Magical Girl Origins - Hypertense Breakpoint (Patreon)

Origin - One - Hypertense Breakpoint

Amira had been hearing a voice for well over a week now, and she was quite certain that she wasn’t going mad.

The voice wasn’t one that she’d ever heard before. It was loud, it was brash, and it didn’t sound like any voice she’d heard before. Maybe it wasn’t really a voice, and instead was more of a constant scream that only she could hear.

It was always saying the same thing.

BREAK.

She wasn’t sure what it meant. What she was certain of, was that she wouldn’t be telling anyone about it. The last thing she needed was to give people more reasons to condescend to her. She didn’t have the worst life, but hers wasn’t easy either.

That morning she was woken up by the now-familiar voice screaming in her mind.

BREAK.

She sighed, climbed off her bed, then rushed through her morning ablutions and picked up the homework she’d left on her little room’s tiny desk. It was all complete, but she’d left herself a nice mess to pick up.

It was Friday, which meant classes in the morning, then work in the afternoon. She packed clothes for work in her pack then changed into her normal daywear for school. Then she entered her home’s chaotic main room. A few of her siblings were up already. Her hard-working mom was working in the kitchen, preparing breakfast for the men. Amira stole a piece of toast meant for one of her brothers, then she kissed her mom on the cheek.

“Be careful,” her mom warned.

“I will,” she said.

The run to school was just that, a quick jog through the foggy morning air of Cairo. She didn’t want to be on the streets when visibility was low, especially not alone. Not that she had many people to rely on at the best of times. Amira always had some trouble making friends, or even just holding conversations with people that didn’t turn impolite.

School... happened. She paid attention to the teachers, minded her own business, and spent the break time alone with a book or two, never entirely on her own--it was stupid for a girl reaching sixteen to be all alone--but never in any group, just on the outskirts.

As soon as she was free from school, she ran across the city towards the nicer, more tourist-heavy parts, with only a stop at Uncle Gamal’s place (one of her many, many uncles) to use private washrooms in his shop to get changed into her work uniform.

She kept her hair just long enough to be respectable, but with a workcap on and an ill-fitting uniform she could pass herself off as an awkward boy. She didn’t like it, but it helped keep things neat and kept the harassment to a minimum.

Uncle ‘Momo’ had been a family friend since forever, and he was glad to have her helping at his place which sold small China-made statues of the pyramids and other touristy crap to gullible passersby. They were on the wrong end of the city for that, but they still somehow got a regular clientele. It helped that there was a smaller airport nearby that often had fresh people coming into the city.

Everyone, it seemed, needed some cheap trinket to bring home to prove that they’d visited the city.

She didn’t understand it, but she kept an eye on thieves and manned the till all the same. She was impeccably honest, and Uncle Momo made sure to reward that on occasion, it was why she kept the job here instead of finding work at one of those American food chains that sprouted up like mice out of cracks in the walls.

SOON, YOU WILL BREAK.

She jumped, which made the customer before her glance up before she made a dismissive gesture. That was a new one, the voice had never spoken more than one word.

The evening was quieter. She had time to do some of her homework. Voices in her head were nice and all, but she had a million other concerns that outweighed that by a lot. Like keeping her grades high enough to get into a good school after highschool.

It wouldn’t be easy, but her family always spoke at length about how they’d always pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

All she needed was a chance, but that chance wasn’t going to come without her working for it.

Uncle Momo showed up to see how things were going, with a bit of sauce in his beard and more down the front of his shirt. He gave her back a hearty smack, thanked her for her hard work, and paid her for the day.

She hid the money in a shoe and headed out.

It was about the time of day when a lot of people were heading home, so the streets were quite busy. She kept to those that were busiest with foot traffic. It risked a pickpocket, but hers were empty, and she looked local besides.

It was the nice tourists with the smart phones and the Rolexes that were at risk. If they stole her homework, she wouldn’t shed a tear.

Her mind was on her plans for the evening and the weekend, which weren’t too exciting. She could, and should, earn a bit more over the weekend.

She was still thinking to herself when something changed in the crowd. She perked up, going on high alert for a moment. She reached to her shoulder. There was a tiny knife hidden in a strap-pocket of her backpack.

The people around her were talking to themselves, but a lot had stopped in their tracks. A number of them were pointing to the sky, and she heard more than one prayer slip past lips. Of course, she followed their gaze.

It took a moment to realise what she was seeing.

It was a haze. A shimmer in the sky, like heat over the desert sands, but more localised. It was triangular as well.

Her mind jumped to a heap of logical conclusions. Some sort of strange weather pattern, a weird reaction in the black smog that often coated the city, maybe even drones. She’d caught a glimpse of a show put on by hundreds of those all coordinated together once.

Then a piercing scream sounded out, and Amira was stuck in the press of the crowd. She stumbled back, tripped over the lip of the sidewalk, and landed on all fours on the dusty road.

Fortunately, the traffic was as congested as always.

She stood and glanced around, then she caught sight of something truly bizarre. A woman was flying.

No, she was being pulled off the ground, and rapidly. She faded into the haze just as another was torn off the ground some ways away, a young girl kicking and screaming.

Amira swallowed, stood, then ran.

She didn’t make it far before she heard a strange hum and the hairs on the back of her neck came to stand on end.

BREAK IT.

She ran harder, but something grabbed her, and with a gasp she was torn off the road and into the air, arms flailing.

Her backpack went flying, and for an irrational moment she was angry that she’d lost her homework. More pressing concerns took over as she was grabbed, twisted, then shoved to the side. She kicked and lashed out, but her arms were pulled to her sides, something was pressed to her face, and the world went blurry a moment before she was plunged into a murky green liquid.

She fought harder to escape, but to no avail. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she squirmed, or tried to, but the restraints around her hands kept her locked in place.

Then she opened her eyes to a corridor lit in frigid green light.

Or, perhaps more accurately, one made green by the liquid she was in.

Ahead of her, floating in a large tube, was a woman a few years her senior, her face covering hanging around her neck while a mask pressed in around her lower face. She looked asleep.

Amira turned her head as much as she could, but there was only so much she could move without losing the mask. Whatever it fed her burned her lungs, but some instinct as old as humanity told her not to lose it, for fear of drowning.

She was surrounded by tanks. Hundreds of them, in neat rows. Many empty, many not. Those that weren’t had girls in them, from young teens to young women, in all manner of dress, but mostly in clothes she could recognize as local.

BREAK.

She swallowed back her panic and closed her eyes against the liquid’s burn.

BREAK!

The voice was insistent, louder than it had ever been, so much so that it felt like a bass going off in her skull. It pushed away the drowsiness that she only now noticed was overtaking her.

Were they putting her to sleep?

BREAK!

She sensed motion and ripped her eyes open again. The pain was awful, like termites in her eyes, but she endured it.

There was an alien ahead of her. A creature with a large head and thin, nearly skeletal body in a strange outfit.

Under different circumstances, she would have laughed at the absurdity.

BREAK!

“How?” she wanted to scream back.

It was her first time replying to the voice.

FIND THE WEAKNESS.

Another new sentence. She struggled some more. She didn’t understand. The world was growing foggy, her vision darkening in the corners.

INHERENT IN ALL IMPERFECTION IS FAILURE. YOU ARE THE BRINGER OF THE IMPERFECT’S END. THE BREAKER.

That didn’t explain anything!

There was a shadow before her, and she blinked. The alien was there, staring into her tank.

LET ALL THAT IS CREATED BY MAN, DEMON AND GOD BE KNOWN TO YOU, BARONESS OF DESTRUCTION AND SHATTERING QUEEN. LET THE ONLY PERFECTION BE THE ONE YOU ALLOW, FOR YOU ALONE SHALL BE SHE WHO ALLOWS PASSAGE TO THE BROKEN. YOU ARE ONLY RESTRAINED BY MORTAL MEANS.

She clung onto that last part. Mortal means. The aliens were mortal? Human-like? So were their machines then. She was able to breathe and think, she had resisted the pull of sleep. They’d failed, somewhere, at some point.

All she needed was for them to fail again. For her to find her chance to pull herself up by her bootstraps.

She started to struggle again, through the hurt. She realized that the liquid was an acid. It was eating at her clothes. Some of her own hair was in the acid. Her eyes... didn’t matter at the moment. She used them to glare at the blur she thought was the alien.

The clasp holding her right arm in place snapped. Metal, which had changed temperatures too often in too short a time, failed in a million microscopic ways, and her tugging, the tension she put on it, was all it needed to break.

SHATTER, SMASH, CRACK AND FRACTURE. ALL THINGS WILL MEET DESTRUCTION AS YOU WILL IT.

She rocked her hand back and punched at the glass.

The blur jumped back. She’d scared the alien.

Judging by the sting, she’d ripped the skin of her knuckle too.

That didn’t stop her from pulling her arm back again, even as her vision went dark. She punched the glass, and the entire tube rang.

THEY KNEW YOU WOULD BE HERE. THEY KNEW THE THREAT YOU POSE. DESPAIR DRIVES THEM TO BREAK THE BREAKER, BUT YOU WILL FIND THE POINT TO STRESS, THE FAULT IN THE MACHINE, THE RATTLE IN THE LUNGS AND THE BIAS OF THE MIND, AND THROUGH THESE IMPERFECTIONS YOU WILL UNLOCK YOUR OWN POTENTIAL.

Another punch. Another ring as the juices she was in sloshed around.

A crack. Tiny, imperceptible. She saw it anyway, even with eyes that couldn’t see. Her fist smashed into it knuckle first.

The alien ran away as the front of the tube exploded outwards. Her mask was ripped off, and before she knew it she crashed onto a grated floor, panting, blind, in agony, but free.

“Who are you?” she asked. In her mind, she asked herself who she was as well.

YOU ARE HYPERTENSE BREAKPOINT. I AM UNMAKER, YOUR WEAPON, YOUR HAMMER. I DELIGHT IN THE DESTRUCTION WE SHALL DELIVER.

And then she saw it all. No, it wasn’t seeing, it was knowing. Every imperfection in herself. Every flaw. Physical, mental, spiritual. Every tiny mistake that came together to make her who she was.

SHATTER.

That was a command, but also a suggestion.

She obeyed.

“Shatter,” she repeated.

Amari broke.

In her place, rising from the ground with the remains of the equipment holding her falling off, was a girl in orange, a hammer that outweighed her in one hand. She blinked, then her eyes narrowed and she reached up to adjust her new hat.

The world around her was nothing but a collection of cracks, each a point standing out like a nail, and she had a hammer that was wanting to be used.

***