Chapter Text
Cassidy awoke to emptiness.
She could feel a lukewarm vastness surrounding her, suspending her in weightless tranquility. She was briefly worried she had gone blind before looking down and seeing she was still in her magical girl outfit. The space around her was empty. Not pitch black, nor blank white. It evaded visual perception, a moving blind spot that wreathed her body. She kicked her legs and connected with a hard surface below her as gravity gradually returned to her body. She fumbled for a little bit, trying to process how she couldn’t make out the ground she was standing on from the sky above her when she heard a voice from behind her.
“Good evening, Miss Tailor.”
She startled, turning around to see a limber man in a black top hat and suit wearing a yellow jasmine in his lapel. He carried a black cane by a round, ornate metal ferrule. His hair was graying and he wore a white domino mask over his eyes, behind which was the same invisible hollowness that now surrounded the two of them.
“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, though I wish it could have been under better circumstances.”
“Who— What?”
“You may call me Mr. Maturin.” He smiled gracefully. “I would like to make you a deal.”
“Am I dead?” Cassidy searched.
Mr. Maturin furrowed his eyebrows. “A very interesting question.” He turned his eyes back to the girl. “Do you recall what your friend Vedika said about quantum superpositioning?”
“Quantum what?”
“Oh, dear.” He sighed, looking away and covering his mouth. “I suppose you never were the best listener.”
“A refresher course then,” he concluded. “A long time ago, before the collapse, your scientists realized that the subatomic world was too delicate to meaningfully observe. They discovered that it was impossible to know every detail of a subatomic particle’s existence and that, without interacting with the particle in a way that fundamentally altered its state so as to observe a state that it was no longer in, the particle could be meaningfully said to be in multiple states at once.”
Cassidy looked at him as if he were chanting the words to an occult ritual.
“One of the many models of this was the Copenhagen interpretation. The Copenhagen interpretation was an appealing model to many scientists, but found resistance from a man named Erwin Schrödinger, who had certain misgivings about it. He proposed a thought experiment specifically to demonstrate how the Copenhagen interpretation didn’t hold up to scrutiny. He posited a box in which was put a piece of radioactive material and a Geiger counter, so as to go off at a random time based on the subatomic behavior of radioactive elements. If the Geiger counter went off a death trap would release poisonous gas killing the final item in the box, a household cat.”
Cassidy was now looking at him as if whatever god he was chanting to demanded a tribute of dead cats.
“If we accept the premise that the Copenhagen interpretation is right, then by closing the box the cat could be said to be both alive and dead, which itself is absurd, meaning the Copenhagen interpretation is also absurd.”
“What are you getting at?” said Cassidy.
“I don’t mean to bore you Miss Tailor, but the gist is this; what if both Copenhagen and Schrödinger were wrong? What if macroscopic indeterminacy could exist but would not be resolved by direct observation? What if you opened the box and the cat was still both alive and dead?”
Her eyes widened.
“The cat is you, Miss Tailor: existing and not existing at the same time. One clone was destroyed, and the other was not there for your body to reform in. It is this peculiar circumstance that allowed me to bring you here, to the space outside your reality.”
“If you could see what was happening to me, why did you let me die?” Cassidy prodded.
“Again, you are not dead,” Mr. Maturin replied. “But to answer your question, my presence is bound to non-existence. I couldn’t do anything until you were already gone.”
Cassidy sagged. Suddenly something occurred to her: “That thing that killed—” She paused.
“That thing that said she was Undine’s little secret. She had nothing to do with Undine to begin with, did she?”
Mr. Maturin frowned. “You jumped to conclusions and made a rash decision because of it. Children make mistakes. In a fairer world you would not have needed to lose your life because of it.”
“I thought you said I wasn’t dead?” retorted Cassidy.
“Losing one’s life is not the same as dying,” replied Mr. Maturin. “Which brings me to the reason that I brought you here.” He straightened himself up.
“I decided that you deserved better than to spend eternity in an empty space between life and death. I am here to offer you the ability to at least partially submerge yourself back into your reality. In return you will have the opportunity to help the people of your city the way you did as a Magical Girl. You might not be able to emulate your idol Miss Aichi, and you will not be able to see your friends and family again, but you will be able to continue the work you left behind when your connection to reality was severed.”
Cassidy considered this for a moment. “That shadow girl…” she said, “she threatened my friends. She attacked me - and if she didn’t kill me she did the next best thing. Will I be able to find her and return the favor?” She was staring at him with the penetrative gaze of someone planning a murder.
“Pursuing The Purple One would draw Her attention,” he answered. “She can’t know I’m here.”
“Who’s Her?” Cassidy interrogated.
“A story for a different time,” Mr. Maturin said. “And I doubt you’d remember anyway.”
Cassidy wanted to press further, but shook it off in favor of more pressing concerns.
“What if I refuse?”
Mr. Maturin looked serious. “I will not allow you to spend forever in purgatory, and I cannot fully sever you from non-reality. I would have to forcibly collapse the wave function. I would be calling tails on your life. The box would be open, and the cat would be dead. You would not feel pain. You would be at peace.”
Cassidy took a moment to grapple with all the information that she had been presented with.
Finally, she said, “I accept. I can’t be like HP, I proved that when I betrayed my friends’ trust. But if I can still help people I’m going to do it.”
Mr. Maturin looked surprised, as if he just saw something pass through his periphery that he wasn’t sure he had actually seen.
“Very well,” he said. “From now on you will be working under my supervision.”
The space between Cassidy’s shoulder blades glowed bright orange. The light filled the invisible void and when it died out Cassidy was standing in a black suit with long coattails. There was an orange marigold in her lapel and she was pleased to find she was now holding her scissor blades in each hand.
“You shall now be known as Gentle Thief Flash Cut,” the elderly man proclaimed.
“Now, let us begin.”
The man’s cane shot forth, beaming the girl in the face, knocking her onto her back and causing her to burst into ribbons. At the same time two duplicates, each just as whole as the original, each carrying their own pair of scissor blades, split off from her body, panickily dodging left and right and rolling into a low stance.
“I have enhanced your abilities by giving you control over your superposition of states. For every version of you that falls, two others do not. You will fight me with your full strength so that you may familiarize yourself with your newfound skills, and then we shall begin work.”
Cassidy repositioned herself to flank her opponent from both sides as he swiftly dispatched both clones in two swift cane motions. Just before the cane connected with them four more clones split off, passing backwards, side stepping, leaping over him and rolling underneath his swing.
As the fight continued the battlefield slowly began to fill with clones, until finally her new employer became overwhelmed. One of the duplicates took advantage of a window, parried his cane, and pointed the tip of her sword a few inches from his chin. She released her concentration and all the other copies erupted into a flurry of orange and white ribbon.
“Excellent,” said the elderly phantom thief.
“Let’s get started.”