The Dark Night of the Soul

She walked underneath the streetlights, through a doorway and into an empty room. There was a girl lying on the table, with mutilated genitals. She suppressed a gag reflex, hot edge of vomit burning her throat, as she checked the victim for signs of life: alive, but barely. Her wish wasn't specifically about healing – she wasn't sick or anything – but it was about transition, transformation, and transcendence, so she's reasonably good at healing magic. After giving the victim some magical first aid and calling the paramedics on her cellphone, she ventured deeper into the compound.

"Dammit, Gavin's gonna be devastated…" she whispered.

It was a women's shelter, once, a safe space for cis women to hide from the violence of cis men. The thing is, a safe space is, by definition, not an inclusive space; safety is cut out by taking power from others. When it's cis women taking power from cis men, like when black people taking power from white people, it's a great triumph for equality; but when cis women beat down on trans people to create their "safe space", it's the same as when cis men beat down on cis women to protect their "masculinity": the repeating of an exploitative, oppressive cycle of selfish violence.

"So the tranny faggot was trying to use the bathroom," a woman said, to the laughter of all the women around her. "So I pulled off its pants, and of course it has a penis; so I cut it off and ate it!"

It's true that this woman once saved and protected many other women, just like it's true that JFK played a pivotal role in the racial equality of US; it doesn't change the fact that she spread a hateful agenda that encourages the rape and murder of a marginalized people, just like JFK's heroic effort doesn't change how messed up his personal life is. Both things can be true at a time; a person can be a hero and a villain simultaneously. Those who believe that the good one does can somehow balance out the evil will soon find their path to paradise is strewn with corpses and their hands wet with blood.

"That girl had a name." Coagula spoke, her voice startling the women, as if she was invisible up until now. Then again, "civilized" society had always viewed trans people like her as invisible and disposable, much like with sex workers, until they need someone to blame, then suddenly it's all eyes on them. "Her name was Ana."

"Who gives a fuck?" the woman turned to face Coagula, and instead of a head she had a translucent womb on her shoulders, with an infant crying putrid pus of black inside its waters. It didn't look like a woman anymore – or human at all, for that matter – because it no longer was; it's now:

WOMBMINE, the Wight of Transphobia. Whether people admit it or not, transphobia is simply a form of Fascism, an irrational need to oppress a people based on essentialist traits they cannot change, same as racism. What transphobes truly want is not a safe space for women, but a safe space for men, where everyone in society is put into rigid, sex-based roles so that men can continue their violence and reduce women to nothing but walking baby factories for men. They're not Feminists; they're misogynists.

At once, all the women around her rose, and Coagula could see that each of them had the symbol of Venus on their cheeks. Coagula frowned; it seemed to work like a Witch's Kiss, but it just...wasn't.

"I had hoped to resolve this peacefully." Coagula said evenly. As a trans girl, she is used to suppress her anger past the limit of human endurance, lest "Feminists" like these would accuse her of possessing a male emotion and thus deserving to die along with anyone that scares white women. "I guess not."

A gemstone the size and shape of a chicken egg appeared in Coagula's hands, encased in a golden cage with intricate patterns on the metal: her Soul Gem. The velvet glow grew brighter and stronger in her palm until it enveloped her body, and her transformation sequence began:

Her clothes dissolved in the rain and then coagulated, transforming into a purple robe reminiscent of Medieval alchemists. She looked at her own reflection in a pool of water, but instead of herself she saw a girl with black wings, and when the two traded places the black wings became her shoulderguards. A drop of rain stretched and expanded in midair, solidifying and gaining color, until it became a two-headed spear in her hands, with each end adorned with a small pair of wings, black and white.

"Who...what are you!?" the baby inside Wombmine snarled as its minions shuffled toward Coagula, but the girl ignored them and dashed toward the monster, sending one tip of her spear deep into the creature shaped like a fetus. Before it died, the Wight cried in outrage: "This is male violence! You're a man!" while its minions all fell down to the floor at once, the Wight's Mark disappearing from their faces.

"If it means I'm doing the right thing," Coagula said coldly as the beast died, its head shrinking into a small, black orb the size of a chestnut, encased in a delicate design traced out by silver: a Grief Seed. "Then I don't care what I have to be." she picked up the Grief Seed and stared at it ponderously. "That was definitely not a Witch...not by our definition, anyways." she observed as a small white creature, a weird chimera between a cat and a ferret, appeared at her feet. "The fuck is going on here, Kyubey?"

"There's a new system in town." the creature - Kyubey – said, and Rain frowned when she noticed how he no longer had the two gold ring around his ears: another new development. "They call her Magius."

Sighing, Rain recalled the time when she first met Kyubey, without a doubt the darkest day of her life...

/ 人◕‿‿◕人＼

"Rain Flaherty," Kyubey said to Rain the very first time they met, appearing out of nowhere inside the privacy of her bathroom. "Make a contract with me and become a Magical Girl!"

"Wha - " Rain blinked, her eyes wet with tears, the razor in her hand suspended over her wrist, its blade kissing her skin gently. "...I don't know who or what you are, but this isn't funny!"

"I do not understand the concept of fun," Kyubey said, unfazed. "My name is Kyubey, a Messenger of Magic. Make a contract with me and become a Magical Girl, and I can grant you one wish!"

"One wish, huh?" Rain hmphed as she finally let go of the razor...for the time being, in any event. "And you just so happen to show up when I'm contemplating suicide? What's the catch, Kyubey?"

"You will have to protect humanity by fighting evil monsters known as Witches." Kyubey said. "It is a very noble cause, truthfully; you will be doing a great service for the entire universe! "

"The entire universe?" Rain laughed bitterly. "Oh, now you're just exaggerating; everyone knows that a tranny like me is worthless except when 'Feminists' need someone to step on."

Nevertheless, Rain considered it. She usually isn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth – after all, most trans people like her were so abused by the "civilized" world that a day without microaggression would be the best day of their lives. But obviously Rain wasn't in a very optimistic frame of mind; her hand gently brushed the right side of her face, where a strain of her hair used to hide her right eye. Without a doubt, people would mock her for contemplating suicide over her hair being forcefully cut, thinking her to be weak; some particularly heartless monsters may even celebrate the death of these teenagers with a special sale of her game, while the gamer dudebros that usually hate Feminists with a passion suddenly bending backward to justify the evil of this particular "Feminist". The same hypocrites also laugh at veterans startled by loud sounds when it reminded them of their traumatic war time experiences: it's not the act or the word itself that hurts, it was a lifetime of humiliation and oppression that was brought back by that one word or act. Then again, these same gamer dudebros also worship the military as an abstract ideal without ever seeing a day of combat or caring for veteran's rights at all, so it's plainly obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together they're just worthless and selfish children.

"Oh, what the hell." Rain sighed and turned to face Kyubey. "Sure, I'll make a contract with you...if you can make me a cis girl. Now, where do I sign and do I have to do it in blood?"

"The contract is completed." Kyubey said as his fluffy and hand-like tail reached into Rain's chest and, after one agonizing moment, drew out a gemstone the color of velvet. "No blood required."

/ 人◕‿‿◕人＼

"Ky!" Rain called out to her neighbor when she saw them on her way home. "Just who I wanted to see!"

"Oh yeah?" Ky said with a lopsided grin and a shrug. "What's the word, Rain?"

"I was just wondering," Rain began, "If you've heard anything about this new system called Magius - "

Suddenly, with one inhumanly fast and fluid motion, Ky grabbed Rain's wrist and dragged her into an alley.

"Rain – Coagula." Ky switched to using her Magical Girl name. "Don't ask questions about Magius. Just...don't."

"Seriously? You're going to get all professional on me?" Rain blinked, sighed, and changed her tone as well. "Quicksilver?"

"It's for your own good." Ky said urgently as they pinned Rain to a wall. "We have a good thing going here, Coagula; don't rock the boat for the rest of us."

"I just had to kill a woman earlier today." Rain said with disdain in her voice as she pushed herself off the wall and against Ky's body. "So forgive me if I have some question about this shiny new system of yours."

"Wights are not any more human than Witches are." Ky backed off with their hands up in a placating gesture. "And they still drop Grief Seeds. What's the difference? It's no big deal."

Rain considered it. She didn't know how much Ky know, about the truth of Magical Girls, about how Witches were Magical Girls, and thus were arguably human...at least at one point.

"If you insist on going down this road…" mistaking Rain's hesitation as refusal, Ky took out their Soul Gem, and bright emerald TRON lines shoot out from the gemstone to initiate their transformation:

The world is made of light and mercury, liquid and fluid, shining and ever-changing. The TRON lines snaked around their body, spreading mercury wherever they went, until they made a futuristic cloak of silver and emerald around them. Ky spread their hands, held their palms into fists, then crunched their fists against each other, before they pulled their hands apart again; a blob of mercury expanded in their hands, trembling as if it was a living thing, and became a spinning ring of silver around Ky's body.

"So it comes down to this, huh?" Rain sighed as she transformed as well. "I swear, there's something about magic that just makes people want to use it when they don't have to…"

"Cut the chitchat, Coagula!" Ky grinned wolfishly as the ring of mercury surrounded their right hand and then solidified into a silver gauntlet with which they struck Rain. "Drop your questions about Magius, or forever keep your peace!"

"I have been a Magical Girl longer than you, Quicksilver." Rain said as she cut the wall behind her with one tip of her spear, and the bricks immediately dissolved into an impossible liquid, letting her through into the abandoned building beyond. "Do you really think you can overpower me?"

"Hey, you know what they say:" Ky, on the other hand, simply smashed the wall in with the gauntlet before they turned the mercury into a silvery whip and used it to snare Rain's ankle. "Nothing is impossible for those who try!"

"Idioms," Rain cut Ky's whip with one quick sweep, then she danced around Ky while spinning her spear, seemingly missing Ky's lower body with the downward tip of the spear. Repeatedly. "Are just shitposts by dead people."

A circular section of the ceiling collapsed onto Ky, pinning their body down to the ground, its melting edge dissolved by Rain's magic.

"Ow..." Ky groaned under the weight of the concrete as they transformed back; they would have been mortally wounded, if not for the fact that Magical Girls are stronger and tougher than any human has any right to be. "You really don't pull punches, huh?"

"Come to my place when you have cooled off." Rain told Ky as she transformed back as well. "Aunt Fara is making lasagna today. Well, actually Jessica is cooking, but Aunt Fara is the one inviting you."