Magical Girl Origins - Silenced Annihilation (Patreon)

Origin - One - Silenced Annihilation

Before today, Eleanor would have said that she was rather ambivalent about mimes in general. She’d seen them around, of course. This was Paris, France, there were at least a dozen schools and theatres that taught people how to mime, and she’d seen them in the more touristy parts of the city doing their acts and mimeing their own business.

She’d once dressed as a mime for a costume party, even. Though that was when she was much younger and less aware of what people thought of her disability.

On her way to school that particular morning, she noticed a number of mimes out on the streets, way, way more than usual, but she chalked it up to a strange event or something. Maybe it was graduation time for all of Paris’ mime schools?

The fact that the mimes were holding up signs that said ‘Up with the Mime-archy!’ and silently protesting something just added to that impression.

She made it to school safely enough and dismissed it all without a second thought. She was in her third year of highschool, and things were getting a little complicated. One of her teachers had left for maternity leave, which meant that her French class was being taught by a substitute who didn’t know sign language.

He was a bit of a bumbling idiot, and had called out on her to answer questions aloud, twice. The first time she could forgive. Sure, there was probably a note somewhere in her file that mentioned that she was mute, but he should have remembered for the second time.

Then when he talked to her, he’d enunciate everything carefully and speak up much louder.

She was very tempted to show him the most-commonly used bit of sign-language in the world, but she refrained. He was just an idiot.

Her mom had told her a lot about those.

Eleanor had, to put it in only a few words, the best mom.

Her mom was a hard working woman, a secretary for a political office at the Assemblée nationale, a job which kept her up late. And yet she still had time for Eleanor.

Eleanor tried to be a model daughter, because that’s what her mom deserved. She was born with a tumour that had to be operated on, and that operation left her mute, something they’d only really pieced together when Eleanor was a couple of years old, though the doctors had warned her mom that it was a possibility.

The first thing her mom did was learn sign language and she taught it to Eleanor too. Then she found her friends who were deaf or mute, so that she wouldn’t ever feel alone.

She was with a couple of those now. Eric, Samantha, and a few others who were all in the same year in the same public school. Their own little clique of friends who were there to support each other.

“Hey, Elea,” Samantha said, poking Eleanor out of her reverie. French class had just finished and she was still packing her things away.

“What?” she signed to Samantha. The girl was mostly deaf, which she’d joked made her mostly useful to her friends. She could still speak aloud, even if there was a bit of an accent to it, and, of course, she could interpret Eleanor.

“Did you see all the mimes?” Samantha asked. She half-signed, a strange quirk that only worked some of the time. It took Samantha speaking over herself for Eleanor to understand the word ‘mime.’

She placed her things on her desk, then answered. “I saw them in the street.”

Samantha nodded. “Me too, but now they’re all over. Wait, look at this.” She fished her phone out of her pocket--they weren’t allowed phones in class, but the substitute didn’t seem to know that, and Samantha had pulled off the ‘I desperately need this to communicate’ move a couple of times.

She tapped a few things after swiping her thumb across the screen to unlock it.

Eric walked over and looked to Eleanor. He quirked his eyebrows, then glanced at Samantha and back.

Eleanor shrugged, then gestured “mimes.”

Eric looked even more confused at that, and she held back a giggle while leaning over Samantha’s shoulder. If she couldn’t see his reaction, then he couldn’t reply, and she wouldn’t laugh at his face. She really disliked her own laugh.

There was a news article on the screen, all text and pulled from what looked like the France reddit page, which Samantha spent too much time on in Eleanor’s humble opinion. She stared at the headline. Mimes Take Over Assemblée Nationale.

She tugged the phone out of Samantha’s hand and brought it closer to her face, then she started reading the comments below, which were always more informative and less accurate than whatever article was linked.

A pit grew in her stomach as she continued to read.

Eric tapped her arm and she looked up to see him sign at her. “Doesn’t your mom work there?”

She nodded, then handed the phone back to Samantha. “I need to go,” she said.

Eric and Samantha shared a look. “I’m coming,” Samantha said aloud and by sign.

“Me too,” Eric replied.

Eleanor shook her head, but she grabbed her stuff and walked out of the room all the same, aware that her friends were behind her the entire time. She found her locker, stuffed her stuff, then found her phone.

There was no reason to panic yet.

She texted her mom.

For all she knew, her mom was out for lunch when... whatever happened happened. Or maybe she got out? She was just a secretary, not some important political-type.

No one answered the text. She chewed on her lip, then tried to call. They were both in the city, and had internet access, they could video call if she found a place to set her phone down, but that didn’t end up mattering since no one answered.

She shoved her phone into a pocket and turned back to her friends. “I’m worried,” she signed.

“Yeah we get it,” Samanatha said. She slung on her backpack. “Which is why we’re going, right?” she asked the last to Eric who quickly signed back that he hadn’t heard. “That’s a yes from him.”

Eleanor smiled, then signed a quick thank-you before grabbing her coat. Technically, they weren’t supposed to leave the school at all. Also technically, the lonesome teacher guarding the exit couldn’t understand them when they all came up to them, signed nonsense, then walked out of the school’s side door while looking like they were totally allowed to just leave.

There were some small advantages to being unable to communicate sometimes.

“Where now?” Eric signed.

“The subway,” she signed back. There was a line that would bring them relatively close to the place where her mom worked, and she had her metrocard. The nearest entrance was two blocks down from her school, then all they had to do was follow the signs leading to some of the more touristy locations in the centre of the city.

The entire time, Samantha was on her phone, having mastered the ability to watch her screen while allowing Eric or Eleanor to drag her along.

Samantha tugged on Eleanor’s coat once they were in a metro car and handed her the phone. There were images of the police encircling an ancient stone building, lights flashing and men shouting through loud-speakers.

Strangely enough, the mimes that surrounded the building were just... standing there with their arms raised at shoulder-height.

Were they just robbers? Terrorists playing some strange game? If so, they’d have been better off wearing masks instead of white face-paint.

“Do you think they’ll call in a magical girl for this?” Eric asked.

Samantha scoffed, then Eleanor wasn’t able to see her phone anymore as she signed with it in-hand. “Please. As if. The closest is Eating Butcher. No one wants her here.”

Eleanor translated the sign name to Feasting Carnage, and she kind of agreed. All of the magical girls were very... intense.

The metro slowed, and they debarked near the Invalides stop where there were a surprising number of people going in the opposite direction as them. Maybe it wasn’t all that surprising, they were heading away from the trouble she was pushing towards.

The moment they were back outside she checked her phone again. No messages, no missed calls from being underground.

Samantha tugged her along, and she followed, letting the girl take the lead while she bumped shoulders with Eric. “It’ll be okay,” he signed.

She smiled, but there was still a pit in her stomach. Something felt different, wrong, and she didn’t know what it was.

They turned around an intersection and found a crowd of rubber-neckers gathering right in the middle of the road. It would have been dangerous if the road wasn’t blocked off by a dozen police cars.

The officers seemed torn between keeping the crowd at bay and facing the Assemblée Nationale where she could just barely make out a few mimes standing along the sidewalk.

“What’s going on?” Samantha asked.

They moved closer, squeezing through the crowd while dodging elbows and swears until the three of them popped out at the front, just before the line of police with riot shields and white-red police tape.

The crowd was rather silent, though she heard plenty of questions flying about. No one seemed to know what was happening. It was worrying. Was her mom in there? If she wasn’t, would she call Eleanor? What if she ran out but left her phone behind?

Then, someone threw a rock and it sailed across the air towards the nearest mime. People gasped. The rock smacked against something, just in front of the mime’s face without a noise, then clattered to the ground.

There was a collective pause as dozens of people wondered if they saw what they thought they did.

“No way,” Samantha muttered.

“What was that?” Eric signed, but Eleanor had no more ideas than he did.

Someone else tossed something, then a bottle went flying. The police shouted and shook their shields and made noise, which quieted everyone down, but not before they saw that bottle explode against nothing.

The mime’s weren’t just miming something, they were holding up a wall. Was it some sort of technology, or was it magic? A year ago she would have dismissed it as a trick, but that was a whole year ago.

The crowd was excited now, and she felt it too.

They settled down after a minute of not much happening. As it turned out, sieges could be a little boring from the outside.

Things grew more exciting as the doors at the front of the Assemblée Nationale opened and a troupe of mimes stepped out. Behind them, walking with their hands together as though they were handcuffed, were a bunch of hostages. They had their heads down, and they stumbled along with little steps spurred on by a mime who was miming holding a rifle.

Eleanor  gasped, eyes locking onto the brunette near the front row of hostages. Her makeup had run, and she’d lost a shoe, but that was undeniably her mother.

The mimes moved to the front of the building, and then one of them brought a sweating, nervous man forwards and shoved a piece of paper into his hands. The mime mimed orating and reading to the crowd, then poked the man in the ribs.

The man lifted the paper and read, but no one could hear it from afar, so a second mime came and made gestures as if tapping a microphone. It made a loud thumping noise from nowhere in particular. The mime placed the mimed microphone in a mimed microphone stand, then moved the man closer to it and adjusted the invisible device.

The man swallowed “Um,” he said, and this time, his voice carried.

SOCIETY IS A CAGE.

She jumped. Had that come from the man? But no, he hadn’t spoken yet.

“The, ah, servants of the Great Silent One wish to, um, inform the people of Paris and France, that from today onwards, they will be instituting a new form of rule. A Mime-archy. Long may the new France live in silent prosperity.”

The mime nearest the man smacked him behind the head, then pointed to something on the page and mimes filling his lungs and speaking up.

“Oh. Uh. Long may the new France live in Silent Prosperity!” the man repeated, this time with more false enthusiasm.

The two mimes at the front made so-so gestures.

“What is he saying?” Eric asked.

Samantha started to translate, long used to the role.

Eleanor was still trying to discover where that voice had come from. It didn’t seem to be from the mimes or the person speaking.

THE SILENTLY OPPRESSED LIVE BEHIND BARS OF WROUGHT PIG-IRON OR GILDED SILVER, BUT THEY LIVE BEHIND BARS ALL THE SAME.

There it was again. She poked Samantha and asked her if she heard anything, but the girl shook her head and continued to translate for Eric. The speech was going on, but now Eleanor couldn’t focus on it.

YOU ARE THE ONE WHO BREAKS.

She shook her head as two and two came together, and she started to have a terrible idea of what was happening. But no, that meant that something awful was about to happen, didn’t it?

Samantha and a few others gasped.

“And... and to prove our intentions and their seriousness, we... we will rid Paris of its current rulers,” the man read, voice halting and scared.

Two mimes stepped up and grabbed one of the hostages and dragged them forwards. They were shoved to their knees, head lowering. Another mime came in and mimed placing a basket down.

The hostage understood before most of the crowd did, and he started to fight back.

A mime pulled an invisible lever. The hostage’s head tumbled down and rolled in an invisible basket.

Eleanor slapped her hands over her face. She felt faint, blood draining from her as she watched what was clearly impossible.

The mimes kicked the body aside, then grabbed another hostage. Her mom.

I AM DELEO, CREATED TO GUIDE YOUR ULTIMATE DESTRUCTION. FOR IN THE TIME OF CREATION, ALL KNEW THAT DESTRUCTION NEEDED A PLACE. THAT POWER OVER MATTER AND ALL OF EXISTENCE MUST BE HELD IN THE HANDS OF A

Her mom was shoved down.

“Please be quiet!” she signed, tears clinging to the corner of her eyes.

There was a loud beat of silence.

The voices of the crowd ceased, wind quieted its murmur, the scuff of shoes and rumble of cars faded away. The world respected her demand for quiet. And in that quiet came a scintillating flash of yellow-white light which wrapped itself around Eleanor.

DESTROY, SILENCED ANNIHILATION, AS IS YOUR RIGHT ALONE.

She raised her hand, and in it sat a wand of smooth wood which she pointed ahead of her.

There was no more sound to her attack than there was to anything else. One moment there was a bright burst of white light, a searing yellow beam. The next, the upper half of the mimes holding her mother down were gone.

And so was a hole the size of a semi-trailer in the front of the Assemblée Nationale.

She really hoped her mom would overlook that last part because she wanted to be a good daughter, and good French daughters didn’t blow up cultural heritage sites.

***