[This is missing something, but I can't quite tell what.  Am I spending
too much time trying to develop characters given the length of the fic?
Am I adding too many "new" concepts to the MG genre?  Or am I just
completely missing what I'm missing?

C&C appreciated, as always, whether or not it's on the things I'm
looking for.]

*****

That drop of sweat had nearly killed her.

Scarlet Fury, magical girl and unofficial errand girl for the CIA,
clung by her fingers to the stone carvings above the massive front
door of the fortress containing her prize.  With exacting precision,
she whipped her drenched, charcoal black ponytail to spray its sweat
into the bushes near the door, where the motion caught the attention
of the machine gun wielding guards.  Had the previous drop hit them
from above, they would have looked up, and she could only have taken
care of one before the other filled her with lead.  But now, a
moment's distraction allowed her to subvocalize words long since
etched into her skull, summoning forth angry fire that she unleashed
in two columns of rage.

As the guards yelled and ran off into the woods, she pitied their
fortune.  Any guards back home would have known to stop, drop, and
roll.  By the looks of things, these two would burn to death in their
ignorance.  Then again, she had made her fire hot enough to ignite
flesh; they would not make it far before becoming charred skeletons.
It was kind of her calling card.  Good thing it had just rained and
the woods were green: no one would hear the guards' yelling, but a
forest fire might attract attention.

Almost no one, she corrected herself as a third guard opened the doors
from inside.  Lazily, she swung down from her perch above, latched her
legs around his neck, and squeezed sharply.  Enhanced strength met
spinal cord just so, leaving the guard suddenly quadriplegic.  She let
go and landed just after the guard collapsed, thinking only after she
landed that if there had been a third guard there might have been a
fourth backing him up.  Fortunately, there was not, so she lived to
curse her oversight as she entered the convincing replica of a Mayan
temple.

Convincing, except that the Mayans had never come this far south.
This was Colombia, home of the drug kings, and she was here to
dethrone one.

---

Scarlet always wanted to be a spy when she grew up.  Her father was
retired military, and her mother a career member of their state's
legislature with one eye set squarely on the governorship.  They both
approved of her plans for public service, until The Enemy arrived.

No one knew where they came from, or why.  It broke the mold of all
the magical enemy stories in the papers.  Her homeland was farm
country, not San Francisco or New York, and definitely not Japan.
Neither were humans directly attacked; instead, the monsters were
mutated farm animals, furiously eating and destroying the crops.
Everyone pitched in to fight when a mutant was spotted, but the best
they could do was to simply to tie up or corral the poor creature
until the magic went away.

These attacks had only gone on for two weeks before she met a spider
on her way home from school.  At first she thought it a tarantula, but
it had no fur, and far too much intelligence shone in its eyes to be a
mere arachnid.  It had climbed the tree in her front yard to just
above her eye level.  She looked at it, it looked at her, and they
stayed like that for many minutes.  Eventually it seemed to come to a
conclusion, and produced a broach with a stylized flame insignia,
dangling it in front of her on a cord.  She took it, intending only to
get a closer look - but the moment she touched it, she felt the power
bond to her.  Scarlet Fury had been born.

She had been thinking of taking a vacation that summer.  As it turned
out, she would spend her summer fighting evil.  At least there was no
issue with secret identity: knowing she would not be able to conceal
it for long, she told her parents almost immediately.  Word spread,
and the folk were generally supportive and sympathetic.  She spent
most of her days in the town center, training with her powers when she
was not leading a posse against whatever fell magic she detected like
a compass.  Two solid months of that wore down her enemy's patience,
until he challenged her in the town square.

---

Scarlet marveled at the grim interior.  Grey, weathered stone offered
no comfort or cheer, not to mention slowed her pace as she padded
softly so her footsteps would not echo down the hall.  Here and there,
paper skeletons adorned the walls like a perpetual Halloween party -
no, Day of the Dead.  She was in Colombia now, and she had to remember
to shift her holidays accordingly.

A slight migraine manifested itself.  Scarlet leaned against the wall
and closed her eyes until it passed.  Rookie mistakes!  She had been
making mistakes she had not made since her first mission!

Opening her eyes, she found she had made another one.  Yet another
guard was in her face, studying her features.  She recognized his
expression from far too many encounters; his habit of thinking with
the wrong head had spared hers.  Smiling, she tugged the front of her
all-red outfit's cleavage, leaning forward to give him a good look,
allowing the spidersilk garment to slide sensuously along her breasts.
Then she leaned forward a little more, puckering her lips while
huskily whispering words in a language he did not understand.

Breathing fire always left a bad taste in her mouth, over and above
the charred pork stench from her target.  But it was quite effective,
especially when aimed into his open mouth.  The sheer pressure of air
forced in by the heat wave triggered his choking reflex before he
could scream, but his brainstem burnt away before he could cough.
Enough of his brain was left to be technically conscious and aware of
collapsing at her feet, but she walked on knowing exactly how many
seconds were left until he was dead.

She shivered a bit.  Fear?  No, she had lost track of how many lives
she had taken.  Cold?  Her powers aside, outside was a rain forest in
June, and the stone corridors had no air conditioning.  In fact, she
felt a bit feverish, although as far as she knew she was immune to
the local diseases.  It must have been anticipation, then: she wanted
to get this mission over with.

---

Of all the emotions Scarlet Fury felt upon seeing the enemy
mastermind, relief was the most surprising.  Finally, the battles
would end, and she could get back to her life.

He demanded to know who she was.  She returned the favor.  They stood
there, angrily exchanging information for fifteen minutes.

The battle had had nothing to do with the victims.  Some minion of
some city dwelling evil group wanted to summon an earth demon, and the
ritual that required lots of land.  He decided to go out to the
country, scare away the "rubes", and buy the "haunted" land for cheap.
Unfortunately for him, the land really was haunted.  Since before the
Europeans arrived, humanity had known of the local benevolent spirits.
Further, these spirits had been through the routine of teaching
people how to fight monsters before.  Much of Scarlet Fury's knowledge
and powers were distilled from past champions.

It was hardly a fight.  After all that dialogue, five seconds of the
hottest flames anyone present had ever witnessed reduced the enemy to
cinders.  She never actually got his name, and the only way she knew
he had been working alone was that the attacks stopped.  Her powers
were apparently hers to keep, though.

A year later, upon graduating high school, she went straight to the
nearest CIA office and was turned down.  Having become a minor local
celebrity, her face was too widely known to make a good agent.  She
saw right through that line - she had said nothing about fieldwork,
and surely they could use support staff - but thanked the secretary as
he shook her hand to slip her a note.

The note contained an URL and a login.  The URL lead to an online
forum, specifically a page where members were discussing the number of
magical girls rumored to have gone into various spy services.  They
were good at keeping secret identities, they could accomplish tasks in
ways that no ordinary security would even think to guard against, and
they usually had strong senses of right and wrong that could become
stalwart patriotism.  Also on that page was a login form; logging in
lead her to a board of job offers.  Her heart skipped a beat when she
realized she had essentially been accepted before she even walked in
the door.  It skipped another beat when she saw the payment offered
for what she thought to be a simple job.

Simple.  As if.  The board also contained links to study material,
which she perused, but the job - go to Cuba and discreetly fetch an
item some diplomat had accidentally left behind - had been set up for
her as a tutorial, throughout which she was carefully monitored.
Ironically, monitoring her had fallen to one of the agency's official
trainees.  When he posted her mistakes in detail on the forum
afterwards, she had to restrain herself from melting down her
computer.

---

Although she had never met him, she always remembered his mocking
tone.  "'Trailer trash' in America is 'Ugly American' elsewhere."  The
nerve!  Even if, in hindsight, her clothes had been a bit out of
place.

"Rookie mistake number next," she muttered, trying to mimic the voice
she had always read his words in so as to drill her self-corrections
into her, "reminiscing on the job."  She returned her attention to
listening to the door in front of her.  "And talking to yourself."

Her stomach ached and she wanted to hurl, but fought it down.  This
was a drug lab - of course there might be something unpleasant in the
air!  Although her powers gave her some protection, she knew better
than to go into a hot zone without appropriate gear.  But she was
here now.  The list of possible bad things and their countermeasures
swam in her mind; best to secure the objective and get out of here.

Hearing nothing but herself, she eased the door open and looked
around.  A small, neatly stacked pile of golden-brown bottles sat next
to a small, neatly stacked pile of stuffed animals.  On the other side
of the bottles sat a modest rat's nest of pipes around a centrifuge
and a refrigeration unit.  The unit was open, showing five bags of
blood inside.  A sixth bag lay on the floor in the middle of the room,
with a plastic tube carrying the red substance from the girl lying
atop it.

Pay dirt!

---

The pay was good, and as far as anyone knew she was just another
young adult with money from somewhere, taking trips now and then to
find herself.  She was a little queasy the first time she killed an
actual human being, until she freed the hostages he had taken and saw
their condition.  After that, she started taking mostly assassination
missions, or at least ones where death was readily excusable.

It was only after her tenth kill did she realize she was starting to
become addicted.  Reaching out and snuffing the lives of those who
caused so much misery was not just right, but it felt good.
Dangerously good.  She had read, in the training material, of agents
who fell to this temptation, and started killing without making sure
of their targets.  They themselves quickly wound up as targets of
"arrest or terminate" jobs.

She had seen such jobs show up, from time to time, but never took one
herself.  She was a bit scared at how fast they were completed.

She knew she needed something to take her mind off the power.
Friends...no, her job was secret from everyone.  Even her family could
not be told.  She was all alone with her truth - just like most
magical girls, she mused, but in an adult world.  Even other magical
girls might not understand her particular fears.

Drinking.  Drinking helped people relax, when they could not confide.
But she needed something more.  So, on her way back from another
completed mission, she decided to try some drugs.  That was when she
discovered another superpower: complete immunity to marijuana,
hashish, alcohol, and even caffeine.  She could still get sugar highs,
but felt bloated afterwards, and did not want to experiment with
enlarging her figure in case her costume would not change accordingly.

Then she tried some Princess.

---

"Princess Pretty, I presume?"

Her quarry blinked once, twice, then looked up.  Scarlet had seen too
many horrors to be shocked, but she definitely pitied the girl.
Hollow, recessed eyes and a gaunt pallor that were undoubtedly the
results of excessive blood drain.  Her pink hair, once done up in
bouncy twin ponytails, now swept straight down her back in a boring
sheet.  Even the pink frills and lace that adorned her prepubescent
frame seemed dirty and faded, as if the very cheer they were made of
had been drained.  The drug lords had discovered her body fluids could
be distilled into a powerful narcotic, one capable of affecting even
the magically resistant, and overwhelming weaker humans with a single
drop.  They undoubtedly kept her on a special diet to make up for lost
nutrients, but apparently not by much.  By the look of things, Scarlet
wondered if Princess Pretty was healthy enough to escape.

"You look terrible."

Scarlet blinked.  That was what she had been about to say.

"Are you here to rescue me?" Princess continued.

"Yeah."  She stepped up to the other girl, pulled out the needle in
her arm, and applied a nearby cotton ball to the wound, presumably
prepared by whoever had been tending to her.  "Can you sit up?"

Princess slowly complied, then smiled and nodded.

"Good.  As soon as this clots, I'm carrying you out of here."

"Thank you for coming here."  Princess looked Scarlet over.  "You are
addicted to me."

"I...I..."  She had used the drug a few times, but an addict?  No.
Even if she knew withdrawal would perfectly explain what was making
her sick and throwing her off balance.  Even if she was sorely tempted
to suck the wound instead of letting it stop bleeding.  Even if she
was seriously considering becoming a lesbian and a child molester just
to get her dose of Princess without putting the girl in any more pain.
Even if it had been all she could think about on the trip to this
place, but surely she had just been planning the mission, right?

"I am so sorry.  Let me make it up to you."  Princess cupped the back
of Scarlet's neck, pulled Scarlet's head forwards, and kissed.

Scarlet's eyes widened as her tongue touched Princess's, and the
saliva that came with it.

---

The first dose was free, and easily exceeded the best sex she had
ever had.

The second dose cost a small sum, easily afforded out of pocket.  It
was all the dealer had left at the time, so she rationed it across
several bliss-filled nights.

The third dose, ordered on consignment, cost ten percent of her
mission's pay, but it was worth it.

The fourth dose cost her a mission: while zoned out, some of her
targets escaped, and the partial pay she got for the rest just barely
covered it.

She swore off buying any more, which worked for a few weeks.  Then she
found some Princess among the possessions of her next target.  Taking
a dead man's stuff was not technically "buying" anything.  Besides,
she rationalized afterwards, it felt like that Princess had been
watered down.

While comparing the effects, Scarlet focused on the past ecstasy,
reveled in it, obsessed with it, and came out howling in her mind to
STOP!  ENOUGH!  Her parents had read her tale and verse of what
happened to drug addicts, and she was determined not to become one.
Even if her nightmares were now haunted by the same fears and
loneliness she had tried to escape from, having multiplied unchecked
in the back of her mind.  Even if she was sometimes convinced she
would die alone, a monster.  The first step towards making sure that
did not happen was to stop her slide towards it.

Mere minutes after making that resolution, she saw the offer to rescue
Princess Pretty from those who were using her as a human drug factory.
Scarlet accepted without hesitation.

---

Princess Pretty had been a magical girl since just before birth.  Her
father, driven half-mad by an encounter with the same evil minion who
eventually fell to Scarlet Fury, had woven together black magic as her
mother went into labor.  Her mother's life and soul were part of the
price for her power.

At first, it seemed her father's designs had succeeded.  Everyone who
encountered her came away happier, more so once she learned how to
talk and, at only 7 years old, peer into the hearts of others.  Few
suspected magic until she was 10, when her ability to transform
manifested.

Pink lace and ribbons and a perky smile earned her a new name, and for
a time she became known as the one who could cheer up even the
saddest.  One local psychiatrist paid her in candy to help his
patients with chronic depression.

But her father saw the toll this began to take on her.  The happiness
she gave to other hearts came out of her own, and her own supply was
gigantic but finite.  She stopped smiling by her 11th birthday, and
could charitably be described as a pink goth by her 12th.  Her father
asked her what he could possibly do to warm her heart; she replied
that she finally wished to be of use to him.

She had learned much from studying other peoples' deepest emotions,
which in turn had made her an attentive student.  She had observed the
effect on a boy she kissed, without consciously using any of her
magic, and had tried a few chemical experiments to confirm what she
saw.  Becoming a drug factory had been her own idea; she knew
something that potent could sell for enough to allow her father to
retire comfortably.

Dreams of wealth and of his only child happy once more washed away his
objections in a blink.  It took only a few months to set up a
distribution network, especially once he struck a deal with one of the
larger drug smuggling rings.  They paid for him to set up a base of
operations an hour's drive from their headquarters - close enough for
convenience, far enough to be out of their day to day sight.  They
laughed in private when the foreigner showed them him plans, but went
along with it.

And then the magical girls started showing up.  Someone, probably one
of his new friends' rivals, had leaked his location to would-be
rescuers.  But Princess Pretty had one more side to her magic: she
could absorb the happiness of others, to refuel her own diminishing
reserves.  Only a half dozen had been thus drained by her 13th
birthday, but it was already starting to feel routine.

---

Not even a sob escaped Scarlet Fury as her heart stopped.  She fell
backwards, nerveless, without the will to take another breath.

Princess Pretty was still looking at the corpse when an aging man in
a business suit ran in.  "My child!  Are you safe?"

"Yes, father," she replied as if discussing the weather.  "There was
only the one this time."

"That's good.  She killed four of my men."

"Four of their men, father.  Never forget, the guards report to our
business partners.  That may save your life someday."

"Of course."  He hugged her.  "But it's your life I worry about."

"Yes, father."

A few moments later, he released her, and then looked at the body.  "I
think I have heard of this one.  Crimson Rage, was it?"  Shaking his
head, he added, "I'll put a few bullets in her and dump her at the
edge of town.  Don't worry, someone will claim her."

"Father?"

"Yes, dear?"

"She did not have much happiness."

He thought about it, and then shrugged.  "Someone will claim her, even
if she thought she was alone.  In this world, no one is ever truly
alone."

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