Chapter Text
Transformation 1.5
“What the fuck have I done?” I whispered to myself in the darkness.
I was lying on a mattress in the spare room of the Undersider’s secret hideout, trying unsuccessfully to get some sleep.
Arachne had long since popped away and I had stayed up chatting with the Undersiders for a little while. Brian had gone out to get pizza and the food seemed to have settled like a lead weight in my stomach. Or was that guilt and anxiety? Why was it so much easier for Arachne to convince me to do things when I was Queen Administrator? Who actually was I, when I was Queen Administrator?
I wanted to be a Light Magical Girl! I didn’t want to join a Dark Magical Girl group! But even for a while after I transformed it felt… good. I felt acutely aware of Lisa’s leg, resting against mine. The almost immediate welcome and acceptance. Even, to a lesser extent, from Rachel. At least, she didn’t attack me on sight. Which, according to Brian, Lisa and Alec, was a marked improvement from the last Magical Girl they tried to recruit. She obviously wasn’t happy about my inclusion, voicing the argument that “More people means less money for my dogs!”. Brian took her downstairs to argue and I think, in the end, convinced her that more people meant bigger jobs, more money and more security.
And still, I didn’t question it. At that point, de-transformed, I still thought that I had made the right choice. It wasn’t until I was in the darkness, lying down, alone, that the doubts really crept in. It was pretty much the opposite of what I wanted, after all. I didn’t want to be a criminal, a Dark Magical Girl. I wanted to arrest the Dark Magical Girls! But Queen Administrator, apparently, had different ideas. She hardly needed to think about the decision before she accepted, and her willingness seemed to carry over onto me. For a little while, at least.
So who , really, was Queen Administrator?
And Arachne, vocal though she was in her complaints about de-transforming in front of the Undersiders, seemed somehow smug and happy about it all. I hadn’t known her that long, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was at least a little supportive of Queen Administrator’s decision.
My last thought before falling into a fitful sleep was that being a Magical Girl seemed to be a lot more than transformations and cool powers.
I woke up early and tried to creep out of the Undersider’s lair, to make my way to Winslow High. Lisa was awake though, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee looking a bit like Dad after a big night out with his friends. While lamenting the fact that my insect control wasn’t quite as advanced when I was de-transformed, I began to summon my courage to tell her that last night was a mistake, that I would promise not to reveal the location of their secret hideout. Her eyes widened almost imperceptively.
“Hey, do you want to hang out, maybe do some shopping?” she asked me, quickly. “We could make a day of it?”
The offer drew me back to the feelings from the previous night, the feelings of hope. I knew that she was just saying whatever she could in order to get me to change my mind, I knew what her power was.
“No, I need to get to school.” I told her, “I promised my Dad that I’d go to school.”
She looked doubtful, “I heard you say that, but last night you had no intention of going.”
I tried to hide my guilty look, and was about to lie and tell her that of course I intended to go, when she said, “Wait. Why would you have said yes, if I’d asked you last night?”
Did she know what was going on with me? Her stupid power had probably already given her all the answers.
She sighed, “Tay, could you please just come and sit here with me. Just for a bit?”
I warily sat down opposite her. She let out another sigh.
“I don’t know everything .” she began. “Not when I’m like this. Like, I get some answers, but often it’s just a lot more questions. When I’m Tattletale or when my black fluffy friend is around, yeah , I know a lot more. Oftentimes I know too much. Like, do I really need to know that the guy I’m about to shake hands with just went to the toilet and didn’t wash his hands?” Her nose wrinkled up and she stuck out her tongue. “That he regularly doesn’t wash his hands? All of the other things that he regularly does and doesn’t wash his hands afterwards? How regularly he does those things? Imagine if I had that level of power all of the time ? Sure, I’d know a lot more, but I’d probably say goodbye to any sort of love life, or sex life. Heck, I’d probably never want to touch another person, ever. Now, look, I get the feeling that you don’t believe that my motives last night were genuine. You probably think that I only said those things to get another Magical Girl in the Undersiders and I’ll level with you… It may have played a small part in why I said them, but what I said was also completely genuine. I want to get to know you. I want to be your friend. I don’t have a lot of friends and I know from last night, neither do you. Will you be my friend?”
“Friends?” I asked, one eyebrow raised. I remembered the things she said last night and I remembered the way my brain short-circuited. Was that insinuated just to get me into the Undersiders?
Lisa smiled ruefully, “Heh. Yeah, Ummm… Sometimes after I de-transform, I’m still kind of ‘riding the high’ of being Tattletale, for a little while. I know you’d be interested in more than friends and I can’t truthfully say that I wouldn’t be. But maybe, could we just try being friends first?”
When Lisa spoke about ‘riding the high’, I immediately wondered if that was what happened to me last night. I was de-transformed, but it was almost like Queen Administrator was still there influencing me. Now, without that post-tranformation ‘high’, I had a choice to make. An actual choice.
Give up on my plans of becoming a Light Magical Girl or give up on the chance of a friendship and possible… Who knows?
If I said ‘no’, would Queen Administrator just come straight back here the minute I transformed again? If that was the case, was there even any point in saying ‘no’?
Would I regret saying ‘no’, or would I regret not saying ‘no’ more?
I looked Lisa in her emerald eyes, she looked concerned to begin with but between one blink and the next a smile began forming. Soon the smile lit up her face.
“Okay…” I said. “Friends. But I’m still going to school.”
She launched herself across the table to engulf me in a hug. It was just a pity she had forgotten about her coffee mug.
“Ow, shit!” we both said at exactly the same time, separating and looking down at the spreading coffee stain on her white t-shirt and my dark hoodie.
“Of fuck, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she apologised as she ran into the kitchen to get some paper towel.
“No, no. It’s okay.” I told her, absentmindedly. Cursing the existence of the coffee that cut the hug short. I… I couldn’t remember the last time I had been hugged. I think that it was Mom, before she died? Had I really not been hugged since then?
Lisa tried patting the front of my hoodie down with the paper towel. It was no use though, I didn’t have time to go back home to get changed before school.
“Just this once.” I announced. “Just this once, I’ll skip school to go shopping.”
It was a decision that I’d only regret for a little while.
Thankfully, Lisa seemed to be balancing the use of her power to her own opinion of what she thought would look good on me. It was obvious when her eyes lit up at something and she’d excitedly hold it up for my approval but would then say something like “On second thoughts…” or “No, maybe not this one.” She seemed to be going out of her way to not irritate me, and honestly it was kind of endearing. I ended up adjusting my comfort level a little, just to avoid disappointing her.
She had ended up dragging me to Weymouth Mall, just about lunch time. She had made me breakfast as an apology for the spilled coffee, but we had to wait for Brian to wake up so that she could ask him if we could borrow his car. He reluctantly agreed, provided we had it back to him by four.
By two p.m, we already had about six bags of clothes and had to go back to the car to drop them off. I thought that would be the end of it, but Lisa demanded that she buy me lunch before we looked for shoes and accessories to go with the clothes.
“Lisa, I’m not going to spend another two hours looking at shoes. I’ve already spent more money on clothes than I think I ever have in my life.” I told her, finally putting my foot down. Despite being well out of my comfort zone for the previous two hours, it was… Nice.
“Lunch and two pairs of shoes? I think I might be able to find two pairs that go with most of the outfits?” she pleaded.
“Fine,” I sighed.
“Yes!” she stage whispered as she pumped her fist, causing a giggle to escape me.
We walked back into the Mall and the first thing we noticed was how quiet it all seemed. There was nobody around near the car park wing. There was, however, someone talking over a loudspeaker or something in the atrium near the escalators. I wondered if maybe there was some sort of event or promotion going on.
“Tay, wait.” Lisa said, grabbing hold of my elbow. She then whispered, “Watson!”
I looked at her incredulously, to which she just raised an eyebrow questioningly.
“What if someone sees him?” I asked.
She looked confused, “Arachne never told you?”
“Never told me what?” I countered.
“They’re invisible unless you are transformed. Or to someone who has seen you de-transform.” she replied.
Arachne! I called.
She popped! Onto my head.
What’s goin… Oh ho! Hurry up and transform Queen Administrator, there are Magical Girls who have taken people hostage! She ordered excitedly. They’ve only taken the green haired people hostages though. And they seem to be acting strangely, like zombies.
“Arachne says that there are Magical Girls who have taken people hostage,” I told Lisa, “she says that the hostages all have green hair and are acting strangely.”
She groaned, “Uber and Leet.”
“What?” I asked. I had read about Uber and Leet, two Magical Girls who re-created video games. They were panned very heavily in MGO for a recreation of Grand Theft Auto where they beat up a prostitute.
“Watson put it together,” she explained. “We should probably get out of here.”
“Arachne wants me to transform and deal with them,” I told her.
Lisa glared at a spot above my head before admitting, “Watson does too, but I wasn’t about to indulge him. But if you really want to, I can support you. I can’t do front line work though.”
“I agree,” I told her. In truth, I was a little worried about what would happen were I to transform, what Queen Administrator would do.
You can do it! Hurry up and transform! Arachne shouted. This is your chance to be a Light Magical Girl like you wanted. Maybe you could get the Undersiders to be Light Magical Girls as well?
What Arachne said sounded like a good third option. Maybe, I could turn the Undersiders into a Light Magical Girl group, like New Wave. Maybe…
“I’m going to rescue those people,” I told Lisa quickly.
“QUEEN ADMINISTRATOR POWER, TRANSFORM!” I shouted and immediately went through my transformation process, somehow ending up in a pose with a leg raised and our fingers in a sideways ‘V’ in front of our eyes.
Seeing my transformation, Lisa grimaced, but followed suit, “NEGOTIATOR POWER TRANSFORM!” she shouted.
We watched as her clothes disappeared and her body went kind of sparkly and translucent. Her fuku appeared from somewhere as ribbons and quickly wrapped around her. If we were de-transformed, we would have had to turn our head due to an intense blush.
We felt our awareness expand and knew, from Arachne’s observations, that Uber and Leet were definitely in the atrium. We immediately left at a run, heading straight for the atrium and summoning all of the insects that we could. Thankfully, we passed by the food court, whose shops backed onto an alleyway where dumpsters were kept. Some had doors at the backs of the kitchens open and we managed to pull a fairly decent swarm by the time we got to the open area with multiple stories. Tattletale followed behind us, ready to do what she could to help.
The scene that greeted us was just a little bizarre. The duo of Uber and Leet were very obvious, standing on the third story walk way to the left, in front of an ‘Urban Teen’ clothing store. Uber’s fuku was a blue short legged overalls with a red long sleeved lace top underneath it, with white gloves and a small strange cap perched at an angle on top of her head with a white circle on the front of it and a red ‘U’ inside the circle. Leet’s fuku was almost exactly the same, except her top was green and she had a green L on her cap.
We vaguely recalled that their fuku were completely different when they first appeared, but at some point they had recreated Super Mario Brothers and their fuku change had stuck.
Opposite the duo, stretched out along the walkway on the other side were about two hundred people. They all wore identical blue jumpsuits and all of them had green hair. They were walking in a line, mindlessly following the person in front of them. Part of the end of the walkway was damaged, the barrier preventing people from falling two stories to their death, gone. The only thing preventing the mindless mob from walking themselves off the end was a single green-haired person who was standing in the way with their arms outstretched and hands raised up in a ‘stop’ gesture. As soon as a green-haired person came up to the one blocking them, they would turn around and follow the person that was ahead of them back in the other direction.
“Well done!” Leet shouted, through a megaphone. “Now all you have to do is find a way to get them to the other side of the atrium without losing any of your lemmings!”
One single person, a woman dressed in scrubs, was the only one without green hair. She was standing on the other side of the ‘blocking’ hostage, holding what appeared to be a toy laser gun in her hand (though knowing that Leet was a ‘tinker’ Magical Girl, it was almost definitely not a toy.) She was struggling, visibly frustrated and shouting across the gap between the walkways.
“What am I supposed to do? I don’t understand!”
Leet answered her, voice amplified by the megaphone, “You did great turning one of them into a blocker! Just turn the dial to find out what you can make others do to figure out a way to get them to the other side! Once you do that, they’ll all turn back to normal and you’ll have won the level!”
Tattletale had just caught up to us and she whispered to us, “Look, there’s their snitch. It records everything so they can post it online.” She pointed to a small golden ball that was hovering in the space between Uber and Leet and their game. “If you can get that down, they might pull out without any need to fight them.”
No! No! You’ve got to announce yourself and battle them! Arachne shouted.
Why not both?
We got all of the larger flying insects to pick up a spider and had the spider begin to release thread as soon as they got into the air. If we got sufficient thread down onto the snitch, we might be able to obstruct its cameras or overload it. We had the rest of the crawling insects flood up towards Uber and Leet’s position. A wave of black chitin and many many legs flowed up walls between shops, across the roof then up to the floor of the next level, repeating this until they were all poised directly underneath the duo. While they were off doing that, we sprung up onto the stage set up in the atrium.
“I am the things that crawl and skitter in the night! I am Queen Administrator! Prepare to face justice!” we shouted in introduction as we posed.
Tattletale remained out of sight of Uber and Leet, in the doorway to a gadget shop.
The duo looked down at us over the railing.
Uber was the one who shouted down, “Queen Administrator? What are you going to do, give us paperwork to fill out?”
“No,” we answered. “I’m going to give you one chance to let these people go, or else you will suffer the consequences!”
Leet simply laughed at us, through the megaphone.
We took that as our answer.
The crawling insects moved as one, from their vantage point underneath Uber and Leet, hanging upside down, to the edge of their balcony/walkway, they swarmed up and over. The tide of insects swarmed around the duo, before crawling up their feet and legs.
“Oh shit!” one of the duo exclaimed.
Uber immediately jumped over the railing and shouted “Parkour!” as she grabbed onto the railing for the level below her. Leet pulled out a small black device that shot a length of wire and grappling hook through the glass of the mall roof and used this to lift up and away from my insect swarm. It was at this moment that the snitch fell out of the sky, either weighed down by the weight of thread or whatever mechanism kept it in the air became jammed.
“How dare you interrupt our game!” Leet shouted as she hung from the ceiling. She was probably thankful that her fuku didn’t include a skirt. “We aren’t even up to a save point!”
“Leet! The snitch is down!” Uber shouted from her position before she sprung off the railing to land onto the ground with a double flip.
We began moving the spiders and flying insects back down towards Uber and pulled our baton out. Uber was obviously a fighter, the way she moved seemed well practiced.
Tattletale then yelled out from her position, “If you attack Queen Administrator, she’s going to use her swarm against Leet. Do you think she’d be able to survive the fall from up there?”
Uber paused for a moment, unsure, then she quickly turned around and ran to scoop up the snitch.
Leet quickly rappelled down and met up with Uber to make their escape.
We didn’t follow. Instead, we called up the MRT on our communicator to report the incident.
“We’re going to have to go off and come back for the car, it looks like the shopping trip is over early.” Tattletale said, sidling up to us. “Let’s get out of here.”
We nodded in reply and we made our way rapidly out of the mall to find a place to safely de-transform.
Once de-transformed, standing close together in a shadowed doorway in an alley, I looked Lisa in her emerald eyes and said, “Thank you. If you hadn’t suggested that to Uber she probably would have gotten to me before I could get my insects to her.”
She smiled her vulpine grin, “I couldn’t let my… friend get hurt.”
Then Queen Administrator kissed her.