“It’s official,” Olathe murmured so that the wind atop the tower almost stole her words away. “Kaycee Kay is dead.”
Kansas City heard her just fine anyway, hiding her scowl. “Hate to say I told you so,” she grunted. She chewed on an overworked piece of gum for a second and blew a bubble. It popped and made a mess on her chin. “I thought it would take at least a couple more weeks, though.”
Her navy cloak flapped noisily behind her, silver trim catching the night lights of the city and obscuring her burly form. If she had to be distinguished from her westerly counterpart then it was technically KCMO, but no one liked saying that shit all the time. Kaycee, then, looked out at her namesake and sucked the gum back into her mouth.
They were perched atop the vertiginous stone of the Liberty Tower, a Great War monolith which reared far above all else around it. A jet of angry steam sprayed forth from the top of the monument. With a sharp click it was illuminated by red and orange flood lights, bathing them in false fire. They hid their eyes away from the harsh glow, casting their gaze to roam over the small but proud cluster of skyscrapers.
The last month had been strenuous even without a rogue girl muscling in, one who didn’t hesitate to commit magicides. All of them were high profile, messy affairs: streets in Kansas were running red with the blood of magical girls.
Their numbers–Kansas and Missouri both–were already stretched thin. Faceless specters roiled in the dark: Troost, South Blue Valley, the Paseo all overflowed with them, their spillage a rot which grew harder to cleanse each night.
Just like it had been before. Kaycee’s lower gut twisted painfully, thoughts turning inexorably to the crisis last year.
That whole thing had been dubbed in official channels as the Magical Calamity, a clean name from clean people. Frankly a bit of a mouthful, and not terribly meaningful to any of them. After all, most magical girls already had lives that were generally catastrophic.
Some of those who had experienced the full brunt referred to it instead as the Unveiling; it had uncovered them, after all, rendered them visible and naked.
Of the original crew Kaycee had inherited alongside control of the city, two had perished in the year since. Kansas City had never been that strong a region, and every loss made the survivors more vulnerable. Just thinking about it tinged her sapphire soul with a trickle of darkness.
Breathe. Focus on the now. She listened to herself, closing her eyes, and when she opened them again her friend Olathe had plodded forward to join her. They looked out across the expanse of the southside together: Union Station squatted directly in front of them, a masoned behemoth propped up on Tuscan columns.
Normally, the Station was lit in full with the emblem of whichever sports team was in season. The President had urged most franchises back towards normalcy, “to raise the spirit of the nation up once more.” Their major league team took that request with some alacrity, vaulting the modest Midwestern hub to the top of their division.
The World Series was all but assured, for the first time since the fucking eighties. Too bad the Royals’ sense of timing wasn’t better. Union Station remained dark, the city refusing to fly the team’s colors to avoid accusations of wasting resources.
Kaycee blew another bubble, a sharp pop piercing the gusty silence. This one got on her nose. “You guys figure out why she’s going on this rampage in the first place?”
“Nah,” Olathe sighed limply as her own dress tugged in the wind. The petticoat always managed to feel faintly itchy, and she had to cross her arms to resist the urge to scratch. It just made her look like she was always pissed off. “Nah,” she said again. “If we could start a conversation with her it might be different. Everyone who’s tried so far ends up dead.”
“Doesn’t seem like she just wants to be left alone, either.” Kaycee’s vision continued to wander. Further off in the Crossroads, the concave glass of the Kauffman Center reached to cup the night sky, a knock-off Sydney Opera House. It too laid in darkness, unable to be lit even if the city had wanted, owing to a gaping hole in its glass face. No operas or ballets or symphonies graced its vaulted interiors now.
Sweeping their eyes out and away from downtown, they spied two spotlights to the southeast, translucent pillars waving lazily through the night sky. Emanating from some shitty stripclub in Raytown, no doubt Raytown herself could be found there, though Kaycee had never bothered to check it out for herself. The idea of stepping foot in the town itself, let alone the disgusting hovel that Rayotwn claimed as her lair, made her insides squirm.
Olathe cleared her throat, scattering the unpleasant thoughts. “We always knew she was wild, but the destruction we’ve seen in the last few weeks is just fucking nuts. Give it another week and none of us will be left.”
The third among them rose, drawing the gaze of her fellows as she broke her silence. “A week is a generous estimate. If she wanted, she could get rid of the rest of you inside the next thirty minutes.” Lenexa stretched tall and proud, a stone cut from the monument they stood upon.
Her outfit was the simplest of the trio. A simple lavender piece without even a petticoat to give it volume, it lay flat on her stolid frame. Her words were blunt to match: “I didn’t want to believe she was capable of this. As her former teacher, I demand responsibility for all of it. I’ll take care of her.”
God, she was always so fucking dramatic. Kaycee and Olathe openly side-eyed each other.
“Don’t give me that look,” she admonished them. “No one else here can even touch her.”
“You know Overland Park better than we do,” Kaycee admitted, “but I’ve been hearing some really intense shit. How has she not gotten a Terminatrix called on her yet? Who was the last one, Wichita? Was there anything even left of her?”
“I’m not sure the Incubator wants to risk wasting muscle on this. As to the second question, I don’t think you really want to hear that.”
Got her there. “Yes, well,” Kaycee finished lamely. “I couldn’t stop you even if I wanted. Just try not to get yourself killed.”
“I won’t.” In one smooth motion, Lenexa turned and kicked off westward, disappearing so quickly that Kaycee and Olathe felt a woosh of warm air dragging in to fill the space her body left behind.
The red of the fake flame shining on Lenexa was replaced with black sky so that an afterimage of her in negative haunted their eyeballs. They stared at it and let a few seconds trickle by. “Do you think she meant, ‘I won’t get myself killed,’ or ‘I won’t try not to get myself killed?’” Olathe asked coyly.
Kaycee blew another bubble at her.
“Fair enough. What are her odds?”
“Not good. If it were just about territory we could probably negotiate or something, but…” Kaycee shrugged. “I want it nipped in the bud. This is the last thing any of us need right now.”
Olathe sat down, dangling her skinny legs over the side of the memorial. “Are things really that bad for you guys too?” Her feet rested above the head of one of the Guardian Spirits. Four enormous sculptures of women crowned the tower, each named for a virtue. She could never remember which was which, but she thought this one might be Sacrifice.
“I don’t know. Has Kyubey talked to you at all recently?”
“No more than anyone else.” She waved down at the sculpture: Sacrifice stared out over the city, heedless of the greeting.
“Then it’s pretty bad. We know he’s still contracting people, but we have no idea how many or what’s happening to them.” The Incubator had stopped most communication with them months ago. If you lived on your own in a smaller town then he was chatty as usual, but if you resided in a city with more than two magical girls to its name you were chopped liver.
It reminded Kaycee a lot of how he had behaved during the DuPage administration. The silence had become so protracted that their group was dwindling again. Normally, theirs was actually a pretty ideal size: large enough to accumulate some semblance of talent, but not too attractive for the real big hitters. It meant their only real threat was not being able to replace manpower quick enough.
Their group did better than a lot of the larger cities could to mitigate losses, but sometimes there was nothing you could do. A younger girl bit off more than she could chew while hunting, or an older one got got by the Law of Cycles. Pretty typical, all said and done.
But now this shit. If Overland Park had only been after the late Kaycee Kay, it would be pretty cut and dry. As it was, the reported deaths coming from suburbs on the Kansas side were just baffling. Girls she knew and worked with before, all the way from Holton to Ottawa, had been slaughtered. Executed, really.
In lieu of a sigh, Kaycee blew one more bubble, though it popped too soon and turned into a sad dribble. “Mandy, I’m going to be blunt.” She took out its wrapper and gently pulled the wad off of her skin. “I’ve made it a point not to stick my nose in your affairs. My predecessor was firm on this: Missouri and Kansas girls keep their problems to themselves.” The last of the residue off, she folded it neatly in the wrapper to throw away later. “Last year was the first time we broke that rule since the archon of ’81. You’re asking me to break it again, but I’m not so sure that our cooperation is necessary, or even in my best interests.”
Olathe nodded. “I’ll be frank too: on our side, things have been dicey for a while. One of us might have approached you sooner, but ever since the last Kaycee Kay bit it, we’ve had no real cohesion to speak of. No one felt like taking the initiative.”
That came as no surprise. Kansas City Kansas had fared better than her Missouri counterpart at first, but on that last day just before the crisis ended she and her successor were consumed, literally.
In effect, the Kansas girls had been decapitated. The third in line to lead was some plucky little thing from Topeka. She had been attentive, even eager, but weak both in raw power and her ability to keep the girls on her side of the state line in check.
To her credit, she had lasted longer than most expected.
Conversely, the former KCMO had been killed within the first week of the DuPage administration, leaving her protégé–the erstwhile Independence—to pick up the slack. “Why didn’t Lenexa take charge?” Kaycee continued. “She’s clearly capable.” Until now, she hadn’t thought there was anyone inside of a six hour drive who could take her on.
“The last time we tried, about half a year ago, she tore Lawrence’s engine block right out of her car. We decided to stop asking after that.” Olathe swallowed nervously. “In truth, we probably should have asked you to take charge permanently. You went through a real trial by fire, kept your girls and ours alive at the worst of times.”
“Not all of them.”
“More than would be here otherwise. They trust you, and the city is still doing okay. Maybe things would be even better if we had gotten this shit done already.”
Kaycee grunted. She took out another stick of gum and offered it to her casual friend. Olathe abjured, so she unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth. She savored the gnashing of her jaws and the fresh, sweet juice dribbling down her throat. She was way too fond of it, and she wondered vaguely if their healing powers could restore enamel. “Let’s call it a tentative yes,” she chewed.
There was a nauseating pressure in her lower belly whenever she thought too much of it: she was just starting to forget the faces of the girls she had lost back then, wasn’t sure if that made her feel more sick than remembering their last moments. She fought with the anxiety that was rising in her chest and throat, trying to choke her. You’ll lose the rest of them too if you’re not careful, it whispered. You were never cut out for this and you know it, you worthless piece of shit.
An impulse rippled through her nerves, a violent twitch of her head that worked to dispel the hateful voice. At least for now. This kind of self-flagellation was becoming ritualistic and she couldn’t help cursing herself for it. If Overland Park decided to kill them, that was a problem she’d deal with come hell or high water. “I still need to go to Perry’s. Come with? We can keep talking shop or relax, your choice.”
“Are you shitting me? Abso- lutely, ” Olathe clambered to her feet excitedly, abandoning Sacrifice below. “I didn’t know she was still kickin’ around.”
“She’ll probably be around long after the rest of us, honestly. C’mon.” Kaycee angled herself to the northeast, between the lights of the city and the shining pillars of Raytown. Pushing off, she was immediately buffeted by the humid air, covering herself in a thin sheen of wet and heat. Though there was only darkness ahead, she knew the way already.
Chapter End Notes
"... she's here!"
There's a picture of the Kansas City skyline that I referenced often while writing and rewriting this chapter:
That's pretty much what I envision the characters looking at this entire time, except higher off the ground. It's very popular to take pictures of the city from the base of the tower, but I'm pretty sure you can purchase a ticket to take an elevator to the top. Not sure why there aren't more pictures from that angle.
This chapter was the most difficult to write, I've been told that beginnings are always like that though. One of my other stories, a Dark Tower fanfic, started off in a very stereotypical fantasy way and I got a lot of criticism on that, so throughout the work I aimed for a little less grandiosity or sweeping descriptions. Didn't avoid that entirely but overall it's definitely a step in the right direction. I think I spent more time just trying to edit this specific chapter to be workable than on basically anything else.
I had some rules while writing this story, including these two: I wanted to use locations I have actually been to in real life, and to not use any quotations that I had not actually read the work for prior to starting writing. This chapter title is an exception: it's like a short poem though so it doesn't really count because you can read that shit in fifteen seconds. I stumbled on it by accident when I was experimenting with making original chapter titles instead of using quotes, and completely by coincidence used the title of Baum's poem. Looking up the phrase to make sure it was properly written in French turned up the full text and I liked that particular phrase a lot more.
I can never remember the names of the guardian spirits and it sucks looking them up, there's somehow one fucking article in existence that lists them. They are: Honor, Courage, Patriotism, and Sacrifice. The Liberty Memorial is actually really cool as one of the only (if not THE only? maybe not anymore) really fleshed out World War I memorials/museums in the country. I also think it's just very tastefully done, understated in a lot of respects. Not mentioned in this chapter are two beautiful Assyrian sphinxes at the bottom of either side of the tower: `“Memory” faces east toward the battlefields of France, shielding its eyes from the horrors of war. “Future” faces west, shielding its eyes from an unknown future."`