Chapter Text
Bright colors washed themselves off the walls, a kaleidoscope of colors draining away to... wherever it was they went when the Inner Barrier came down.
She was feeling poetic tonight, but not enough to actually bother with completing the line. Nobody was listening anyway.
-And I am nothing without an audience.
She grinned to herself, and jumped off the wall she’d been sitting on.
A pair of heeled boots touched the ground and strutted away, red, black and white blossoming into the shape of a flower just beneath her knees as she crossed the street under the lamplights.
She walked up to the glass, finding a man sitting in a chair inside the building, asleep against the door. She giggled softly and held her cane up, tapping the magpie-shaped metal handle on the glass to wake the guard up.
He grumbled a bit and changed positions. She pouted, her red lipstick forming a comically annoyed shape. She had been looking forward to this part!
Oh well. She took two steps to the side, getting the lockpicks out from inside her red velvet gloves. A lesser girl would have kept them on their hair, but hers would always be the flaming, flowing red that it was now, she thought as she breezed through the lock and entered. Then, for the sake of her own amusement alone, she took the keys from the guard’s belt, locked the door with them, put them back, and shook him awake.
-Wha… what, what, what’s going on?
-Oh, it’s horrible, mister! We’re trapped out here! They’re already inside!
The guard, still groggy, rushed to the door, urged by her cries, unlocked it with his key, and ran outside, believing he was going into the building. She then locked the door back shut again and broke the lock in.
This finally alerted the guard to what was really going on, and he tried opening the door, to no success. Inside, she waved at him playfully and winked, bright red eyes amused at the guard’s failure.
Well now. She had, what, five minutes before someone actually competent showed up? Good enough time to rob this place twice. And she only wanted one thing.
Dusting her white coat, she walked behind the counter and opened the door to the back. This was a far darker and more cramped room, filled with little tools and cabinets holding… something. Jewelry, maybe? Jewelers probably held jewelry in their cabinets, right? Whatever. That wasn’t what she was here for. Even if she was curious…
Ah, there it was! Right underneath a small desk, hidden under a rug. She could tell the rug had been moved lately, from the little marks on it. She kneeled to check it out, but stopped herself before touching the floor. Standing back up again, she walked back and forth a bit, paying attention to the sound.
Floor near the table sounded different.
She tapped her heel on the floor lightly, trying to find the right spot...there! A small pressure plate, right in front of the table, where one would have to make effort to push the thing away. Double alarms! This was fancy security!
And nobody knew fancy better than her. She stepped to the side, sliding herself under the table and lifting it with her own weight. It barely worked, as it was a heavy, wooden table, but it worked enough that she could slip the rug out from under it, revealing a square cutout in the floor. She lifted it up to reveal her prize: a tiny but long safe. Cute, but she’d broken that kind of lock before.
Quickly, she put herself to work with her tools. Slide in the file, put in pressure, fiddle a bit… there. She found the right spot. The lock clicked the right way, and she moved to the next. It took a few moments, but she did it: busted open in under a minute.
And then her prize: inside the opened safe were a few important papers… and what she actually wanted: an old pocketwatch, made of real silver. A bit scratched, but still good. She picked up the small thing and put it in the pocket of her red dress shirt, then picked up the jewels and the papers as well. From a coat pocket, she produced a white card with a rose taped to it, kissed the card for effect, and put it inside the safe before closing it back up (and locking it again, for the giggles). Then she got out from under the table, put her top hat back on, and took a look around the room before finding the things she wanted.
She hid the papers inside a drawer, set up so that they’d fall and scatter when the drawer was opened… except for one paper, which she removed from the pile and instead taped to the underside of a different cupboard, so the owner would keep looking for it. She giggled to herself while thinking about it. Well, all that was left was making an exit, she thought, moving towards the back exit.
And then she stopped. Her curiosity nibbled at her, and she couldn’t help herself. She ran to the nearest cabinet and, in a few seconds, unlocked it, seeing that it indeed held little pieces of jewelry. She smiled at the knowledge she was right, and then frowned at hearing the guards outside. She’d blown her exit timing.
Oh well. It’s not like she hadn’t planned for that eventuality.
With catlike grace, she jumped, using the table as a boosting pad to throw herself in the air and through the window, landing perfectly on her feet in the alleyway outside. Full marks, the thought. Then, following that up, she jumped up a bin and used it to get on top of the nearby house, aware of the commotion she could hear, heading her way. Well, time for her show, she thought, standing near the edge and looking out to the street, overlooking the guards on the street below.
Their spotlight shined on her. She wore high-heeled boots shaped like red flowers, black velvet pants, a white frock coat with a bright red dress shirt underneath, red velvet gloves holding a cane with a magpie handle, bright red lipstick matching the red eyes and long hair, and a single top hat with a white and red ribbon on it.
The Wondrous Thief Red came in view of everyone around.
-Hello, sweeties! - She enthusiastically welcomed them, blowing a kiss to her audience. - Sorry I can’t stay long tonight, but I have a full schedule! We shall have to arrange a different day to catch up!
She dramatically placed a hand upon her forehead, feigning her despair with a large grin on her face.
-For now, you will all have to remember this night, and remember the sight… of the Wondrous Thief, Red!
She declared, and jumped off the back of the building, vanishing into the night.
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It was morning, and the students of Future’s Promise all poured into the school.
These days, very little could match the relief Aurelia felt when she entered Future’s Promise every morning. Every girl there had some manner of wild color on her hair: some were blue, some green, she had even seen a girl with hair that looked like pink and blue balloons once. The most subdued ones she could find were the ones with brown hair, or this one girl she saw once that had black hair with little stars in it. That absolute mess of colors did exactly the thing she needed, though: it made her own less noticeable.
Aurelia, you see, was one of those types that didn’t like attracting attention. She wasn’t shy or anything like that; no she, was perfectly fine being the center of attention on occasion, and enjoyed making new friends and seeing new people. But she also didn’t like being looked at constantly. And these days, when she essentially had the sun for a head, this was becoming increasingly difficult.
Other than her very bright yellow hair, which she had already cut very short, she looked (or at least believed herself to look) rather plain, not being especially tall or small, nor skinny or stout, with little remarkable features other than a tiny mole on her cheek, which these days she felt attracted even more attention on her golden-eyed face. She missed her old brown hair and dark blue eyes.
Luckily, on top of all the colors at Future’s Promise, these days Aurelia was certain she wasn’t the person who attracted the most attention. That would be Juniper, her friend. Juniper was this small girl whose hair was made of yellow and orange streaks, and she seemed to have made it her life’s work to befriend Aurelia, who herself wasn’t sure how to tell Juniper she’d already succeeded. The girl was a ball of energy and sunshine, and their lockers were beside each other, which was how they had met.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. That was how they had first learned of each other’s existence, yes, but their meeting had been about a lot more than that. The thing with Juniper, you see, was that she was…
-Hi Aurelia! How was the night for you? Oh, you should see this monster I was fighting yesterday, it was this weird thing with all these little dangly thingies on it’s horns, right, and they made a little noise that you could hear and they would make you dizzy, so me and the girls had to cover our ears, and that got me to thinking that maybe we should buy some headphones, but the girls didn’t think that was a good idea because then we wouldn’t be able to hear each other and we need to hear each other in the field, right, and it’s not like I don’t want to hear the girls, especially Lulu because she has this beautiful voice, I heard her sing once and she was so good at it, really elegant as well, she has a good eye for these things, you should see the dresses she normally wears, we usually go to this little sandwich shop before we start patrolling but she always shows up in these pretty dresses that seem like they would be a terrible idea in a sandwich shop cuz you’d get all sorts of stains, I know I do cuz my mom says I eat real messy but I just like eating stuff cuz it tastes good, you know, I’m too busy enjoying my food to think about being careful with it, like this other monster we fought the other night that was trying to grab us and eat us but we kept cutting it’s arms off and it dropped us, so there was no danger really!
…talkative.
Aurelia wasn’t sure how to respond; with Juniper, she never was. The girl might have just taken a pause to breathe, after all. Thankfully, the bell usually rang before she had to work that out, signaling that classes were about to start, which meant the two girls would have to go their separate ways, as they barely had any classes together. They said their goodbyes and Aurelia headed to class, where her other friend was.
Marigold was to Juniper what oil was to water. She was lanky, withdrawn, and more than keen to avoid being seen, which her short, dark green hair helped with. She happened to sit beside Aurelia in most of her classes, which had been how the two had met: after Aurelia had taken a pair of scissors to her own hair in an attempt to stand out less, Marigold approached her immediately after their first class together ended and declared (not asked) that she would fix that mess. As it happened, Marigold was a remarkably skilled hairdresser, and, after the two spent that entire lunch period in the bathroom, she had not only made Aurelia’s now short hair look decent (and less like the result of someone being attacked by wild birds), but she had made it look good. The two had been friends since.
Granted, their friendship still mostly consisted of them being quiet around each other, with only the occasional note, but as they spent more time together Aurelia had found Marigold to be rather expressive, in her own subdued way.
What she had yet to understand was how, then, when she introduced Juniper and Marigold to each other, had the two instantly also struck a friendship. She had dreaded the idea of doing that for days, but immediately the two girls took to each other, and so their little lunch trio was formed. Juniper talked loads, Marigold talked none, and Aurelia occasionally played the middle part by interacting with both. The only problem was, ever since she’d joined school, this had put her at a slight disadvantage, as occasionally both of her friends, now clear allies, would eventually bring up the old question:
-So who have you been patrolling with? You just started, you should really not be going solo, you know?
Aurelia dreaded that question with all her heart.
-She’s not wrong. - Piped in Marigold. - We know you took longer than most to get started patrolling, but you should really find some help. We could both offer you some.
As usual, Aurelia politely declined, and reassured the girls that she would be fine on her own.
She felt bad about it, but she couldn’t admit to the truth, even to them.
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Her Magical Girl dress was, to Aurelia, the best thing to have come out of this change. It was a sleeveless two-piece dress in a golden color, with a white sash on her waist that trailed into a thin, long cape behind her, accompanied by what she would have described as combat gloves and boots in alternating gold and white colors, all of them with similar trailing pieces of fabric in golden color, topped off by a large white bow on her head. With this, she was Booster Breaker (name subject to change)!
Jumping around at night was a great source of fun for her. Surprisingly, even her new haircut helped with that. Until becoming a magical girl, Aurelia had always kept her hair long, so the feeling of the wind going by her head was a welcome surprise in these nights.
-Monster on the street right below.
Aurelia turned her head to look: indeed, some weird, six legged thing was skittering about on the street she had just zoomed past. As soon as she landed on a building, Aurelia changed courses. She visualized the graph in her mind, and, spiking one of the sides of the pentagon represented by the symbol on her elbow, she increased her speed and tackled the monster that was on the floor, four stories down from her, the fabric on her left glove shining brightly.
This was her power: she could boost herself, in one of five aspects: strength, speed, dexterity, defense or sensing, with one of her five ribbons (the ones on her wrists, ankles and the one on her head) glowing to represent that.
As a result of tackling it with speed, the monster was thrown aback and off it’s feet, but it survived. Aurelia landed on the street calmly, getting ready to boost her strength and send this thing flying, possibly literally.
-Hey, can I get that one? - Asked the voice.
-I dunno, is there anyone around? - Asked Aurelia.
-Not that I can see.
-Hm… yeah, sure. Knock yourself out.
Aurelia took a step back, giving herself some space away from the monster. The creature, caring little, continued trying to advance on her, only to find she wasn’t the one there anymore.
Another girl was. A normal girl, with long brown hair and dark blue eyes, and a large, confident grin on her face.
The monster was confused for a short second, and then it resumed, attacking this sudden civilian instead, since the girl was foolish enough to stand still there.
And then the girl's hair and eyes turned golden, and she simply raised her arm, not only parrying but completely stopping the monster’s attack, visibly undamaged.
The girl chuckled in delight.
-Hi. - She mocked it.
Had the creature been given any time to process that, it might have been confused. But the girl, named Bruna, pulled the monster forward with an unbelievable strength. A Magical Girl’s strength, with which she punched it into the ground, immediately dusting it.
From the top of the building nearby, Aurelia cheered her on.
The other half of Team Booster had arrived.