Sunspot [Magical Girl Mutations]

SERIOUS CONTENT WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER:

Objectification, human trafficking, implied rape (in backstory, not on-screen)

"Amane?" Alice called.

I heard the scuffling of a chair moving in the other room and turned to see Amethyst, almost three meters of gemstone mecha, looming in the doorway of her gamer cave. She waved at me. I waved back up at her. She said something in shimmering tones to Alice, who nodded and replied in rapid Japanese. They exchanged a few more phrases before Amane swung her massive, spike-snout head to look at me. She seemed to hesitate. Then there was a flash of purple light, and Amane stood there, clothed in flesh and carbon fiber and a bathrobe, now merely my height—though that was still tall, especially for a Japanese woman. She walked over to Alice with the faintest shadow of a limp and sat next to her, smiling thinly at me. That made me nervous; I had a vague idea of where this was going, and it was dark. Alice took her hand and looked at me seriously.

"Ezzen. Yuuka has…a whole shitload of trauma. Trauma around men especially, to be frank. Which you're not one of, I know, believe me, but this is still context you deserve to have."

"…As opposed to having it two weeks ago?" I couldn't help but ask.

Alice looked guilty. "Well—yes, maybe we should have just opened with this on day one, given you some pointers ahead of time. But we really thought you wouldn't set her off so badly."

I bristled on reflex. "Because I'm—"

"No, not because you're so hideously masculine or anything. It's your Flame and her eye—she depends on it to feel safe, and since she can't see you properly, you automatically put her on edge. But it seemed like she'd warmed up to you, and I know she was trying, and I'm proud of her for that, but…for you two to coexist, you need to know why she's…like that."

"Okay," I said, feeling very uncomfortable. "Um, lay it on me."

Alice hesitated and looked over at her girlfriend, who nodded at her, looking…impatient? Alice gathered herself, shoulders hunched, then breathed out. "Okay. Well, about…six years ago, Amane was kidnapped by Sugawara. Human trafficking, since this was back before flamebearer trafficking was really an established industry. Yuuka was her best friend, and we weren't in the picture yet, so when Amane disappeared, Yuuka started looking. She found them." Alice's voice was low and serious, and she spoke without drama or embellishment. "But she was far weaker as a flamebearer than she is now. This was before the flame donation that made us strong, no mantle—glyphcraft barely existed yet—and she didn't have the eye. She could defend herself, but she couldn't blow down the door. So when she eventually hit a dead end, she…got herself trafficked. As a fifteen-year-old foreign girl, not a flamebearer. To evade suspicion."

Alice was looking down at the floor, not directly at me, and I couldn't blame her. She didn't have to describe anything more; I understood the broad shape of it, what Yuuka must have endured for Amane's sake, and it made me begin to feel physically ill, the spectre of nausea looming. I had to say something to fill the silence. "Oh God." Then another layer of horror revealed itself to me, and I stared at Amane. If it had happened to Yuuka, then it would also have…

Amane looked less moved than either of us. She shook her head and said something to Alice, who translated with a wince. "Amane doesn't…remember much of her own experiences from that time." That felt like a lie, or at least a half-truth, but there was no way I was going to press on it, and Alice seemed antsy to move on besides. "Anyway. That's the part of it that you should know. I wanted to let Yuuka tell this herself, when she was ready to share it with you, but if she won't, I think it's too important for you to stay in the dark about. She witnessed men at their very worst from all too close. That's where it comes from."

"Fuck," I said. "I'm…sorry."

I didn't really know what else to say; it was both the expected expression of sympathy and a deeper sense of penitence on the behalf of my erstwhile gender. But then I started to think about it more, the way Alice was talking about it. This did explain Yuuka's standoffishness and misandry, and I couldn't blame her for reflexively reacting to me as poorly as she did at first—but how did this actually help me treat her better? Especially if Yuuka wasn't the one to say it, and Alice was doing it in her stead—and apparently without her permission? That made me terribly uncomfortable in a way that I didn't know how to bring up.

I opted to instead try to keep it practical. "Um. Okay, so what do I do to not set her off?"

"You've honestly done a fine job of it without being told, because most of it is common sense. Er…men touching her, that's arguably the biggest. Being around people she perceives as men isn't too much of an issue anymore, as long as they're not flamebearers, then they make her skittish. I think you have a feel for this already, yeah?"

"I'm a flamebearer." And she thinks of me as a man, was the part that went unspoken.

Alice picked up my subtext and shook her head quickly. "I don't think she perceives you as male anymore. You rode her jetbike yesterday, yeah? Then you're probably fine in that aspect now. If she cited Hina as the issue, then that's a whole other set of behaviors you need to watch out for. It depends on if her eye is acting up, and whether it can see you—" Alice was interrupted by Amane, who said something sharp in Japanese that made her eyebrows go up a little. "Amane says—"

"Iwaseteyo," Amane huffed at her, emerald eyes narrowed in a mild glare as she drew her phone from a bathrobe pocket. Alice muttered an apology and shot me a pained glance. I didn't know how to respond to that, so I just averted my eyes and awkwardly scooted the ball I was sitting on a little closer to them so I could read what she wrote, translated through a machine in a bid for a little independence rather than having Alice interpret.

Amane: Yuuka feels unsafe when her eyes can't see.

Amane: Yuuka told me that it still can't clearly see you, so please be careful. It's sufficient that she can see the future circumstances around you, but she can still be scared by you.

"Um. Got it, I'll be careful. Are you…?"

Amane waved me off and quickly produced a response.

Amane: I'm doing well. The past doesn't scare me.

She hesitated, glancing back at Alice, then quickly tapped something else in.

Amane: I think Alice is blundering by telling you this. I thought she would be more respectful.

Alice, oblivious, rubbed her forehead, where horns certainly weren't growing. "Alright. That history is all very dark, and I'd much rather talk about practicalities. This stuff is compounded by her issues with Hina, as you well know. Exes. I'd avoid being overly flirty with each other while she's around, mostly because Hina's brand of affection is…you know."

I nodded, confused by the mixed signals I was getting between the couple. "I'm—yeah, I'm intending to do that. That was a big fuckup of mine last night, and, um, I'll talk to Hina." I glanced at Amane. "And, um, red ripple. We'll be responsible."

Amane frowned back at me. She raised her phone again, flesh and mechanical fingers flying across the screen.

Amane: Thank you, but it's not only your responsibility. Yuuka is afraid and her soul has scars, but she shouldn't be harsh to you for doing normal things. She should talk about this with you so you can agree. This isn't Alice's concern.

Alice, leaning forward to peek around the phone to see the screen as well, frowned. "Yuuka's having an immensely difficult time right now, what with all the portents of war. The least we can do is help Ezzen understand how to interact safely with her. Itawatta hou ga ii yo ne?"

I didn't have to understand that last part to agree. "Um, yeah. I mean, the way I acted yesterday was shit, and I ought to do better. If I'm the one making her uncomfortable, that's on me, isn't it?" Amane watched me and nodded slightly, silently encouraging, urging me to continue. I took a breath, looking at Alice's nose rather than right in her eyes. "But, um…I don't think you should have told me about this."

"What? I know it's horrible, but it's really—"

Amane's viridian eyes flashed with anger at Alice as she snapped an interruption that made her girlfriend recoil. "Uh, whoa, hey," the dragon girl said, voice full of surprise and worry, before switching to Japanese. "Senpaikaze wo fukashiteru wake ja nai no yo." Her gaze flickered to me. "I'm—trying to keep the team on the same page. That's not being patronizing. Is it?"

I cringed a little when that earned her another frustrated reply and wave of the hand from Amane. Alice winced. "Okay, sorry, gomen. I just don't think Yuuka should be the one who has to come meet Ez in the middle on this."

Amane jabbed more text into her phone in response and showed it to me, pushing it close to my face so Alice couldn't get a peek.

Amane: I'll talk to Yuuka about it later so she won't get mad. She'll listen to me. Don't let Alice make you think it's all your fault.

Then she lowered the phone, turned to Alice, and began to chew her out. I was glad to not be privy to the exact content of the conversation; the vibes were bad enough on their own, with Amane's height making her loom over the dragon girl and her voice clipped and reprimanding. She didn't seem furious, but clearly she felt that Alice had overstepped and was coming at this the wrong way. The only time she slowed down was when her breath hitched in a gasp that made Alice reach toward her with alarm—but Amane pushed the hand aside, and after a moment, steeled herself and continued like it hadn't happened.

Other than that moment, Todai's leader sat there and took it. She didn't bristle, no wash of heat pulsed off her; she just endured Amane's chastisement with a wince, hunched shoulders, and growing guilt in her eyes like it was a physical lashing. She glanced between her irate girlfriend, the wrinkled bedsheets, and me, clearly humiliated to be chewed out with an audience. I didn't dare interrupt.

Eventually, Amane stopped and looked over her girlfriend, who was hanging her head in shame. She reached out to Alice's chin with her prosthetic hand and raised her face gently—Alice looked like she was very close to crying, which I hated. Amane took her hand again and said something much softer. Alice hesitated, brought her other hand over to join the embrace, and let out a rattling sigh, like she was trying to master her emotions. After a slow breath very much like the ones she'd instructed me to take, she looked down again and spoke.

"Sorry, Ezzen. I'm…meddling. I thought I'd keep it light on details, but it still wasn't my story to tell, and Amane is right; you shouldn't be the only one who has to adjust your behavior. Yuuka being a bitch isn't okay, and I'm sorry I treated it like that was your problem to solve."

I was gripped by paralytic secondhand embarrassment even watching this, so I struggled to formulate a reply. "Uh. It's—I mean, she's right to be upset about how I acted yesterday. I do need to do better, less gross. Yuuka wasn't the only one who was put off by that; it made Ai uncomfortable too, she's just nicer about it."

"Oh, hell," Alice sighed, rubbing her face. "Yes, we'll still help you work on self control?" She pitched it up like a question, directing it to Amane, who nodded encouragingly. "I just—didn't want Yuuka to be upset, and you came in here freaking out and needed specific things to do to pull you out of the self-toxicity pit, and that made me want to do this all from your direction without rocking her boat. I probably need to apologize to her too. Or—Amane and I will do it together, I guess. Tomorrow. It's late."

The sun had already been down when I'd first come in. I nodded, taking this as a cue to get out of here and escape the awkward atmosphere; the way Alice was rubbing her face seemed painfully familiar. "Um, yeah. Okay."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Amane waved me to sit back down, which made me pause uncertainly. "Hold on," she said in English, then directed something else to Alice, who removed her face from her hands to give Amane a questioning look, then interpreted. "Um, well, as long as we're here, it's okay to at least talk about some of Yuuka's behavior as it stands right now, anything she does that bothers you, so Amane can bring it up with her. It's only fair."

I hesitantly returned to the purple yoga ball; what a faintly ridiculous prop for this emotional clusterfuck. Amane, seemingly satisfied with Alice's understanding of what she'd done wrong, gave her girlfriend a make-up hug while I thought about what to ask. Yuuka was really abrasive, but I found I'd grown tolerant of much of it, at least in the sense that I'd become able to distinguish the friendly ribbing from the self-defensive biting remarks, or at least I thought I had.

I did hit on one odd thing. "She's called me Ezza a few times," I realized, an emotion mounting in my chest that was either anticipation or dread. "Which, um, I thought was a nickname? But foresight, right. So…don't tell me that's because I'm destined to change my name again in the future, to make it more feminine?"

Alice stared, then looked to Amane, who was apparently taking notes. "Um, I don't know for sure. I thought it was an Australianism. But I guess it could be foresight, or just an assumption—a sign she already sees you as less masc, which is good, but is assigning you a fem nickname, despite you currently going by it/they, which is bad. I'm—oh, I don't know," she moaned. "I don't want to make more assumptions, or put words in her mouth, since apparently that's all I've been good for."

"I'll ask," Amane added for my benefit, in English.

"Thanks. Um, also, what is with the Australian-ness? It's pretty…almost a caricature?" I hazarded.

Amane replied to that one, which Alice interpreted. "Oh, she's from Japan. Just spent a lot of time in Australia during the summers, so that's where the accent comes from. She really sounds much more normal in Japanese."

"Oh, okay." I wondered how she'd sound with my prosthetic's translator; Amane and Ai sounded pretty different between the languages, as the least fluent English speakers. Both sounded more casual in Japanese, Amane more peppy and Ai more vulgar. I thought Yuuka might be the same despite being fully bilingual, but maybe the switch would be reversed, more polite with her wording in Japanese, though perhaps no less biting in meaning. Not a completely different person, but projecting different vibes in different contexts. Like how I had felt while mantled up in the doll. Huh.

Thinking of mantling gave me one more thought. "Er. Maybe this one's too much, but I really don't want to ask her directly; she'd cut my head off."

Alice looked nervous, then suddenly didn't as she realized where I was going with it. "Oh. Is this about her style?"

"Um, yeah. Her…appeal." I gave Amane a cautious glance, but she didn't seem to think this topic was an overstep, so I continued. "She seems…very willing to put her…chest…on display for somebody who hates, um, attention from men. At least on your promotional material and stuff, and her mantle outfit." Her outfits around the penthouse and what she wore to her classes seemed much more modest—still fashionable, not frumpy, and nothing could entirely hide her figure, but a far cry from the intentional sex appeal of her professional image.

Alice hesitated and glanced at Amane, who thought for a moment, then dictated a reply in pieces. "Okay, we'll be blunt about this: knowing she can jiggle her tits at guys to make them do what she wants is a form of control over her situation. It puts her in the pilot's seat for a lot of interactions. And I know that sounds contradictory, but it also literally streamlines the possibilities of an interaction with a man as far as her eye is concerned, and that gives her more confidence, especially when it's backed up by a mantle and her affinity for magical traps. Nobody's ever tried anything, but it seems to help her deal when there's a lot of attention on her, so that's how she's styled herself." Amane added something else that made Alice frown slightly. "Um, yeah, it also helps business, I suppose—er, I want to make clear that we aren't forcing her to do that," she hastily clarified, looking wary. "It's all her. I, um, don't want to make any assumptions about how victims deal with their trauma, but…well." A tinge of sadness entered her voice at the end.

Amane added something else. They went back and forth for a moment; it sounded like they were negotiating phrasing. "And she's also the most…extralegally active of us, and being 'the bimbo'," she emphasized with air quotes, "makes accusations of those activities look more ridiculous in the public eye. A girl can't have fat knockers and violently actionable ideologies, as far as the average fan is concerned. I benefit from that one too," she admitted, looking down at her own chest, which was still voluptuous by any standard that wasn't Yuuka. "Though as the leader, I need to be taken seriously by the powers that be, so I split the difference a bit more. Current attire notwithstanding."

"Right," I said, thoroughly red in the face. This was equal parts enlightening and entirely TMI; I hadn't thought the topic of breasts would have such profound political implications, though in hindsight that had been silly of me. But it was weirdly gratifying to know that Yuuka handled me with the same abrasion and directness she used with her female teammates, rather than stupefying me with a flash of cleavage—though that probably had as much to do with me being an unfamiliar and unpredictable flamebearer as my status as a nonbinary Vaetnathing. She likely considered me a much more real risk to her safety than a random nonmagical man, which was sobering.

Amane pulled me out of those troubled thoughts with another comment, this one with an adorably impish grin at odds with both her anger and elegance. Alice snorted in response, seeming to return to more of an emotionally stable state by way of mild exasperation. "Oh, well, yes, her strategy doesn't work on every man. Hongo, Hikanome's other male flamebearer in a leadership role, remember him?"

"Yeah?" I did; he had been affable during lunch, the least enigmatic of the three, and then taken charge of protecting and evacuating Hikanome's faithful who had been most wounded by the inferno. Public faces for organizations like a Flame cult could be incredibly slimy, but he struck me as a true believer in a more down-to-earth way than Miyoko's prophetess vibe, and moreover, Amane and Yuuka had seemed outright amicable with him. "Oh, yeah, I guess he didn't seem to bother her all that much, huh."

"You noticed! That's partially because they have a good history from during the schism—he's one of the people who was instrumental in deposing the person responsible for all her suffering, after all—and partially because he doesn't even glance at her rack, which even I have to admit can be terribly challenging. But that's because he only has eyes for me, ugh. Wants to slay the dragon." She looked a little put-upon, but it gave way to a wry grin directed to her girlfriend. "But he can't have me, can he?" she asked her girlfriend playfully. Amane reached over and squeezed her bare thigh, and I heard a distinct whap from Alice's tail on the sheets behind her as she leaned into the taller girl and a much more genuine smile washed over her face.

Talking about boobs had apparently gotten the lesbians warming back up to one another, which felt like my cue to leave. I didn't belong, and I had no more questions besides. "Um, okay, I think that's it." I began to stand.

Alice waved me away. "Yeah. Sorry about…all that, I really put my foot in it. Leave it to my amazing girlfriend to set me right." She gave her teammate a distinctly sapphic look, heart-meltingly adoring despite the rebuke she'd received—or maybe because of it. She turned to me, covering the attraction with some of her professional air as Radiance Opal. "I appreciate you coming to talk to me when you were freaking out about the Vaetna stuff. Talking's good, and I appreciate being trusted with that. Though, I do have to ask: you're not going to immediately start hyperventilating once you leave my line of sight, are you?"

"Um. I don't think so?"

She nodded, trusting my judgment on that. "Good. Have a nice night, Ezzen. Let's do another session with the doll tomorrow—I'll help you troubleshoot your euphoria and we can talk more about the design."

"Okay."

I retreated from the room, Amane waving to me with her prosthetic arm as I left. Once I was in the hall, though, I got a text from her.

Amane: Thank you for taking my side. Alice can be frustrating.

Ezzen: No problem?

Ezzen: I think you did most of it, I might not have said anything if you hadn't called her out

Amane: Teamwork!

Amane: I'll talk to Yuuka. Good night

Ezzen: Good night

When I got back to my room, I got straight into bed; even though I was technically behind on mantle work, having spent most of the day in a guilty and dysphoric haze, I couldn't muster the willpower to hop on my computer and rectify that tonight. It was looking like a chatroom-and-YouTube night, with no glyphcraft. Perhaps a more responsible version of myself, one who was free from the universal mental penalties imposed by dysphoria, would have mustered the will. Or maybe I just needed ADHD medication. After all, I hadn't even bathed today, and that had a far lower mental and emotional barrier than designing the inner workings of my speculative ideal body.

It wasn't just dysphoria. Though Alice had talked me down from the worst of it, and I wasn't immediately overcome with a new wave of adrenaline, I was still reeling from the possibility that I was poisonous to my heroes. I felt some kind of abstract pressure about the broader possibility that the Peacies were already taking steps to investigate whatever had happened to Kat, to replicate and refine it, to forge a weapon that could cut down even the Vaetna. Even if Todai somehow resisted all PCTF encroachment in the coming weeks, I felt I would still be party to that horror simply by inaction. If something about my Flame was inherently inimical to the Vaetna, and that knowledge was soon to be dragged out of Pandora's Box regardless, then I ought to learn and understand the mechanism behind it, so that we—meaning myself as well as Todai if they'd participate—might find an…antidote? Vaccine? I was thinking of it in terms of disease, though there was no particular evidence for that.

There was very little evidence for anything. That should have excited me, the suggestion of further horizons of magic that I was uniquely positioned to explore and document, but the circumstances made it feel bleak and burdensome. Sharing my work with the wider magical community would only hasten the development of the perfect weapon, and I was under no illusions about my ability to go the other way and try to mislead the entire PCTF's research apparatus via a few papers, not when they already had one of the others whose Flames matched mine in hand.

So I lacked the will to work the myriad problems as of that evening, instead busying myself with the chatroom and aimlessly scrolling for videos that might take my mind off of it instead. I was great at avoidance, at lying in bed and staring at a bright rectangle a few inches from my face and trying very hard to think about how much I wasn't doing.

But not everything could be avoided, nor ought to be. I was forcibly reminded that I'd barely eaten today when my stomach began to growl, and that biological demand forced me out of bed, out into the common area, down the stairs, and into the main common space, where I was grateful to find nobody to intrude on my alone-in-the-kitchen time. I dug through the fridge, found one of the many convenience store heat-and-eat meals Alice and Ai favored, and popped it into the microwave. These came in many varieties; this one wound up being spaghetti in a red sauce that more resembled ketchup than bolognese or marinara—long-ingrained sensibilities about food presentability had me searching the fridge for elements to make it better resemble an appealing dish and less like pure carbohydrate body fuel in a vaguely noodlesque form factor. I found an almost-spent rind of a hard cheese and a grater, and atop that snowy mountain, I added dabs of hot sauce, vaguely surprised to find that name-brand Tabasco was living in the spice cabinet alongside the more exotic chili oils and pastes. I wished we had a basil plant or something that would give me an easy way to put a little green on top—not that it would really make the meal any healthier, but this was less about nutrition and more about the psychology of eating. I'd found myself inheriting Dad's love of plating and garnishing now that I was living with others, even when none of them were around.

I sat alone in the kitchen and ate my upgunned pasta. It was quiet in the penthouse, and when there were no people around, it was easy to pick out all the mechanical sounds: air moving around from the heating system as the building breathed, the steady rumble of the fridge, the hum of the microwave I cut off before it could beep at me. The ding of the elevator, which I kept anticipating but never arrived. The world outside the penthouse was silent, both the lower floors of the building and the wider Tokyo cityscape beyond the windows, present only to my eyes as a background for whatever was happening among the Radiances' bubble of domesticity, not as a vast assemblage of real places I could go and explore.

Since arriving at Todai, I'd hardly ever had reason to leave Lighthouse Tower, except for that one outing with Alice and then Hina, the ill-fated Hikanome festival, and going with Yuuka to the shrine where Sugawara would next appear. Oh, and the haircut. I had no outdoor obligations short of flamebearer duties—all the care for my amputation and prosthetic was being taken care of in-house, Todai's lawyers had apparently managed to get me some kind of visa or asylum status without me needing to face a single official, even groceries just kind of appeared in the fridge. I didn't even know where the convenience store this pasta had come from was. Somehow, that last one was a bridge too far, making me pull out my phone's map and hunt, which taught me that there was a Family Mart immediately across the street.

It frustrated me that I had access to essentially infinite money in the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world and had still barely ever left these two floors, let alone the building, and never voluntarily or for fun. In Bristol, I'd at least had the excuse of being broke, and that it was Bristol. Here, I only had myself to blame; my interactions with Amane had demonstrated that the language barrier wasn't really all that much of an obstacle, and that would go double once I had the final version of my prosthetic with its built-in translator.

I hoped that maybe the emotional pressure cooker of living with the Radiances would be less intense if I left the house more, if I were to form some social bonds with even a single non-flamebearer…somehow. I'd had very little idea of how to do that even in England, let alone in a country where I didn't speak the language.

Besides, the penthouse felt like it wanted to keep me here. Most of this lower floor was still and dark, my small island of lights in the kitchen reaching out toward the distant windows and dying before they got there, drowned in the furniture in the sitting area. Even more forbidding were the hallways leading around the back of the floor, which denied the light almost entirely past the first few meters.

In that abyss, somewhere in one of the further rooms, lay the doll. For a moment, I entertained the idle fantasy of going down there and ditching this meat body for a while. That was easy enough to dismiss with reasonable counterarguments like "I don't know how to set it up" and "if something goes wrong with the transfer I'll be alone and helpless" and "I don't deserve to feel good." Then even I had to admit that that last one wasn't so reasonable, and that I might feel a little better about everything if I at least went over and gazed upon it; if nothing else, maybe looking at it from the outside would help me pinpoint what I found so comfortable about inhabiting it, which would inform the design of my actual mantle.

So with my stomach full and my steps light, I ventured into the dark.