Chapter Text
"Wooow!" Himiko looks around the abandoned room. The flashlight she 'borrowed' from the League is a really good one. It shows off the blank concrete walls and concerning equipment really well! "What's with this place?"
It'd been well hidden, but Himiko is better. Her parents would have found this place in no time! She shakes her head. Never mind them. They aren't important. is little Akiko fine?
"Mmm... this way!" Himiko skips forward, following the large cable spooling out from the back of one machine. The tech here is weird. It reminds her of visiting a museum- all the old stuff mixed in with the new. Though the dust over everything kind of ruins it. "So not cute."
The cable disappears into a wall next to a door. A good push doesn't budge it, but a kick does the trick. Dust flies up as the door falls to the floor and Himiko takes a step back. A haze settles into the beam of the flashlight, obscuring the thing that dominates the room.
Himiko steps forward and waves her hand. The dust roils, not going away but at least falling somewhere else. A faint light pulses out of the thing, cute red seeping through a crack in a door.
"How's it still got power?" The blonde circles around it. A cylindrical chamber dominates the space, plenty of machines hooked up to it. Two other chambers are at each side, equally connected to the central one. One of the screens is still lit. "Lost connection, huh?"
An easy enough fix. Where's the power button? A check shows a largish button on top of the machine. A quick press and a light humming fills the room.
"Rebooting? Good." The screen flickers and changes. Looks like whatever stopped it did a bit of damage, some of it is hard to make out. "Emergency stop, unexpected power draw. Recalculating parameters." Must've been something with the big machine. "Huh, is that the MLA symbol?"
Looks like it. Not quite out of the textbook though. Twisted a bit. A big thunk has Himiko look up. The machine is open, red light bathing the interior.
"Old MLA base with some weird machine? Pass." Quirks haven't done much good for her, now have they? Sure living like she wants is amazing and she'd never give it up, but there's pain there too. Akiko's blood boils, what if they hurt her "Ugh!"
Never mind that! Time to get some satisfaction! What was going on here? The terminal flickers, parts of the screen unreadable, but finding the stored documents isn't too hard. No password lock either.
"Too bad it's all in scientist..." Lots of stuff about the 'meta gene' and lots of big words. A click brings up a flashing screen- one Himiko can't move.
"Guess I won't know what you are." She pokes at the bits of the screen that are unreadable with a smile. "I can make it a guessing game!"
Let's see... all the usual check stuff. Or what's probably the usual check stuff. Power and stability and all that. All green. Hm, 'mental blinder’? Sounds bad, but at least it's off. The red line item under it is probably good. That one must be a ready check thing, it's green and big at the very bottom.
"Maybe I should tell someone?" Be a shame to, it's a nice place. Quiet and hidden, perfect place to keep some stuff and sleep. "Huh?"
Why are there so many images of mascots here? Sure magical girls are pretty cute, but it feels really creepy for a place like this to have anything to do with them. Unless it's trying to make them? Plenty of places had stuff like that.
"Guess that's what this means by 'control unit'." Weird that it's flashing red though. Or maybe not, whatever animal they wanted to use is probably dead by now. Or escaped. Hopefully escaped. Hm, wait… "Awaiting input? Did they try this without one?"
Bad, bad idea. Magical girls always need a mascot at first. Keeps their power from spiking out of control. That's why they always get regular upgrades for a while- they can handle more power over time.
"Guess they weren't that smart." Whatever. Maybe they'll have more documents around. Place certainly seems big enough. "I wonder if they had beds here?"
Probably. Himiko shrugs and steps around the monitor. The flashlight clicks off, the red light enough to see by for now. It makes everything cuter anyway.
"Hm, could I get that as mood lighting for my room?" Do they make red lights for normal sockets? Not the little LED ones, but big actual- "AHH!"
The flashlight thuds to the ground as Himiko catches herself. She tries to yank her foot up, but it's caught in one of the cables.
"Damnit." Her hands sting as she crawls backward. One hand yanks at the cable over her foot, but she must have twisted into it as she fell. It certainly isn't coming off at least. "RRR."
She leans to the side, one hand pressing against one of the smaller cylinders as she lifts her foot. A quick yank and it falls to the floor. She slaps it once, then curls her hand and yanks herself up.
"Stupid cable." She kicks it. It flops to the side, unaffected. "Whatever."
There are better things to think about. Like that cutie! Camie Utsushimi. Second year at Shiketsu, a bit ditzy, wonderful body, and currently preparing to take the Hero License Exam. It'd be kinda neat to see how that plays out. Nobody needs to know that Camie isn't actually the one who took the test anyway. A little secret between friends!
"Huh?" Something slams into... through her hand. "FUCK!"
It burns it burnsitburnsitburnsITBURNS!
The second time Himiko lays on the floor she is gently lowered by the cuff attached to her hand. The monitor lets out a small beep. 'Control Unit' flashes green.
~[#]~
“Ugggh.” Himiko gently lifts her head. “What… nnnn…” Her head hurts. Most of her hurts. Her body feels weird. Like when she uses her Quirk except not exactly like that. “Nnn…”
Her eyes blink open. The room swims into focus. The room seems brighter, the cables on the floor obvious. A green glow suffused it, coming off the machines next to her. She attempts to shift her body, but it doesn’t quite work right.
“Hm?” One limb comes forward, requiring far more attention than a limb really should. It isn’t her arm. Which would, normally, cause someone great distress. Luckily, Himiko knows how to deal with this situation, even if it didn’t come about in quite the usual manner. “Right. Am I a cat now?”
It certainly looks like a cat limb, even if it’s iridescent like the sludge her Quirk makes. A bit more… fluid? Watery? Something like that. It still moves fine though, once Himiko gets the trick of it. Her whole body takes a bit to get moving, really. How uncute.
“Let’s see…” Himiko pads over to the machine terminal and looks up. “Oh. Right.” How do you jump again?
After an… unfortunate amount of time attempting to jump, Himiko manages. The screens aren’t much different from before, but at least the dark ones are suitable to use as a makeshift mirror. Once some of the dust is wiped off, anyway. It reveals a cat… thing. The ‘fur’ looks iridescent, the same as the sludge her Quirk makes, bar some fluff around the ears the same blonde as her hair. Her eyes look… basically exactly the same. Even odds on whether this thing was supposed to change them any or not. Regardless, her body is weird. In that it isn’t moving right.
Sure, Himiko is getting where she wants to go, but her body… doesn’t quite follow the usual ways to get there. It… contorts like it doesn’t have bones. Shifts about more like putty or slime than actual flesh and blood.
“What?” A blinking green light draws Himiko’s attention. “Input candidates?” Candidates for what?
Her paw taps the screen, the prompt falling away to reveal the other screen. Complete with the obvious change to the control unit prompt. Is she… a mascot now?
“At least I’m cute…” Who would she even choose? What is she even supposed to oppose? It’s not like she's going to go with what the MLA opposed. Or whatever this variant of them opposed. Destro got most everything he was looking for in the first place, after all. “Am I like this forever?”
Himiko closes her eyes as she focuses on herself. Her Quirk is still there, the feeling the same as ever. Not quite the yawning chasm it usually is, thanks to the payment from the LoV thing, and the blood from that bundled up in the little packages she usually feels.
The space is… interesting. To Himiko looking into her Quirk to know who she can transform into has always been like going into the shoe lockers at her school. Each stock of blood is represented by various footwear in different lockers. Now there's something else there- her own shoes. Plus a cat-eared hoodie right next to them. It’s even in the same spot her locker was back when she was in school. A quick grab and her eyes blink open.
The monitor is further away, her taller body standing easy on top of everything. A quick hop has her stare at her arms from her new position standing on the floor. That… isn’t right. Her clothes aren’t… real. They look right, but she can feel the air against them. The sleeve shifts as she looks at it, turning to the iridescent sludge that her Quirk makes before turning back to normal.
“Huh. Cute!” She has all the clothes now! She smiles as she turns back to the door. “I should check this place out more…” Maybe she can visit Camie after. Oh! Camie would probably make a great magical girl!
~[#]~
A more thorough search of the bunker explains… some. Corruption has claimed a lot of the computers, and what is there usually requires passwords. Physical records didn’t seem to have been used much, and what is there also suffered from the time. Piecing together things isn’t easy, but Himiko had time. A lot of time, considering becoming a mascot apparently messed with her need to eat.
Sure, she can ignore hunger pretty easily, but there's a difference between ignoring it and not feeling it at all. She wasn’t that far gone. Blood still sings to her. Enough to make a woman sick, but she could manage that with the blood bags she got after the camp raid. It tastes terrible, the way the plasma gets preserved is just ick, but it staves off the hunger for a bit. Or at least, time enough to figure out the essentials.
“So!” Himiko smiles as she gestures at the plushie she had found hidden in one of the beds. He was well cared for, an otter with the name ‘Monsieur’ stitched into his plush collar. Excellent listener too. “This place is weird.”
It really is. Apparently Destro, or whoever was leading the MLA at the time, wasn’t big on looking at other powers to help them out. No reaching out to Magical Girls, or warlocks, or the half dozen other things that could result in someone having some form of meta ability. The people here disagreed and attempted to work on their own solution to the problem. To ‘unite all of those with meta abilities under one banner’ or something like that.
It… didn’t really work out. Turns out that a lot of those people had been dealing with their own shit a lot longer than the MLA were, and didn’t appreciate being approached by terrorists. Which resulted in these guys going ‘fuck it, we’ll do it ourselves’ and attempting to make their own magical girl squad.
“I guess it kinda worked…” Himiko watches her hand as it shifts. Changing her body around is intuitive after living with her Quirk for so long, but it’s still weird to be able to do it without any blood. Not that she can’t use her Quirk anymore, or anything, but her shift from mascot to human and back is done in a different but similar way that twinges that little part of her brain that says- ‘yo, this is freaky’. “Since when do I say ‘yo’?”
Monsieur doesn’t answer. Probably for the best.
“Right.” Himiko lets her hand fall. “Guess I’ve got to figure out what to do now.” Visit Camie, of course, and maybe actually make a magical girl squad. She can… probably turn people into magical girls now? At least she feels something burning beneath her skin that’s probably something to do with that. “Huh, what are we going to call ourselves?” Plus they need an enemy to fight.
Well… enemy is easy. The HPSC, CRC, and MLA are pretty good enemies to have, when it comes down to it. They’re all assholes trying to impose their own views on people and that isn’t right. The world is hard enough to live in as it is, people making it harder don’t have any place.
As for a name? Maybe something will come to her. Or whoever she turns into a magical girl will have an idea. The first is the leader, after all, and she should have a say in it.