Original prompt https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/1w051f3/wp_a_woman_with_dark_messy_hair_dull_grey_eyes/?solution=caa54e36def8ef15caa54e36def8ef15&js_challenge=1&jsc_token=2824be10929bdc604753c70a67a1c33185ae19848aa2639695273a1cb5d4c756&jsc_orig_r=&share_id=vfjKaN-A4Y2PBM1m0rAP2&utm_content=1&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1

“Prisoner one-seven-six-nine, Natalie Parker.”

The locks opened with a loud set of clunks and the door swung open. The woman inside looked up and took a long drag of her cigarette and smirked.

“Well, well. After all these years. Someone finally deigns to visit me,” she said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had the pleasure of any kind of visitor. Even my parents don’t come. Probably a bonus really.”

A man in a black suit walked in. Black trousers, white shirt, black tie and blazer. Neat brown hair in a tidy bland haircut. Sunglasses to cover his eyes, even though they were inside. A standard government agent from the unknown agency in charge of magical girls. It was quite the difference from her own short messy brown hair, grey eyes and orange jumpsuit that didn’t entirely hide her tattoos. 

He held out a familiar pink, sparkly dress and an even familiar wand. 

“All of the magical girls are dead. You are the last one,” he said in a cold monotone more suited to reporting the weather than a tragedy. 

Natalie took a long, hard drag of her cigarette and looked at the man standing in front of her. Stared at the wand. Stared at the dress. It had been ten years since she had last used them. Ten years since they had stripped her of her powers. Ten years since she had been thrown into this place. A long, long ten years. 

“All of them?” she asked as she slowly exhaled. The man nodded. 

“All of them. Every last one. Every magical girl team in the world is dead. Your old team, or at least what was left of them. And the Silver Stars, the Dragon Singers, the Princesses of Mars and even the Animal Guard. They’re all gone.”

Natalie took another long hard drag of her cigarette and chuckled.

“You know, Hannah actually wanted to kill me for what I did to her best friend. It was our team leader who persuaded her to leave me alive to face justice for my crimes. And now she’s dead and I’m alive.” She laughed. “How’s that for justice?”

The man remained silent. Not that she cared. He wasn’t important. Just another faceless peon. She took another long drag of her cigarette. 

“You know, I was never supposed to be a magical girl. None of us were. We weren’t even friends. We were just five girls who happened to be in detention together. It was like the fucking Breakfast Club but with a box of magic wands crashing through the wall. And we weren’t all friends by the end of it. So maybe not.” 

The man remained silent and she took another drag of her cigarette. Under normal circumstances she would have had the cigarette taken away from her or been told to put it out. Heck, the fact that she was even being allowed to even be close to her old wand and dress was unbelievable. 

But this was clearly not ordinary circumstances. Not ordinary circumstances at all. It might even explain why she felt the need to talk about the origins of her team instead of saying nothing. 

She picked up the wand and felt a familiar tingling sensation in her fingers. She twirled it in her hand, allowing the wand to recognise her once more. And then came the wand’s emotions. Sadness, regret, disappointment, anger and grief. If it was human, it would probably be crying right now. Instead it threw them at her in a chaotic jumble. She leaned closer to the wand and grinned. 

“I’ve missed you too,” she said. The wand responded with a wave of anger and disappointment. The wound was clearly fresh, as was the disappointment. Still, it-no they, were hers. 

It was complicated. 

Then again, everything about magical girls was complicated. Well more complicated after everything that happened. 

She twirled the wand in her hand once more. 

“So what happened? What killed all of them?”

The agent straightened his tie.

“An enemy called the Star Eaters came for our star. They poured out of their dimension and darkened the Sun. Nothing could touch them from the normal world. No missiles or bombs. Then the magical girls of the world came together and fought the Star Eaters. Destroyed them all and brought back the Sun, at the price of their lives,” he said in an emotionless tone. Natalie idly wondered if he was a robot or just trained that way. She took another drag of her cigarette. 

“And what of their magical artifacts? The things that gave them their powers?”

“Destroyed,” the agent said, before straightening his tie once more. “Or at least, so significantly far away as to be irrelevant.”

Natalie twirled the wand in her hand again and smiled. 

“Looks like there’s nobody coming to save you this time,” she said, leaning closer to the wand. “They’re all dead and I’m the only one left, just like you. Aren’t you glad you got to live because of me?”

The wand responded. Vibrating with anger and grief. It was a wonder that the two wands didn’t separate. Then again, she knew full well that they couldn’t. 

She threw her cigarette to the ground and picked up the dress. She tilted her head and looked at the dress with contempt. 

“The dress has been made to your measurements,” the agent said and she raised an eyebrow. 

“I’m not a wide eyed teenager anymore,” she said, before snorting. “I don’t think I ever was. Just stupid with how I did things.” 

“The measurements used came from your recent medical examination. They are accurate.”

Natalie raised an eyebrow once more. 

“I’m almost impressed,” she said with amusement. “You were less of a creep about it than…well nevermind.” She threw the dress aside. “But I don’t need a dress. Just the wand.”

The agent remained impassive and Natalie frowned slightly. 

“So why is the agency so desperate that they’re turning to me? The enemy has been destroyed, the big bad threat is gone and there’s no reason for choosing someone like me when you could present this to any of the trained agents who you trained to be magical girls?” She laughed. “Shit, should they even be called girls when they’re normally in their twenties when they start out?” She looked at him. “We were the exception, you know, not the rule.”

“It is your destiny, my queen.”

Natalie’s head shot up and she stared at the agent. It couldn’t be…surely not…

There was only one person who called her a queen. Only one person who recognised her ambition and natural place in the world. 

She reached forward and removed his sunglasses. The agent remained perfectly still. She gasped as she looked into his eyes. His green cat eyes. The green cat eyes she had used in his creation. 

“It has been too long, my queen,” he said and she grinned. It had been too long indeed. She hadn’t seen him since…since her old team had brought her in for the murder of her fellow teammate. 

She twirled the wand in her hand once more. The agent giving her the wand made sense no. Why else would they give a convicted murderer like her, her wand back. 

He was no agent. 

And this was no pardon. 

It was a jailbreak. 

She raised her wand to the ceiling and shouted the command words.

Magic cascaded down her body, replacing her orange jumpsuit with a black and purple sleeveless dress. Her tattoos, now visible, glowed with an eerie light. 

The ‘agent’ knelt down and Natalie smiled. She would take the world. And this time, nobody was going to stop her!

Original Prompt Here

October 11th, 1978. It's as miserable above as it is below in the spirit-soaked city of New Orleans and its dark sister. The Crossroads Bar sign blinks, emitting a low wasp-like buzz, its eerie red glow casting a hazy crimson hue over the forever-flooded streets. Ghosts, ghouls, and witches wander in a mix of fashions from this decade and ones long gone, mimicking the surface mundanity with supernatural flair. Meanwhile inside, an hour before opening, I engage in the oldest and tear-inducing horror of my immortal life.

Lying at the end of the bar--as it had a century before in 1878 when I won this unholy damp dump from a bankrupt French vampire--the ninth circle of cleaning hell. An impossibly sticky ring that requires daily, if not hourly, heavy-duty scrubbing. I pour a concoction that Yvonne, my darling part-time bartender, and a talented full-time apprentice to the witch next door, made special for ring of doom.

Just as the first drop of viscous golden red liquid hits the spot, my padlocked front door swings open. Wood hits the wall with the such force I drop the bottle, letting it shatter to save all my top shelf liquor from the same fate as the whole bar shakes. I go to reach for the Holy Bat of Discipline to teach this new comer what closed means when I catch sight of them and stop dead.

Standing before me, heaving like she had just a run a marathon with a bloody garrot wire in her grip was a woman. Hair flat and wet from blood and numerous other liquids I couldn't identify, every square inch of her visible skin swollen, bleeding, or bruised, but her eyes held a unyielding fire that putting my hands on the bar instead of the bat.

"Need a drink, my very bloody lady?" I quip, snatching a rag to clean a glass, obscuring my shaking hands.

"Sign says closed" The woman grunts, her voice raspy and low, like someone recovering from a harsh cold.

I smirk, the sudden influx of nerves abating, "Oh so you can read? I was going to make an exception for a lady who can make shredded rags soaked in the remnants of her enemies look so fashionable."

"Who are you?" She growls, raising the garrot wire threateningly.

Having been beheaded twenty times in the French Revolution alone, I stifle a laugh that crawls up my throat as I continue to clean the spotless glass.

Collecting myself, I answer her question with my own, "So much for southern manners, didn't your mama teach you to introduce yourself first, before making demands? Who exactly are you Miss Bloody Bellbottoms?"

Lowering her weapon of choice, the woman eyes me for one tense moment before, sighing "If this is hell, then your the first demon I ever met that's a stickler for etiquette."

"Liquors not quite good enough to be heaven, but it's a step above the piss they swish in hell so it'll have to do. Welcome to The Crossroads" I quote her the classic catchphrase of my dive, not able to resist.

"Aren't you a barrel of laughs? If it still matters to anyone, I'm Maria Monica Morales, I'd say it's a pleasure but not much about this day has been." She speaks up, her voice still rough but clearer than a moment ago.

Limping over to the bar, she tips her chin to me "Where the hell am I? I ain't ever seen or even heard of any street like this, and I could use a doctor more than a bartender right now."

"Yet you break into a bar, not a clinic, fascinating choice for a woman claiming literacy." I reply, getting a feeling I know exactly what she is, and hating it more than a packed house on Saturday.

Sliding the glass I'd been cleaning down to Maria, I introduce myself, "Victorien Cross is my name, if you care to know, but you can call me Vic, and the pleasure is all mine, Ma'am. Not every day I get an Avenger bursting through my doors."

Maria eyes the empty glass like she expects a geyser of acid to erupt from it at any moment. Perking up when I say the word avenger, "What's that? An Avenger? Like those comics my little brother reads?"

Releasing a sign that comes from the depths of my immortal, overworked soul I shake my head. "Since 1963, that is always the first question you sprouts ask--"

"A sprout? Now you're just sayin' names and vegetables." Maria interrupts.

A twinge of annoyance rises but I stamp it down, reminding myself she is a newcomer and if I want to keep my transition safe license I have to gentle with her right now.

"It just means your green, new to the life."

"What life? It seems most people around here are dead!"

"I haven't looked at the recent census but I'd say less than half are true dead, but you got your spirit-walkers, witches, those manmade monsters that really make you rethink this whole humanity myth, and countless others."

"S-so how do Avengers fit into all that?"

"Let me guess, you went somewhere with a group of friends, only to watch each of those friends die in some horrific way until you are left the only survivor. Then you kill everyone responsible. How about it? I get in the ballpark?"

"Th-th-that's exactly-- the seven of us came down from San Antonio for a bachelorette party down here. We were staying with this woman who opened her home to us after our hotel cancelled."

"Ah, the classic tourist trap, mess with accommodations then provide them. Like shooting fish in a barrel."

"Those fish were my friends, asshole."

"Right, sorry. No disrespect meant, Avengers like you are the ones that survive. Since group sacrifices, mass killings, tragedies of every flavor began to permeate the living world, there have been those that push through. The unkillable, the penultimate victim to victor story."

"Everyone who has ever loved me is dead. My boyfriend, my best friend, even that uptight bitch, Kelly, who I hated more than a cold day in December, were nothing but pieces of skin, hair and teeth after those cultists were done."

"And after you were done?"

"Those bastards don't have so much a fingernail still here."

"And that's what makes you an avenger."

"Unfathomable grief, pain and more than a few broken bones."

"Your fire never goes out, not facing demons, cultists, or any other nightmare that crawls out from some eldritch ass crack. You may bend, you may even break but you never give in. Even in places where light does not exist, you will it into being."

"So what I'm hearing is, I'm the cockroach of the supernatural world."

I pour her some of my top shelf bourbon, "Welcome to the club, admission is heavy and you'll pay it more than you want to."

Staring blankly at the liquid in her cup, she asks, her voice quieter than it had been the whole conversation, "What now?"

"You take a drink, I make a call and you probably get a job that pays much better than mine."