#ma37

Magical Ace! 37 Lost Souls!

Episode four: Don't interrupt! Very important business, but Alex has bad news!!

"Everything looks good over here. How are things on your end?" "Grrraugharrhhr hrrrbaurgrh." "Right. I'm gonna increase speed by thirty percent. Let me know if I start overheating." "Grr augh." Alex turned his communicator off, leaving Ursula to monitor his new invention from back at Moloch Tower. As long as Iron Malaki was in dry-dock (and unable to leave thanks to the not-quite-wide-enough exit hidden by the employee parking lot above the mech's hangar) he needed alternate modes of transportation, and none was more fun to work on than the Iron mini-Kai, his flying suit of armor. "Right...let's see how much speed this thing can handle." According to the holographic display floating in the suit's helmet, he was at a decent fifty miles an hour. Nothing was overheating and despite the airborne threat of alien invasion and the ground-based dangers of marauding demons the city was peaceful for once. Not that it would last, if the projections Ursula had handed to him were true. The kilaari, an alien race with plans to take over Earth for some nefarious purpose of their own, were expected to return in less than eight hours according to the report he'd been handed by a polar bear. Sometimes if he stopped to think about it, Alex began to think his life might be kind of weird. He shrugged the thought off, picking up speed so he could cross town and get to the house of his best friend, recently given a magical sex change by a rat demon and forcibly drafted into the war between heaven and hell. Dante would be able to help, and probably to reassure him that life wasn't really all that strange. --- Taking up all of Dante's couch by sitting lengthwise in human form, her legs stretched out before her, Beatrice stared at her toes. "These don't serve a defensive purpose, do they? I mean, the claws are so short they're practically vestigial." Matelda rolled her eyes. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, watching Virgil chase Dante out of his own kitchen. "Humans don't use claws or fangs to defend themselves. They were designed to be physically weak so they'd develop brainpower. The opposite of demons, basically." Beatrice snarled at the angel, wishing she was close enough to pull her wings off. "Cute. Don't you have a harp you could be tuning?" "Don't you have a pitchfork you could use to go f-" "Hey, what'd I miss?" Dante sat down next to Matelda, smiling warmly as he looked from her to Beatrice and back again. Beatrice looked away, examining her tail and picking off invisible flecks of dust. "Nothing much." Matelda didn't much care for irony, but there was an innocent angelic tone in her voice as she put an arm and wing around Dante and pulled him close. "So what's for dinner?" "I was going to order pizza but Virgil decided he wanted to cook." Dante rolled his eyes. "Even he can only do so much with a microwave and a refrigerator full of leftovers, though." "What does human food taste like, anyway?" Beatrice looked up from inspecting her tail, one hand running through her hair to groom it as she spoke. "Human food is the best food," Matelda said. "Not that you can really compare the stuff you eat to what humans eat." "What's that supposed to mean?" The demon bristled, ears pointing backward. Matelda smiled in as patronizing a fashion as she could. "Nothing really. I just thought rats mainly ate gar-" "Beatrice, what were you asking about before?" Dante asked. "Something about your feet?" "The toes specifically. They don't seem to serve a purpose for combat." She stared at her fingernails. "These claws are slightly more efficient-looking, but I'd hate to have to use them in a fight." "They're not for fighting, they're decorative." Matelda rolled her eyes. She held up one hand, nails pointed toward Beatrice so the rat could see their pastel blue color. "Humans paint them." "Oh! For attracting mates!" "Um..." Dante and Matelda glanced at one another. "...kind of?" "Not really." "Well, they used to be." Dante frowned and thought it over. "I guess it's more for personal enjoyment now?" "And reminding yourself you could easily find a mate, even if you don't need one," Matelda added. "It's a confidence thing." "Well it's nice to have one," Dante said, looking at his shoes. "That's right, you two have mated! Tell me all about it." Beatrice leaned forward, her pointed nose twitching. Even as an unnervingly pretty human, she still had inescapable rat qualities. Dante went bright pink, as did Matelda (who buried her face in a wing to avoid meeting his or Beatrice's eyes). "Woah, um, ha. Wow. Um, no, let's don't." "So you haven't then? You two are perfectly biologically compatible, you know. At least, you are when you aren't putting my gift to use, Dante." Dante rolled his eyes and muttered, "Like that'd stop us." Matelda hit him in the shoulder and hid even deeper in her thick, feathery wings. "Oh come on, Touched By An Angel, tell us all about it." Virgil gave Dante a pat on the back, sitting on the floor next to his friend. Now Dante and Matelda were the same shade of red. Virgil grinned wickedly. "I suppose it's more accurate to call it copulating than mating with these two. Since it's more for fun than reproduction." "Okay, wow, it's time for everybody to shut up," Dante said, more than a little irritated. "Virgil, did you get food together or what?" Virgil frowned. Even with his talents and magical ability there was really nothing he could do with the bits and pieces in Dante's kitchen. He'd started doing the dishes but that was the best he'd been able to manage. "No, and thanks for bringing that up, Dante. You're gonna have to get pizza or something if you plan on feeding all your attractive and terribly interesting guests, love." Matelda looked up, glad she was getting less red as time went on. "Pizza, everybody sleeping over, and painting our nails? If I didn't know better I'd think this was turning into a slumber party." "Now that is a good idea." Virgil grinned and ruffled Dante's hair. --- Alex cut power to the thrusters, gliding downward toward a tree that loomed over Dante's apartment and blocked the skylight. He landed on a branch, holding onto another for support, and listened. From inside Dante's apartment he could hear feminine voices, alternating between conversation and bouts of giggling. Whatever was going on in there, Dante and Beatrice seemed to be having fun. But who was the third person? Before he had a chance to figure this out, the branch he was under gave way with a resounding crack. He barely managed to grab hold of another branch with both hands, then power the suit's boot thrusters back on to keep himself in the air. As he breathed a sigh of relief, he listened carefully and wondered why the talking from inside the apartment had tapered off. Another loud noise rang out as the window smashed, glass spraying outward. A slender black shape caught Alex around the middle, breaking his grip and sending them both plummeting to the ground. Before he hit the sidewalk, Alex swept upward in a wide arc, turning in midair to glance back at the ground. A batlike shape was heading toward him as quickly as he'd moved away from it. In the faint moonlight he could barely make out what it was - nor could he tell whose shadows were hiding the light inside Dante's apartment - but it definitely had a fight on its mind. "Look, I don't know who you are-" He was cut off before he could finish half his sentence. The black thing hit him in the jaw. Sparks flew off his suit and he reeled backward, catching only a few glimpses of white and a flash of bright blue amidst the black body of his attacker. "Okay, now it's on." As the thing charged again, Alex ran through a few extra status checks on the suit. Everything was working properly, and the gauntlets had enough functionality for the delicate move he was about to try. When the shadowy figure drew close enough Alex's left hand shot out, fingers arranged to hit a pressure point in the upper left of the ribcage. With his right hand he caught the figure around the waist, pulling it into his pressure attack.  If that didn't disarm his enemy, he didn't know what - "...um..." He blinked. He'd hit a pocket of flesh that he did t recognize right off the bat. With his left hand he squeezed at it, trying to get a feel for the shape. Whatever he'd hit was round, plump, and squishy. It almost felt like- "Get...OFF ME!" Dante grabbed Alex by the wrist and threw him to the concrete, making an Alex-shaped crater in the ground. "Who the hell said you could just fly over here and grab my boobs, asshole?!" She landed, standing over the crater with hands on her hips, and waited for the intruder to climb his way out of the hole. It was a robot of some kind, with a lot of sharp angles and a finned protrusion on its head. It looked just like a Gundam, come to think of it, but Dante had never been a huge anime fan. At least it wasn't a demon. "Whoever you are, you better get the hell out of here before I-" "Holy crap, untwist your panties, Dante." Alex dragged himself up and out of the crater, staggering backward and rubbing his head. "What the hell are you hitting more for anyw-" As Alex reeled backward, crashing into a dumpster and leaving a massive dent in its side, he realized he hadn't turned the outer communicator on and nothing he said was being broadcast to Dante. This time, when Dante lunged at him he raised a hand, firing a middle from his arm directly at her. Dante lurched to the side, the missile blasting past her head and scorching a chunk of her messy, curly hair as it sped past her and into a neighboring car. Alex followed the missile up with a reversal, catching Dante and using her momentum to swing her over his head and into the dumpster he'd smashed moments before. She sat up, looking dazed, and brushed debris off her jean shorts before rolling over to face Alex again. Her eyes were bright. "Demons I can handle, but robots? That's just stupid." Dante was in front of Alex before he could blink, clipping him on the jaw again. This time when Alex fell back, a blast from his gauntlets hit Dante in the chest and knocked her into a tree. After a moment of silence, Beatrice called out "Are you alive?" from the apartment window. Dante groaned and got to her feet, waving a hand in front of her chest where her top had begun to smoke. Alex sat up too, removing his helmet and giving Dante the dirtiest look he could manage. "Alex? What the hell are...you built a robot suit so you could try to cop a feel and survive?!" "Oh my god, what. No. Dude, come on. That was a pressure point attack. It wasn't..." "It was weird and uncomfortable." "You know you liked it." "Bite me." "Where?" Dante rolled her eyes and, as Alex rubbed his head and watched, flew up and into her apartment via the broken window. Alex decided to take the stairs and knock on the door. --- "I didn't know I was interrupting anything," Alex said again, trying to ignore Beatrice. She had tried pizza for the first time and immediately started praising its taste. "Especially not a slumber party with your rat girlfriend and your other girlfriend." Dante shot Alex a glare. Matelda shot an even more venomous one at him. "You were floating outside my window the same day I busted my ass fighting demons for the first time ever. I think I reacted pretty acceptably, if you ask me." "I did say I was sorry." "So this food...humans invented it? It strikes me as the kind of thing they'd steal from higher beings." Matelda rolled her eyes at Beatrice and was about to make a comment when she thought better of it. A mischievous grin spread across her face. "Humans stole the secrets of pizza from Heaven in ancient times. You haven't heard the story of Prometheus?" "I thought he stole fi-" "No Virgil, you're definitely thinking of something else." She looked at Beatrice, whose expression was one of extreme curiosity. "That's why humans were cast out of Paradise. Obviously." "That explains it. Although I think it might have been worth it for this." Her pizza finished and everyone else's leftovers stolen or bartered for, Beatrice sniffed the pizza box and then tapped Dante on the shoulder. "When can I have more?" "Pizza costs money, Beatrice, I can't buy it for every meal. Especially not the way you eat." Beatrice immediately scowled and Dante turned her attention back to Alex. "What was so urgent you had to fly over and spy on me for, anyway?" "I got this report from Ursula." Alex handed it to Dante, who examined it and then turned it right-side up. "So...what's happening in three weeks?" "The kilaari are-- three weeks? Give me that." Alex's face fell. The report had been of the utmost urgency, or so his assistant had told him. The kilaari were amassing a fleet for a second assault that would launch in a matter of hours, the polar bear had told him. The actual report - which in hindsight he probably should have read before suiting up and getting himself so upset - had a projected attack date of three weeks away. "...at least we got to see your hideous new armor," Beatrice offered, patting Alex on the shoulder as she'd seen Matelda do to reassure Dante. At that Virgil lost his composure entirely, bursting into uproarious laughter that only worsened when Alex glared at him. --- "So, if we have three weeks to prepare for the invasion, we should spend them training and making sure we're in the best possible shape." "Oh yeah, of course." "I mean, I have my lab guys working on some cool stuff for you, and in the meantime my side project is going really well. Trust me, dude, this is going to go so smoothly." "Mm. Yeah. I believe it." The morning after their battle, Dante and Alex were getting along just fine. Alex was getting excited and worked up over his latest invention, while Dante humored him and buried himself in yet another book. This one was a compendium of demons she'd borrowed from Virgil several times before, now being reread with a student's eye and a lot more note-taking. The only real challenge was pretending to listen to Alex on the phone as he made notes on scratch paper in her living room. "Basically the robot I'm working on is gonna be the best thing in the world," Alex continued. Deciding to let Dante in on the secret of Iron Malaki and his robot friends had made Alex very excited to tell his friend all about the project whenever he could. "It's gonna have drills, and missiles, and oh dude! I forgot to tell you, it can do this thing with its fist where they're like, rocket fists. It's gonna be so awesome."

"That does sound pretty cool, actually. Did you-" Dante trailed off. "Oh goddamnit."

"What? You okay, dude?"

Dante sighed, clothing ripping or becoming uncomfortably tight-fitting as his body shifted from male to female. As her hips stopped widening and her breasts stretched out the front of one of her favorite t-shirts, she closed her eyes to try and suppress the transformation, to change back to her male form. But it wasn't happening.

"I just - oh come on - I was just - oh goddamnit! - I'm in the middle of -" She trailed off, sighing in frustration and setting her book down. "I'm gonna have to call you back, man. I just, um, blossomed again, and that's only supposed to happen out of my control when there's a new demon around I have to get rid of. I'll have to catch you later."

"Okay, good luck, bro. Let me know if you need any backup."

Dante hung up the phone, swept her hair out of her face, and turned toward the open window. Across town, near the college, a plume of black smoke was rising.

Magical Ace! 37 Lost Souls!

Episode three: An old friend...or more?! Matelda is back in town!

Evening darkened the sky, clouds swirling overhead as a storm grew in the air above Mesa City. Miles below the clouds two humans and a demon in the form of a large rat were leaving the wreckage of a skyscraper. "Virgil, you're a lifesaver," said the taller human, a young woman. She pulled a group of stray curls out of her face, the rest of her messy black hair swaying and springing in and out of view as she walked. "How the heck did you find clothes so fast, anyway?" "Magic, honey. Oh, and your bank card." "I thought I lost it when my clothes vanished." "I thought so too, but your wallet and your phone fell on the gr-" "My phone?!" Dante ran to Virgil's side, eyes shining with excitement. Her dinosaur-patterned wallet was nice to see again, but Dante's phone was practically grafted to her hand. She'd felt odd not having it around. Virgil handed it back to his friend, glad she'd forgotten the fact he used her debit card to buy her some fairly expensive clothes. Dante's original outfit had disintegrated to give way to the poofy, frilly, black costume she'd had to wear in order to fight off a demonic creature near the middle of a now-collapsed skyscraper, and then that had vanished after the demon was destroyed. Virgil had stuffed Dante's phone and wallet into his messenger bag then spent the remainder of the fight at a safe distance, watching clouds of dust rise from the building and absently twirling his braids with one hand.

"Where'd you buy these shorts, anyway? I don't think I've worn anything this short in my life." Dante fidgeted with her top, trying to pull it higher and obscure her cleavage. Whenever she pulled it up to hide her breasts it left her stomach exposed, however, and she would pull the top down to start the cycle all over again. She had never worn more revealing clothing in her life than she had after her two outfit changes that day. "I say just be glad you get your stuff back," Beatrice said. The rat was fluttering along behind Dante, batlike wings working overtime to keep her in the air. She was just as tired as her human charge after the ridiculous day they'd had. "Now where do you live? I really need to sleep." "Can I come over too?" Virgil put in, "Seeing as there's a huge hole in my roof and all, not to mention a tree." "The price one pays when summoning a demon." Beatrice had a lofty tone in her voice but wasn't looking in Virgil's direction; she appeared to be addressing a chain-link fence. Dante sighed and fidgeted with the hem of her new shorts. She wasn't used to wearing clothing that showed so much of her legs - nor was she used to her legs, really. Beatrice had done Dante the "favor" of conferring a female body and demon-fighting powers upon her earlier that day, and now she was looking at what appeared to be a lifetime fighting demons and angels for cursed relics both sides wanted to use to end their eternal war. It wasn't a fun prospect, and having suddenly been transformed into a girl was leaving Dante feeling very overwhelmed and confused. Virgil and Beatrice had lapsed into bickering and she tried to ignore them by turning her phone on and seeing what time it was, but all she got for her trouble was a blank screen. "Great. My phone's dead." Dante swore under her breath and tried to slip her phone into a pocket, only to discover they were merely decorative. What kind of sick person gives clothing pockets that don't work? She had to take a moment to figure out what to do in lieu of pockets, then slid her phone into her cleavage. "I don't think I'm ever gonna get used to any of this," she grumbled. Virgil and Beatrice were too busy arguing to respond, and Dante spent the rest of the walk back to her apartment in silence. --- As soon as they opened the front door Virgil crossed the room and flopped onto the couch, only pausing to draw the shades closed on one of Dante's few windows. He spent the night at Dante's apartment frequently, especially if he'd happened to butt heads with his parents during the day. Sorcery had never sat right with Virgil's parents, despite the fact some of Mesa City's most famous and influential spellcasters were Black. It wasn't for their son, as they were happy to remind him. Beatrice sat on Virgil's stomach, giving her front paws a lick before starting to groom her fur back into place. She glanced at one of Virgil's braids - which she seemed to regard as similar to her tail - and then resumed her work. "Make yourselves at home, I guess," Dante muttered. She walked past Virgil to throw herself onto the chair at her computer desk and let out a long, drawn-out sigh. Even her hair seemed to droop with exhaustion. "Hey...are you all right, sweetie?" Virgil sat up, Beatrice clinging to his shirt for a moment then fluttering in the air near his shoulder. Dante had gone from comatose at the beginning of the day to driven by the goal of fighting off a monster and possibly ending her obligations to Beatrice, but now she seemed on the verge of just shutting down again. "I think I'm the complete opposite of all right." Dante glanced at the clock on the top right corner of her laptop screen and seemed to droop even further. Had the day really been that hectic before it was even five pm? "I'm so tired, Virgil. So so tired. And I just..." She paused, turning in her chair to face Virgil and gesture toward her breasts, which had been given a small lift by the top he'd purchased for her. "This is so much to get my brain around. Demons...getting an unasked-for magical sex change thanks to a talking rat...basically losing my identity all in one day... It's too much. I dunno how much more I can take." Virgil shot Beatrice a look. The rat flew over to Dante on batlike wings, landing on her thigh and giving it a gentle pat with one paw. "I understand this is a lot for you all at once," Beatrice said, surprising both humans by speaking in a gentle tone, "but I sense amazing potential in you. I wouldn't have chosen you for this if I didn't think you - and your friends - could handle this." Virgil smiled, a little proud of himself after Beatrice glanced in his direction just then. He added, in his kindest possible tone, "Besides, it's all over for the day, sweetie. You can relax now." "Yeah. What else could happen, anyway?" Dante cringed after asking that, and everyone glanced at the door. It had been the kind of day where somebody came into the room right after you asked what else could happen, but luckily for the group nobody did. It was about thirty minutes - time enough for Virgil to doze off with Beatrice curled up on his stomach - before the door to Dante's apartment was unlocked and an old friend walked back into her life. --- "Do you know how much it's going to cost to remodel the parking lot, sir?" Alex rolled his eyes so quickly he felt as though they might spin out of his head. The board of directors was always panicking whenever he came up with an idea, and always protesting about costs and laws and permits. As if he didn't have the money to do anything he felt like doing! He turned to his assistant Ursula, handing the polar bear his laptop and legal pad, and stood at the head of the table. "Ladies and gentlemen of the board," Alex began, "shut up. I totally have this under control. The employee lot needs to be remodeled because I'm hiring a new R-and-D team to help with an internal-use app we'll be developing for smartphones. We have to be able to support new hires, after all." "A new team?! Of how many people? And what sort of phone thing are you designing anyway? Sir, this is just outrageous! There's been no communication with the board about this-" "I'm communicating it now! You seriously need to calm down, 'cause I can get a new board just as easily as I can get a new R/D team, remember?" Alex pulled the projection sheet down and pointed to his favorite chart ever: the one denoting the amount of stock he owned in the company. Due to a clause his diabolical parents had invented, everyone was being paid to not receive shares of the company. It left Alex - as he was very fond of reminding people - somehow owning one million percent of the company. It was a marvel of economics and probably the only affair of finance he'd ever taken an interest in. The board backed down as a whole, the more excitable members sitting back down and falling silent. If he wanted to develop some new app, they had to let him. They didn't have to like it - their grumbling as he left the room was a reminder of that - but they did, as Alex reminded himself before donning a pair of sunglasses and heading down to the research department, have to deal with it. --- "Virgil, hi! Where's Dante?" "Telly! Oh my god how are you?!" Virgil practically jumped off the couch, leaving Beatrice to sit on a cushion and stare at the new arrival. Matelda had darker skin than Dante but didn't quite match Virgil, occupying an in-between olive tone that Dante had always rather liked. She had long dark hair, straight unlike Dante's, but like her was dressed in shorts and a top. Dante had started over to her from across the room, then realized Telly wouldn't recognize her in a female body and hung back, suddenly feeling very awkward.

Magical Ace! 37 Lost Souls!

Episode two: Magical transformation! Am I really supposed to go out in public like this?!

“Why would you do this to me?!”

Dante was busy pacing back and forth, gesturing with her arms and then immediately pulling them back to her sides when she felt her breasts move slightly. The sensation was entirely disorienting: the extra weight in her chest and buttocks wasn’t too hard to deal with because it was proportional to her body weight, but movement at all where none had been before was utterly mystifying. It was as though suddenly she had gained weight in very specific areas - which, in a sense, she had. She was still fairly tall and slender, with breasts that in Alex’s estimation seemed very respectable and neither too large or too small, and a behind that matched. All of the new weight swinging in different directions was making her very agitated, however, so Dante threw herself onto Virgil’s bed and pulled her knees up to her chin, remaining as still as possible.

“Why couldn’t you have left me the way I was and just given me armor or something?! I don’t need magic to help you, I could have had a weapon! I could have had centurion armor and a grim reaper scythe or something cool like that!”

“I think I’ve played that video game,” Alex said, then winced as Dante started wailing again.

"My family's never going to believe I'm me! I won't even be able to go to work like this, nobody will listen if I tell them a demon rat turned me into a girl!"

"Honey, it's not that bad." Virgil put his hands on Dante's shoulders. If they couldn't get her to calm down she was likely to make herself sick. "You're still you, no matter what head your brain is in. We'll think of something." He glared at Beatrice and added, "and you could help too, you know." 

The rat-demon was perched on one of Dante's long-since-discarded shoes, paws in front of her face as she groomed the fur near her horns. She paused to give Virgil the most withering glare she could manage, then spoke in a lofty tone.  

"Where I come from most people tend to show gratitude when given life-changing gifts and abilities," she sniffed, seemingly addressing no one. Dante had stopped sniffling long enough to push her hair out of her face and listen to Beatrice's scolding, but she kept her expression blank. "Especially when their bodies are elevated to the pinnacle of human physical ability."

"You are kinda hot, too," Alex put in. He cringed when Dante and Virgil glared daggers at him, and meekly explained "I hadn't said anything in a while." 

Beatrice pressed on, trying to resign herself to the fact that constant interruptions seemed to be a human tradition she was going to have to get used to, and fluttered across the room to sit on Dante's shoulder and pat the side of her face with a tiny paw. Virgil moved away to sit at the edge of his bed. "I know this is a lot to handle all at once, but you're going to love it when you adjust. You and I are sisters now, in a way! Isn't that great? I mean, I have the looks, obviously, but there's plenty of perks to being a Daughter of Ciacca. For one thing you don't have to worry about human diseases anymore. I'm not even sure if you can even technically die! You'll definitely live for ages now, at least. Besides," she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, "I've never tried that before and honestly you're lucky you didn't end up a pile of bloody hair and teeth."

  "Oh that's encouraging," Dante snapped, "so I might've lost my entire life and identity thanks to a deranged rat from Hell, but at least I have plenty of time to be depressed about it, right?" 

"You're welcome," said Beatrice. She braced herself with both paws as she stood on her hind legs to sniff at Dante's mass of curly black hair, then flapped her wings and deposited herself firmly atop Dante's head. When she was the size of a normal rat, things like that were almost tolerable.

"I really hate to interrupt you right now, honey," Virgil said, "but first things first we need to figure out cleaning up in here. My folks won't notice a little bit of dust and ashes, but the hole in the ceiling is definitely going to make them suspicious."

Beatrice poked her head out of Dante's hair, red eyes shining. She had a mischievous look on her face that made Virgil cringe.

"I think I know a good way to fix that, actually."

---

It took another half-hour of cajoling to get Dante out of the house and into Virgil's back yard. Dante stood between two evergreens, planted a good distance apart long before the Dunhams had moved onto the property, and listened to Beatrice lecture her. Virgil and Alex were leaning against the sliding glass door, trying to take stock of the situation.

"You know, she's going to need our help," Virgil said, watching Dante as she tottered back and forth, trying to adjust to a new center of gravity while compensating for a large rat riding on top of her head. "With this demon slaying thing. I mean, she hits the ceiling whenever she sees a spider, how do you think she'll handle getting attacked by something a lot uglier than Beatrice?"

"You think you should try to teach her magic or something? Or sign her up for martial arts lessons?" As Alex watched, Dante fell to the ground and began shouting at Beatrice when the rat demon berated her for tripping over her own feet.

"Girl, there is no way in Hell she's gonna want anything to do with sorcery after it got her into a mess this big. If we're lucky she won't go into a coma every time somebody mentions Harry Potter." Virgil smiled as Dante got to her bare feet, still wearing her ripped black jeans and tattered dinosaur t-shirt. She was trying, and that was a good start. 

"So what do you think we ought to do? I don't think I can be much help telling her how to behave to fit in as a girl, you know."

"Mm, but you can use your vast stores of riches to buy her clothes, or use your influence to bury any paperwork complications from all this. Poor little thing doesn't have a birth certificate anymore even." Dante was sitting on a decorative boulder, Beatrice on her knee and evidently lecturing her on something or other. Virgil sighed. "And honestly I'd rather deal with crazy-ass paperwork than think about the fact she's gotta start fighting demons and shit." 

"You think this Halech scavenger hunt crap is serious, huh?"

"It is for her. Look." Virgil pointed to where the boulder had sat. Now Dante was lifting it - all 700 pounds or so - off the ground at Beatrice's insistence. She gritted her teeth and strained, back as straight as she could manage as she lifted the boulder to her chest and then held it above her head, eyes shut tight so she didn't have to see what she had somehow managed to do. Beatrice sat on the boulder, still chirping instructions whenever she could, but leapt off and hovered at Dante's side when she dropped boulder back into place with a dull thud. 

“Jeez.” Alex watched for a moment as Dante panted for breath, then walked over to one of the evergreen trees. He looked at Virgil again. “We can’t let her do this on her own, dude. She could end up really getting hurt--”

CRUNCH. 

Dante was standing in the crater where the evergreen tree had stood moments before, hands covering her mouth and eyes widened in shock. The evergreen tree was lodged in the roof of Virgil’s house - neatly fitting into the hole Beatrice’s arrival had created - and aside from a few dirt clods rolling down the roof and a half-dozen shingles out of place, nothing else appeared to have been disturbed.

“Oh my GOD!” Virgil ran off, leaving Alex behind, and skidded to a halt in front of a smug-looking Beatrice seated in the middle of Dante’s mass of hair. “Why would you do that?! This is even worse than a hole in the roof, my parents really are gonna kill me now!!”

“I was helping,” Beatrice said, “ and I’ll thank you to show a little more gratitude if I do it again in the future.”

“Oh my god you are so fucking smug,” Virgil muttered, glaring at the rat one more time. He looked at Dante, who was still staring at the roof with her hands over her mouth.

“I...I’m sorry...” Judging from her tone of voice, Dante’s bottom lip had begun to quiver. Her eyes were wide and shining as if she were about to cry, which Virgil figured was understandable given the way today had gone for her. “I was just...”

“No, no, honey, it’s okay, it isn’t your fault,” Virgil said, patting her on the shoulder as she shot another glare at Beatrice. The rat was busy cleaning flecks of dust off her tail and didn’t pay him any mind. “You didn’t ask for such a crappy tutor.”

“Or a friend who summons demons when they’re trying to talk to their dead grandmas,” Beatrice put in, though she could have been addressing her paws judging from the direction she was facing.  “I suppose ineptitude runs in your family, after all. I mean, anybody related to Whinnie Dunham-”

“WHAT did you say about my great-granny, you rude-ass little demon weasel?!”

“You want to watch who you’re calling a weasel, you Hermione Granger wannabe!”

“And YOU wanna be careful who you insult, if you don’t want your horns snatched off your head!”

Beatrice was fluttering in front of Virgil, yelling at him just as fiercely as he yelled. Dante watched, eyes traveling from Beatrice to Virgil and back every few seconds as they continued to shout. Virgil was waving his arms and Beatrice was bobbing up and down in agitation. 

“You gonna summon another demon in here, maybe one that won’t be as generous as I am?”

“Generous?! What have you done that’s generous?”

“Everything! Not only do you and your friends have an actual chance of surviving the war that’s about to start thanks to me, but I was actually going to stick around for a while to make sure she has what it takes to keep you alive!”

“Like we need any more help from you after you ruined Dante’s life! You gonna erase her memory next too?!”

“Maybe I will, I’d be doing her a favor if she didn’t remember having to put up with you any m--”

“Shut up, shut up! SHUT UP!”

Virgil and Beatrice turned to stare at Dante. Her fists were clenched and hanging down at her sides. She was scowling, her face framed on either side by black curls with brown highlights, and her chest heaved as she panted for breath. Virgil hadn’t seen Dante that angry in a long, long time.

“Neither of you are helping me with this bullshit, so just stop! I’ve been blown up, had my identity erased, I just threw a tree twenty feet in the air, and I’ve spent all day being bossed around by a rat demon who enlisted me in some interdimensional war I have no business being a part of! And NOW I have to listen to you two bicker?! I don’t think so! I’m going home!” She turned on her heel and stormed off, fists still clenched at her sides. Beatrice could hear her fuming and fussing as she left Virgil’s back yard through the gate and grumbled her way down the sidewalk.

After a moment, Virgil looked at Beatrice. “I guess we should-”

The interruption this time wasn’t from a person. An explosion shook Mesa City, and Virgil glanced over his shoulder just in time to watch a skyscraper crack in half, chunks of concrete and steel tumbling to the ground. Beatrice’s eyes widened in horror.

“It’s started.”

They looked at one another, then back in the direction in which Dante had stormed off.

“DANTE! Wait a minute, girl, come back!”

Virgil took off running after his friend, Beatrice fluttering along at his side. What the hell was going on now, and where the hell had Alex wandered off to, anyway?

---

Whoever had decided to play elevator music in the shaft descending miles below the Moloch building was totally fired, as soon as Alex could figure out their identity. He drummed his fingers against the wall, watching as concrete gave way to layers of rock strata through the elevator window. It made sense, having the hangar far enough underground to keep it off any kind of radar or sonar grids, but it was still a pain in the ass getting down there. Especially when he possibly only had a few minutes to act.

He was lucky his phone had vibrated when it did. Service downtown was normally awful, but over at Virgil’s house it was even worse thanks to all the magical energies in the air. But the early-warning app he’d designed had paid off, and he probably would make it in time to gear up and handle whatever was threatening the city.

It wasn’t just demons and angels that caused problems, despite what people thought. The supernatural was just a distraction from actual problems, in Alex’s mind: it was like trying to stomp a roach while someone tried to break into your home through the kitchen window. The kilaari had had their dozens of eyes on planet Earth for at least the past six months, and he’d only just managed to get everything ready in time to mount a proper defense. It looked like the time to launch that defense was now: his phone had alerted him to a huge mass, something the size of a mountain, entering Earth’s atmosphere and coming to a hovering stop a few miles above Mesa City. Luring the aliens into starting their invasion over his hometown had been the easy part. The interesting bit was going to be fighting them off.

---

"Sir. Earth forces have yet to respond to our arrival."

"Excellent. Let them scurry around in a panic while we take our prize."

The shadows of the mothership's bridge hid the commander from view, but Wince knew he was there. As always, his black cloak was outlined by the images of the view screen, in this case a cloudy gray sky with rows of detestable human buildings stretching in every direction. What they couldn't see on the view screen was the actual subject of their search: the scattered remnants of an Earth creature known as a demon lord. Intelligence claimed they could augment the powers of any mortal being - and much as the commander hated the implication that he was mortal, that was far too valuable a prize to pass up.

Wince cowered near a console dotted with buttons and levers arranged in patterns suited for a kilaari's three fingers, waiting for the order. As much as he loved when the commander was angry enough to demand chaos and mayhem, there was something about the surgical air this plan of attack had that interested him. He would have compared it to the pleasure derived from smashing an ant farm, had he cared what ants were. As it was, he was elated at the thought of leveling a human city in under a minute, though not as much as a full-scale assault would have made him.

"On my mark, Wince. Three. Two... What is...what is that?"

Somewhere down below the ship, something exploded. It was a building just off to the left of the commander's chair, clearly struck by a missile that the humans had launched, aiming at the ship! It would have struck the force fields and exploded harmlessly, of course, but still...

"The INSOLENCE!" The commander's fist swung out, aiming for Wince but hitting a control panel. A pair of red lights in the back of the mothership's flicked on and off.

"Ah...sir? The, ah...the hazard lights..."

"I KNOW, WINCE! Call off the strike! Return us to base and scramble the fighters! We will not end this siege quickly.”

“Oh, yes! Yes, sir, your most antipathetic highness!”

Wince scrambled to alert the soldiers, serrated teeth bared in a hideous grin. Now this was his kind of mission.

---

While an invasion force of space aliens retreated from Earth to recalculate their battle plans, Beatrice and Virgil were dragging a protesting, squirming Dante along the sidewalk and in the direction of the mysterious explosion.

"Come on, this is what I chose you for! It's your responsibility!"

"I didn't ask for this! This is in no way my problem!"

Dante swung around again, trying to make a break for it, and Virgil stopped her by throwing an arm around her. 

"Honey, stop!" He cried, the extreme discomfort on Dante's face taking a moment to register. "We have to at least go see what's going on. You'll be fine, you saw how much stronger you are, and - are you okay?" Dante folded her arms across her chest, shaking her head back and forth. "Did I hurt you?" 

"It didn't hurt," she muttered, going bright pink, "it's just...I guess these things are kind of... sensitive."

"Oh sweetie, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to - wait. If it didn't hurt, what are you..."

Dante blushed even harder. Beatrice landed on Dante's arm, poking one of her breasts with a tiny paw. "Looks like it's started," the rat demon said.

"What's started? What the hell did you do now?"

"Well, I anticipated that you might have a little trouble doing what I need you to do, so I just made sure there was a proper incentive for helping me out."

Dante and Virgil looked at one another, then back at a very smug Beatrice. 

"And that would be...?" Virgil was sure he didn't want to hear the answer.

"Well, the longer you go without stopping nearby demons and collecting the pieces of Halech's soul, the more sensitive your breasts are going to get."

"...that is the stupidest fucking thing you could have possibly-"

"They'll get bigger, too," Beatrice added helpfully. Dante went pale. Getting used to them at a proportionate size was bad enough, without having to worry about them growing larger over time! She gritted her teeth and scowled down at the rat, who was grooming her horns again.

"I am going to kill you someday," Dante growled. Beatrice just patted her closest breast with a paw, a patronizing smirk on her face.

"Of course you are, honey. Now let's go handle this demon problem, before you get too big to walk, shall we?"

That at the very least was motivation enough for Dante to sprint toward the source of the disturbance, one arm under her breasts to keep them from bouncing. If nothing else, she was going to need to invest in a bra before the day was over.  

Dante, Virgil and Beatrice came to a halt at the top of the hill, where a bus had parked and dozens of passengers were milling around or staring at the falling building. Only a few faint snatches of conversation could be heard over the sound of falling rubble and sirens: a great red mass of some kind had floated toward the building in haphazard fashion, making loops and lazy figure eights as it flew through the air, and then landed on the roof of the skyscraper. No sooner had it landed than the explosion took place, and then the whole thing had started collapsing.

"So what the hell caused it?" Dante panted for breath, slouching forward with her arms hanging in front of her and a mass of black curls hiding her face from view. Beatrice poked her head out of Dante's hair and sniffed. 

"My guess is something got ahold of a piece of Halech, went crazy, flew up there, and starting tearing that building up from the roof down. I bet you if we head up there now we can stop it before it causes any more damage."

"Unless you can grow to elephant size I think we're gonna have to take the stairs,and I am NOT interested in running my ass off up thirty flights of stairs," Virgil said. Dante nodded agreement, still trying to get a handle on her breathing. She reached a tentative hand up to her chest, grateful it and her face were hidden by all her hair, and gave herself an experimental squeeze. So far she felt like she hadn't grown too much, if at all, but if the sensitivity got much worse she wasn't sure what she would do. 

She was starting to feel weird - not so much uncomfortable in a female body with changed proportions (although she sorely wished her feet still fit properly into her shoes because the barefoot running was really beginning to suck), she was getting a handle on her center of gravity and walking and running and so forth - but oddly tense. Heightened, as if her senses had been dialed all the way to twelve. Hearing had definitely improved, as had balance: when she didn't think about it or obsess over not falling over, she felt perfectly at home moving in her new body. Sight seemed better too, or at least everything around her had stopped being blurry when it got too far away. As far as her body was concerned, if she was being honest with herself she felt a lot more comfortable in it than she had all day. No, it was something else...her muscles felt tight, like she was tensed up for a big workout or something she'd been anticipating for ages. That was it. God, am I actually looking forward to this? The thought was a little worrisome at first. But it would be cool in a way, having some form of superpowers. Even if she hadn't wanted them and definitely didn't think losing her identity was a fair trade, the idea of being stronger and faster really did appeal to her. And there was always a chance that Beatrice would turn her back once she'd finished finding all the chunks of Halech...she hoped.

Dante grinned, clenched her fists, and stood up straight. That was it. All she had to do was finish this stupid assignment and she could get out of any further involvement with idiotic fights against angels and demons. She opened her mouth to say something to Virgil and Beatrice, but they were in the middle of a conversation of their own.

"-transformed," Beatrice finished, looking a little smug to see Virgil actually agreeing with her.

"All right, that makes sense. Dante, honey, we need to - what's up?" Virgil as pleasantly surprised to see a calmer, more determined look on Dante's face. Maybe she was feeling a little better?

"I'm gonna go find out what's causing all this trouble, and get rid of it," Dante said, which made Beatrice break out into a wide grin.

"That's my girl! Now, like I was telling Virgil, all you need to do is transform and we can fly on up and take care of this."

"Transform? You mean turning me into a girl with demonic radar boobs wasn't enough for you?" 

"Look, magic has rules, all right? And women with magical abilities have to access them in specific ways. There's rules to follow. Rites to perfect. And that means you have an incantation you've got to recite so you can unlock your true powers and get ready to fight!"

"That...is the stupidest thing I have ever heard."

"You haven't heard the incantation yet."

It was a good ten minutes before anything of interest happened. Dante had to be threatened and cajoled into going along with Beatrice's demands, especially since muttering the incantation was evidently not allowed. Dante hated shouting, and wasn't used to her voice yet anyway, but rules were rules...or so Beatrice had insisted.

Virgil and Beatrice sat on a fence, watching Dante climb her way up onto a parked car. She took a deep breath and for a long moment, didn't appear as though she was going to go through with it. Finally, though, she shouted at the top of her lungs praying for another explosion or some disturbance in town to take people's attention off her.

"Death Sugar Princess! Ciacca's justice drives me onward!"

It was, as everyone but Beatrice would agree later, a remarkably silly thing to say. Virgil especially found it silly and over-the-top, as did several of the bystanders that day. Unluckily for Dante, they would soon be distracted from her shouting by an even more interesting sight.

As Virgil and Beatrice watched, Dante's eyelids fluttered and closed. She was floating a foot or so in the air, arms extended in both directions as if she was telling someone she loved them 'thiiiiiiiis much', and a blue light began to emanate from the center of her chest.

The blue light expanded, forming a bubble around Dante. She began to spin, eyes shut tight, and as she went faster and faster in a circle a second circle of blue light appeared. This one started at her feet and traveled upward, and as it did clothing sprouted out of nowhere. Her socks vanished, leaving a pair of light blue knee-high boots that thankfully had chunky heels rather than stilettos. Under the boots were white thigh-high stockings trimmed at the top in blue lace. A skirt was next, short enough to risk showing newly-created white panties if Dante moved too quickly. The skirt itself was something like a tutu, arching outward and down just enough to cover Dante except in the case of a gust of wind or a sudden movement. It was baby blue with white trim and to Dante's dismay had a circle of white bows spaced an even distance apart around the circumference of the skirt. Above that was a bustier, blue with white laces and topped with another small bow resting at the spot where her cleavage became visible. The bustier had no shoulder straps, but it did have puffy shoulders with a bow on either side and white lace circling Dante's arms. Elbow-length white gloves covered her arms, each one with a strange blue jewel (the color of Dante's eyes, as she would note later) resting on the back of her hand. Around her neck a small pendant had appeared: it was on a silver chain and shaped like the head of a rat, with two bright blue gems for eyes. Above the necklace, a faint pink stain on her lips highlighted Dante's newly-developed cupid's bow, and above that her eyes had been highlighted with hints of blue eyeshadow and black mascara that made her substantial eyelashes even longer. Her tangled, curly hair had been pulled into two Afro puffs, one on either side of her head, and between them an angular white tiara was perched (with the same rat design as her pendant at its center). The look was completed with, of all things, a wand that came to a sharp point at one end. At its top was another rat head, and the actual wand portion had the same pink color and scaled pattern as a rat's tail.

Virgil and Beatrice exchanged glances once more. As Dante gently came to a landing, her eyes opened and she blinked several times, trying to figure out what had just happened. When she stared down at herself, noting her larger breasts resting in a revealing bustier and her thighs partially revealed where her poofy skirt ended, she cringed visibly and covered her chest with one arm, using the other to grab the hem of her skirt and pull it as low as she could in front. 

"God, I have to do everything myself," Beatrice muttered, fluttering over to Dante and landing on one puffy shoulder. "Citizens, do not be alarmed! The Death Sugar Princess has arrived to vanquish the demonic threat! Return to your homes!"

A few people laughed. Most of them just stared. Virgil sat back on the fence, sorely wishing he had some popcorn or a drink right about then. Between the bright pink hue Dante's face had developed as she blushed, and the confusion of the passers-by on seeing a talking rat and a girl dressed as some kind of rat princess, this had become the most amusing day he'd had in years. 

---

Alex stood on a raised platform, eye to eye with his prized creation. The battle mech he'd designed, Iron Malaki, stood twenty stories high, was armed with the best weaponry his vast fortunes could buy, and looked like his favorite Gundam robot: the mighty Gundam Alex. The task of creating a defense system for planet Earth that also looked really cool and impressive had been a daunting one, but it was going to be worth it once he got out there and started kicking alien ass. If the kilaari had asses, anyway. He supposed they had to. All life-forms did, right?

“Wait. What about snails and bugs and stuff? Do they have asses?”

He paused. For a moment he tried to remember if he’d ever seen a snail’s ass, then shook his head to clear it.

“Fuck, man, I gotta focus. They won’t wait for me to get out there, after all.”

The raised platform whirred as a walkway extended, sloping downward to an entry point within Iron Malaki’s chest. From the center of the mech he could control everything: weapons, limbs, communications, and everything else he would need to mount a defense against the aliens. A raised chair was surrounded by circular rails with control panels mounted on them, and as he climbed into the chair the rails moved back and forth as needed, sliding all the controls and buttons into arm’s reach as the startup procedure got under way.

High above, a thick beam of light shone down onto the giant robot as the Moloch building’s parking lot split open. A few rocks and dirt (and possibly cars) fell into the hangar, but that was a minor detail. The power Alex commanded was greater than that of any military power on the planet, and it was all his! He grinned, reaching out and pressing a few buttons as the launch sequence began. Iron Malaki rose higher and higher, making the ascent from miles underground to the surface in a matter of minutes. Any second now he would-

A crunching noise made him wince and the resulting tremor threw him sideways and then out of his chair. Metal groaned as it slid against concrete, and the whole thing came to a halt. 

“What the - what happened?! Fuckin’... oh, no. Oh, for fuck’s sake...”

The viewscreen changed to an image of the Moloch building from the outside: Malaki’s giant metal head had cleared the entryway, its chin level with the surface of the parking lot. Its lengthy, pointed shoulders, however, were too wide to fit through the doors.

---

The roof of the skyscraper was caved in; chunks of the ceiling and shattered cubicles littered the floor in every direction. Dante landed on the ground, wobbling for a moment as she got used to her new heels, and put her hands on her hips as she looked around.

“This place is trashed,” she muttered. Beatrice, perched on her shoulder, sniffed the air and pointed off to the right.

“Looks like something came through that wall over there.” Through the hole in the wall they could see a gaping hole in the floor, where something had torn its way down through the building.

“Oh crap. I think it’s headed for the ground floor. This whole building could go if it manages to make it there.” Dante frowned, biting her lower lip as she leaned over the hole and peered down. Sure enough, something had punched through several floors of the building, and down at the bottom of the shaft it had created Dante could see something moving around. As she stepped over the edge of the hole and fell downward, her fall slowed by the billowing of her skirt, a thought struck her.

“Beatrice, where’d all the people go? This place should be packed on a weekday, right?”

“Maybe they all evacuated in time. That’d be convenient,” Beatrice said, thinking it over. “Or maybe they all got eaten.” She was seated on Dante’s chest, peering past her breasts to see downward, but she felt her newly-christened sister when she cringed at the thought. “Um, it’s probably the first one, though?”

Dante landed on the toes of her boots, planting her feet and then brushing dust off herself and her new outfit.

“This thing is ridiculous,” she grumbled, “and so are these things.”

“Oh, bitch, bitch, bitch. I made you a superhero, the least you could do is be a little grateful for it.” Beatrice prodded Dante’s left breast and snickered when she felt Dante shiver. Dante was about to respond when something fell over nearby, landing flat on the ground with a heavy slam that made both rat and human jump. Hesitantly, Dante turned to look in the direction of the sound. A chunk of wall had fallen over and through the cloud of dust it left in its wake she could see...something...looking at her. Some huge, gray creature with a wide and rounded body. Bright pink eyes blazed from the top of a head mounted on a long neck, and as the thing turned its gaze onto Dante, clicking its beak shut with a bone-chilling snap, the dust cleared to reveal...

“Oh man, really?”

Beatrice looked disappointed as well. “I suppose it makes sense, but...still.”

The giant pigeon stared at Dante, tilting its head sideways and cooing to itself. It didn’t seem openly dangerous, even if it did have a pair of twisting ram’s horns coming from its head and a long forked tail where tailfeathers belonged. As Dante watched, it pecked at the floor, searching for food, and the force of its peck left a gouge in the tile that began to crack the floor around it.

“I guess we know how it did all that damage. Why don’t you get rid of this thing so we can go home?”

“We?”

“I’m not leaving you alone with all the incredible power I gave you, lady. I don’t trust you not to make me look bad.”

Dante bristled at the ‘lady’ comment - though she had to admit she was only mildly offended, considering its accuracy - and walked over to the pigeon, which raised its head to examine her again.

“I guess if I’m stuck as Boobzilla you might as well stick around so I can yell at you when this gets to be too annoying.” She was trying not to think about the fact that her breasts felt larger still, and every time the fabric of her bustier slid against her she felt like squirming. Beatrice was going to pay for this, that was for damn sure. Dante brandished her wand, trying to ignore the fact that she looked like a fairy princess from some atrocious non-Disney animated movie, and pointed it at the pigeon. She felt a surge rush through her, the muscles in her arms tensing up from her shoulders to her fingertips, and the eyes of the rat head at the end of her wand began to glow bright blue. Nothing seemed to be happening, though...

Standing on one leg, she tapped the wand against the heel of a boot, but nothing happened.

“Come on, come on... what’s with this thing?”

“Rub it,” Beatrice suggested, grinning wickedly.

“As much as I appreciate the innuendo that’d happen if I had to rub this dumb wand until magic came out of one end, somehow I get the suspicion that isn’t how you set it up.”

“It’s not how I set it up,” said Beatrice, “it’s the rules of conferring the power of Ciacca to a mortal. But you’re right. It doesn’t work that way. I just wanted to see if you’d do it.”

The pigeon took a step forward, clicking its beak again. It seemed to be deciding whether or not Dante was something edible. Dante cringed, stepped back, and glared at Beatrice. “So you wanna clue me in, or watch me get eaten?”

“You have to say the right words, just like when you transform. This sort of thing is all about the right magic words. And you might wanna hurry,” Beatrice added, clinging to one of Dante’s puffy shoulders as the human took another step back, “because I don’t think this guy’s ruled out the possibility of eating us.”

“Okay, fine... you have no idea how embarrassing it is to be dressed like this and yelling catch phrases all the time, by the way.”

“The characters in human television do it all the time.”

“Are you implying there’s demon television? Because you wouldn’t need to draw a distinction unless-”

The pigeon flapped its wings, letting out a rumbling noise and a gust of wind that blasted Dante and Beatrice away. Dante skidded to a halt on her bottom, Beatrice landed on a computer desk in the remnants of a cubicle, and the pigeon moved forward again. 

“Okay, kill the bird.”

“What do I say?”

“I don’t know! Kill the bird!”

“What do I say?”

“I don’t KNOW! You’re the Death Sugar Princess here, I’m just your guide!”

“So guide me, damnit!”

Dante held the wand out in both hands, cringing as the demon bird took another step toward her. Beatrice clambered into an abandoned coffee mug, reducing her size to its smallest yet, and pulled a sheet of paper over the top to hide herself. The pigeon pecked at the ground scant inches from Dante’s boots. Knees together, sitting on her behind with her heels digging at the floor as she tried to push herself away from the bird, Dante shut her eyes, took a chest-heaving breath, and shouted the first ridiculous thing that came to her mind at the top of her lungs.

“DEAD SUGAR RHAPSODY!”

A blast of light emanated from the rat head’s eyes, lighting up the wand and knocking Beatrice and Dante back with massive recoil. Dante flew backwards over the desk Beatrice had been hiding on, Beatrice’s coffee mug hiding place rolled off under a chair, and the beam of light continued until it punched a hole in the wall of the towering building and lit up the dull, cloudy sky of Mesa City.

Dante sat up, rubbing her head. One of the puffs her hair had been pulled back into was lightly singed, her tiara had fallen to the floor in the confusion, and there were streaks of soot on her white gloves, but other than that she seemed to be all in one piece.

“You okay, Beatrice?”

The rat shoved her way out of the coffee mug, sitting back on her hind legs and cleaning off her tail and wings as best she could. “Fine. You know...you actually did all right, Dante.”

Dante smiled. Beatrice hadn’t used her name until just then, that she could remember. Hopefully it was a significant gesture and not just Beatrice being inattentive. Dusting herself off, she got to one knee and held out a hand for Beatrice. With a gratified look on her face, Beatrice climbed along Dante’s arm to her perch on the girl’s shoulder. 

“Sure left a hell of a mess, though,” Dante said. She was looking at a massive pile of charred feathers, a few shards of hollow bone, and a gleaming red gem at the center of the pigeon’s remains. “I guess this is it?”

Beatrice quivered with excitement, clinging to Dante as tightly as she could. She seemed almost on the verge of lunging at the soul shard, but instead she let Dante pick it up in one hand.

As soon as Dante touched the shard, it began to glow brighter. So did the eyes of the rat pendant around Dante’s neck and the gems on the backs of Dante’s gloves, now that she was paying attention. Tendrils of light began to flow from the shard into the gems decorating Dante’s ridiculous getup, and when they had gone the gem appeared to be nothing more than a dull chunk of lava rock. Dante dropped it to the ground.

“Well, I guess that’s---”

Beatrice took to the air when Dante shuddered and fell to the ground, on her hands and knees. She quivered for a long moment, biting her lip and remaining as still as possible. Around her, the magical girl outfit had begun disintegrating into blue dust particles, which flew up into the air and then circled back around to flow into the rat pendant, which Dante still wore. When Dante sat up, she shook her head several times, trying to clear it. Her outfit had vanished and she appeared to be back to normal size and sensitivity, though her face was slightly flushed and her hair had returned to an explosion of curls all around her face. Beatrice looked her over, hiding her concern.

“What happened?”

“...dunno,” Dante said, avoiding Beatrice’s gaze. “Can we just get the hell out of here?”

“Sure.” Beatrice spoke in agreeable enough tones, but as she landed on Dante’s head and snuggled up in the middle of her hair, she added a very smug, “you might wanna try to find some clothes first, though.”

Magical Ace! 37 Lost Souls

Episode 1: Let's begin! A heroine is born!

I don't know anybody who didn't want to be a superhero for at least a little while when they were a kid, even if they just wanted to be a firefighter or something, but I recently learned there's a huge difference between getting to be something you've always wished you could be and getting forced into a role you never would have asked for in a million years. I know that's nice and dramatic, but maybe I should start at the beginning. As usual I was minding my own business when things got weird. And, as usual again, it was all my friend Virgil's fault that things got weird in the first place.

---

Skyscrapers towered over the crowded sidewalks below as countless people scurried back and forth. The sun fought its hardest, but only a few rays of daylight managed to fight through the rain clouds and reach Mesa City. Down at ground level, the #3 bus had stopped for passengers, and two young men shoved their way onto a bus, narrowly squeezing past a woman in cybernetic armor and a giant panda. Raindrops slithered along the windows and vanished from sight as the bus pulled away from its stop.

"Dontcha just love gloomy days like this, Dante?" The taller of the two, a Black man with hair swept back into tight braids, grinned at his companion. Then his smile faded a little. "Not like there're any other kind of days around here."

"Not if I had anything to say about it there wouldn't be," Dante said. It was his turn to grin. Dante was scrawny, thinner than his friend, with olive-toned skin and bright blue eyes that tended to sparkle when he was particularly amused. Virgil would have admitted that it tended to make his heart flutter ever so slightly when he saw that had he not been so busy grousing about the rain. "I just love the rain. You know that. It's so...peaceful. I think it just sort of puts me in a meditative state, you know?"

"You know what puts me in a meditative state? Meditation. Which doesn't tend to stall traffic or give me a cold the way constant rain does."

"You don't like the weather, change it."

For some reason this made Virgil smirk. Dante gave his friend a wary glance, not sure what was going through his mind. All he said as the bus stopped a few blocks from his house was "I intend to."

---

Mesa City was like every other metropolis: full of people, thriving business, racial and social tension, and public transportation users whose dedication to personal hygiene was somewhat lacking. It differed, however, in the fact that it was built on not two but an even six intersecting ley lines, a fact which meant the city was prone to countless paranormal events. Virgil came from a long line of sorcerers (or so he hoped, not knowing much of his family history past the 1940s) and had been fixated on continuing the Dunham tradition for as long as he could remember.

"So is this standard operating procedure for you? I thought there was typically a more outdoorsy bent to your stuff."

"Well, this is...extracurricular."

"That makes me feel just so much better, Virgil."

"Will you shut up and help? I can't draw all of this myself."

Dante picked up a bit of chalk, then frowned. Virgil's attic had once been where they had played as children, climbing over dusty old furniture or imagining sweeping and dinosaur-populated landscapes where boxes of clothing stood. These days it was Virgil's room and the staging ground for experiments in sorcery.

"I dunno about this. Did I already mention that I don't know about this? Because what I meant by that was that I think it might not be a good idea."

"I feel like I said shut up at some point."

"Okay fine, jeez."

Virgil was lighting candles and had cleared a patch of free space on the wall facing the attic's only window (the Charmed posters would be back in their proper place before the day ended, Dante suspected), while Dante set to work sketching lines on the floor. The art of tracking ley lines was a difficult one to master, taking a lot of math at the best of times, but they'd long since discovered where the ley lines crossed the Dunham family property. 

"Strongest concentration is here," Dante said, scuffing one of the chalk lines with his shoe. "Should I get your black robes and pointy hat?" Virgil didn't have to say anything: Dante could tell his friend was rolling his eyes. "Then how about you tell me what the hell we're doing? If we're summoning anything I am gone and I'm not coming back until your birthday."

"No summoning, don't worry. I just want to see if I can talk to someone. You know my mom never talks about my great-granny, right?"

"Maybe she was just a mediocre granny."

"Shut up, Dante. I think she might be the person I got my magic genes from, and if I can ask her a few questions maybe she can help me increase my powers!"

"Or," Dante said, ignoring his order to shut up, "you could go back to college and learn from a sorcerer who doesn't live in an attic and force their non-magical best friend to get involved with rituals neither of you know how to actually perform."

Virgil waved the suggestion off, taking a piece of chalk and sketching a list of names on the bare wall. He glanced back at Dante, an excited grin on his face. 

"Think about how meaningful it is when you learn to do something on your own, Dante. If I can do this, I'll be able to accomplish so much more...so, so much more. Now are you going to help me?"

"I...but...you..." Dante let out a long, drawn-out sigh. "Fine."

"Good. Now get your butt over here and help me. I want to make sure everything goes absolutely right."

---

The suburbs, where Virgil and Dante's families had lived next-door to one another for ages, abruptly stopped at the top of a hill leading to the downtown area. This boundary was marked by a flatiron building painted a dull brick-red, and that building was the home of Dante and Virgil's friend Alex.

Unlike his two friends, who came from poorer families, Alex had grown up in the shadow of the Moloch corporation. It was rare as he grew up that he was able to get away from some responsibility the shareholders wanted him to face up to - he and Dante handled almost all their communication via texting, Facebook, and Twitter these days - and so instead he resorted to the old standby: sneaking out.

Down the maintenance stairs, through an unused corridor in the mail room, across the marble floor of the company entryway...almost home free! Just a moment more and...

He paused. Alex swept a few strands of brown hair out of his face and pushed his glasses back into position. He'd kept his hair long as a show of defiance and refused to get contacts for the same reason. He loved how much it annoyed the board of trustees. They hadn't been able to get back at him for it since they'd hired that --

"BEAR!"

Alex cried out reflexively as he dropped and rolled to one side, narrowly avoiding being hit by the massive paw of an angry polar bear. Originally, hearing that he was being given a personal assistant had excited him, especially one with a sexy-sounding name like Ursula. But he hadn't expected a ten-foot polar bear - or really any bear at all - the board had gotten him that time, he had to admit. Moreover, she was surprisingly good at tracking him down when he planned on sneaking away.

Ursula roared, rearing up onto her hind legs and preparing to aim another swipe at Alex. Tensing himself to run, Alex shouted at the top of his lungs.

"Oh my god! Somebody left that baby harp seal completely unattended!" 

Just as he'd hoped, Ursula whirled around as soon as she heard what Alex said. He took off running, making it to the door while Ursula took a few lumbering steps away. By the time she looked back, he was long gone.

The sun wasn't shining through the storm clouds above, he was sure he had several people planning on yelling at him when he returned to the building, and there was always a chance he'd be assaulted by a polar bear later in the day, but Alex was still feeling pretty good about himself. Just up ahead he could see Virgil's house, which looked as safe and inviting as ever. The gray paint, the manicured lawn, the smoking hole in the ceiling... Hmm. That was new. So was all the smoke and red light pouring out through the hole. Come to think of it, Virgil and Dante didn't usually spend so much time shouting, either. Maybe it was worth looking into.

---

"What did you DO?!"

"I don't know! I don't know what happened! I knocked that candle over and it fell on the chalk and the chalk caught fire, and -"

"Okay, so you DO know what happened."

"Shut up, Dante!"

Dante was hiding behind Virgil, who had taken refuge behind his bed after the first explosion. In the center of the room, amidst the smoke and ashes, something was stirring. A sight like it could break your mind, Dante thought: without benefit of a portal or a doorway something was sliding into existence, merely *being* where only empty space had been seconds before. It was a large dark shape, about the size of a kitten and steadily growing. Light gray hair - or was it fur? - covered the shape, and as it grew larger hints of pink appeared on the creature's body. Eyes widened, both the sorcerer and his best friend stared as the shape became that of...

"Oh my god, Virgil, look! It's a RAT!"

"Well....half a rat."

"Oh Jesus what."

Virgil was right. As Dante took in the sight, his eyes widened. He grinned at the sight - he had always loved rats. The shape emerging from nothingness was a rat the size of a dog, but only its front half had made it out. It hung there, squirming for a moment, then lifted its head to address Dante and Virgil. 

"Can one of you give me a little help and pull me the rest of the way through?"

“Did...that rat just...”

“Oh god. Oh Jesus. I think she just talked.”

“Spoke,” the rat said, “I spoke. Now help me out here, will you? Just hanging here is hurting my stomach.”

Virgil shook his head, utterly speechless, and Dante slid past him to reach for the giant rat. She grasped his hand with both her paws and Dante pulled as gently as he could, sliding her out of that midair nothingness and fully into the physical world. The rat sat on her hind legs, grooming her fur and brushing her whiskers back into place. She seemed completely unaware of Dante’s presence and the human stepped back, feeling a little awkward now that the new arrival had disregarded him.

“Are you...” Virgil edged forward. He’d never shown as strong an affinity for rats as Dante - or at least not one that made it as easy to forget the flames and smoke and the explosion he’d just witnessed - and still didn’t feel entirely comfortable. “Um, are you...a spirit? In the form of a rat, maybe?”

The rat glanced at him, blinking slowly as it looked him up and down. “I dunno what you’re talking about, kid. You thought you were calling up a spirit?” The rat snorted. It sounded like a tiny sneeze, and from Dante’s side of the room came a barely suppressed and high-pitched squealing noise in response (“Oh my god so CUTE.“). “I’m no human ghost if that’s what you’re asking.” As the rat continued to groom itself, it parted the tufts of fur near the top of its head to reveal a pair of tiny black horns.

“Oh shit... you’re...”

“You oughtta be more careful about the doors you try to open, kid. You’re lucky you only opened one big enough for me to fit through, ‘cause most demons are a lot bigger and meaner than I am.”

Dante and Virgil shared dismayed glances. 

“My mother is going to kill me if she finds out I summoned a demon in the house.” 

“Demon might kill you first.”

“Hey!” The rat scowled at Dante. “Like I said, you’re lucky you found me, because I’m one of the good ones. Trust me on this,” she said, sitting down on Dante’s foot. “I’m gonna be a lifesaver for both of you.”

Virgil narrowed his eyes at the rat. “Right... anyway, it’s definitely time for all the demon rats to go back home, so -”

“I don’t think so.”

Suddenly the rat was at his eye level, fluttering scant inches from his face with a pair of black, bat-like wings. The wings, horns, and the faint tinge of red in the gray rat’s eyes definitely gave her ‘demon’ claim some weight.

“I just got here, after all, so I don’t wanna leave just yet! Besides...I need your help.”

The rat perched on Virgil’s shoulder, ignoring Virgil as he tried to keep himself from shuddering. The rat was a little smaller now, and didn’t weigh as much, but Dante’s pet rats had also given Virgil the creeps just a little when they clambered up onto his shoulders or tried to scale the vast expanses of his shirts. 

As he watched, the rat waved its front paws at the blank wall. The soot and ash lifted off the surface of the wall and formed a circular cloud.

“I am Beatrice, one of the Thousand and One Daughters of Ciacca,” the rat intoned, the ash cloud moving in time to the movements of her paws. Inside the cloud, a picture began to form: a red landscape, the ground more closely resembling flesh than dirt, with hideously misshapen creatures writhing back and forth amid what could have been some kind of plant or other. Large rats darted around, many of them on bats' wings, snapping up the misshapen demons in their jaws or carrying them off to parts unknown.

"Our task has always been to eliminate the vilest dregs of demonic society, the truly worthless and useless." The image changed; Dante and Virgil stared at an image of the largest rat imaginable. Larger than a city block, it lay on its stomach gobbling up the demons the smaller rats carried to its mouth.

"But our mistress grows weary of such pedestrian fare!" Beatrice fluttered around the room excitedly, the cloud of ashes following her. The picture changed again to show humanoid demons, succubi and incubi as well as larger minotaur-like beings, marching through doorways hanging in midair. "Denizens of Hell are even now making their way into the mortal realm as reinforcements in the battle against the angels, and Ciacca would feast upon the fallen soldiers of both armies!"

"She talks almost as much as you do, Virgil."

"I'm not that creepy, right?"

"You don't have visual aids."

Beatrice shot them a glare, then continued: "My goal was to find a weakness between our world and the human realm, then breach it and enlist a human to weed out the weakest and most useless of the demons in order to take them back to Hell to feed my mistress. But...my mission has become complicated."

The cloud showed them a huge demonic figure, something like a humanoid dragon, roaring in pain as an angelic shape ran it through with a spear.

"The Longinus, the spear that-"

"That pierced the side of Christ? We've heard of it."

"Yeah, didn't it get stolen from the museum or something?"

This time Beatrice just rolled her eyes before pressing onward. "A powerful demon lord was slain - shattered into pieces! The remains of the demon Halech were lost in both the mortal realm and the realm of the angels: thirty-seven pieces of Halech are somewhere in your human world, waiting to be discovered. And if I'm not the one who discovers them, well..."

The picture changed a final time, showing one of the misshapen demons that looked like twisted corpses. It clutched onto what appeared to be a chunk of red brick, and when it did so it began to twist even further. What was once a pathetic, emaciated creature bulged with muscles and sinew, spines and horns growing from its back and shoulders in all directions. It rose to its feet, newly appointed with jet-black hooves, and lumbered through downtown Mesa City, smashing buildings out of its way and incinerating people by the hundreds with the fumes of its breath. 

"Even a single chunk of Halech's body can give the most worthless demon unimaginable power. An angel or a demon - any spiritual creature - who touches one of the pieces of Halech's soul will be changed into a twisted and depraved version of their former self. So...I need a human to collect them for me. Only a human can handle the remnants of Halech without any harm coming to them. And with my fellow demons, and those damnable angels looking for the pieces as well, that human would have to be altered in order to hold their own in combat against soldiers from either side's army."

Beatrice landed on the ground, sitting on all fours. Now she was the size of a golden retriever again. As she landed, curling her tail around her, the cloud of ash fell to the ground as well, landing all around her without actually touching her body. She looked from Virgil to Dante and back again. Dante was running a hand along his head, displacing hair that was so short it almost looked shaved. His eyes were wide with curiosity and awe - probably he was still stunned by the image of the rat larger than most buildings - but Virgil was already shaking his head.

"Oh no. Nuh-uh. No way in hell am I gonna sign up for your The Matrix-meets-The Book of Revelations nonsense, little girl. You can get right outta here with that."

"Fine," Beatrice said, a little harshly, "then I guess your friend will have to be it. Right, blue eyes, you ready to enlist?"

"What?! No! No, I don't--"

"Eh, you don't get a choice. You're perfect, really: right size, about the right age, untapped magical potential...so anyway, hold still, will you?"

Dante immediately ran to hide behind Virgil, but Beatrice was too fast for him: she flew around Virgil's other side, grabbing onto Dante's nose with her front paws, eyes glowing bright red as she opened her mouth and--

"BLAMMO!"

---

Alex wasn't sure who was doing all of the shouting, but right after somebody yelled "blammo" everyone else in the attic began shouting like crazy. He recognized Virgil, but the second voice didn't sound familiar... weird. Again.

He ran up the stairs two at a time, flinging the door to Virgil's room open. He'd been in there many times before, but not usually when there was a hole in the ceiling, ashes and soot coating the floor and walls, and a rat with wings and horns sitting on the toppled nightstand. Virgil had fallen to the ground, sitting with his back to Alex and his legs splayed out in front of him. His hands were limp at his sides. The rat was grooming its lengthy tail as Alex entered the room, looking around to try and figure out what had happened.

"Virgil? Are you okay?"

"Alex? Hey... um, yeah, I... kinda?" Virgil looked dazed. Smoke was rising from a bundle in the corner of his room - it looked almost like a pile of clothes except for the bare foot sticking out. A foot or so away was one of Dante's black tennis shoes. Alex cringed.

"Oh my god, what happened?! Dude, did Dante -- I mean, is he okay?! What -- dude!!"

Alex crossed the room in seconds, stopping to reach down and scoop one of Virgil's hands into his own and pull him along. Virgil managed to snap out of his daze by the time they approached Dante, who was laying on his back in a clump of black clothing and more ash from yet another explosion. The winged rat flew along with them - it was the least of Alex's worries until he knew if Dante was all right, but he did mark it as being incredibly strange - and landed on Dante's knee.

"Yep," Beatrice said, sniffing at Dante's leg, " definitely made the right choice. I wasn't even sure that would work - I've never tried it before, honestly. Everybody's supposed to be able to do it, but hell, that doesn't mean anything, right?"

"What are..." Beatrice took wing again as Dante moved into a sitting position, knees up off the ground and both hands on the floor on either side. A tangled mass of black curls hid Dante's face and upper body from view. That definitely hadn't been there before. "What happened? I feel so weird, guys. My stomach is kinda..." Dante paused. Alex and Virgil looked at one another: the voice that spoke was definitely not that of their childhood friend. It sounded much more, well...

Dante reached up with one hand and swept the mass of curls back. The light streaming in through the hole in Virgil's attic played against the brown hair mixed in with the black in Dante's new head of curly, full hair, and Dante's wide blue eyes sparkled like never before. Alex and Virgil didn't notice this, as they were busy taking in the sight of their friend. There was still a hint of Dante's face in the one they looked at now, though the new face had a smaller nose, slightly fuller lips, and higher cheekbones than Dante's did. The new Dante also had larger breasts than Dante normally did - in the sense that she had breasts at all. Dante's jeans were now baggy at the ankles but pulled taught near the top by wider hips and a larger buttocks, and Dante's t-shirt had done the same thing: it was loose and baggy at the midriff and tight at the top where breasts had grown.

Beatrice was still smiling approvingly. Virgil and Alex looked at one another again, then back at Dante, who was now running her hands along her hips and stomach, trying to process the change she had just undergone. She paused when she brushed the undersides of her breasts with her hands, eyes widening in horror. 

"Okay, dude, before you freak out--" Alex started, but was cut off by a high-pitched shriek he'd never imagined could come out of his best friend.