Magical Girl Origins - Dimension Death (Patreon)

Origin - One - Dimension Death

“Ollie Olivia!”

Olivia grinned, bent her knees a bit, then jumped while twisting her ankle just so. Her board followed her into the air, almost as if it were glued to her feet. Then she came back down, skirt flaring and knees bending with the hard impact of her landing.

Laughing, she leaned backwards and turned around in a big, lazy circle, one hand extending to smack her friends' hands as she went by. There was a smack-smack-smack as she flew past Emma and Mateo and Bruno.

“How are you doing?” she asked as she put a foot down and stopped herself. Her other foot came down on the lip of her deck and threw the board up for her to catch it.

“Hey, not bad,” Bruno said. He gestured at her with a still-smoking joint and she pinched it from him to take a tiny, quick pull.

She didn’t like it too much, it made her lungs itch, but it also made everything a little lighter and funnier, and besides, all of her friends did it.

Olivia passed the joint to Mateo, but he waved her off so she gave it to Emma who took a hit with a smile. “What took you so long?” Emma asked.

“Liam was being a bitch,” she said. It was rude to call their teachers by their first name, so she revelled in every opportunity to do so. “Kept me in to ‘talk about my future’ or whatever." She set her board down on a cement half-wall, then hopped up and sat on its middle, her hips swaying lightly to keep the board level.

“He means well,” Mateo said.

“He’s a self-righteous prick,” Bruno corrected as he took his joint back.

The day was too nice to talk about serious things, Olivia found. The sun was beaming, and it was unusually warm. The skate park was their spot, but they shared it easily enough. There was the all-familiar sound of small wheels whisking across smooth cement or clacking over a familiar crack. Not as many people were out. Maybe it was too warm for some but she loved it.

Every day she could spend outside was a nice one. Home was... well, she liked the sunshine and hanging out a lot more. Winter would roll around soon enough, and then they’d be shivering out here or at someone’s place and... nah, she just liked it better when it was cosy out.

Olivia let her friends chatter while she tilted her head back and stared at the blue above. There were clouds, but they were small, patchy things that she didn’t mind one bit.

Then a warm hand touched her knee. Her leg jerked a little, but she didn’t react beyond that. Her friends kept talking about... some guy called Tobias who’d gone missing? She was playing catch up with the conversation.

The hand slid up, rough and calloused, and it started to push at the hem of her skirt. She felt a disgusted shiver run down her spine. “Bruno,” she said, sharp enough to cut off the conversation. “You take that hand and put it away or I’ll feed you your fingers one at a time.”

Bruno’s hand snapped back. He knew she wasn’t exaggerating.

“Not cool,” Emma said.

Mateo fired a glare at Bruno, but he just shrugged and passed the joint around again.

“What’s that about... Tobias? Who’s Tobias, that name’s familiar,” she said.

“You know that fat kid in my homeroom,” Emma said.

Olivia snorted. “Which one?’

“Always has a book with him. Bit of a loner. Nice guy, I guess,” Emma said.

“He’s alright,” Mateo said. “Took the bus with him a lot for a while. He likes good music.”

“Okay,” Olivia said. “What about him? He drop out, got someone pregnant? What?” She wasn’t keen on gossip, but it kept things happy and kept people talking. She just wanted to bathe in the sun, maybe ride around and practice her moves for a little bit, but she preferred doing that kind of thing with friends around.

Emma shook her head. “Nah. He’s just gone.”

“Missing, like that Maria girl, and like, three others,” Mateo said.

“Wild,” Olivia said. “What is it, like human trafficking?”

Emma let out a shocked laugh. “Where’d you get that idea?”

Olivia’s only reply was a shrug. “Sounds possible, no? Some gross millionaire from somewhere buying people in like, cargo containers or whatever.”

Emma laughed. “You watch too much TV.”

She disagreed, but felt that her idea had some merit. “If it’s not people smugglers, then what? It’s been mixed, right? Boys and girls?”

“Yeah. Some kids too,” Bruno said. “Hey, what’re you doing after this?”

“Nothing,” she said. And it was clear even to someone as thick as Bruno that she meant nothing with him. He’d been pushing his luck lately. Not that he wasn’t usually a nice guy. He didn’t mind sharing his stuff, and threw fun parties, but he was way too... Bruno for her tastes.

Jumping down, Olivia grabbed her board and set it down. “I’m going to spin circles,” she said.

“Have fun,” Emma said. Then she started talking about something else while Olivia pushed off and started to make her way around the park. It wasn’t all that big, just a few small halfpipes and ramps where an old building had burned down half a decade ago.

It was one of those things the municipality added to modernise the city. That was back when she was really young, when things were more... different than they were now.

She went around, faster and faster, more daring as the sun beat down on her and her lips went dry. The way her skirt shifted against her legs, the rhythmic rumble of her wheels sending vibrations up her calves, the little moments when she took to the air and wasn’t sure how she’d stick the landing.

It was nice.

But it came to an end. Bruno invited everyone to his place for drinks and such. She decided not to join them when she learned that Emma wouldn’t be going.

So she rode back home across the sometimes uneven sidewalk bricks to the tight little apartment on the fourth floor of a ten storey building right in the middle of Rosario. No one was home when she arrived, so she checked the kitchen for leftovers, grabbed some asado that no one had touched last Sunday and tossed it in their old microwave.

She eventually grew bored enough to give her homework a try. It was all so easy. Nothing but a waste of time that she couldn’t really stand, but it would make the one or two teachers who actually cared happy and so she bothered.

By the time anyone arrived, she was in bed already, and when someone cracked her door open, she pretended to sleep.

The next day, on arriving at school she discovered that Emma had gone missing too.

It hit her like a rock to the face.

Emma had been a staple for... ever. She was Olivia’s friend, even if their friendship mostly amounted to occasionally being near each other and Olivia listening to Emma. It wasn’t deep, but it was something, and now the girl was gone.

Olivia wasn’t sure what to feel.

She was the only one at the park when school was out. Around and around she went, wishing that the place was bigger, that the cement ground was smoother, that the sky wasn’t so cloudy and heavy with the potential for rain, but she knew that wishes weren’t worth much.

When the first drops came down, she decided to return home.

It turned into a downpour, and by the time she got home to get an earful from her tired mother about bad influences and being irresponsible, she was soaking.

She didn’t bother with homework. Instead she sat in a corner of her tiny room, still dripping from her hair, and she used what tools she had to undo the truck on her board. There was a squeak she’d noticed by feeling alone. What she discovered was a rusty set of bearings that almost crumbled apart when she reached them.

She left everything on the floor and fell into her bed to stare at the ceiling.

It wasn’t worth it.

Olivia eventually succumbed to sleep. Her eyes closed, her still-wet hair stuck to her pillow, and she sank away from everything.

She awoke when something grabbed her leg.

Bolting upright, she tried to see, but it had gone dark, all she could tell was that there was something long and dark reaching out from beneath her bed and grabbing at her leg. Her dream-fogged mind forgot to scream until a second hand reached around the end of her bed and grabbed her face.

Of course, she screamed anyway. It was only in movies that covering someone’s mouth stopped them from screaming.

The hands didn’t care, they pulled, and Olivia fought them. She hooked her free leg around the opposite end of her mattress and grabbed the hand over her mouth. It was disgusting, oily and slick and too warm.

She didn’t know what was happening, but she knew that she didn’t want it to happen at all.

YET AS THE MIGHTY RISE TO GREAT HEIGHTS AND IMPOSSIBLE POWER, THEY ARE OVERSHADOWED BY THEIR OWN POTENTIAL.

Olivia pulled her face back and gasped as she gained just a little bit of space around the hand digging long fingers into her cheek and jaws.

Then another hand came and grabbed her hard by the thigh and she screamed.

The voice in her head continued.

FOR IN INFINITE REALMS ACROSS INFINITE DIMENSIONS, EVEN THE MIGHTIEST OF TITANS IS FELLED. POTENTIAL IS EVER RECURSIVE. UNENDING. EXCEPT BY THE HAND OF THE DEATH OF DIMENSIONS.

She fell off the side of her bed, and as she was turned to be pulled under, she saw. There was a whole disgusting world under her bed. Many faces stared at her, pale and emaciated, with arms that were far too long.

They looked excited, eager.

She needed a weapon.

WIELD ME. CUT THROUGH THE CHAFF. FREE YOURSELF OF THIS MUNDANITY OR CHASE GREATER CHALLENGES. I CARE NOT. I AM INTERMUNDIA, THE WORLD CUTTER. I AM THE BLADE OF DEATH’S SCYTHE REFORGED. TAKE ME, AND TOGETHER WE WILL BE THE END OF UNIVERSES.

As she pressed her knee against the top of her bed and tried to stop herself from being pulled in, something cool and... reassuringly familiar fell into her hand. It was the same feeling she had when handling her board. A tool, a toy, a thing she knew well.

She sliced.

The arm gripping her face fell away in two halves, the skin and bone flaking apart as dust.

Reaching down, she flipped the knife around and stabbed at the hand grabbing her thigh. Then the one around her leg pulled, and she was almost dragged under the bed.

It was instinct that had her lashing out, not at the hands, but at the lip of the impossible space beneath.

DIE.

The voice resounded in her mind and in that fraction of a moment, the world changed.

She was on the floor, halfway under her bed, panting hard and covered in sweat, her thigh and face and ankle stung a little where they’d been squeezed.

The door to her room opened, and she got an earful from her mom who seemed too sleepy to even focus on the inside of Olivia’s room enough to tell that something was wrong.

Then the door shut, and she fell back, head thumping against the floor.

She could almost dismiss it all as a horrid nightmare.

But the knife was still in her head. A long, sleek thing, with a blood-red blade and a handle of leather and carefully sculpted gold inlays that felt right in her hand, as if it was tailored just for her.

Olivia wasn’t one to question things too deeply, but... “Are you... Intermundia?” she asked, remembering the voice.

I AM.

“And what the hell was that?”

VISITORS FROM ANOTHER DIMENSION. THE HUNGRY WHO WISH TO FEED BEYOND THEIR OWN BORDERS. THOSE WHOM, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE IT, SHALL BE PUNISHED FOR THEIR HUBRIS.

Olivia pulled herself out from under her bed and just... sat on the floor for a moment, staring at the knife. It should have looked evil and malevolent, being all curved and sharp and somehow so real. But it wasn’t.

“What does that make me?” she asked.

YOU ARE MAGICAL GIRL DIMENSION DEATH. THE INHERITOR OF THE DEMISE OF ALL. THE WARDEN OF THIS REALITY. ETERNAL MAY YOU REIGN.

“Oh,” she muttered.

Well, that explained nothing, but she could live with that.

***

Let's pretend I didn't forget to post three days in a row!