And on to the oldest one left in the backlog:

Well, I had to make it to the top of the list somehow. ^_^

I've been looking forward to publishing this story for a while. It's

an

original story in the magical girl genre, but the tone is closer to
Gunslinger Girl meets Alien Nine.

Seen two episodes of the first and none of the second.

I recommend the Alien Nine manga because, although it doesn't make much
more sense than the anime, it seems to finish the story. The anime stops
after four episodes without really resolving anything, presents you with
what I consider to be the most mind-blowing scene in my entire anime
experience (beats anything in Evangelion or Lain by far), and that's it.

Of course, since there's no such things as real life magical girls....

What I meant was that I'm trying to dispense with the usual contrivances
of "love conquers all" and "good guys always win" and consider the story
from the perspective of "what would happen if magical girls really
existed?" The conventions of anime still hold... naked transformations,
magic powers, and revealing costumes that prevent ordinary people from
recognizing the girls. But many of the aspects I don't like, such as
forced romance with a man who just happens to have a connection to the
magical girl's past life and the "be all end all" nature of the magical
powers, are not to be found in this story. It's got a more angsty feel
to it than the usual magical girl fare.

Hmm. I remember reading some C+C for this. I'll try not to hash over

the

same old things.

Indeed... people have given me directions to explore in future stories,
but the nature of the world and the conflict between magical girls and
hunters will come to light as the story progresses. I couldn't spill all
the details here, or there'd be no story, and I've got plenty of plots
left to write.

    "You don't look like one of them," agreed Jessica, "but

everybody

says that magical girls don't look anything like themselves when

they're

in disguise."

Nice to see the fear her buddy has about MGs

Well, magical girls have fans just like any famous person or group. So
did the Justice League, but you didn't usually see those fans. In MGT,
the magical girls have to live among their admirers and generally try to
blend in. People aren't as stupid as they're portrayed in anime... they
can put clues together and figure out who the magical girls are. There's
a certain reluctance to believe that someone you know well is a magical
girl, but it's a distinct non-zero probability. By the end of the
chapter, I hope it's evident that Amber's mother very strongly suspects,
if she's not quite sure.

    "Yeah, I know. The hunters again. I don't see why you're so
terrified of them when the magical girls are there to protect us."
    Amber's side twinged painfully as she closed the stall door

behind

her. "I don't know either," she lied.

Hmm .Unless the hunters are incompetant or horribly underpowered, one

would

think they've whacked MGs, and would be proud to brag about it. I'm
surprised her buddy would be unaware of that.

They're very powerful, but they don't usually need to advertise...
people notice hunter attacks. The cities where magical girls live aren't
as empty as the Juuban district of Sailor Moon fame, where the monsters
always manage to attack when only the victim and one or more Sailor
Warriors are present. Jessica doesn't know that Amber is a magical girl
and therefore has a VERY good reason to be afraid of hunters... because
she's a target.

Theron: The same way an intelligent horse can bind your wounds when

you're

unconscious.

I Did that in a D+D game once, by the way. :)

I always wondered how that worked.

Hmm. So the hunters are bad enough that the gvmt feels the need to try

and

stop them. Either they're clandestine, or operate from somewhere they

can't

be touched, I take it.

>From another dimension, actually. Not much is known about it except that
a hunter surrounded by a high concentration of antimatter can't return
to its own dimension. Of course, making cells out of antimatter is
fairly impractical, and putting hunters in them is even more difficult.
There are actually quite a number of government programs in place to
protect magical girls and study hunters, resulting in a number of
innovative anti-hunter weapons and very strict privacy laws to protect
the identities of women everywhere. I just haven't gotten into the
details of most of that yet.

a monster that had several girls cornered. Two teachers lay

unconscious

on the floor behind the monster, their clothes and faces burnt by

the

same acid that had destroyed the walls. The students in its sights
weren't undamaged either, but they remained conscious and screaming

as

the hunter advanced on them. Its top half bulged and pulsated like

an

overfilled water balloon about to burst.

Not the sort of thing I thought about when you called them Hunters. I

was

thinking more human.

Some of them appear to be human. They're quite literally as varied as
imagination permits. The term "hunter" was actually used by a hunter and
then absorbed into various languages as more people came to believe that
they were more than just an elaborate hoax. I'm playing with the idea of
giving them a different name in some other countries, but as it's the
English word and English is so widespread in modern culture, that would
probably be in deep Africa among the bush tribes or something. I just
really hate seeing the word "youma" in an English story, but "monster"
is way too generic. And unlike the monsters in most magical girl stories
who have some sort of world conquest goal, the goal of the hunters is
exactly that... to hunt down and exterminate the magical girls.

    The explosion had dispelled

think  you can drop the 'had'

I think it sounds more accurate with. Past perfect.

    The hunter was seconds from bursting.
    Nothing else for it.
    Yurika inhaled sharply and screamed. The echoes quickly filled

the

I'm not quite sure why she didn't do this *before* it refilled with

acid.

Because she hates using her power, and the other two magical girls at
the school usually show up before she has to. This time, they didn't
make it. There are quite a few magical girls whose powers are of the
"last resort" nature for various reasons. A future chapter will focus on
another one of those.

 as it slowly

died, but the process wasn't nearly over yet.

drop 'nearly'

I'll find another phrase to emphasize how much more death is to follow.
^_^

    "You wanna turn down a hug?" asked Nephtali.
    Yurika couldn't stop herself from smiling. "Not a chanthe."

Heh

Warm fuzzies all around. It's a requirement for angst. ^_^

    "Are you going to be okay?" Rachel asked at last, once the tears

had

slowed to a mere trickle.
    "No," Amber replied truthfully. "I'm going to stop crying, and
things will go back to the way they were."

Well, that's true.

Makes you wish you could just go on crying forever, doesn't it? This is
why I never found comfort very comforting.

    "SHINING LANCE!" shouted Tabitha, summoning a new copy of her
weapon. Moving her feet carefully to avoid sliding in the slick

puddle

of blood, she hurled the lance at the hunter's chest. At such close
range, the hunter couldn't dodge in time, and the weapon gouged out

a

wide hole in its side. It leapt away, finally escaping the range of
Nephtali's attack, and landed in a heap half a block down the

street.

Tough critter

Indeed. There are no monsters-of-the-day in MGT. Although some magical
girl teams have a sufficient variety of powers that they can deal with
any challenge with minimal difficulty. We'll meet one such team in the
next chapter.

very unusual power, unlike anything I've ever heard of. I know it

hurts

you as much as anyone else when you use it. And unlike most of the
magical girls I've known, your life really meant something before

you

changed.

Heh. Interesting fact.

One of the things that makes this story so hard to write is that I
really want to flesh out all of the characters, even though most of that
characterization ends up being thrown out. I never got around to
mentioning that Chenyce's parents knew that she was a magical girl, and
she'd moved to this town because her identity had been discovered. Or
that she had a boyfriend... he was supposed to show up at the end, but I
decided it was too anticlimactic and cut that scene.

    "I knew a girl some time ago who was extremely intelligent, just
like you," the story began. "She got the top grades in all of her
classes until she hit puberty. That was when she found out that she

was

a magical girl."

I think I know what this is leading up to.

Probably. To the reader, I figured it would be pretty obvious.

    "She taught at the school where I taught before I transferred

here,"

replied Miss Hodgson. "She disappeared from there some time ago and
hasn't been seen since. I suppose I was never very close to her,

except

for knowing her secret, so I didn't keep in touch."

Hmm. Thought it would be this teacher.

It is. She's double-talking her way around her secret identity. This
line is pretty misleading, I'll admit, but she wasn't very close to her
magical girl self... she hated it, and now that she's old enough to
escape suspicion of being a magical girl, she's glad for the excuse not
to have to transform anymore. She does eventually, when two of the
magical girls are dead and the third is about to become a slave to the
hunters.

    There was a soft snap as Jessica's arms closed around Yurika's

neck,

twisting her head firmly, and her spine split in two. She died
instantly.

Ouch. Didn't see that one coming.

Ah, the joy of surprise.

    The ooze stretched toward her, and her hair stood on end as it

made

a beeline for her ear. A bright flash blinded her, and she felt a

pair

of comforting arms wrap around her. The silky smooth hands brushed

her

face and neck, and then she gave herself to unconsciousness.

Ouch

The good news is, the flash and comforting arms are a magical girl. The
bad news... that's the only good news.

I see. My, how grim. I didn't count on you whacking the main character

you

had been focusing, and it coming out of nowhere like that. Excellent

work

Thanks. The fun part is that now that I've established the mood, I have
to write future chapters without that element of surprise. But I figure,
if it worked for Goldenboy and Those Who Hunt Elves, I can pull it off.
Eventually. ^_^

Thanks as always for the extensive comments. Guess I'd better get around
to those comments for Houseguest, hadn't I?

- Nidoking

Weiler's Law: Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do
it himself.

My not-so-humble webpage of fanfiction and other random junk has MOVED:
http://nidoking.anifics.com Update your bookmarks!


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