Middle-Aged and Magical

Ah, Tokyo. The ever-beating heart of the Land of the Rising Sun. A city that can hold its own with any in the world. Home to 30 million people, give or take a few... and once in a while, a thoroughly distressed magical mascot.

Aliana made a last-second aerial dodge, missing getting smeared all over the hood of a Toyota by about three inches. The little fairy noted with distaste the driver's obscene gesture, tiny motes of green-gold light flickering off of her. Honestly, you'd think someone would be a bit more considerate of the person trying to find worthy heroines to save their behind.

At last, she sensed what she was looking for. Candidates, and good ones, too. Plenty of potential in this group, even if they shot the magical girl stereotype to hell and gone. Oh, well- beggars couldn't exactly be choosers. She sped over towards the group of women, looking for all the world like a miniaturized comet.

Alexandra was walking down the evening street, trying to get home for the night. The hustle and bustle of the city was all around her, and it was difficult enough to keep her footing in the sea of humanity. Suddenly, she watched as everyone's heads swung around like swivels to watch what seemed to be a ball of light heading straight for the sidewalk at high speed.

"Um... is everyone else seeing that, or just me?" she said out loud, albeit to nobody in particular.

Helen was trying to make her way home, caught at a crosswalk when she too saw the mysterious ball of light that had come into sight. When she heard what Alexandria said, she replied “Yeah, I’m seeing that too. Wha-what is that?” She tried to get a read on what it was, but couldn’t see from how small and fast it was flying around. To her it looked like a glowing baseball with a mind of its own.

Ruby was hurrying back towards the hotel with two heavy bags of shopping. They'd reached their hotel in the early afternoon, by which time Erika was exhausted by the long journey and the time difference. After a short discussion, Erika had gone to sleep, while Ruby went out to familiarise herself with the neighbourhood and buy a few essentials and Japanese snacks.

Everything had taken longer than she intended, just because there was so much to look at and a whole different world to get lost in. But the darkening of the evening sky around her reminded her of the passage of time, and she wanted to make sure she was back before Erika woke up. So she didn't take much notice of the situation at the crosswalk, until the voices close by called her attention.

She looked around, confused. What was that thing? In spite of her hurry, she stopped to stare at it. She couldn't help herself.

A rare moment away from the tomb of merch and electronics; last-minute grocery duty foisted onto the freshly-minted 30 year old in an attempt to get her into the sunlight. Given Hoshiko had wrapped herself up in a sky-blue jacket and put the hood up, it wasn't really working as intended. But antisocial vibes and a hood to obscure one's face wasn't enough to block out the sight of one of the fae zipping about.

Oh hey, another spirit like on the news. Some little girl's got a big day ahead of her...

With that thought plinking around in her head she wandered over to the trio of obvious foreigners who didn't even know what a Mascot Spirit was. She cleared her throat and tried to reach into her knowledge of English.

"[Do they not have mascots where you're from? It's been twenty years.]"

Now to us, as readers of a text-based medium, what Hoshiko just said doesn't look weird. But audibly it's obvious that she has never actually spoken or even heard English being spoken before because her pronunciation is entirely phonetic based on the visual spelling of the word.

"Oh! Konbanwa!" Ruby swivelled her head to greet the new arrival. She felt an acute sense of embarrassment at being addressed in English; she was obviously standing out more than she intended to. But now that she came to notice it, the four of them were somehow standing together in a group now, as though the crowd had been shaken up and they had happened to glom together. The light thing, whatever it was, was right in between them.

She decided to try Japanese, since the other woman's English was clearly not the best. "I know some Japanese, if that helps. A... mascot, did you say? What do you mean by that?" She desperately hoped she hadn't made any huge blunders in her words or her level of politeness.

Alright, showtime. As she zipped towards the candidates, Aliana closed her eyes and concentrated. She was a little nervous- it was her first time empowering magical girls, after all- but every mascot instinctively knew just what to do. And suddenly, time came to a screeching halt.

It wasn't a metaphor. Everything had stopped, from the people to the leaves on the trees, save for Aliana and a handful of women. The fairy glanced around, looking them up and down.

"Well, seems I found what I was looking for at last."

Alexandra gasped as the spell took effect. Actually seeing magic up close and personal was a rarity maybe one in a hundred got to witness, but she'd read several first-hand accounts from magical girls, and every single one mentioned the mascot getting their attention in some sort of supernatural way. That said, the time freeze was apparently a new twist on the subject, and a rather spectacular one, too.

"Looking for..." It took Alexandra a few heartbeats for things to click in her mind. "You were looking for me?" As she watched, she noticed that there were some others who were unaffected by the magic, and swiftly corrected herself. "For us? Why us? We... we don't fit the typical magical girl model, in case you haven't noticed."

"Mascots, the guardian spirits that choose magical girls. Do they call it something different in America?"

Hoshiko looked a little surprised as the world slowed to a crawl around the group. She looked at Aliana, if her eyes could they'd probably glow ominously from within the shadows of her hood.

"You're late."

Helen looked as the world slowed and settled on the fairy. This was not some work-induced hallucination. “You… can’t be serious. Please, take someone else. This is not a good job idea, I’m sorry. Please, could you just get us out of here?”

Ruby was frantically looking around, inwardly cursing herself. Stupid. This was why you didn't want to come here. You knew there was still magical stuff going on, and you thought it was okay to bring Erika here?

Her first instinct was to run. There didn't seem to be any physical barrier stopping her. But as she looked out into the frozen shadows of the crowd, somehow she knew that she was in some kind of bubble, and if she ran out, she would immediately be frozen just like them. She forced herself to focus on what the others were saying. Maybe there would be some hint as to how to get out of this.

"Um, I'm actually from England." And I've spent the last ten years switching the channel the moment magical girls were mentioned on the news, but I'm not about to start talking about that with a bunch of strangers in Japan, of all places. "So... it's alive? What could it want with us?"

Edited by Vilui on Jan 13th 2024 at 3:55:30 AM

Aliana looked over at Ruby. "What do I want with you? Simple. I want to offer you the chance to become magical girls! Protect people, fight monsters! Be the heroines you always knew you could be!" She then turned to Hoshiko. "I noticed. Still, I believe the saying is better late than never, correct?" She smiled, but it was hard to tell if it was getting the desired effect. Helen was the next to be addressed. "No can do, unfortunately. There are very few girls these days with the right qualities. The bravery to put yourself on the line to help others. The kindness to always do the right thing. Hard to find in the modern age. So, you gonna do it?"

Alexandra blinked a few times. She'd wanted the chance to be a magical girl growing up, and she knew she wasn't alone. Now, with the opportunity staring her right in the face, she wasn't going to pass it up. "I'm in. How does this work? Do we need to prove ourselves or something?"

So it was true, this mascot was doling out power to the four despite all of them being far beyond the usual child to teenager demographic that was normally fed through the meat grinder of protecting the world from danger.

"Are there any benefits besides combat magic? We all have lives here this would have to exist next to."

Yuriko was a Bit of a Dumbass. a bit of a... Stresser. she wouldnt jump at the chance at something but at the same time well. However. she has seen some people Surrounding something, Clearly Piking up her Curiosity.

"Yo, Whats with the-"

she stood there still, Her Mind isnt A big fan with Magical girl animes back then and would Rather watch BBC and other stuff. Her mind is Wondering...

"(What is this? another one of those uh... Aliens from Doctor Who?)"

"(I hope it doesnt really speak that much because it would run on my nerves, or write that much.)"

Ruby stood stock still, the words, and various responses, going round and round in her head like a revolving door. This can't be happening. It's some kind of sick joke. And then — but I never told anyone about those dreams, how would anyone know? She looked up to the sky, as if wondering if the universe itself was playing a colossal prank on her, one that had just happend to get four other innocent women caught up in it.

Well, whatever it was, it wasn't showing any sign of stopping. She would have to be a bit more forthright. "You must have got the wrong person. I'm sorry, I need to go."

Helen looked around at the other women around her, including the skittish Ruby. She felt she should say something to ease their minds, but didn’t have the heart. She settled on a different statement: "I guess we should believe we can do this. So when do we start?"