Post-Apocalypse Magical Girl Quest, Part 22

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Opening Theme: youtube.com/watch?v=r3FKgL7YVFg

This is what you know:

Once upon a time, the world ended. Your name is Lupa, and you were born in the Ashes.

Your mother was a junkie who tried to roll the wrong man. The man, Pytor, killed her with a crowbar, and adopted you. You and he salvaged the ruins of the world. Piton kept you as you had a knack for repairing things, and understood the forgotten written language of the Civilization that used to be. The pair of you traded with the large settlements: the military-run multi-farm colony of Genesis, and the large ranch owned by the religious group known as the Confessors.

You survived, and had a full stomach, and a warm place to sleep, more nights than you didn’t. A fair accomplishment in this world.

Then you salvaged some old relics from a forgotten museum, and everything in your world changed. Including you.

Once upon a time, the world had a team of magical girls in it. They fought a secret war against monsters one year, and witches the next, then Misery came. Misery was an invader, whether from another dimension or the stars, it doesn’t matter. She was good at it though, and the magical girls were losing. Until one of them did the only thing she could, she told her secret, and her father was part of the military. The world fought back, adapted, and won. After that, nothing was the same, and Magic (Known now as Clean Energy), and Magical Girls (Known as Joy-In-Hearts) were now everywhere, and a fundamental part of the world.

And you are one of the last. Your name is also Joy-In-Ashes. The artifacts that belonged to the first magical girl reawakened the energy within you, allowing you to change, and do terrible and wondrous things. It also opened your eyes to one of the biggest threats that the old world left for you.

They’re called Hubris, at least that’s what the voice in your head calls them. Creatures created from the fallout of magical ‘Clean Energy,’ and invisible to most eyes. They’re small insect-like creatures that seek out water to drink, and humans so they can burrow into them. Hollowing them out and turning them into Hives, so more Hubris can hatch within them. It’s unsure if infection from Hubris makes humans hostile and irritable, or if Hubris prefer to seek out hostile and irritable humans. The answer seems to be a bit of both.

Of course, the Hubris are only just as threatening as any of the other Altered animals that exist in this world. It’s not too hard to deal with them, especially now that you can see them. Humans are always the worst threat to other humans. As one of the last magical girls alive, you have very specific human threats.

They are called the People of Joy, and they’re the descendants of the people who remember the days of magic and wonder. It seems that most of humanity now consists of the lower rungs of society, people who were unable to benefit from ‘Clean Energy’s’ ability to improve bodies and minds. Some of the ‘Accepting’ did survive though. Once they were kind, and led by a man named Gaft. However, he was overthrown in a coup, and barely escaped with his life. Apparently, he went and found you. He was in the museum, and gave you the relics that Awoke your Joy. You’re not sure how you want to ‘thank’ him for that, when you see him next.

Either way, now his former followers are after you, and anyone else that was capable of turning into a Magical Girl, for reasons that are mildly unclear and deeply unsettling. In Genesis Settlement, there was a girl named Emily who could do just that. Thankfully, you got to her first, and saw her emerge as Joy-In-Embers. Embers…was utterly useless in combat. She could barely hit the side of a barn, if she was standing next to it…trying punch it. You had to teach her almost everything, and you knew so very little. That might be the explanation as to how the People of Joy managed to kidnap the both of you.

You both managed to escape, but not before your kidnappers brought you far from your familiar territory, miles away from anyone who could be friendly. Thankfully, that was when Voice contacted you over the radio. She said that she was trapped within an area that was soaked in Clean Energy Fallout, which was fatal to normal humans, but harmless to Joy-In-Hearts. She needed help, and Voice said that she had supplies, technology, maps to get you back to Genesis, and answers.

You traveled toward’s Voice’s location, and went through a city that was filled with people. People who were all infected by Hubris. However, they were all acting strangely, and unlike the usual Hubris Hives that you’d seen. It turned out it was due to them all being under the control of a Joy-In-Heart that had been infected by Hubris just before her own awakening. Her mind and powers were scrambled, but still desperately trying to keep everyone alive. You were able to purify the girl, and save her and her ‘followers.’ She had no memory of her pre-Joy identity, her mind scrambled by the Hubris, and went by her title of ‘Joy-In-Ruin.’ She joined you and Emily, being slightly better at combat than Joy-In-Embers, and the three of you continued towards Voice.

While you were doing this, Pytor was attempting to track you down. He was joined by Raymond, a Confessor boy who ‘knew’ you (biblically) and carried a torch for you; and Amelia, a Genesis soldier who was sent to spy on Pytor, and discover what was the secret behind the Ash-covered girl with incredible powers. They ran into the People of Joy, who were also looking for you, and thanks to guidance from Voice, began a three-person war against them. During their fighting Raymond discovered that he was one of the new ‘Accepting’ and found his vision, and reaction time, becoming sharper and sharper. Amelia was infected by Hubris, and underwent a procedure that the People of Joy performed on a chosen few of themselves. It saved her life, and made her capable of working artifacts that ran on Clean Energy, but made her skin, and body fluid, a walking toxic hazard.

The People of Joy threw quite a bit at you, including other girls who could manipulate Clean Energy, who had forcibly enhanced into being Joy-In-Hearts by the People of Joy. It appeared that there were two camps, one that wanted to capture you, and one that wanted to outright kill you. As you managed to slaughter their agents with the blades you could summon from your ashes, the second camp slowly grew to be the louder voice.

You arrived at Voice’s compound, and discovered that she wasn’t lying. She was indeed trapped by fallout, and had a fantastic trove of everything a scavenger could hope for. What’s more was that she wasn’t just another survivor, but a survivor from Before the End, and that she was a former Joy-In-Heart. One of the very first teams, the one known as ‘Joy-In-Thought,’ although she went by Wren these days. She had survived by turning her body nearly completely robotic. She then revealed to you two very large revelations.

First: The world was dying.

Due to all the catastrophic disasters, and the unleashing of so much Clean Energy in untamed formed, the temperature of the world was dropping. In 50 years the world would be in the middle of another ice age, another 50 and there would be no way that life, beyond bacterial, could survive. It would take centuries before the planet would regulate and warm again. There was nothing that could be done to stop it. The problem was too far gone, and too wide spread for this broken world to fix.

Second: There was a chance.

All the time, you had been getting information about a site in Genesis territory that was once known as OLYMPUS. The place was located in the middle of an area that was so heavy with corrupted Clean Energy Fallout that is was unlikely that even a Joy-In-Heart could survive it. It was a personal project of Joy-In-Love: the original team’s first leader, most powerful, and greatest of all Joy-In-Hearts. She was incredibly secretive about it. At one point she paid a fortune to hire an entire movie studio, and a cast of hundreds, in order to create part of an AI called HESTIA to run it. Wren said that it was only after the End, that she discovered what was inside OLYMPUS that was so valuable, and dangerous. It was to contain a single Joy-In-Heart, known as ‘Joy-In-Time.’ A girl who had accidentally erased the existence of a teacher, and her brother, from the world with her gift.

It is now clear that the People of Joy want to gain access to OLYMPUS, and use Joy-In-Time’s power to escape this slowly dying world. This would kill Joy-In-Time, an act that Gaft viewed as heresy, which caused the coup. Wren believes that Joy-In-Time’s powers, along with OLYMPUS and HESTIA can be used to stop the End. What a changing timeline means for your survival…Wren is unsure.

However, Emily and Joy-In-Ruin wanted nothing to do with any of it, and they had enough of your emotionally detached nature, and blasé regard for killing people. They loaded up a truck with as much as they could carry from Wren’s compound and took off, back towards Genesis. You were left alone with Wren, and since you had little purpose left, you decided it was better to help her, than do nothing and watch the world freeze. Also, you wouldn’t be alone this way.

Wren’s thought was that the End was caused by a weapon that worked too well. Her records show the End’s effects were that all Joy-In-Hearts instantly dropped dead. Then everyone came to a slow, safe, pause and stood still for a few moments. Then nearly everyone on Earth went insane. Killing themselves, each other, going catatonic, or just remaining in a single spot until they died of thirst or exposure.

Your own research in Wren’s endless files show that it might have been something else. The World Before was an age of magic and wonder, but it was not peaceful. There were multiple wars between nations, and conflicts were devastating as armies led by Joy-In-Hearts unleashed the fury of Gods against each other. Peace summits were regularly called, and regularly failed, and the records of ‘Joy-In-Unity,’ a diplomat, show her becoming increasingly unhinged and talking more and more of ‘making people see each other’s point of view.’ A phrase that Wren agreed should be investigated. More importantly, if Joy-In-Unity WAS the cause of the End, getting the exact date and time of the Event was absolutely necessary.

You took a motorcycle from Wren’s compound, and went to the city of Charybdis, the seat of Unity’s organization, ‘The Peacekeepers.’ There you used you power to make a new friend, Musor…an Altered bear that had been living in the ruins. You also discovered that Unity’s building was intact…but filled with Hubris that had merged with all the advanced technology and security systems within the building. The place was impregnable. However, one species of Hubris will violently fight another, so you traveled a few miles away to gather up a large amount of ‘Standard’ Hubris in order to, hopefully, fry the ‘Silverbug’ Hubris’ systems.

There you had a pleasant, and murder filled, reunion with Pytor, Ray, and Amelia. You happened upon them, as they were fighting People Of Joy. After combat, you explained to them most of your story, and they agreed to assist you. You gather up a barrel full of Hubris, and went back to Charybdis. Pytor and the others will be on the edge of the city, so as to avoid Hubris infection, and any possible Clean Energy fallout.

All throughout this, you’ve been discovering things about your self, your powers, your helpful voice in your head, and the fact that you are a severely psychologically damaged individual.

That is what you know…you’ll have to continue to sift through the ashes of this world to see what’s next, and what’s left.

The Summit Building is a friendly looking building. Cream colored stone supports shiny mirrored glass, and the sigil of the world surrounded in roses is engraved in the stone, still clearly visible. The building’s doors are wide and have large pull-bars on them that are decorated with paintings that look like they were done by four year olds. Smiling children and happy suns with lots of colorful dots and rainbows. Everything about this building says both ‘Welcome’ and ‘Stability.’ It’s a shiny gem in this endless, cold, trash heap.

Well…time to lift this rock up, and see how nasty the things wriggling under it are.

Wren told you that the defenses and auto-repair of the building make it so that throwing a rock through the glass wouldn’t be effective. The only way to start this, is by doing something dramatic.

Musor is by your side, and you are wearing your regalia. The barrel of Hubris rests against your feet, slightly moving.

> Just hurl the barrel through the doors and let the Hubris spill out.
> Walk in, carrying the barrel and let the building make the first move.

Hmm...
> Walk in, carrying the barrel and let the building make the first move.