more nervous.  Everyone wanted to meet before classes, but Midori wasn’t quite ready.  She spent the morning flipping the card over and over, trying to figure it out.  A pledge, clearly.  But why was it worded like that?

“Having second thoughts?” Pandora leaned over and smiled at Midori, her short blue hair catching the light in an unusual way.

“No, not really.  I don’t know.  I just…” She turned the card over again, the words staring back at Midori. “Do you remember what your Missive said?  The day you took your vows?” Pandora shrugged her shoulders. “Nothing sounded weird, like the wording or anything?”

“I guess mine was very vague,” Pandora answered. “I don’t remember, to be honest.  They are usually something you understand in time, not right away.” That’s what Kuu said, anyway.  She had all the theories and ideas that the group took as truth, mostly because she was the only one that cared enough to try to find answers.

“I guess it’s fair to say I don’t understand it,” Midori sighed, twisting the index card again and again.  Nothing changed.  It didn’t give any further explanation.

Midori’s nerves had reached their peak by the end of the school day.  All five girls were seated in the music room when she arrived — even Naomi! — and they had arranged their chairs in an amphitheater style, all facing a table in the center of the room.

“Welcome Midori,” Kuu said. “Please sit on the table.”

“Do you have your Missive?” Kachiko asked excitedly.

“She does, but she is shy about it,” Daisuke said.

“She wouldn’t tell me either,” Pandora pouted.

“You aren’t supposed to ask,” Naomi said.

“Rules, shmules,” said Kachiko.

“Quiet down,” Kuu told the group. “Midori needs to concentrate.”

Midori sat on the edge of the table, across from everyone, and looked down at the Missive in her hand.

“So I just… read it aloud?  And I become a magical girl?”

“Miko,” Kuu corrected.

“Right.  Miko girl.” Midori felt silly.  If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she wouldn’t have believed any of this was real.

“You should sit on the table,” Kuu said. “Lay on your back and get as comfortable as you can before you read.  The process can be a bit… intense.”

“And remember to read exactly what it says,” said Kachiko. “Don’t make it up as you go or anything like that.”

“This is exciting,” Pandora whispered.

“Isn’t it?” Daisuke said.

“Another kid to look out for…”

“Don’t ruin it, Naomi.”

Kuu motioned to the table and Midori did as she was told.  She laid down on the table and looked at the card once more.  Then she puffed out her cheeks - a touch too pink for the spring air - and closed her eyes.

“I don’t want to.”

“You gotta,” Kachiko said.

“Then I want to do it alone!  There’s nothing that says I need witnesses, right?” This was a joke, Midori thought.  They switched my card!

“You don’t have to,” Pandora said. “Only Naomi did hers alone.”

“And there’s nothing wrong with that,” Naomi said.

“Please, Miri?  You can trust us!”

“If you’d rather be alone, you can be, Miss Kaneda.”

“If something goes wrong,” Kuu said, “we’d like to be there to help.”

Midori sighed and re-read the card for the thousandth time.  No matter how she interpreted it, it sounded messed up.  As simple statement, but heavy with meaning.  But Midori knew she should defer to the judgement of the other Miko.

“Fine…”

Midori did what she was told.  What else could she do, really?  She laid nervously on the table and closed her eyes, hearing shuffling around her as the girls waited impatiently.  She didn’t have to read the card; she had it memorized.  Midori waited until everything was quiet, took a deep breath, and read the card aloud.

“I want and I wait, missing what I cannot find… a girl that’s all mine.”

There was giggling — a lot of giggling — but Midori didn’t hear any of it.  Lightning crackled from her extremities, her fingertips and her toes, and danced noisily along the walls.  It zipped past each girl, who had carefully positioned themselves to avoid it.  When it was over, there were long black burns on the walls, a bookshelf on fire, and hundreds of shredded books settling throughout the air.

And of course, on the table, Midori was dead.

Midori woke in the center of a forest, where the sky was eternally dusk and everything around her was just a silhouette.

“Well, I’m not in Kansas anymore.” And her Missive was clearly not a joke.  But where was she now?

“Hello?” she called.  There was only one path straight ahead of her.  She decided to follow it.

The trees had a verdant yellow bark that reflected dimly in the long shadows, and they looked eternally unnatural and unearthly.  Most peculiar of all, however, was that there were no other sounds than the crunch of Midori’s school shoes in the dirt.  There were birds or animals or anything one might associate with a forest.

She followed the path through the dusk, looking nervously over her shoulder as she went.  Behind her, the path seemed to disappear after only a few feet, lost in the shadows.  She felt her hands, but nothing seemed right.  Shouldn’t she have powers?  But she didn’t.  She was her usual self in her usual clothes, walking through a dark forest.  And Midori didn’t like it.

Eventually, the forest made way to a clearing and in that clearing stood a building — a pagoda with four tiers — and on the stairs of the pagoda was a tiger.  Its black stripes were impossibly dark against the almost luminescent white fur.  Perhaps more impossible, however, was that it raised its head and yawned, then began to talk.

“Rather late to be walking on your own, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would say,” Midori muttered, looking at the sky, then at the tiger.  She didn’t approach.  She didn’t want to die.  Little did she know, she already had. “I just didn’t think you’d say.”

He laughed.  Midori didn’t know tigers could laugh.

“This is some Alice in Wonderland stuff,” Midori said more to herself than to the tiger.

“Perhaps Alice became an Unmei no Miko, and they forgot to tell that part of the story.” The tiger rose to its feet at the top of the stairs and slowly began to wander down toward the girl. “You have come to a very sacred place, Midori Kaneda.  What is it you seek?” For a tiger, this one was quite polite.

“I suppose I’m here to become one of the Miko girls.  They said it was my destiny, and… and they said I can’t die.  If I can’t die, I can take care of my mom.  You know?  It seems… worthwhile.” Midori felt awkward.  Philosophical conversations with a tiger wasn’t on her agenda for the day.

“Oh, I’m afraid you’ve been swindled in that case,” the tiger said. He made his way to the bottom of the stairs and approached the white-haired girl.  Though she backed away as he came closer, she eventually found herself against a tree.  The tiger — who was much larger closer up — stood as tall as the girl did, with a head the size of a beach ball. A head which he softly rubbed against her arm, affectionately.

“You see, Midori, you are dead right now.”

“What?” Midori blinked in surprise, looking at the tiger, then at the sky.  This was being dead? she wondered. “But… but I’m not supposed to be.  I’m supposed to be a Miko.  Right?  My mom… she…” What was all this for?  Midori felt sick to her stomach.

“Relax.” The tiger laughed again, plopping down on the ground in front of Midori and stretching out.  The two of them nearly matched: white hair amidst the contrasting shadows. “Death to a Miko is a setback, a time to recuperate and reflect, and then return where you left off.  While dead, time won’t progress.  You can feel free to spend as much time here as you see fit.” He made it seem like a rather good deal, all things considered.

“Oh…” Midori took a moment to let that sink in. “Why?”

“If not for this opportunity,” the tiger explained, “you would learn nothing of the reason you died or how to prevent it in future times.” He put his head down on his front paws and wagged his long tail into Midori’s side, knocking her over and into his fur.  He felt like a warm blankety beanbag.  It took a minute for Midori to settle into him, but she found it oddly comforting.

“So, am I here to reflect on anything in particular this time, or is it like an introductory course in dying?” Did all Miko die right away? Midori wondered.  Did this happen every time they died?

“This time, Miko Midori, you are here to discover what your weakness is and forge it into a strength.”

“I barely know who I am.  How am I supposed to know my weakness?”

“Ah yes, you were touched by the Richi.  I smell it on you.”

“Great, I smell too…” Midori sighed, running her fingers through the tiger’s fur.  He truly was soft.

“This is not a discovery I can make for you, Midori.  You will find clues inside your pagoda, but the answer will come from you.  You must discover your weakness.  You must fight it on the highest tier.  Then you must absorb its strength, so it becomes your own.  I will accompany you, but I cannot give you answers.”

“A test,” Midori sighed. “Just what I need.”

The pagoda, with its four tiers, loomed ominously above the clearing.  The stairs led to the opened door at the bottom. She climbed up from her comfortable spot on the ground and made her way up the stairs, toward the trial of a lifetime.  

[Ending Song & Credits]

-------------

Cast & Height:

Midori Kaneda > 158cm (5'2")

Pandora > 167cm (5'6")

Kachiko Kazumi > 152cm (5'0")

Daisuke Hidoki > 173cm (5'8")

Kuu > 165cm (5'5")

Naomi > 168cm (5'6")

[Galdamax]

Oh no sophie, I think some auto correct magic got out and turned your envelope in a "even lope"

Great chapter loving reading so far

[Sophie ♥]

6 hours ago, Galdamax said:

Oh no sophie, I think some auto correct magic got out and turned your envelope in a "even lope"

Great chapter loving reading so far

Fixed!  Thanks for the help.  

[Sophie ♥]

Next time on: Maidens of Fate!

*

“Each painting represents a feeling you hold important," the tiger said. "You must stand before each one and declare it a strength or a weakness.  A true statement will help to clear your mind, putting you one step closer to your answer, while a false statement will cloud you and bring a degree of pain.”

“This seems trivial.” Then again, if every Miko did this, could Midori really question the logic?  She went over to the first painting — the one on the right — and saw her mother. 

*

It had been two days; Midori only knew that because the tiger told her - there was no astronomical indication.  She was lying on the ground and staring up at the painting upside-down.  Already, Midori had lost hope.

*

“See class,” the teacher said, not to Midori but to everyone else, “this is what happens when a sixteen year old wants to act like a two year old.” The teacher unfolded the thick diaper, decorated with pastel colors and baby blocks, and spread it out on her desk.  With no effort at all - as if Midori weighed nothing more than an actual toddler - the teacher lifted her and set her down on top of it.

The class watched in awe and amusement as the teacher stripped Midori of her skirt and panties, dusted her with baby powder, and pulled the thick baby diaper up between her legs.  The teacher expertly taped the diaper in place.

*

Episode 4: Still Afterlife

[Pudding]

Is it Tuesday yet? This chapter was fantastic and people who aren't reading it are bad and should feel bad ?

[bbykimmy]

On 5/26/2020 at 7:54 PM, Sophie ♥ said:

“And remember to read exactly what it says,” said Kachiko. “Don’t make it up as you go or anything like that.”

“This is exciting,” Pandora whispered.

“Isn’t it?” Daisuke said.

“Another kid to look out for…”

“Don’t ruin it, Naomi.”

Kuu motioned to the table and Midori did as she was told.  She laid down on the table and looked at the card once more.  Then she puffed out her cheeks - a touch too pink for the spring air - and closed her eyes.

I was honestly expecting this to be the beginning of the diaper content, that Midori's magical girl form would be a padded princess.  You set up the red herring beautifully, and as the dominoes lined up, ready to be knocked down...

They stood firm.

As the embarrassment built, as your false clues fit together - I was disappointed.  Not like you'd expect a fetishist to be, no - I was disappointed thinking that it WOULD be the start of the diaper content.  I felt like the story to this point was too good to have it go that direction right now.  This has been a fun story - unfortunately, I have a bit of a hard time keeping the characters separate at this point because you introduced quite a large cast of characters all at once, but I'm looking forward to seeing them develop.

Good job.

[Sophie ♥]

Episode 4: Still Afterlife

Midori took the first step inside the pagoda, peering around curiously.  It was smaller than she had expected, lined with paintings on the walls.  Midori turned back to the tiger.

“So I just go to the top, and then I get to go home?”

“More or less.” In motion — and so close to the girl — the large tiger was even more pronounced in size.  His head was beside her own as they entered. “Each painting represents a feeling you hold important.  You must stand before each one and declare it a strength or a weakness.  A true statement will help to clear your mind, putting you one step closer to your answer, while a false statement will cloud you and bring a degree of pain.”

“This seems trivial.” Then again, if every Miko did this, could Midori really question the logic?  She went over to the first painting — the one on the right — and saw her mother.  She bit her lip.

“She’s a strength, because she’s an inspiration.  But she’s a weakness too, because she can be used against me.  Can it be both?” Midori looked harder at the painting, but it was just her mom, in the kitchen washing dishes.  All this was for her.

“If she were present during an encounter with a Richi, would she be an asset or a liability?” The tiger paced behind the white-haired girl, his large claws gently scratching at the wooden floor of the pagoda as he did.  It seemed to have a general vacillation between restless and restfulness, like most cats.

“A liability.  So she’s a weakness.” A surge of electricity shot up through Midori’s legs, through her fingers, and she let out a scream.  She slid down to her knees, with smoke rising from her clothes.  It hurt even to breathe. “Ow!  Fuck!”

“She’s a strength,” the tiger explained. “She would expand your potential, empower you to succeed.”

“Well… you… could have been a touch… more informative…” Midori’s ears were ringing, but the shock was starting to subside.  Already, her muscles felt weak.

“I suppose that’s true, but you’re more likely to remember a lesson learned if you learn it yourself.” Many of the paintings wouldn’t be so black and white, and some would have more obscure framing and reference.  There was only so much a painting could do to encapsulate a feeling, but Midori made it through with only a half dozen more shocks and her head so much clearer for all the victories.

Midori sat on the stairs to the second tier.  She had gone through paintings of people and places and objects and abstract waves of color.  Some were easy and some made no sense at all.  One painting in particular — intended to represent life itself — took her an hour to figure out.  But by the end, when it was all over, she felt like she understood her role much clearer, what made her better and what made her worse.

“I hate you.  I hate this place.” Midori ran her fingers through her hair.  She was sweating.  She didn’t know you could sweat in the afterlife, but she didn’t know you could feel pain either. “Being alive isn’t that great.  I’m just going to sleep here.”

“You are welcome to stay as long as you need.” The tiger spread himself out at the bottom of the stairs and encouraged Midori to rest upon his fur.  She took him up on that offer. “This journey will likely take you days, or longer.  But time has no meaning here, so you need not concern yourself with haste.”

Midori sat and relaxed, but grew bored within the hour.  Well, maybe it was an hour.  She struggled to tell the difference when the sun never went anywhere.  She got up on her feet and looked over her clothes.  There were no burns on her uniform, though she was sure she smelled something burn whenever she would get an answer wrong.

“So that lightning that goes through me… that’s normal?  You don’t seem put off by it.” Midori started making her way up the stairs and into the second room.

“It comes from within you,” the tiger explained. “All Miko are attuned to one of the elements, and that is where you draw your power.  When you fail to live up to your potential, your element rebels to ensure you do not repeat the mistake.” For an animal his size, the tiger stepped very softly as his paws padded up the stairs behind Midori.

The second tier of the pagoda housed more paintings, though these ones were somehow even more ambiguous — one was just a color in a frame.

“This isn’t another strength-weakness test is it?  Please don’t say it is.  I can’t do it again.  These paintings make even less sense than the ones downstairs.” Midori walked around the room groaning.  She didn’t know where to start.

“These paintings test your desires, Miko Midori.  Each one represents something you desire, and you must be truthful with just how deep that desire runs.  The closer you are to the truth, the clearer your head will become.  But drift too far…” The tiger didn’t need to finish the sentence.  He paced behind the girl as she looked glumly at the paintings.

Desire is easier, right? Midori wondered.  But she thought the weaknesses and strengths would be easy too.  With reluctance, she went to the first picture on the right.  It was completely blue.  This had to be a joke.

“I… I don’t know.  It’s just the color blue.  The sky?  The ocean?  I guess I like them?  I wouldn’t want either one to go away.”

“What do you most strongly associate to that color?  Judge upon that.  Close your eyes and picture it.” Not every painting was so obtuse.  Some were things like ice cream and pretty clothes.  One was a house with a white picket fence.

Midori closed her eyes and thought about that particular shade of blue and something odd came to mind.  A pair of shoes she had as a kid, almost that exact shade.  But they weren’t her shoes - they were Nari’s.  One of them went missing when Midori was eight or nine years old; it probably fell off at the playground.  Midori felt so guilty for losing it.  She went back to that park every day for a year looking for it.  Midori opened her eyes.

“It means a lot to me,” Midori answered. “Even now, I still feel guilty.  I want to find that missing shoe and give it back.” A rush of clarity filled Midori’s head.  She was a child.  She wasn’t stupid or careless.  She was young and naive and her responsibility then should never have been to her doll.  She shouldn’t blame herself.

“A strong start,” the tiger said. “Onward.”

Midori was shocked twice on the second floor.  The one with the pretty clothes got her bad.  She must have wanted pretty dresses a lot more than she thought, though the notion brought color to her cheeks.  Finally, Midori arrived at the final painting.

“Pandora?” The painting was only of the girl with the short blue hair, with bright blue eyes.  None of the other girls were present.

“Seems so,” the tiger said.

“Well, I guess I desire her.  She’s one of my…” How did Daisuke put it? “Sisters. So I desire her a lot.”

Though there was no shock, there was no clarity either.  The door on the far side of the room was still shut.

“You should elaborate on your answer,” the tiger encouraged. “Dig deeper within yourself — there’s something you aren’t saying.”

“What are you talking about?” Midori crossed her arms in irrtation, looking up at the painting of Pandora.  She didn’t get it; what was it trying to say? “She’s… I don’t know!  There’s nothing more to say!” 

No shock, no clarity, no door opening to the next floor.  Midori groaned and sat on the floor.  The tiger curled up next to her.

“This is so stupid…”

“A Richi will use your most hidden desire to shame you, to work it’s way inside you.” The tiger explained things that Midori already knew. “You’re aware of how potent a force that can be, from your own experiences.  That is why you must be honest.  Reach inside yourself and confront your strongest desire, the ones you keep most hidden.  Here, in this place, you will not be judged.  Once reborn, a Richi will not have power to shame you.”

“I really don’t know what to say,” Midori sighed.  She understood what the tiger meant, but that didn’t give her an answer to the problem in front of her.  Just Pandora.  Why not the other girls?  Was she a symbol for the group, or was there more to it?  Was it specifically her?

“She’s very… nice.  Outgoing.  I like that.  And she’s cute.  I don’t know.  I like her.  She’s one of my favorites among the Miko…”

No clarity, no shock, no stairs.

“That’s all I have,” Midori pouted and closed her eyes.  Maybe a nap would help.  It would take time, and Midori had an infinite supply.  In short time, she fell asleep against the tiger’s fur.  It would take three more failed and frustrated attempts before Midori stumbled upon something quite by accident.

It had been two days; Midori only knew that because the tiger told her - there was no astronomical indication.  She was lying on the ground and staring up at the painting upside-down.  Already, Midori had lost hope.

“Can’t it just shock me so I can move on?” But the painting didn’t shock.  If it did, she wouldn’t learn anything the way she learned from the other shocks.  And she still had two floors left.

“This is the Gallery of Desire, Miko Midori.” The tiger didn’t say anything new, but he was free to reiterate things the snow-haired girl already knew. “In a place designed to have you face your desires, what are you failing to find?”

What I cannot find, Midori thought.  Then she remembered her Missive.  She sat up and reached into the pocket of her uniform, where the little envelope was waiting for her.  Sure enough…

“Missing what I cannot find, a girl—” Midori blushed and threw the Missive to the ground. “I do NOT like Pandora!”

A shock poured through Midori’s bones, through every nerve under her skin, and caused her to shake and shiver.  Then the shock was gone and smoke rose from Midori’s clothes.  The doors on the far end of the room opened and Midori’s cheeks were on fire.

“We will continue to the Gallery of Knowledge,” the tiger told her, leading the way to the stairs.  Midori followed behind, biting her lip.

Really, Pandora? Midori thought.  And it shocked me.  It seems wrong.  Maybe the game is broken?

Midori shook the thought from her head and made her way to the third floor.  More paintings…

“I hate this game.  Can’t I just fight something?” Midori would take violence over all this introspection.  The tiger chuckled heartily and padded around the room.

“You expect yourself to win against a foe when you can’t even conquer yourself, Miko Midori?”

The paintings on this floor had words beneath them — logic problems, to match the pictures.  Each one tested a different facet of knowledge, from grammar to reasoning to physics.  For a girl who was so behind in classes, it would certainly be an eye opener.

“Failure to answer correctly,” the tiger explained, “will instill a drive to study the discipline in question after your rebirth.  In addition to the usual consequence, of course.”

“I can’t believe this… I have school work?” She went up to the first and looked it over.  Chemistry. ‘NaOH.’ The painting was a dead giveaway, and Midori successfully passed.  But the next one was physics, and that sent volts of electricity through her skin.  

The tiger yawned loudly as the girl received her fifth shock in a row — she would find herself drawn to excelling those topics when she woke up, though she would only barely know why.  Memories of this place were selectively suppressed when reborn.  The challenges and the paintings weren’t retained, but the questions raised within her and the realizations she made would all be kept.

A Miko must be adaptable,” the tiger told her. “Quick thinking.  Bright.  You are not to blame for the tragedy brought by your Richi, but only you can repair it.”

“Doesn’t focusing on school mess with the idea of fighting these… things?  What do my studies have anything to do with them?” Midori looked up at the last painting.  English.  Of course it was English.  

“Core is to apple as blank is to solar system.” It wasn’t a hard question; Midori just had to remember the English word.

“Power without knowledge is as useless as knowledge without power,” the tiger told her. “One strengthens the other.  Miko live long lives, Miko Midori, and during that time your thirst for knowledge will drive you to remarkable things, as it has for countless centuries of others like you.” The raspy, deep voice echoed its speech in the gallery, but despite the tiger’s efforts, Midori was focused on the painting, looking for the right word.

“It’s the same answer.  Taiyō.  They have it there, but… but it’s the same answer.  The same word as that one.  Solar.” Midori was thinking out loud.  Solar.  It was a trick question for a Japanese student, but it wasn’t for an English one.  Whoever designs these pagodas are assholes, Midori thought.

“Sun, I think.” Then the doors on the far end of the room opened. “Really?  I was right?”

“Adaptability is a strength as much as any knowledge.”

The final gallery had more paintings than any of the others, despite its smaller size at the top of the pagoda.  Each painting was smaller and they were affixed to the walls in random arrays with no sense or order.  In the center was a painting suspended by the ceiling by two cables, covered in a blue velvet blanket.

“Facing our fears makes us strong,” the tiger said. Viewing each painting would cause the fear to unfold in front of her, as real as could be.  This floor was destined to take the longest. “The center painting is for last, and represents your worst fear.”

“Great,” Midori sighed.  She went to the first painting nervously, but it was simple.  It was her, in front of this very painting.  How self-referential, Midori thought.  But the painting wasn’t a lie.  She was terrified, just being here.  Facing truths.  She felt sick, but she moved on to the next one in the line.  In a way, she conquered the fear just by starting the process.

The next painting in the line was an image of the grim reaper.  A reflection of death.  Suddenly, Midori felt a sharp pain in her back, between two disks in her spine, and pushing up through her ribs.  Blood dropped onto the pagoda floor as she sunk to the ground.  A small blade stuck out the front of her and she watched as her uniform started to take on the sickly red color.  She couldn’t breathe.  The pain was secondary to the exhaustion.  She felt logic and fear and everything slipping away.  Tears dripped from her eyes.

“Make it.. stop.. please make it stop…”

“Close your eyes,” the tiger told her. “Accept it.  Death is inevitable, and it comes for all of us.” The tiger licked at his paw in the center of the room, as Midori continued to cry and whimper. “A Miko cannot fear death.  Though she cannot die in her Miko form, she must know it is a part of life that will find her eventually.  It finds everyone.”

Midori’s whimpering began to slow, and as she drifted away from the world… just like that, the blade and the blood were gone.  Any evidence her death had ever happened simply vanished, aside from the girl crying on the floor.

Midori was so tired.  She had gone through only two of the paintings, and couldn’t brush off her exhaustion.  She curled up next to the tiger on the floor and closed her eyes.

“I don’t like this… I just… I just want to go home…”

The tiger didn’t say anything and Midori herself quickly drifted off.  She knew she would die someday.  She knew everyone would.  It didn’t make it any easier, knowing.  Even accepting it didn’t make it easier.  But her perspective had certainly shifted.

When Midori woke up the next morning — morning was a subjective term — she pulled herself to her feet and moved onto the next painting, ready for anything.

The painting in front of her showed a black road and a night sky.  A fear of the unknown, a fear of what was to come.  Upon viewing it, Midori found herself alone, in complete blackness.  No pagoda, no tiger, no paintings — just her and the nothingness.  A Miko couldn’t be afraid of uncertain situations, because she would face so many of them.

Midori took a deep breath and closed her eyes.  Darkness was okay.  Being alone was okay.  She had never been alone before, but she had been with only Nari for many years.  Was this any different?  Perhaps this was even safer.  This was fine.  Midori was fine.  And sooner rather than later, Midori opened her eyes and found herself in the pagoda once again.  She felt sick, but it felt okay.  And she moved on.

The next painting she faced was insects — it didn’t go well.  Thousands of bugs poured from the painting and Midori’s panic rose in her chest.  She let out a loud scream and took a step back.  The jolt of electricity — the one she was growing more and more accustomed to — zipped up her spine.  With a flourish of fear and frustration, it arced out of the tips of her hands and splashed against the painting, catching it on fire.  It spread across the dry wooden wall and, by the time it fizzled out, there was a large hole in the side of Midori’s pagoda.

“I’m sorry,” Midori told her tiger, looking over the damage.  The bugs were illusory, but the fire she had started was not.  From that moment, Miko Midori’s pagoda would show the damage as a fine reminder for her fledging actions.

“Fear is powerful,” the tiger said. “It can cause you to act in ways you may never expect or anticipate.”

Perhaps Midori didn’t conquer her fear exactly, but she certainly came to realize its dangers. Maybe the process of rebirth took pity on her, or maybe her realization was enough, but the painting and the bugs didn’t reappear.

The next painting was of a classroom, with desks of students and a teacher at the front of the room.  The teacher’s hand began to move, writing words in chalk that Midori couldn’t seem to read.  The students would look up at it, then down at their papers, taking notes.

Midori looked around, but she was no longer in the pagoda.  It felt like she had never been there at all; this was just another ordinary school day.  She picked up her pencil and tried following along, but everything the teacher wrote was gibberish.

Midori felt a tightness in her chest as she scrambled to understand the words on the board.  A sickness filled her stomach and then a heat between her legs.  She thought those feelings were just anxiety until she noticed the warmth spread across the seat of her skirt.  The teacher’s lecture was interrupted by the soft pattering of droplets on the classroom tile.

“Miss Kaneda!” The teacher’s voice echoed through the room and Midori’s classmates all turned to look at her.  For some reason, she was in a row of her own, centered for everyone to see.

“I… I don’t…” Midori fumble for words just as inelegantly as she fumbled to figure out what had happened.  She looked down at her uniform, with a large wet stain between her legs, and the puddle forming under her chair.

“Come here this moment, young lady,” the teacher said strictly.  Midori felt compelled to listen, like her body was nothing more than a train on rails.  She stood up and stepped awkwardly around the puddle, walking quietly to the front of the room.  The students began to snicker and giggle at the sight of Midori’s wet behind.  Everyone knew she had just wet herself in the middle of class.

“Look at the mess you’ve made,” the teacher said, pointing at the desk and the puddle beneath it.  Then the teacher took Midori’s skirt in her hand and held it up for the class to get a better look. “And you ruined your uniform, too.  Are you truly such a child that you couldn’t make it to the bathroom?”

“I… I didn’t…” Tears of humiliation appeared in Midori’s eyes.  The laughter from the students grew, filling the classroom.  The teacher didn’t silence them or even pass a stern look to Midori’s classmates.

“If you intend on disrupting my class with such infantile acts,” the teacher told Midori, “then we will solve this problem just like we do with little babies.”

Midori was frozen in place as the teacher went around her desk.  She wanted desperately to cover the wet spot on her skirt, or to run from the room, but she couldn’t seem to move.  The laughter in the classroom only got louder when the teacher returned with a square of plastic.

“See class,” the teacher said, not to Midori but to everyone else, “this is what happens when a sixteen year old wants to act like a two year old.” The teacher unfolded the thick diaper, decorated with pastel colors and baby blocks, and spread it out on her desk.  With no effort at all - as if Midori weighed nothing more than an actual toddler - the teacher lifted her and set her down on top of it.

The class watched in awe and amusement as the teacher stripped Midori of her skirt and panties, dusted her with baby powder, and pulled the thick baby diaper up between her legs.  The teacher expertly taped the diaper in place.

Midori was in tears.  Allowing her classmates to see her naked was humiliating enough, but being publicly changed into a diaper was a thousand times worse.  When the teacher was done, she walked around to Midori’s head and popped a large pacifier into her mouth.  Immediately, Midori’s cries were silenced, but her humiliation only grew.

“That’s a good little girl,” the teacher said, helping Midori to her feet.  She continued the ritual of publicly diminishing Midori by replacing her shirt with one in baby pink that came no lower than her belly button.  On the front, in block letters, said ‘Mi-tan’.  The teacher pulled Midori’s hair into short high pigtails and directed her back to her seat.

Midori never stopped crying.  She tried to plead with the teacher, or to shout at the classmates, but the pacifier kept her silent and docile.  Every time the teacher gave her an instruction, her body obeyed on command.  And so Midori spent the rest of the class sitting above a puddle in the center of the classroom, wearing nothing but a diaper and a baby tee.

But no matter how long Midori waited, the class seemed to go on and on forever.  An ache in her stomach and a pressure between her legs reminded her that she still needed to use the bathroom.  And her position in the center of the room and the constant snickers and glares from the other classmates reminded her that if wet herself now - or worse! - everyone would watch her do it.

Midori raised her hand to be excused, but the teacher didn’t call on her.  Midori tried to interrupt the teacher’s lecture, but the pacifier kept her words from getting out.  Midori tried to get up and run rom the room, but her body wouldn’t let her without permission.  She sat helplessly as the pressure grew worse, as she fought as hard as she could to keep control.

But in the end, Midori was a slave to inevitability.  There were some things she simply couldn’t stop.

Midori looked up at the tiger with glassy eyes.

“You were gone for nearly six days,” the tiger said to her.

“…took a long time to realize…” Midori muttered, “…some things just don’t matter…”

Midori felt dizzy, but well-rested all the same.  She made her way to shaky feet.

“Relax,” the tiger told her. “Miko, like many humans, take comfort in food at times.” The tiger nodded toward the center of the room.  Midori turned to see a long table, lined with foods and drinks, salty and savory, spicy and sweet.  Of course, in death it was all an illusion.  But that didn’t mean Midori couldn’t enjoy it.

Midori ate.  It helped a lot.  She was feeling a lot better, though the memories of her time in the painting were not gone.  She hated that she was so vulnerable to the whims of others.  She hated that she let their laughter confine her in that place.  Their opinions didn’t matter.

After eating, Midori looked quietly around the pagoda, at the remaining pictures.  Then she saw the burned hole in the wall.

“I broke it,” she remembered.

“You did,” said the tiger. “And in time, you may decide to fix it.  When you do, the tools will be provided.” The building could repair itself under the bizarre rules of the afterlife, but it had to make a point. “Why do you think it took so long to conquer your latest fear?”

“I didn’t realize it was a test as quickly as the others.” If she had, maybe she would never have been embarrassed in the first place.  Then she wouldn’t have learned anything.  Midori turned her attention to the paintings with much stronger resolve.  The incident with the bugs - losing control - wouldn’t happen again.  Getting trapped in a painting wouldn’t happen again either.

“You will face your next fear, then?”

Midori nodded.  But her certainty was interrupted by a scream outside the pagoda.  Midori — accustomed to the silence — fumbled to her feet and hurried to the hole she had made.  Down below, on the ground and pinned under debris, was her mother.

“How… how did she…”

Without a second thought, Midori ran out of the room, down the stairs, down another set, and down one more, before bursting out of the pagoda and into the grassy clearing.  She ran to her mom’s side and slid into the dirt.  Her mother sobbed, trapped under rubble of stone and wood.  With a cursory glance upward, Midori saw the broken parts of the pagoda.  Missing sections of wood and rock.  Had she caused this?

“Hey, it’s alright, I’m here, it’s okay.  Come on, I’m going to help get this off you…”

“I… I don’t understand,” Midori’s mom whimpered. “The girls from school said you ran away, through a strange door.  I followed you and found this forest, and…” She winced under the debris.  When Midori lifted one of the beams of wood, it made a disgusting wet slurping sound and blood began to pour from her mother’s stomach.

She’d been here six days while I was stuck in that painting, Midori realized.  She felt horrible.  She had never felt so horrible in her life.  She would never forgive herself, but… Midori shook her head and sat down beside her, putting her forehead against her mom’s. Midori knew, somewhere deep inside her, that her mom wouldn’t live through this.  As a good daughter, she needed to make this moment count.

“I love you, Mama… but the afterlife is really nice.  There’s talking animals and forests and nice houses.  You’ll love it…”

Midori’s mom smiled weakly and ran her fingers along Midori’s cheek. “It was just an accident, sweetie… you didn’t mean it.” When she coughed, more blood came up from her stomach. “I hope dying is… as nice as you say…”

Midori sat with her.  They talked about diners and cupcakes and birthdays and puppies.  When Midori’s mom stopped talking, Midori kept talking anyway, until she was only crying.  Then, when she was done, it was just her and her mother again without words or tears.  Everything washed away.

And once again, Midori was on the fourth tier of the pagoda.  The wall was fixed and the tiger sat with her.

“…what…”

“You conquered your guilt and your fear,” he told her. “You accepted that she needed you to be strong, and you did not fall apart.  You demonstrated an understanding of death.  And without meaning to, you faced failure as well.”

“It wasn’t real…” Midori was only just realizing.

“No.”

“So she’s…” 

“Yes.”

“…right.  Good…”

The game was exhausting her.  She had been here for weeks, and she felt worse with every passing day.  Confronting her shortcomings had proven to be the most difficult thing she had ever done, and the most difficult thing she may ever do.  Change was not easy.

“I’m ready,” Midori told the tiger. “I just want to go home, so let’s get this over with.”

Midori had reached her second to last painting, other than the large one in the center of the room.  This one was simple: a tiny box in a vast darkness.  Then, suddenly, Midori was in that box.  The weight of the earth above her creaked against the wood and Midori knew that she would stay in this box until she died - as she would in a timely human manner - or freed herself by force of will.

Midori never liked such small spaces, and her heart began to race.  She kicked at the walls of the box, frantic to break out and escape into a brighter, bigger world.  But the weight of the dirt above her was too much.  She could hardly move.  She couldn’t claw her way out.  After hours of fighting, she stopped.

“Why am I doing this?” she asked herself.  Her words, out loud, brought a calm to Midori. “If I’m going to die here, then I’ll die here.  If I can’t move, then I can’t move.” There was no honor or bravery in fighting something that couldn’t be overcome.  Sometimes acceptance was the best outcome.

Midori took a deep breath and closed her eyes.  She let the air leave her lungs and her mind drift away.  To better times, with her mom and dad.  To drawing in the music room.  To the smiles of her new friends, and the way they welcomed her into their club.  

Hopelessness was something Midori knew well; she had been living with that feeling for a decade.  The feeling she felt then wasn’t the same.  She hadn’t given up.  She found a way to win an unwinnable fight, and to defeat an undefeatable situation.  She found clarity.

When she woke up, the tiger was sitting in front of her.

“That was fast,” he said.

“I’m getting the hang of it,” Midori smiled.  But despite her success in the trial, she was clearly exhausted. “Perhaps another nap…”

The tiger allowed Midori to fall asleep in her fur as he always did.  But when she woke up the next morning, she wasn’t in the pagoda. Nor was she in the classroom with the table where she had originally died. Rather, Midori was standing in a bedroom, decorated with blue flowers and a blue bedspread, and the only other person with her was Pandora.

“Well?” she asked softly.  Her face was filled with anticipation.  But Midori had no idea what she was waiting for.

“Well, what?”

“Well, aren’t you going to say anything?  I told you I like you!” Pandora smiled in the goofy way only she could pull off and took a step closer to Midori.  She bumped into the edge of the bed and fell onto the comforter.

“I couldn’t say anything in front of the others,” Pandora explained. “But when you read your Missive, about a girl to have as your own…” 

“Pandora, I—”

“I’ve liked you since I first saw you and your perfect white hair.  Gosh, that was… years ago.  We were still in middle school.” Pandora climbed onto the bed and Midori scrambled back until she bumped into the headboard. “I always hoped you liked me too.”

“I’m not sure what this is about,” Midori said sharply, trying to play into the assertiveness.  But her cheeks were pink and her heart was racing.  Pandora crawled closer, until her body was over Midori’s, and their lips were only an inch apart.

“What are you so afraid of?” Pandora asked.

Afraid? Midori wondered. Why would she use that word?  

But Midori’s heart was racing and her hands were trembling.  Her expression said it all.  Midori was truly afraid.

“I… I don’t know.”

“Because someone will find out?” Pandora asked. “No one is even here.  Just you and me.”

Midori looked around, as if Pandora were lying.  But she wasn’t.

“Because you’ve never kissed someone?” Pandora asked. “You’ll kiss someone one day, won’t you?  Is it so terrible that I’m your first?”

“No, but…” Pandora was a gorgeous girl; even Midori couldn’t argue that.

“Do you want to?” Pandora asked seriously.  She meant it.

Midori stared at her for a moment and nodded.  Midori did want to.

“Then why are you afraid?”

Midori didn’t know.  It didn’t make sense.  Was being so close to another person such a terrifying idea?  She was so close to a monster for so long, and she survived it.  Pandora could do nothing worse to her than Nari had done.

“Do you trust me?” Pandora asked.

Midori nodded and leaned forward, until her lips touched Pandora’s.  She could only describe it as… warm.  Not warm like the air in that wooden box under all that dirt, or warm like the puddle on her seat in that classroom.  Warm like all her insides knew it was the right thing to do.

Warm like there was nothing to be afraid of.

“Good morning,” the tiger said as Midori sat up.

“I had the oddest dream,” she muttered.

“Ah, it seems one of the paintings got ahead of itself,” the tiger nodded, pointing his nose toward the final painting.  A picture of a bedroom. “That does not often happen.”

“Oh…” Midori blushed and looked down at her uniform. “Then that’s…” 

“Correct.” The tiger stood up and padded around the room, stopping by the blue velvet sheet over the final painting. “Are you ready to face your final fear, Miko Midori?”

Midori nodded and got to her feet.  She knew what it was, even before the tiger bit the cloth and pulled it to the floor.  A doll.  A familiar doll that represented the Richi named Nari.  At the sight of her, Midori felt pangs of guilt and panic, but she was far more equipped to handle them.

“I’m sorry I left you behind, Nari,” Midori told the painting.  The doll on the canvas never moved, as Nari never moved.  But she spoke in Midori’s mind.

“You’re not sorry.  I’ve been nothing but a friend to you, Midori.  And then these girls come along and you discard me like trash?  How many nights did we cuddle while you cried?  Huh?  How many times did I comfort you when you felt useless?”

Midori winced and looked at the tiger, then up at the doll again.

“I… I didn’t mean it like that, Nari.  I was trying to show you what kind of life I can have.  A good life.  With you and with them.  That it’s not dangerous like you say it is.  And then you… you hurt me.” Midori held her hands, remembering the pain she felt.

“You turned against me!” Nari sounded genuinely hurt. “Do you think it’s normal that a doll can talk?  I’m special and I chose you to be my best friend, and these girls hunt down dolls like me because they fear what they don’t understand.  And you were stupid enough to believe them.”

She was right.  Midori looked at the ground and played with her fingers in front of her.  How did she know that the Miko weren’t the evil ones?  Maybe they tricked her.  Maybe Nari was telling the truth.

“It’s okay, Midori,” Nari sighed. “It’s not too late to fix it.  We’ll put a stop to these evil girls, okay?  We’ll use the powers they’ve given you and we’ll stop every last one of them.”

“Stop them?  Like… hurt them?  Like you hurt me?” Midori looked incredulously at the painting.

“They want to hurt me, Midori!  They want to kill me, don’t they?  They are using you to get to me.”

“They aren’t using me.  They like me.  We’re friends…”

“Why would they be friends with you?  They have no reason to be.  You’re not good at anything.”

Midori remembered her drawing in the music room.  She remembered tracing her dad’s words, with her hand in Daisuke’s.  She remembered stepping between Nari and Naomi when they were fighting, to keep Naomi safe.  Safe from Nari.  Safe from everything she did to Midori.

“You have no right to tell me what I’m good at!” Midori shouted.  Then there was a flash of light and Nari disappeared.

When the light cleared, Midori was standing in the pagoda, but she was no longer in her school uniform.  The sky blue dress was unique to her, with puffy sleeves and a frilled skirt, flared out by white petticoats.  The dress was partly covered by a button-up black vest, and her hands were covered in full by long white gloves.  Her shoes were black buckle flats - similar to her school shoes - with bows on the top, and her white socks came all the way up to her knees.  The only thing that remained was the blue handkerchief, the same color as her dress, tied through Midori’s snow-white hair in a pretty bow on top.

“Woah…”

“Congratulations, Miko Midori,” the tiger said proudly, nuzzling his large head against the girl’s dress.  The picture frame that had once housed the painting of Nari now had a door painted in its place. “When you’re ready turn the handle.”

“Thank you,” Midori said with a smile, patting the tiger on the top of his head with her gloved hand.  Midori took another look at her clothes.  They looked more mature than Kuu’s and Naomi’s — with the vest and all — but still decorated in frills and bows.  Midori liked it, despite a few of the impracticalities.

Then Midori remembered. “Wait, what’s my weakness then?  The thing that I’m supposed to turn into a strength?”

“Commitment,” the tiger said simply.

“That doesn’t sound like a weakness,” Midori frowned.

“It is when you commit so blindly.”

Midori thought about it for a moment and nodded her head.

“I look forward to seeing you again, Miko Midori,” the tiger said, pushing his face into Midori’s hand affectionately. “But perhaps not too soon.”

“Goodbye Mr. Tiger Sir.” The tiger laughed — the same laugh from weeks before.  Midori wondered if maybe she was still funny, after all this time.  She patted the tiger on his head and turned to the painting.  She had a whole life ahead of her, waiting just beyond the door.

She turned the handle.

[Ending Song & Credits]

-------------

Cast & Elemental Attunement:

Midori Kaneda > Air

Pandora > Water

Kachiko Kazumi > Earth

Daisuke Hidoki > Water

Kuu > Air

Naomi > Fire

[Sarah Penguin]

Invisible Hyper Platypus Ninja Author Tickling Ranger Team Go!

[kerry]

Such a wonderful and inventive chapter!