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I always do things the hard way, can't fall in line right now, oh, maybe someday.
I thrust the neck of my keytar into the closest Pandora creature and fired a blast of magica that sent it reeling backward, then dodged aside as another one rushed in to take its place.
There were too damn many of them.
Nova wouldn't like me cursing, but this seemed like an appropriate time for it. We'd encountered the Pandora Corruption more often in recent months, usually two or three at a time. Not twenty.
Try to smile and do what I'm told, don't step out of line or be a little too bold.
My deeper voice harmonized with Sara's as we sang. I hit another chord on my keytar, directing the energy to Sara and Cass to boost their attacks for a moment.
This was worse than dealing with Sorceress Makula and her minions. The fight had quickly turned into a running battle, retreating down the darkened streets of Portland as we tried not to get completely surrounded. Hana and Nova were doing their best to keep the creatures disoriented and throw barriers in their way, but it wasn't enough to be able to hold our ground.
I just can't win, so go ahead and leave me in the bargain bin.
I slammed the body of my keytar down onto the head of one of the Pandoras, then spun away to engage another. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the one I'd struck drop to the ground and dissolve into purple smoke. That was what, six now? Seven? And still they kept coming.
Dodge. Fire. Block. Counterattack. Keep playing. Keep singing. Keep fighting. We had to win. We were Magica Riot, and we had a job to finish, no matter what it took.
We were on the third song of this battle, after "Burn Us Down" and "Too Kind to be Cruel". I'd finished writing it just a few weeks ago, focusing on the emotional struggle of existing for other girls like Nova and myself.
It must be nice to never break the mold. The road less traveled isn't a cake walk.
I tucked my keytar close to myself as I rolled out of the way of another Pandora's attack. As I pushed back to my feet, I took a moment to survey the state of the battle.
Sara — my lovely, handsome Sara — was a whirlwind of destruction, seeming all the more fierce in contrast to the calm precision of Cass next to her. Blue and green shockwaves pummeled the Pandoras in front of them, slowing the creatures and making them easy targets.
What's it like to be like you? What's it like to be beautiful and true?
One of the creatures had managed to circle around us and charged toward Nova from behind. No one else had noticed it, too focused on their current attacks.
Shit.
I dove in front of the creature, bracing myself for the pain of its attack. I could take it better than she could; heck, the kid hadn't even gotten her driver's license yet. It was amazing she was doing so much already, given how young she'd been when she had her awakening.
The pain I expected never came. My world collapsed into darkness.
Sara aimed her guitar down at the fallen Pandora creature, her final notes turning into a scream as she fired. The crackling, overcharged bolt of magica punched through the creature's shell and blasted a jagged hole into the asphalt below. As the remains of the Pandora dissolved into red smoke, an eerie silence fell over the street.
How many had they killed? Twelve? Fifteen? It had been hard to keep track. Sara's gut twisted with a sickening dread as she tried to catch her breath. When Iris went down, the Pandoras had rushed them hard, pushing them back half a block before they'd been able to regroup. Everything had become a blur after that.
She'd thrown herself at one Pandora after another, desperately trying to get back to Iris. Their Iris, but even more than that, her Iris. The whole team cared about Iris, of course, but she'd come to mean so much more to Sara in the last couple of years.
Iris meant everything to her.
They had a date planned for the next weekend, but Sara hadn't told anyone what she was going to say or do during that date, or the question she was going to ask. The hopes and dreams she had for their future together.
No one spoke as Sara cautiously walked forward. She didn't think they'd killed every one of the Pandoras they'd seen when they'd arrived here, but there was no sign of them. No movement, no sounds of their wet, chitinous shells. That made no sense. Every time she'd seen them, they attacked with a mindless recklessness, not retreating even when clearly outnumbered and outmatched; every record she'd read about them in the Vault had said the same thing. So where were they?
As Sara drew closer to where she'd last seen Iris, her dread curdled into something even worse.
Laying in the middle of the street was Iris's keytar. The strap had been broken off the case at one end and it was fully powered-down, with magica no longer flowing through its thaumatite crystals.
Iris herself was nowhere to be seen.
She wouldn't have left the keytar, left them, left her, not if she had any choice about it.
Sara let out an anguished cry that echoed off the brick buildings lining the street.
I blinked back to awareness.
The first thing I noticed was that I wasn't on the streets of Portland anymore, in several senses. I appeared to be indoors, but clearly nowhere in Portland. The massive room I stood in was large enough for Big Pink to fit comfortably inside, and easily three times as tall. Looking up, were those... clouds? Inside the building?
I'd never heard of anything this large, at least not on Earth. So where was I?
Back at ground level, I didn't see any of my friends, but there were dozens — hundreds — of other people all around me. Expressions varied considerably: shock, anger, confusion, resignation, even joy. Everyone moved forward at their own pace toward a line of desks in the distance.
I pushed forward through the crowd; wherever the hell this was, I needed some answers.
As I got closer, the desks resembled how old-fashioned bank tellers were set up, at least from what I'd seen in movies: dark, polished wood, with upholstered wingback chairs on either side. A woman waved me over to one of the desks, gesturing to the vacant chair opposite her.
The woman watched me with a soft smile as I approached. She had a slender, pretty face, framed by long curly hair. A plush canine sat on one side of her desk with a small felted mouse holding a four-leaf clover next to it. As soon as I stood in front of the desk, a file folder appeared on it out of thin air. The cover was a rich shade of purple, with my name written across it in thick, pearlescent letters: Iris Carr.
The woman continued to smile up at me. "Hello and welcome to the Afterlife. I'll be assisting you today. Call me Audra." She extended a hand, which I shook automatically.
"Iris. I could use some help figuring out what's going on here." Almost as soon as I said it, the rest of her words sank in, and I dropped heavily into the chair behind me. "Wait, afterlife? I can't be dead!"
There was a hint of sadness in Audra's eyes as she watched me. "I'm afraid so, darling. I know it can be a lot to take in. Give me one moment to get familiar with your file."
I leaned back in the surprisingly comfortable chair, feeling like I must be in shock. This couldn't be real. There was still too much I wanted to do. Too much I needed to do. Audra flipped the folder open and started to read whatever was written on the pages inside. I tried to be patient and focused on myself for the moment.
I was wearing a casual outfit of a simple t-shirt and jeans, not what I'd had on before transforming to fight the Pandora creatures. Oddly, I felt fine physically: a fight like that would leave me sore for days afterward. My heart should have been racing a mile a minute after what Audra had said, but it wasn't. Wait... no...
I didn't have a heartbeat at all.
That wasn't encouraging. But in its place, I could still feel the Maidensong, thrumming and pulsing with energy, with life.
Audra's hum of interest drew my attention back to her. "You used to be a magical girl in Portland? I recently had another former magical girl come through from the other Portland, the one in Maine. Her soul had lingered for a while as a ghost, made a whole mess of paperwork to sort through. It made for a great story, though; I could write a whole novella about it."
I frowned. "What do you mean, 'used to be'?"
She looked back up at me. "Magical girls are guardians of the living; their powers don't extend to the Afterlife. It's not something tied to the soul: people usually aren't one in every lifetime. Looks like your life was unfortunately short, but good, and you've definitely earned a paradise of your choosing."
"No." My response was immediate. This didn't seem right; if I was dead, Audra said I wouldn't be a magical girl anymore, but I could feel the Maidensong calling to me as strongly as ever. "Send me back."
"You want to reincarnate right away? That is an option—"
"No, I don't mean that. Put my soul back in my body so I can get up and keep fighting. My friends need me."
Audra shook her head slowly. "I'm sorry, that's impossible. I understand the desire, but—"
I cut her off again as I shoved my chair back and stood. "More impossible than this?" Perhaps I was about to make a fool of myself, but I had to try. I would always try. Couldn't go much worse than that first big fight after my awakening. I reached upward, and reached for the Maidensong.
Its harmonies responded as they always had. A glittering microphone studded with purple gems appeared it my outstretched hand. I brought it to my lips and recited the phrase I knew nearly as well as the name I'd chosen.
"Maidensong harmony power... go live!"
The energy of the Maidensong flooded through me and lifted me into the air as the now-familiar transformation began. I spun through the swirls of purple light while my street clothes vanished into the ether.
For a moment, I hesitated. My body was different here; the shape was more right than I had ever felt. As much as I wanted to look like this someday, it wasn't worth leaving my friends behind for. It wasn't worth leaving Sara behind for.
My purple-trimmed uniform materialized around me. I descended back to the floor, my boots making contact with a sharp click. To anyone else, the entire process took only an instant. I looked down at Audra, who stared back at me in shock.
"I am Iris Carr, Riot Purple, guardian of song and heart, and I never leave a job half-finished, for better or worse! You know what magical girls do? We face the impossible with love, and we succeed! Now I'm going to find a way back, no matter what it takes."
Audra's eyebrows lifted halfway to her hairline, but her voice remained calm as she pressed her fingertips together. "You're right, that was completely impossible by my understanding. Perhaps your case is different somehow. If anyone knows how to help, it would be the folks at the Reincarnation Office. I can take you there right now."
A few minutes later, Audra was giving a quick explanation of my situation to someone — or something — named Vedalia. Neither of them mentioned it, but I suspected Vedalia wasn't exactly human. She looked almost like a normal person, but one who had stepped out of the screen of a black-and-white movie. Her clothing was all blacks and greys, as was the coffee mug she held. Her hair was black. Even her skin and eyes were shades of grey.
Vedalia set her coffee down as she turned to her computer terminal, typing and scrolling through information for a while. I blinked in surprise: once out of her hands, the mug had familiar stripes of red, orange, white, and pink, instead of the greys it had been. Eventually, she looked back at Audra and myself with a sigh. "I've got someone from upper management coming; they're the only ones who can override the system for something like this. While we wait, I've got good and bad news for you, Iris."
I nodded. "Just lay it out; I can handle it."
"First, your body is still technically alive, so there is a chance your soul can be sent back to it. If you were dead dead, that would be the end of it; trying to put a soul in a dead body goes about as well as you'd expect if you've seen zombie horror movies. However, time behaves a bit differently here, and souls often take a while to arrive, so you won't be able to help your friends with whatever those things were they were fighting."
"How long has it been, and are they okay?"
Vedalia tapped at her computer a few more times. "Looks like they all survived without lasting injury. Physical injury, that is. And in the mortal world, it's been over a year."
I sighed in relief. At least Sara and the others had been able to win that battle without me, somehow. And waking up from a coma after a year is exactly the kind of romantic thing she'd love. Maybe we'd finally get to have that date I'd been waiting for.
Vedalia continued. "Also, your soul may not have been in your body, but something else has been controlling it. I'm not sure how that might affect things if we try to put you back."
So, very much not a coma then. I could work with this — I would, I had to — even as I felt myself reeling inside at the news.
"Doesn't matter. I'm a magical girl; I'll fight whatever tried to take me over, and I'll win. I know my friends will help as soon as they realize what's going on."
What could possibly have possessed a magical girl, and why? What were they doing with my body? Where had they gone with it? Shit, they wouldn't have kept taking my hormones, would they?
I shook my head, trying to break out of my spiraling thoughts. The Alliance had bases around the world. As soon as I was back and in control, I'd just have to make contact with the closest one and they'd help me get home. Transforming a few times should put a signal they'd have to investigate on any sensor grid. As long as I was alive and home, everything else could be fixed.
Audra gave me a soft smile. Perhaps she could guess how I was feeling, even if she couldn't tell my exact thoughts; I had never been very good at concealing my expressions. Sara had said that she liked that about me. Liked my intensity, especially when it was directed at her.
Vedalia's grey eyes flickered to somewhere behind me. "Looks like Thanatos is here. He'll be able to send you back, if you're sure that's what you want."
I turned to see the man approaching us. I wasn't a short girl, and I didn't expect to have to look up so much; Thanatos must have been a full seven feet tall. Dark, curly hair and beard framed his angular face. He wore a long, flowing robe in such a deep blue it was almost black. Lustrous black-feathered wings rose above his shoulders and flared out slightly behind him like a cape. Despite his imposing stature, his eyes were gentle, and he looked at me with a faint smile.
For a brief moment, I hesitated. From the short time I'd spent in the Afterlife, it was clear there was so much I had never seen before. It felt like becoming a magical girl and joining the Alliance all over again. As busy as the part of it I'd seen had been, it also felt peaceful in a way I'd never experienced. Part of me wanted to stay, to explore.
But I still had work to do being a magical girl in Portland; I wasn't going to quit before my job was done. There were people I wasn't ready to leave behind. Nova, Hana, Cass, Commander McCoy and everyone in the Vault. And especially Sara. I could never leave Sara.
There was a question I suspected she'd been planning to ask me for a while. I already knew my answer; I could have given it to her already, but it was more fun to let her have the anticipation of asking me properly.
"I'm sure," I said, then took a breath before continuing. "I understand this is an exception to how things normally work, so thank you. I won't forget your kindness."
"Actually, you will, at least for now," Audra said with a hint of sadness. "One of the rules of the Universe is that living mortals can't remember their time in the Afterlife. Your soul will remember once you're back, hopefully many years from now. Look me up when you do; I'd love to hear about what you get up to as a magical girl."
I gave her a smile. "I'll do that."
Thanatos beckoned for me to follow him. As I got closer, my skin prickled with the energy that radiated from him. It was very different from the harmonies of the Maidensong, but whoever and whatever he was, he was intensely powerful. Despite this, he seemed entirely at ease; his power was simply part of who he was, not a restless energy waiting to be used.
He led me to a corridor that ended in a swirling mass of rainbow-hued mist. I could feel the energy from the mist; the promise of life in all its infinite possibilities. I stepped closer until Thanatos's large hand on my shoulder stopped me.
With a wave of his other hand, the mist shifted colors until it was primarily purples laced through with hints of red. The energy had changed as well, no longer offering the limitless potential of every possible human life. Now, it thrummed in harmony with the Maidensong. It felt like... me.
"Good luck, Iris. Live well. Love well."
Thanatos released his grip on my shoulder, giving me a gentle push. I stepped forward into the mist, and back to the world of the living. Back to my own body, and whatever else was in it.