aiko's otter den

Dancers - Dodge carefully now, Nagisa. You want to survive the morrow, don’t you? Prequel to Many Days of Crimson

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1.

Nagisa is five. Knees get scraped. It’s normal.

Her mother’s reaction is not.

She screams at her for a moment, enraged by the torn dress, saying something about how neither of them can sew. Her father only watches, sympathetic, but that’s all. Then her mother calms and holds her tight.

“Your brain is important, Nagisa,” she says to her. Nagisa nods. “You need to be strong and smart and not have ruined clothes. Worn yes, Ruined now. Girls don’t show when the world hurts them.”

The word girl is a nice one. Nagisa doesn’t think it fits them though. “Can I wear shorts instead? It’s hot.”

The innocuous query would have been dangerous five minutes ago. Now, it is met with a smile and a pat to their head.

“Of course,” she says. “Friendships are important too.”

So many things are important to their mother.

2.

It happens again. The failure is already strong.

Her math comes slowly, the numbers take their time. School is all about speed. School is all about how sharp your knife is. Never mind if you know how to hold it or not. It’s disheartening. She’s always been a bit slow. That’s why she’s so careful. She finds her spot, looks for it, and waits.

Mother’s ruler is fast, always fast and sparks red on the tops of her hands. It makes it harder to write and she goes even slower.

Slap.

It’s a vicious cycle.

At the age of six, Nagisa knows the word very well.

3.

Nagisa is six.

Her mother has thrown a smelly glass bottle into the garbage, scoffing at it like it has done her wrong, scoffing at her like she can do no right.

Like they are a mistake that needs an eraser.

She gets the highest grades she can and earns a head pat. But no hair ties. No pigtails.

She wants ice cream at the very least but none of her wishes seem to be granted.

The word strays at the edge of their mind, her very being.

Then it’s gone and Nagisa is left thinking of the moon. The moon and its many craters, like their many failures.

4.

Nagisa is seven and she sees a boy in a skirt and hurries to tell her mama. Mama slaps her so hard her cheek swells but she’s insistent.

“Those aren’t people,” she says. “They are quitters. Don’t look at them.”

She tries. She tries very hard not to look but she wants to look. They look so comfortable on the dances they do, the pretty black shoes that clack on the concrete.

There is someone found dead near their house when one dances back. He doesn’t look proud to have a witness. He at most is surprised. She is looking while he is working. And there is not a drop of horror when he does the deed, only curiosity. Only disturbing fascination.

The fear comes later, when she’s still alive and the dead body is on the neighbor’s side of the balcony.

Nagisa cries until she throws up.

5.

At the age of nine, Nagisa knows that she is not a she. She doesn’t know what she is but girl is not it. Or rather, it is not enough. Mama needs her to be so she can pretend to be. It doesn’t seem too hard. She’s done it before.

But doesn’t that hurt?

It sure hurts their neck to look down all of the time. They say nothing about this to their mama of course, because all they can do is obey obey obey.

Don’t you wish you could change things?

Change? Sure. But change wasn’t like that. It wasn’t that easy.

But Nagisa wants it to be. Before it’s too late.

A part of them whispers it might be, whispers it is the second their mother calls their name and sinks their claws in.

The guilt sinks in with it. After all, her mother wants a daughter more than anything.

6.

Nagisa is still nine.

There are dead bodies on ground for hours sometimes.

They see white things wander by the crime scenes, leave tiny red prints wherever they walk.

Like tiny angels of death. Nagisa wonders if they are killing people.

But they doubt that fairly quickly after a while. They don’t really do much other than swish their tails and talk to the pretty girls.

The real girls, she can’t help but think. What is a real girl anyway? Probably a good killer, because all the girls she’s seen lately are killing things with ease and a bit of pride.

And yet… she can’t help but notice that they don’t ever seem to stay the same. There’s rarely a girl there more than three times. Then they’re gone. Just like that.

She wonders why.

Maybe she’ll find one and get an answer.

The thought is more thrilling than the silence of the lack of thrown plates.

7.

Nagisa is ten.

There are flying plates.

Their father’s ratty suitcases are slowly coming into the forefront by the apartment door more and more every day. Nagisa wonders what happened to their own suitcase. Wherever their father is going, they assume they won’t go too. They probably should.

Then mother would be alone. A lonely mother would be very scary. She would try to look for them, at least take Nagisa back. And that would make things worse. It’s much better to stay, soothe her wrath a little by remaining loyal.

Even if that means more disappointment in the future.

The dress their mother buys them itches on their legs. That’s rare. It never itched before.

There’s a little cuckoo waiting to catch from its egg I see.

They looked around but nothing was there, nothing but a vanishing spot of white in the grass.

8.

Nagisa, still ten, learns how to observe even more than they had before.

They observe when they can get away with wearing pants instead of the skirt. They observe when their mother’s smile is at its most fake.

They observe when their father’s bag is gone and isn’t coming back. They think about going. They think about going to the court dates their mother hides in the garbage, which she doesn’t hide well. They think about seeing what their parents look like at their worst.

Then Nagisa decides to not go, in that same thought process.

Then the white thing comes and sits on their window sill. And they watch.

Nagisa’s head hurts.

9.

The white thing makes her think of a mutant rabbit and a weasel having a baby and the thought is so disturbing Nagisa feels their pronouns change in the head for the briefest of instants.

A human’s identity is fragile, they heard in a strangely distant sort of echo, soft and gentle. Almost. It was more like mother’s gentle when things were going her way.

“Who are you?” they say, voice quiet in the nosy house.

It cleans a large, flopping ear piece. I am Kyubey! The fact that you can see me means that you have the potential to become a magical girl!

The word girl feels really wrong now but Nagisa knows nothing about how to deny it, how to change it. They want to. They want to say it’s incorrect but she decides not to, because it won’t make a difference.

“Well, whatever your earth terminology is!” it continues, seemingly oblivious to the roiling sickness in the human’s gut. Whatever the case, I can grant you one wish, if you promise to fight a great and incredible power for us. We are working to save the universe, you see.”

It speaks the same way mother does, except more enticing. Something Nagisa wants is in those words. Freedom is in those words. What will they do for it?

It’s time to find out.

10.

She takes hours to think of her wish. She takes a whole day, scribbling it in spare areas of her notes. They think the word ‘she’ in regards to themselves. They think of a friend. They think of the girls that weren’t girls and the magic.

They think of the corpse. The set of corpses. They think of white. They think of a girl fighting in a wedding gown.

They think of their mother’s insistently right voice.

Why me? They think in the safety of the daylight. Why me, compared to many other girls?

You have a wish that wants to be granted, do you not?

They jump in their seat and no one notices.

They don’t speak again. Instead, they think on their wish further.

What do I lose?

Just the rest of your adolescence. You’ll have to fight Demons, monsters that use humans, monsters that become part of human skin. If you’re lucky, adulthood will come and your powers will fade, wish intact. If you are not, the Goddess will simply carry you away into the Law of Cycles.

Nagisa stares and wonders until they are called up to speak and. They speak perfunctorily. Someone laughs.

Nagisa ignores them. Their wish is decided.

Not now. Do you want a public execution?

Nagisa bites their lip down on it and thinks about it more. They acquiesce but the words burn in their mind.

“I wish to live on as the me I want to be.”

It sounds so silly, there’s no way she can say it out loud

11.

The pain is almost as bad as the time their mother had put them into a corset. They hadn’t even known why. It was just something she had decided to do for her own personal gain. Except the worst part is where it is centered on their own chest.

The ears pull out like feelers (they can’t help but wonder if they’ve made a mistake) and then the rest of the pain happens and Nagisa cries for hours.

Nothing changes, not really. But their body feels looser, more relaxed. And the blue as ocean gem remains on her open palm.

Nagisa wakes, and there are whispers, all kinds of whispers, burrowing into their brain. It’s uncontrollable, loud, but they say everything that they need.

That person will hurt you. That one will keep you safe. That person is strong enough that person is dangerous.

Threats or not threats. Help or no help.

Survival. That is their gift now.

12.

Nights pass. Days are dull. You can hide in the night what you don’t in the day.

Nagisa feels their body soften, but sharpen. There is nothing that changed for them, and yet everything is suddenly very different. There are ideas, methods, most of all, answers that were previously unavailable. And as that becomes clear, so too do the monsters. So too does the reality.

Their mother’s fingers feel harder too, more pointy.

They think about running far, far away. But they know the land now. There are not many like them here. Not much mages.

Nagisa makes more daggers, imagines them in places they shouldn’t be, in people that don’t deserve it.

The cubes help, but they help like a cigarette after a long day. It’s bad to keep them, so much so.

Then, one night, Nagisa dreams of a girl their age. She smiles.

13.

It’s not getting any easier.

Her wish did work, as now it’s easier to tell apart the black from the white, but when the grey blurs it blurs too quickly and they just don’t know what’s real and what’s not.

Wishes are real. Magic is real. It’s not in the fairy tales nor in the hearts but it exists.

It’s the rest of the universe that doesn’t click into place. Not anymore.

Without Father, mother sits half empty, sits open and wide and devouring every inch of Nagisa that there is. They know, without a sliver of doubt or fear, that mother will make their time run short.

On some days, that sounds worse than others. On some days, that sounds preferable.

The girl is the most far away on those days.

14.

Nagisa is twelve and a weapon is pointing at their neck.

It’s a real weapon too. It’s not the fake ones that they’ve smelled from person to person over years and years. From kitchen to body from body to bag, from store to kitchen. And it looks heavy, and it must be because it can’t cut. It’s not close enough to their neck to draw any blood.

Nagisa has yet to figure out if magical boys like them bleed for real or if it’s something else. They’ve never checked their injuries enough to tell. They’re not sure it’s worth it.

Still, Nagisa isn’t afraid. They don’t really know why. But maybe it’s the way the girl in front of him is shaking so much. They feel more of a threat from the way they keep trying to be and doing things they don’t seem to realize they’re doing, rather than actually being able to cut.

And that, unfortunately causes the problem.

“Stay back!” she orders. “Give me your cubes!”

Nagisa doesn’t quite know how to respond to this, lips quirking unbidden and hand closed over their Soul Gem.

They can fail plenty else, but not this.

“Nagisa.”

Now. They panic.

15.

Their mother is heading outside, looking for them of course. The apartment complex is quieter around this hour, the two hour window between work ending and hapless employees begging off drinking with their boss and various other supervisors. Nagisa knows that if their mother turns around at the wrong moment, she’ll see. And she doesn’t like her mother, but surely the woman doesn’t deserve to die for it.

The assailant’s hand twitches, cuts in, and Nagisa bleeds.

It’s not an unusual feeling. It’s not even a particularly bad feeling. It’s too shallow to be anything but a super annoying itch and it’s a little breezier at their neck but it’s tolerable because Nagisa knows it’ll heal fast with a couple quick hunts (the nearby elite middle school is a really good place for that, and they don’t know why but their mom wants them to go there so they’ll probably find out.) and some cubes and ten minutes.

“Nagisa, what are you doing outside you have class in the morning?”

“There’s a podcast on my phone about how to separate the events between historical eras,” Nagisa tells her, and it’s not a lie, there is, they just listened to it yesterday. “I came out here so I didn’t disrupt you making dinner. I’ll be in soon.”

She pauses at the door. Then she harrumphs. “Don’t forget to do some actual book work.”

“I won’t, mom.”

The other girl’s sweat drips and Nagisa twitches.

The knife digs in but she flees, taking it with her.

Nagisa makes a face. What a jerk, stealing people’s stuff. If it wasn’t for the fact that it was magic, they’d be down a weapon.

Still, they clean up and head inside. They’ll probably never see her again anyway.

(Nagisa is dead wrong of course, but in their defense, they’re not Akemi Homura, and she’s got confirmation bias on her side.)

16.

Thirteen happens.

They’re in an elite private school’s crosshairs. It’s intimidating, if only because people keep looking at them, looking for something. There are, on the upside, a lot of god damn demons here. It’s only natural. Schools and businesses are full of dissatisfaction and curses. They’ve seen other magical girls here. They all nod at each other and let them go.

If there are any in class E, Nagisa hasn’t met them, because they haven’t been there.

Then because survival is all that matters, it all goes to absolute pot.

Survival doesn’t mean good grades, or even great ones. It means passing. It means ducking under the radar. It means doing the right thing to live sometimes.

None of this place is right.

So Nagisa tries to slip through the cracks. Until a boy decides something is enough, that they are too much. There’s no violent suspension.

But there are whispers. Whispers ache. Whispers are full and heavy and deep and unforgiving. You can’t kill whispers, you can only kill the people who make the whispers and that’s just too many.

And Nagisa comes home too tired to hunt the longer it goes. They come home too angry. Their mother pries and picks and pokes but smiles sadly towards the end.

“You’re my son after all, it’s going to be hard.”

It’s not quite right, and it’s probably the magic talking, but Nagisa is relieved at the sound of it, at the brightness that fills the room, because Mom, for now, knows they’re trying, knows that these people hate them and knows that people are against them. Even at the bottom is good enough because they will push and push to the top.

They will continue to let her think so. Because how true is it really?

It lasts for a while. Then the last month, the whole world turns asunder and they fall, fall to the bottom.

Into E.

It’s almost not worth continuing. The world is bright and dark by turns. Nothing keeps it one way or another for very long and it just keeps slipping, keeps shattering.

It’s almost not worth it.

It’s so nice where it is.

Nagisa nearly misses fourteen, but doesn’t concern themselves with it.

17.

The dream is bright.

Surrounded by stars, Nagisa looks at themselves and sees the body they’ve always wanted, always believed was real and wanted to work towards. Their own body is good, it responds easily enough, but it’s bent in all sorts of ways and none of those ways are theirs to own nor theirs to keep.

There’s a sense of something, not a laugh, but a joy made of starlight. Nagisa looks up to see a girl.

And if they’re honest, she’s the kind of girl their mother had always wanted, beautiful and elegant and sweet. There is no demureness to the way she sits though, no bowed head or crossed, neat legs. Instead she is watching Nagisa with bright, clear eyes, the color of gold, the color of untamed wild magic, seeing beyond anything that could be seen by the human eye.

“Hello,” she says and Nagisa’s throat explodes with envy at the melody of her voice, soft and sweet and perfectly impossible. “It’s nice to meet you at last, Shiota Nagisa-kun. Please, sit down.”

Nagisa sits down to see a chair that hadn’t been there an instant ago. Tea and cookies appear on a table and Nagisa feels hunger in their toes. They feel hunger like they haven’t eaten anything but chalk dust in three years.

They taste heavenly.

“Papa taught me well,” she says simply.

And as Nagisa swallows, all the information they could ever need or want or use falls into their head and lap and heart.

“Kaname Madoka.”

She smiles sadly. “Present. You know why I am here.”

They do.

“No one will begrudge you if you go. Probably. No one has so far.”

The goddess of all magical people in the universe (and maybe any universe ever) sounds sheepish, smiling with one hand behind her head, her hair trailing off into another galaxy.

“But if you stay, it will be hard. It’ll be painful and slow and maybe not worth it. I’ll come get you then, if it’s too much. I always promise that. I am here to save all of you.”

“Even though I’m not a girl.” It’s a statement not a question.

Kaname Madoka nods without hesitation. “Because your wish deserves to be carried out until the end. When your dream is no longer a dream and you can’t make it one.”

Something warms in Nagisa’s eyes. “Mother would love you.”

“She loves you too, she’s merely forgotten how, and refused to live in her dream.” She offers a hand to Nagisa once more. “So. What do you choose?”

Nagisa thinks and doesn’t think. They raise their hand—

And wake up in their bed to the dull buzz of their alarm, and the steady warmth of a new blanket the color of stars.

It’s another day in the rest of their life, their dance with hope.

It’ll be a long turn.