(no subject)

[ax_iom]

Setting Concept (Shamelessly stolen from Prof)
Modern Earth, but with magic-wielding humans called Mages who fight monsters to protect humanity. Mages can be magical girls, sentai heroes, or a variety of other kinds of flashy defenders of humanity, but the powers are fundamentally the same, and manifest at an early age - usually around 10-13. Mages fight monsters in savage battles of survival until they turn 18, at which time they surrender their powers so that magical energy can be recycled for the next wave of Mages to be able to defend humanity.

The thing is, this setup is a lie, perpetrated by a massive 300-year-old conspiracy. Its originators, the Elder Magi, are humans who hoard magical power to live forever as gods in the shadows of the world. Magic isn't actually a non-renewable resource - when a Mage offers up their powers, it's the power they were born with, not power recycled from others. The power taken from the Mages at age 18 is crystalized and put in the vaults of the Elder Magi so that they can continue to amass metaphysical wealth, living eternally in luxury and letting the youth do all the hard work of fighting the monsters drawn to Earth by its steadily increasing concentration of magic.

This story isn't named yet, but it's about young people realizing that they've been lied to by older generations about the form of a society built to exploit their suffering, and those kids getting mad and rising up to tear down the system that torments them to seize their own happy endings when the adults fail to help them.

Character Information
Lily is a disgraced mage, a former hero. Well-celebrated and well-loved, she had everything in the world.

She had gained her powers at six years old, and was fighting monsters ever since. Too young to keep her name or identity a secret, she grew up as a celebrity, and with her selfless and kind personality, and her all-encompassing love for everyone, she was loved by everyone as a hero. Her magic was ridiculously powerful, and she had started it so much younger than everyone else, she had control and experience leagues above other mages.

And as she approached her eighteenth birthday, she began to question giving up her power. She talked to her familiar, Flora, and decided that she wouldn't give up her power. After all, she had power, she had experience- She could fight. She could fight so others woudln't have to. If she fought, others wouldn't have to experience the same fear she did as a child. She could save people, she could save even more people...

The elder magi used their kill-switch on Flora, as they had on all familiars. And just like that, the familiar face of Lily's familiar transformed into a ravenous monster, bringing its claws and thorns to bear against her. And Lily, who lost her powers without her familiar, let her monster-fighting instincts take over... And with a nearby fire ax, she killed her own partner.

She broke. She soon discovered her power returned, as it was her own power. She found a boy named Marco, and learned the truth of the conspiracy. That everything she had done had been for nothing. And, when she showed herself to fight more monsters, the elder magi hit the killswitch on other nearby familiars, blaming her as the source of it, for not giving up her power.

Thoroughly broken down and despairing, Lily now fights the conspiracy of elder magi, doing as much alone as she possibly can. She doesn't have an end goal, past a vague plan to plant herself as a figurehead of the conspiracy and let herself be defeated, to bring about an ending that won't cause anyone else to feel as though their sacrifices were meaningless. Her life, as far as she believes, has no other use. So she'll fight it alone, and not take away anyone else's purpose. She'll do everything she can on her own, and not drag anyone else into her mess.

She knows her role. She is the villain of the story.

Prompt ideas
1) AU into Lily's setting! You're probably either a mage or a concerned civilian, and here's this famous criminal former-hero fighting a monster right in front of you. What are you going to do?
2) AU Lily into your setting! Well, I'll figure out an AU, but you just tell me what the setting is.
3) Jamjar setting! Pick a game, pick a non-specific jamjar, figure it out and we'll work with it! You can assume they know each other or are just meeting for the first time.
4) Wildcard! Shitty texting memes, bad life choices, seven minutes in heaven, whatever.

Comments

1

[axeceptional]

[ Well. Nothing, actually. Jo, now Concerned Civilian #33303304, grabs a first aid kit from her bag just in case - Lily might remember her stint, some hero with an axe and body manipulation magic that used it to help people in their everyday lives more than she did to fight monsters, who gave her powers up without any fuss a couple of years ago - before she's able to make a break for it, Jo bounds over with the kit in hand, waving.

In person, she is huge. A good half a head taller than most men, with long limbs. ]

Nice job out there!

[ Said with a laugh, like she has no clue who Lily is. ]

[ax_iom]

[Lily has a distinctive appearance, and given how often she was on the news and such, she's surprised. She kind of assumed everyone would know her, so she squints suspiciously.

A stint of a former mage... She vaguely recalls this one, because that height was so distinctive. But does she really not remember her?

Lily's power is almost as distinctive as she is. It's basically just giant fuck-off pink lasers made of love. Which means, with overwhelming firepower, she doesn't take much in the way of wounds in battle, usually. But today, her power seems a bit weak, and even as the monster goes down... It lashes out, and gives her a pretty nasty slice across the arm.]

Ah... Thank you?

[That said, she doesn't seem to mind the big gash along her arm...]

[axeceptional]

Sure thing.

[ Well, first thing's first - getting it clean. She reaches for her arm, gingerly. ]

Is this ok?

[ax_iom]

[She winces a bit, but shakes her head.]

You don't need to bother. I'll live.

[axeceptional]

Between you and me, I don't think those kids would like it if you got killed from a scratch.

[ The mages that died when she refused to give up her powers, she means. ]

[withalltheuntold]

[one moment, Lily is alone in some shady alley doing...whatever she's doing. the next minute, a slender teenager who is wearing an inordinately fancy furisode - like something straight out of a painting of the Edo period imperial court kind of inordinately fancy - comes stumbling out of...somewhere??? into said alley. also of note is that they're covered in blood and holding a drawn sword (from which..most of the blood has been flicked off at least). a literal god-sword, since Lily can probably feel how much power is radiating off it.]

[ax_iom]

[She was just walking home, honestly. Her hair is a dark brown, cut short, and her eyes similar- She can at least disguise herself in her civilian form. But... Her eyes change color, almost on their own, as soon as she sees that sword.]

Who... are you?

[A monster...? But monsters don't ever look human, do they?]

[withalltheuntold]

[very calmly going to...flick the rest of the blood off their sword before sheathing it, cautiously, as they regard the other person. the sense of active power from that sword diminishes, though it's still kind of probably this Loud Fucking Presence on Lily's senses even inactive, as long as Kazue's hand is on the hilt.] I am Kazue. [a very formal, old-fashioned speech pattern. very polite.] Who are you?

[ax_iom]

... My name is Lily.

[Lily shifts her stance. She doesn't know who this person is, and she definitely doesn't trust them. She carries herself like she's ready to fight.]

What have you done?

[withalltheuntold]

What I must. they are not going to cry in front of a foreign stranger.] But this is not where I belong. [yeah, they can see that stance and while they aren't going to draw their sword again for now, hand still resting easily on the hilt, that doesn't mean much when they are able draw a sword from a sitting position while drinking tea in response to assassins. it's a deceptively relaxed pose.]

1

[unaffective]

Ah.

[ Despite being active now, at the tail end of her tenure (a mage that manipulates space, a girl who's a noted eccentric, a hero that thoughtlessly and mercilessly kills every monster she comes across), Elaine also just stands there and watches her. If it occurs to her at all to be miffed at a kill she planned to take being stolen, it doesn't show on her face; she pulls a chair and table from nowhere, some tea from nowhere, and just looks on while pouring a cup.

And then she has an idea, so she stands - in the battlefield, right in the crossfire, and says, simply, ]

Pardon me. If I could have a moment of your time...

[ax_iom]

[Tea? Well, she expected to be ignored, and even to be a spectacle. She was an enemy of humanity, after all. But, then...]

What are you doing?!

[She swings her staff, and a rain of pink lasers arcs around Elaine, slamming into the monster.]

If you're not going to fight, then leave!

[unaffective]

If I have approached you it is because I would like to speak to you -

[ Said as she dodges a swipe from the monster so at least, in spite of how she sounds, she is alert, ]

Have I behaved strangely?

[ax_iom]

Is this the time?!

[She jumps up, and blasts the monster into a small crater.]

[unaffective]

[ And with that she just sort of. Calls up a series of lances to impale it, before it's able to shake off the blast. Like... like 80 of them actually. Neither pretty nor entirely necessary. ]

Of course.

Post-canon texting

[moonlightglory]

Have you ever listened to that podcast that Maddie apparently has

oh my god

[ax_iom]

Not when I can avoid it, no.
Why?

[moonlightglory]

She's scouting for guests to interview
Asked me, I said maybe

[ax_iom]

That sounds like it'll be a pain...
Do you want to do it?

[moonlightglory]

No clue, I've never been on a podcast before.
You're a celebrity, is being interviewed any fun?

Somewhere roughly six months post-canon, if that works for you?

[nor_iron_bars]

[Normally, you'd expect Jail not to be a morning person. And sometimes, you'd be correct. Other times, however, the fact that she didn't have a sleep schedule so much as a sleep roulette wheel kicked in, and she woke up unaccountably early.]

[This may explain why she's in the kitchen at eight-thirty in the morning, hair still just the slightest bit damp at the edges from her shower, wearing nothing but a pair of white-and-grey-striped underwear and a shirt she clearly ripped the sleeves off of at some point. Judging by the fact that her gas mask isn't on, she's in her transformed state, despite having chosen to change out of her default battle costume.]

[The fact that she's also singing along to the radio and making something involving two different types of pancake mix and a jar of raspberry jam is a little more inexplicable. But at least it smells pretty nice?]

[ax_iom]

[Lily... Well. She hasn't had a good night's sleep since she turned eighteen. So her sleep roulette is pretty standard now. She's gotten used to power naps to survive.

That said, she's starting to think she's dreaming, looking at Jail doing this as she wanders into the kitchen with a yawn....]

What are you making?

[nor_iron_bars]

I have no idea.

[That seems a little inappropriately cheerful tone to say that about breakfast in, but it seems at least theoretically edible, so maybe she's just trying to hold on to her optimism. Such as it is.]

Kinda just following my muse, here. And my muse said "pancakes, but different". So I'm just working that out.

[ax_iom]

[okay, that. that gets a slight giggle.]

Did your muse say to make enough for two?

[nor_iron_bars]

Yep. She's a generous soul.

[Jail flips the potential pancake creation out of the skillet and onto a nearby plate. It looks... actually pretty tasty? It seems to be a large, thick pancake with swirls of darker color in amongst the golden brown. Apparently, Jail somehow managed to mix regular batter with something chocolate-flavored.]

[This may be less of a breakfast food than a dessert.]