To Prevent World Peace Read online

  “It does not!” the hobo shouted. “Put that halo away!”

  “I think I’ll hang on to it, thanks,” Kendra said dryly. “Why were you following me?”

  The hobo straightened, and seemed to be making an attempt to sound mysterious. “Because of my power. I can see the future.”

  Kendra burst out laughing, her arm holding the halo falling to her side as she clutched her stomach. This ludicrous hobo, with the power of an arch-villain? Oh, yeah, right!

  “It’s the truth!” the woman shouted.

  Snapping her halo back into a threatening position and wiping a tear away from her eye, Kendra jeered, “All right, soothsayer. If you’re so smart, prove it.”

  The woman looked annoyed. “I didn’t say I was smart; I said I could see the future.”

  It was all Kendra could do to keep from laughing again. She’d seen carnival fortune tellers claiming that they had magical powers before, and those claims were beyond ludicrous. They were too old to be magical girls, and too drab to be born mages, a.k.a. villains.

  “Uh huh,” Kendra smirked. “Why don’t you just . . .”

  “And you’ll want to stop that child from running into the street,” the woman added, pointing over her shoulder.

  Kendra spun around and saw a small child running after a ball that was bouncing straight at the road.

  “Little girl!” she shouted, sprinting after the kid.

  Kendra’s wings flared as she shot forward and grabbed the girl and ball right before they hit the street. A second later, a car raced around the bend three times faster than it should have been going, right where the girl would have been.

  Kendra’s heart beat wildly as she set the kid down and the kid ran off towards a sandbox. There were parents everywhere, seeing as she had been walking right beside a playground, but somehow, no one had noticed that this kid had run off.

  Was it possible . . . was it feasible . . . that the hobo could see the future?

  Or had this whole demonstration just been staged?

  Kendra couldn’t decide. The two seemed equally likely.

  “So,” the hobo said from a seated position. She was sitting on the sidewalk, despite the fact that it was filthy and covered with sand. “Do you believe me?”

  “Maybe . . .” Kendra said cautiously.

  “What would convince you?” the woman asked.

  “An explanation wouldn’t hurt,” Kendra said darkly. “Why were you following me?”

  The born mage hobo shrugged. “I figured it was high time someone told you not all magical girls are inherently good.”

  “What?!” Kendra shouted.

  “You heard me.”

  “That’s absurd!” Kendra burst out, shoving her arms outward. “Everyone knows our magic only works for the pure in heart!”

  “Yes, I’ve heard the propaganda,” the woman said coolly. “It’s true a girl has to be young, innocent, and well-intentioned to become a magical girl. But I’ve studied the magic system since before you were born. After gaining their powers, magical girls can become corrupt.”

  Oh, that was what she was talking about. Kendra relaxed microscopically.

  “Well, sure, but then they’ll lose their powers,” she said, as if speaking to an idiot. Her halo spun in the air over her hand. “Just as if they’d grown too old or given them up willingly —”

  “— or died,” the hobo finished for her. “But, Kendra, I think you’re missing something. Only death or voluntary loss make magical girls powers vanish instantly.”

  Kendra didn’t ask how the hobo knew her name. It wasn’t the first time a villain had figured out her secret identity. She’d never gone to much effort to keep it hidden.

  “Don’t be dumb,” Kendra said impatiently. “I’ve seen recordings of defectors. Their focus items crumble, and they lose their transformations permanently!”

  I mean, really, you couldn’t get much more instant than that. The second a magical girl declared that she was turning to villainy, all her powers and costume and transformation vanished immediately. And it wasn’t just defectors, either. When a magical girl quit for any other reason, the results were the same.

  “There are dark magical girls,” Kendra conceded. “Is that what you mean? But they’re brainwashed by villains. When you take away the magic brainwashing them, they go back to normal again. They’re still pure underneath.”

  The hobo brushed away this comment as if it were irrelevant. “Well, obviously. But I meant real magical girls. Like you. The kind who look completely harmless on the surface.”

  Kendra bristled. If there was one thing she did not consider herself, it was harmless. She was mighty and powerful. She was a strong force for good.

  “You say you’ve seen recordings of defectors,” the hobo said. “It’s true that the news loves to report those rare events. It looks so convincing, doesn’t it? The instant a girl decides to turn evil, she loses her magic permanently.”

  “Right,” Kendra said, nodding sharply. She was starting to feel irritated.

  “Think it through, Kendra,” the hobo said. “A girl declares her intention to join the other side, then loses all her magic. The same thing happens with all defectors. But that isn’t because they’ve just turned evil. It’s because they’re choosing to give up their magical girl forms after turning evil. Do you really think that anyone would make such a decision out of nowhere? In a split second? Do you really think those people change drastically overnight?”

  Kendra was starting to see red. “MAGICAL GIRLS DON’T TURN EVIL!”

  “. . . And yet you assume all born mages do,” the hobo said. “Why are you so quick to judge my people, and so quick to praise yours? Haven’t you ever heard the saying, ‘Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely’?”

  “I wrote a paper on how that doesn’t apply to magical girls in fourth grade,” Kendra snapped.

  The hobo looked unsurprised, then exasperated.

  “Look, it’s been nice chatting,” Kendra said, starting to walk off, “but I have combat practice to salvage, a best friend to chew out, and —”

  “I didn’t come without proof, Kendra!” the woman interrupted. “Would you like to see it?”

  Kendra hesitated.

  Proof?

  “All right,” Kendra said slowly, turning around.

  The hobo held a hand out, cupping it, and images appeared. A pair of wings; a whip; a halo. Then a full scene appeared, tiny in the palm of her hand. The woman pinched it, and it stretched out wide before them. Sound began to swell from it, too.

  “— to protect world peace!” a politician was shouting from a podium.

  “World peace! World peace! World peace!” a crowd shouted. “World peace! World peace! World peace!”

  The woman pulled the image, and it zoomed forward to another scene. The same politician, zooming through the air with a mob of flying magical girls behind her. Her flowing robes were bloodred, as were her wings. There were buildings in the distance.

  “That looks like Mágico,” Kendra commented. “That’s the style of magical girl outfit they wear out there. Is this from the revolution?”

  The born mage hobo said nothing, and the scene changed.

  Now there was a terrible battle. Very little bloodshed, since most magical girl powers didn’t shed blood and most magical girl forms didn’t bleed, but there were thousands dying. One girl engulfed a soldier in what looked like cotton candy, then another soldier launched at her and mowed her down with bullets. She fell to the ground, detransforming, and he shot the bullets through her again, killing her human life as well.

  “What in the world?!” Kendra screamed. “You don’t do that! Killing a magical girl form, that I can get, but you don’t kill someone permanently!”

  The born mage’s eyes hardened, and she changed scenes.

  “If you see a kid on the battlefield, do not let it live!” an enemy commander was shouting. “I don’t care if you know you killed its magical form! The yo
unger they are, the more likely they are to get magic all over again! And those things aren’t innocent! They mean to destroy our entire country!”

  “Moron,” Kendra muttered. “It’s true that younger girls don’t have to be as pure as older ones, but there’s still a minimum level. If they’re attacking you, you clearly deserved it.”

  “But they’re kids,” a subordinate objected. “We can’t kill kids —”

  The superior’s fist thumped down. “They’re killing us, aren’t they? We don’t have a spare life we can just throw away!”

  “Nobody throws a magical girl life away,” Kendra said, riled. “There’s no guarantee that you could become a magical girl again. The vast majority of girls who die as magical girls don’t!”

  The scene dissolved, and a new one took its place.

  “Kill the hostages,” the woman with the bloodred robes said, stretching out her hand.

  “But they’re innocent!” a girl with an Australian accent protested. She was dressed much like a figure skater, and wore ice skates. “We can’t do that!”

  “We said we would if they didn’t release our allies, didn’t we?” the woman snapped. “We’ll lose all credibility if we don’t follow through on our threats.”

  “I told you not to make that threat, didn’t I?” an Asian girl said coolly. She wore what looked like a kimono and had flowers drifting lazily through her hair. “It didn’t work well against Emperor Kami, and it won’t work well here.”

  “Thank you for your opinion, Namikaze,” the woman snapped. “But I remind you that we still overthrew the man.”

  Oh. Kendra’s mouth opened. She’d been thinking she was watching scenes from the Mágico revolution, when magical girls had freed a portion of Brazil from the tyranny of its dictator who had persecuted magical girls, but now she realized she wasn’t. Emperor Kami was still on the throne of Japan.

  Which means . . . Kendra thought. Which means . . . this is the future?

  That would make more sense. The woman had said she could see the future. Maybe she could show it, as well. It was a fascinating power, one that Kendra would have found extremely admirable if it had belonged to a magical girl, but unfortunately, being from a born mage, that made it suspicious. It could very well be an illusion power, for instance. Everything she was watching could be fiction.

  But there’s something . . . Kendra thought, unsettled. There’s something that seems . . . familiar . . .

  No. Kendra shook her head. She’d never seen that woman before. What was familiar was the costume, which was rather like one she had been designing for her next power-up. She’d already planned out Florence’s, which would be that color of bloodred, so that she’d stop complaining about her costume being pink.

  Maybe not that shade, after all, Kendra thought, if there’s a villain masquerading as a magical girl who dresses like that.

  Because that was clearly what was going on here. If those future scenes she was currently seeing were real, it was a villain who had infiltrated the whole magical girl community and made them think she was one of them. Kendra wasn’t sure how, since magical girls were the only ones with magic that allowed for transformation, but perhaps a tricky villain from another world could pretend they did through illusion magic.

  The only question, Kendra thought, watching the woman kill off the hostages herself, is, why did this hobo come to me?

  As she watched the army of magical girls overrun the world, shattering cities, the answer became clear.

  Because we’re the only ones who can stop it. We’re the ones who are meant to save the world from that charlatan monster. Even a born mage doesn’t want to see the world ruled and destroyed by somebody from another world, and if she sees the future, she knows we need this information so that we can stop her.

  The moon exploded in the born mage’s hands, scattering fragments across the sky. A terrible earthquake roared.

  Of course, Kendra thought, nodding. She had never failed to do what was necessary, no matter what the cost. She would do whatever she had to to protect world peace.

  “Do you understand?” the born mage asked softly, as devastation continued spreading with her hands.

  Yes, Kendra tried to answer, but she couldn’t manage to speak. The magnitude of the disaster was too big to take in. The responsibility to stop it was too tremendous. But she mustn’t let fear stand in her way. The world needed her.

  Kendra licked her lips and swallowed to allow her dry throat to recover. “Is that . . . our new arch-nemesis?” she managed.

  For a moment, the visions ceased. The hobo was staring at her with what looked like pity. Then the born mage twitched her fingers, and a new scene appeared. Florence was there.

  Kendra recognized her in an instant. She had the same face, the same braids, and a new costume that looked nothing like Kendra had designed for her friend’s next power-up — typical Florence.

  The woman in the bloodred wings was standing there, too, with her back to Florence.

  This is the part where we defeat her, Kendra thought. Or — no. Is the hobo warning me that Florence is going to die in the attempt?

  Her heart squeezed at the thought. It was an awful idea. If Florence was going to die, then she should let her friend quit. Kendra could save the world by herself if she had to.

  But then the woman turned around, and she looked very, very familiar. The way she’d held her face before, such rage and fury, had seemed clearly villainish. But the way she looked at Florence now was different.

  The woman’s face now looked familiar.

  Horrifyingly familiar.

  “Kendra, you can’t take civilians hostage!” the future Florence said angrily. “If you do that, you’ll be crossing the line!”

  “They keep on killing our allies,” the other woman snapped. “Not just their magical girl forms, but their human lives. They won’t negotiate. They won’t stop. We have to do whatever’s necessary to save more lives.”

  “But their families are innocent!” the future Florence cried.

  “And so are our allies,” the woman said quietly. “I won’t have to make good on our threat. It won’t come to that. But I have to make it if we want those girls to come home alive.”

  “But even threatening —”

  “Do you want our allies returned, or not?” the woman roared in fury.

  The scene waited, and the born mage waited silently.

  “So . . . so our arch-nemesis looks like that,” Kendra said shakily. “She even has Florence fooled. Is . . . is that a doppelganger?”

  In answer, the born mage lifted her hands.

  “We will do whatever is necessary,” a translucent image of Kendra as she was now said, “to protect world peace.”

  Yelling at Florence. “To protect world peace!”

  Standing before the FBI branch office. “To protect world peace.”

  Speaking at their high school graduation. “To protect world peace . . .”

  Standing over a dead Felicity. “To protect world peace!”

  Now in the bloodred costume. “To protect world peace.”

  Founding the Magical Girl Union. “To protect world peace!”

  Leading the mob of magical girls following her into the horrible, bloodless battlefield. “World peace! World peace! World peace!”

  There was silence as the images faded and the born mage lowered her arms.

  “No,” she said. “I wish it were.”

  “That’s not me!” Kendra screamed. “That can’t be me!”

  “I can show you five complete paths from now to then,” the born mage said. “It’s rapidly becoming your most likely future.”

  “NO! YOU’RE LYING! I’D NEVER TURN EVIL! NEVER!!” Kendra screamed.

  Around her she felt feathers flying. She realized dimly that she must be detransforming. It was as if part of her wanted to shove the magic away. As if doing so would make the whole future dissolve and vanish.

  “Fine. Ignore my warning,” the hobo sa
id coldly. “Your choice.”

  “But . . . but I wouldn’t,” Kendra murmured, stumbling over the words. She was too stunned and lost to make any coherent argument. “I’m good.”

  “And let’s hope you stay that way,” the woman said, shoving the bloodred-woman future into her face.

  Kendra burst into tears.

  Did I go too far? Chronos wondered, unsure of herself. She never knew how to talk to people. She hadn’t meant to make anyone cry.

  On the other hand . . . wasn’t that a good thing? If this conversation made a strong impression, maybe it would stop that future. Maybe it would end it permanently. Chronos had no way to know; she couldn’t see any futures that she herself was in, and right now, this girl’s future was clearly dependent on their conversation.

  Clearly, because it was in flux, and almost all of the girl’s futures were now invisible to her.

  What can I do? Chronos wondered. What should I do?

  She knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to just walk away. She’d gotten here by teleporter, a magical device her uncle had made, so it would take no time at all to get right back home and resume ignoring the problem, like she’d wanted to do in the first place.

  But . . .

  But what if she’s not convinced? Chronos wondered. What if I only made things worse? What if I made her more determined, and it makes everything happen sooner?

  That was a risk she didn’t want to take. She wanted the future resolved. She wanted the nightmares over. She wanted to go home and know that she’d never have to return again. She had to make sure that future was gone now.

  “The thing about evil magical girls,” Chronos said, “is that most times corruption is a gradual process. The magic system’s too merciful. Magical girls don’t lose their powers when they start going corrupt — they lose their powers when they finish. Which is why evil magical girls are possi—”

  “MAGICAL GIRLS DON’T TURN EVIL!!” Kendra screamed, leaping to her feet.

  Chronos was about to snap back, but then realized that the girl was teetering on her feet, her eyes wild, looking unstable.

  “Except for the rare cases that do,” Chronos said gently.