Magical Girl Origins - Burning Ultranova (Patreon)

Origin - One - Burning Ultranova

They’d only been on the station for a little over two years, but already, there was something of a... culture developing.

Jacqueline wasn’t an expert on developing cultures, but there were a couple of psychologists (not to mention a few who’d minored in the subject) on the base who would gladly go on and on about the subject.

Port Martin was currently the largest inhabited, year-round settlement on Earth’s final frontier. It was slapped on top of some old station from the 1950s that had burned down and had been turned into a historical site because what else were they going to do about a tiny station way out in Antarctica.

For the most part, Jacqueline didn’t mind living there. It was more interesting than France, and part of her knew that it would make for a good story when she got older.

But life in the Antarctic wasn’t without a few issues.

“Where are you going?” her dad asked as she stomped out of her sleeping space and towards the habitation’s door.

“Out,” she replied. Then, when that wasn’t enough, she rolled her eyes and raised her phone. “Trying to look at stuff, but I’m getting negative bars.”

“Ah,” he said. “Come back before light’s out.”

She chuckled, and this time he was the one who rolled his eyes. The joke had gotten stale during the very first week of their stay. The light outside was only up for a few hours a day, and that was if they were lucky. There was a period in the first year of their stay where all the psychologist-types were worried that people would get depressed because they had a two month stint with no sunlight.

In her expert opinion, what depressed people wasn’t the lack of sunlight, it was the god-awful internet connections they had. The snow piled up onto the dishes atop the base, so they’d only get a signal when someone dared to go outside with a shovel and a broom to clear off the snow.

“Alright, see ya,” she said as she stepped over the lip under their house’s door. All the habitation units in the station were arranged like the spokes on a big wheel, with smaller ones within, and larger, family units on the outside of the wheel.

Theirs was a family unit, and it was about half the size of a shoebox.

That wasn’t entirely fair. They had two little beds, a small sitting area, and that was about it. The bathrooms were communal, one for each housing ring.

She walked past the girl’s bathroom on the way to the bridge connecting their ring to the main station habitation quarter. She walked with her phone up, carefully studying the little bars at the top right.

There were a dozen habitation rings taking up about half the station’s entire space. The other half was all warehouses, garages, greenhouses, and all the other stuff they needed to keep the station working.

Mostly, her entire life for the past couple of years was spent in the main station, where a grand total of a thousand two hundred people lived, making it the largest over-winter station on the continent.

At least, for now. The Americans were talking of setting up their own within their own slice of Antarctica, because they couldn’t endure being showed up.

“Hey, Jacquie!”

“Oh, fuck me,” she muttered.

When her parents had both excitedly told her that they were going to live in Antarctica for a long, long while, she’d actually been somewhat excited too. Jacqueline had... issues regarding her behaviour that made it difficult for her to assimilate in a school environment.

That’s how her therapist had phrased it.

Others just called her a raging, hormonal bitch with anger issues.

Personally, she preferred to think of herself as a person with a low tolerance for stupidity, so the trip to the literal end of nowhere sounded perfect. Thousands of kilometres away from the next idiot, a station filled with talented scientists and researchers and interesting people.

And then she’d discovered that she wasn’t the only teenager around.

“Hey Chloe, hey Julia,” she said. She very pointedly didn’t say hi to Anthony, who’d been the one to call her over. He grinned as if she’d done a whole lot more than just ignore him as she came over to the table in the corner of the dinning room and sat down next to Chloe.

“Hey, how are you?” Anthony asked.

“I’m alright,” she said. “Looking for a signal. It’s been shit today, hasn’t it?”

“All day,” Chloe agreed. “It’s been pretty bad in our ring too.”

“Maybe classes will be cancelled again?” Julia asked.

“I hope so,” Jacquline said. Their classes were split into an online segment and more-or-less normal classes taught in a room in the recreation ring. There were twelve students in the class. That wasn’t too surprising, really. There were only so many people willing to bring their kids along, and only so many researchers who had kids to begin with. It made for an interesting schooling experience.

She didn’t mind it. Some of the ‘teachers’ were terrible, but a number of them were legitimate experts in their field. Biology was taught by one of the doctors, the science and math classes were taught by people with PHDs in their respective subjects. It made for some rather haphazard but still fun education.

“So, what did you want to look up?” Anthony asked. He was all smiles and had immediately set on ignoring the other two the moment she arrived. He was also staring down the front of her blouse whenever he thought she wouldn’t notice.

She always noticed. Jacqueline didn’t understand why boys couldn’t get it into their thick skulls that girls always knew.

“Just nothing,” she said. She opened her phone with her thumb-print, then tapped a few buttons to start a torrent download or two.

Another bonus of living so far from everything, while the station was technically in ‘France’ by a certain definition, it was also arguably in international space. Pirating music and videos and books was totally fine. Probably. Honestly, there wasn’t a single lawyer on the station so who was going to make a fuss?

“Hey, did you hear about the footprints?” Anthony asked.

“The what?” she asked absently as she queued up another download.

“It’s a stupid rumour,” Chloe said.

“No, but it’s true,” Anthony said. “I want to go check it out myself. But Drew saw them, and he’s not a liar.”

“What, did a penguin get lost in the station again?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Not a penguin. Human footprints. In the snow.”

“Yeah, that happens when people walk in the snow,” she said.

“Yeah, but these didn’t come from the station, they came from inland. There’s supposed to be three sets of footprints, with like, snowshoes, but not the sort we use here.”

She frowned. That did sound weird. Which probably meant that it was made up. Give a lot of creative people nothing to do and they tended to make up their own fun.

Glancing up from the download bar on her phone, she watched someone run by, then another. A little strange. There wasn’t much to run to on the station. It was all rather enclosed at the best of times.

“Did you hear about Madison?” Chloe asked.

“Hmm? No, what happened?” Jacqueline asked. She wasn’t as interested in hearing the gossip as she was in listening to Chloe talk. The girl had an interesting Italian accent that Jacqueline couldn’t get enough of.

“Okay, so you know how she’s been making eyes at that one guy from the bio team?” Jacquleline nodded along. “Well, guess who might be having lucky baby number thirty?”

“Really?” she gasped as she leaned forwards. “She’s pregnant?”

“Or so the rumours say,” Chloe replied. “I don’t see what she sees in that guy, he’s a bit lanky, you know? But yeah, apparently she vomited in the gym this morning, and she was in the infirmary.”

“Oh my god,” Jacqueline replied.

There weren’t many babies born on the station, only two so far, and those were worrisome events. They had doctors, sure, but they were also about as far from a proper hospital as someone could be.

She was about to ask another question when she heard a distant crack.

“Was that a gun?” Anthony asked.

“Can’t be,” Julia said. “No guns on the station, right?”

Jacqueline raised her head as she noticed someone else running by, then two of the station’s six security officers sprinted across the hall towards the station’s exit. They never made it to the doors before they were smashed open.

For a moment the cafeteria was quiet except for a few startled gasps. A sweeping, chill wind spread through the space, sending a cold shiver down Jacqueline’s spine. Then she saw the thing standing in the doorway and her blood went cold.

It was a man, of course, but one covered in metal armour. Not like some mediaeval knight, but like a walking tank. Thick, heavy steel, painted a dull grey and with a few inner sections made of exposed leather. It was power armour, something she’d only seen in movies and maybe a game or two.

The person within shifted, brought his arm up, and then the cafeteria filled with two incredibly loud bangs. The guard went down, one entirely dead, the other screaming as he clutched his side.

A static-y squeal came from the armour before it started to speak, but Jacqueline didn’t recognize a single word of what he was saying.

Her attention was fixed on the armour’s arm though. There was a red band painted on it, with a white circle, and a disturbingly familiar symbol she’d last seen in a history book.

“Jacqueline, run!” Chloe said.

“Right,” she replied as she took flight. The others ran with her, but her heart sank as she looked back. The armoured man wasn’t alone. More were pouring into the room, in long jackets coated in packed snow, with sub-machine guns held close. They were fanning out already.

They ran across the ring, but halfway around they came upon others running in the opposite direction. She wanted to hide, but the adults insisted they go the other way, away from the danger behind them.

“Come on,” Chloe said. She grabbed Jacqueline’s hand and tugged.

“No, wait, we should--” she began.

FIRE DEFINED THE FIRST MAN. IT GAVE THEM WAR. IT GAVE THEM VENGEANCE. IT GAVE THEM THE FIRST FORGE.

She stumbled, blinking dumbly as the voice receded.

When her focus returned, she found herself staring down the barrel of a gun, the man behind it screaming at her through a full-face mask.

She carefully raised her hands, then protested when he grabbed her by the upper arm and dragged her along. Soon, she found herself being pushed back into a crowd of familiar faces. The people with guns were gesturing down, and shoving those who were too slow to act.

It was surreal. A moment ago she was worried about shitty internet speeds, and now she was trying not to panic as she watched men in eerily familiar uniforms prancing around her home.

She saw her father and mother further down, but she didn’t dare stand to go and see them. One of the men said something, and someone stood up, a woman she only recognized on sight  and whose name she didn’t know.

The woman was brought forward and held back until a man stepped into the cafeteria. He was wearing a black leather coat and a steep-fronted hat. A gun hung by his hip, and he had an armband as well. The man looked like an actor playing the role of some Nazi officer in a cheap movie.

Jacqueline watched as he came up to the woman and spoke to her, the disgust in his face obvious.

She nodded, then said something back in what she guessed was German.

The man replied, then gestured to the crowd.

His new translator swallowed, then spoke in the station’s own strange mix of Italian and French.

“This man says that they are from the New Reich. Um. They want to ask us questions,” she said. “I... I think they want to separate us into men and women, and by... religion too.”

Jacqueline felt a pit open in her stomach. Fear... but just for a moment. It was replaced by a swelling anger a moment later.

CHASTISE REALITY FOR REFUSING TO BEND TO YOU, FOR IT HAS WRONGED YOU, BUT EVEN IT CAN BURN. FOR IT IS WITH FIRE THAT YOU WILL BE TEMPERED, THE FLAME WILL CLEANSE YOUR SOUL. THE BURNING HATRED WILL GUIDE YOU.

She gasped, blinking at the floor and trying to remember when she’d fallen forwards.

The people around her were shuffling back, and as she blinked she realized that there were boots in her vision, sparkly black leather boots.

She raised her head and found the officer glaring down at her. He growled something which sounded threatening, then reached down and grabbed her by the hair.

Wincing, she climbed to her feet while grabbing at his arm. “Let go, you son of a bitch,” she shouted.

The man laughed.

Her gut boiled.

IT IS THROUGH YOUR OWN PASSION THAT YOU WILL ACHIEVE IMMORTALITY. THAT PASSION CHAINS ME. I AM YOUR SERVANT, DENWEN. BRIGHT IS MY RANCOUR.

She swayed, but less than last time. She didn’t know what was going on in her head.

“Eighty years under the ice,” he said. She heard the words in German, but somehow understood them perfectly, though on parsing them, she kind of wished she couldn’t. “And still the French girls are just as pretty. This one will breed a nice new generation of perfect men, don’t you think?”

BOUND BY YOUR HATRED, WITHOUT PAUSE OR REST, I AM CURSED FOREVERMORE TO SERVE YOU AND ONLY YOU. I RELEASE YOUR SOUL, AND BY YOUR OWN ADMISSION, CONDEMN THEE TO BE MY ETERNAL MASTER. IGNITE, BURNING SUPERNOVA.

Jacqueline growled. “That’s a stupid fucking name,” she said. “No, call me... Burning Ultranova.”

Then she exploded, but not before her fist, wreathed in brilliant flames, punched the Nazi in the face.

***