Oneshot: melancholy

*

"So this person is bad?" (? 2)

"Yeah, what do you think? Perfect ain't it?" (?)

Shrinking in terror, I struggled to climb on my feet. Another truck-like blow impacted my chest, ejecting blood out of my throat like a garden hose. The pain was too much, so much so that I lost consciousness immediately.

***

The boy's eyes rolled over in an instant, his body couldn't withstand the force, it was a simple law of nature. The insides get crushed and the organism dies from organ malfunction. What was different was that the boy's insides weren't skewered like paper thrown into a shredder. They had remained relatively intact, despite all the bruises and injuries showing on the surface of his skin. He was not suppose to take a blow on such a scale, humans wouldn't usually survive such a hard hit.

Nevertheless, he got back up. His eyes were partially closed by his eyelids, it was hard to guess what he was seeing or how we was seeing through such a small opening, or most strangely of all, how he was standing after taking such devastating blows. The blue magical girl and the yellow magical girl had send trucks flying and small buildings swaying violently with similar force before. A normal human would have turned into red paste or something similar.

"This one's a little resilient, lemme have a go at him." (blue?)

"Sure, I'd rather not stain my knuckles"(Yellow?)

That was the unfortunate nature of it all, they were still holding back. Until now.

" [Diamond blaze] -first form, Gauntlet" (Blue?)

Flames of a fierce azure hue spread over her fists, as if wrapping them in a protective covering. They layered and shifted around from her fist all the way to the back of her elbows before whisking into the air like numerous flaming hot kites were fluttering around. These flames didn't hurt the wielder at all and made no sense for anyone watching from a distance. Only magicians could guess as to how these flames came about, though it would be nothing like they imagined as these flames tore through the air and lit the surroundings in an instant.

A circle of shiny blue fire surrounded the 3 as the flames cackled and roared into the sky. In another instant, she had vanished and a fiery hot fist struck the boy. Though he wasn't send flying this time. His palms perfectly caught her fist-..... and ripped them off. Blood spew off like a fountain, gushing out of her amputated right arm. As her flames could not harm her body, she couldn't cauterise the wound and reduce the bleeding. Her parameters kept her up, magical girls were naturally much more resilient than humans and her mental fortitude allowed her to endure the pain.

Injuries like this were a common occurrence, all she had to do was find a magical girl specialised in healing magic. They were rare, but every faction usually had 1, 2 if they were lucky.

"Tch, this one's dangerous. Let's head back and form a subjugation team before he joins a faction... A newly awakened fighter who could ripped my hand off in a half-conscious state... I doubt the church could find him and get here before us, but just in case, we should rush. "(Diamond free)

".... He could join us in the future, for now we should get those specialised in defense and secure a parameter until his consciousness comes back. Perhaps he could be negotiated against... "(Topaz faith)

" Yeah... Yeah... This injury is common enough, I wouldn't hold a grudge over it. Focus on making his grudge disappear you lewd magical girl. "(Diamond free)

" Mou... I've told you, I put those days behind me..." (Topaz faith)

The 2 shot off into the air, either by skill or magical equipment. In this world, magical girls were compared by their parameters of power, speed, endurance, magic, mental(fortitude) and resistance. They were mainly measured using letters E-A and extremely rarely S-SS.

These letters dictated how much stronger than the average human these magical girls were, E-5 times as strong as the average human, D-20,C-100,B-250,A-500, S-1000,SS-unknown. Anywhere between these numbers would be taken as the lower grade, though they don't usually stray too far away. The magic used by magical girls enhanced their bodies to such accurate measures, usually only deviating by 1 to 3 times as strong as the average human. In that case, they would measure as the rank they are closest to.

Magical girls with an S parameter typically become celebrities in their own factions and maybe other factions, to the rest of the world though, they couldn't tell the difference. They treated every single one of them as ticking nuclear bombs that should be taking caution against. Hence, "Don't look at strange things" order issued by the government. Things have gotten hectic, with abnormal creatures coming from another world.

The mana that flows out of these gates have been absorbed by humans, turning them into magical girls. Hair growing longer, more vibrant and shinier to attract the attention of monsters, same goes for their costumes. Muscles becoming more compact and lean, giving them statures that were smaller than their normal form, so they could move more nimbly and fight more efficiently. A rough guess could tell omitting the male parts also makes them faster? And breast... Some things were better left unexplained. In any case, they became the textbook definition of a magical girl regardless of previous gender. They could easily revert back by deactivating their mana.

Mana was a new form of energy that started flowing out of mysterious gates to another plane of existence. It reacted in a way similar to radiation, only even more drastically. Only some human beings were compatible with mana and could absorb it in the first place to mutate, others remained unchanged in their mundane lives. After the appearance of mysterious buildings that seem to whisk away random passerby, monsters started showing up, and following that were magical girls.

It was simple as shown on television and anime, the magical girls fight the monsters and save the day.

Back to the original situation, the leader of Diamond free's organisation had a powerful skill that disabled mana, the sense of touch and awareness quickly slip off the half-conscious boy... No, to be more accurate... Magical girl. When she had broken off Diamond's arm, her hair had turned into a long slick black, her clothes had transformed into a bodysuit with plates of armour and frills jutting at various places like the waist, shoulders and elbows.

A dark purple skirt seemed to stretch from her hips at an abnormally low angle, accentuating her newly condensed figure. The skirt was in 2 layers with different patterns of frills and a slightly darker shade of purple on the lower layer. Both layers start from around the centre of the stomach and curved to one side diagonally, forming something akin to an upside down crown.

Her boots seemed to be almost made purely of metal plates that clattered as she took her steps. They were accompanied by black tights that covered the rest of he rleg above the half-knee high boots. It seemed that her magic was a physical type of sorts as gloves with trace amount of dark purple steel bars thinly veil her knuckles.

Magic can be refined and made use of in efficient techniques, called 'skills'. From there, there are a few types of skills. Physical, magical, recovery and control. There are other minor subgroups like extraction, creation and transformation, however those 4 were the main groups that magical girls classified under. The subgroups are independant of the main groups, hence there's no connection between those 2 whatsoever. Lastly there was also a 'conceptual' category, but that was for another time. Most importantly, magic had an 'activated' and 'inactivated' state. If it didn't, magic circles would randomly form in the air and implode the earth starting from the openings of those mysterious portals.

In an 'activated' state, the energy called 'mana' would be channeled and converted into something else, depending on the skill. Channeling it into the body transforms the person into a magical girl, and 'deactivating' it back into the 'inactive' state causes the transformation to come off.

However no one understands, not even the magical girls understood the purpose of it all. They were all merely the products of coincidences and accidental evolution, the portals had started appearing centuries or thousands of years ago. It was what led to the mythical arrival of "black magic" or the ancient culture of "sacrificing to the gods". Even some magic tricks in online videos or platforms could be attributed to it, nobody would be the wiser.

***(1 year later)

The mysterious buildings have disappeared, I've grown accustomed to the duties of a magical girl. I still go to school like usual, though I've been out of it more often than in. Our organisation in particular had reached out to receive support from the government, in exchange for a fixed amount of protection from unforeseen circumstances. I've lost comrades and made new ones, fought with other organisations, the strongest one being the arcane Church and the trickiest one being the melancholy lineup.

All our organisations have reached out for the easy support of our daily lives from the government, though they have no say in our interorganisational conflicts. Particularly, the heads of the organisations were monsters in a sense that could decimate cities on a whim, the central authority couldn't exactly oppose them. By the way, our organisation was called 'Mythical order'. Anyway, none of those experiences could match out to what was happening now.

Those mysterious buildings that first showed up with those portal gates and monsters while swallowing existing buildings... They started rising out of the ground. They didn't exactly float, more like they extended and grew. Large swathes of land had started rising and crumbling, earthquakes and tsunamis ravaged the country. Even the pontifex of the arcane Church, the supposed strongest magical girl could do nothing but watch as tectonic destruction spread like a spider web over civilisation.

All matters of fluids, water, tears, oil, sweat, acid, blood, sewage fell over the large regions of land, others had a wildfire set on them, blazes large enough to consume 30 floor buildings infiltrate the city. Naturally most of the magical girls could protect themselves to some extent, however those with (magic) resistance stat below B collapsed into comas on the spot, with the lower ranks dying from shock.

I had barely raised mine to A rank with my final skill [Mudae edav]

"We've got no choice, if we don't hurry, humanity will perish. I'll bring you to the main church with my skill, you enhance the pontifex's ability so she can decimate the phenomenon. " (Hero Ruby)

"Humanity will perish?! Surely you're lying... There should be a shelter somewhere, where people are safe. This can't destroy the planet can it..."

"Listen, it doesn't seem like it'll be stopping. We're at our limits expending magic to shield ourselves from the debris in shifts, at the rate at which we're burning mana... We'll die. We may be able to store large amounts of mana given our stats, however without a skill, everyone has the same mana recovery rate... We'll run out eventually. This insanity may even cause infighting, without our resistance and mental stat we would be dead.

This phenomenon is not only affecting the common man, but it's also lethal to us. There's some psychic attack that's acting on our mana and making it worse by adding to our consumption rate. We'll be finished if you don't resolve yourself now. "(Hero Ruby)

"... Alright, I'm counting on you... "

" Hahah... Unfortunately I don't have much longer... I only have enough to teleport you... Guess this is goodbye... "(Hero Ruby)

A mask of loneliness was draped around her facial features, a forced gentle smile adorning her usual cuteness. Her dark crimson hair much like blood fluttered from the pressure outside her barrier, slowly inching closer as her barrier shrunk. It was unfortunate, I couldn't do anything in the end. The miasma leaking from the mysterious buildings sucked out mana, it was all we could do to protect ourselves and stay on the defensive. The boss fought those very pillars... And lost. Seeing a top rate magical girl like her die even made the leaders of the church and lineup fall into despair.

I had spent far too much time with Hero Ruby. She was a valiant, sparkling and shining light to our lives, a hope to defeat the other organisations. Unfortunately we got far too distracted by our strife and forgot everything altogether. The arrival of magic, those buildings that seemingly stretched infinitely into the sky, revealed to be demonic creatures of destruction and those portal gates that open up with monsters to slaughter the common person. All of it was completely unnatural, magic wasn't suppose to be real. Yet it was.

Without her here to support me, there was no more doubt to my next step. I had to be decisive, or I would die. As she had said, her skill shifted space and carried me to the highest floor of the main church. The pontifex was barely there, unchanging, staring blankly at her desks in the middle of the office room. Her desk emanated the smell of antigue wood, her hands seem to grasp at it as if never letting go of a family member.

"Are you here to take advantage of my despair and kill me? Unfortu-" (Pontifex)

It was a little girl in priestly robes. Perhaps her True form was an old man, but that didn't matter now. Those robes covered what seemed to be a nun outfit that was pure white with occasional streaks of gold and black accentuating her bodyline. With the way she moved, it was obvious there were metal plates protecting her from inside those robes.

She had fallen silent due to my actions.

[Mudae edav], it operated on the concept of ascending something intangible, such as the pontifex's stats or skills. In this case, I had given her final skill an upgrade. Every magical girl only had 3 skills, and the last one was usually their trump card. Due to the nature of magic being "exploring the unknown", we start of with somewhat weak skills that grow stronger over time, and discover new skills that all fit a single theme. I had thought my theme was wind magic, it heightened my power by increasing my speed and pressure, well in the end I realised it was gravity.

The last skill [Mudae edav] decreased the 'gravity' of the world, the limits of the human body, and allowed skills to ascend past their limits. It allowed my stats to soar pass a certain point and endure the psychic attack aimed at magical girls.

"So you want me to fight... What if it didn't work. What would happen then. That thing could withstand time, what saw it couldn't withstand this powerup?" (Pontifex)

Her high-pitched voiced resounded in the office, full of sorrow. She must have lost a lot more than I thought, after all she had a whole organisation to look after.

" Then I'll burn myself out to help you escape. If this final attempt didn't work, we're done for."

".... You wouldn't even be able to distract it for a second, your boss could only delay it by a whole half an hour before dying..." (Pontifex)

"... ..."

" What's with that angry look. You couldn't even kill me if you tried... "(Pontifex)

"... ..."

" Fine... But I'm doing it from a safe distance away." (Pontifex)

Standing on the roof of an old half destroyed building, I awaited for her to be ready as an audible inhalation could be heard.

[Omni(Chronos) reversal]

A wide beam of white light swallowed half the city in an instant. Aiming high enough to not hit the ground, the large black pillars had disappeared in a flash of light. Due to the mana overuse, the pontifex had accidentally use their life-force of every human to eradicate the threat. The demonic pillars have finally disappeared at the cost of humanity.

".... Ultriss, I'm finally going to meet you on the other side..." (Pontifex)

"Why... Why did you leave me alive... I could tell due to my manipulation of gravity, I could feel all the energy on earth but not use it... You sacrificed everyone's life force but mine?!"

"Thank god... It was enough... If I had used yours... This skill would revert back... And be useless..." (Pontifex)

Coughing blood, she could barely maintain consciousness. Her hair had greyed in an instant, her stature aged magnificently and withered like a dried plant. There was no going back. From this lonely life without civilisation.

.... "[Chronos reversal]".... (?)

... Did she send that from the past? Looks like a time loop. So that was what that dream was. No that this was the second loop, the effects stacked and became stronger. Instead of a vague dream, I'm now have conviction. In order to run into a future where everyone lives. I'll work hard. Hmph, this must mean that the pontifex had been watching me for an absurd amount of time, to the point that she also watches my future self... No perhaps now that this was the second loop, something would be different.

As proof, I was expertly able to manipulate mana despite having not met "mythical order" yet. This was it, I need to stop the invaders in this attempt or I would be stuck in this loop, it would wear away at my sanity. In fact it had already started, no matter what anyone said, my mental state was supposed to be far more different than this, it was upposed to be immature.

"[mudae edav]" , ascend through time to the point before the time loop's activation. If I wanted to win, I needed her cooperation.

"So you're here... It seems we failed even with out trump card. Are you perhaps living in the moment for the rest of eternity?" (Pontifex)

"... Let's defeat them. With Ruby's help we'll reach the core of the enemy and attack it."

" You're not immortal, if you died the time loop will stop... "(pontifex)

" That doesn't matter, if we lose nothing will be left. Let's try it one more time. "

***

It was a mistake. We landed on the other side of the portals. The sky was an eery brownish-red, the ground was a wriggling mass, a sea of monsters. The core to their invasion, was the planet itself. It turned out that we had been fighting for resources, it was one or the other. And I chose to end this planet.

First skill... [mass pressure], third skill [Mudae edav] ascend first skill into [Infinite(mass) pressure]. Ascend further... [Black hole extinction pressure]. Ascending pass my limits of mana recovery, I practically suck out this planet's mana to fuel my absurd skill as thousands of monsters flattened in an instant, before reaching millions. Reverting the recoil and damage with [Chronos reversal], the pontifex gave support as we slowly sunk to the planet's core.

Large tentacles akin to the buildings that appeared on earth stretched into the sky before crashing down. The tentacles were trying to protect the planet's core. Applying the first skill a few more times, even the tentacles were crushed under the weight of the magic. Instead of actual gravity, it made objects 'feel' a pressure and unnaturally cave into the ground by themselves. Hence, the durability of the materials were of no matter, when they destroy themselves for you.

Eventually the dimension itself collapses.

***

It felt like my consciousness had collapsed as well. Maybe we finally won, or lost and died in the other world. I can't find out anytime soon. I'm stuck in this space of white.

Ah, we're barely surviving. This white, is the flash of a supernova that was artificially caused when I compressed the planet too much. The pontifex was using a barrier to protect me. She could have thrown me out into the shockwaves, I would have definitely died. Did this mean there was hope for peace?

"You did well. " (?)

"Thank you. "