Olivia

 

The glass doors of the Marty Mart slid open, revealing a chaotic scene on the other side. Not chaotic in a bad way, mind you - just the normal chaos that goes on in a shopping mall. Long lines at check-out, with carts stretching so far back they got in the way of foot traffic. People loitering around the produce section, carefully eyeing everything before selecting anything. A few moms, with crying children. The usual.

It didn’t come to a stop when I came in. Which, on the one hand, gave me a bit of time to compose myself and figure out my next step. Great. Except for the fact that I now had to try and actively draw the attention of an entire crowd of people.

I coughed slightly, clearing my throat. It got me a couple odd looks, but not much else. A few people slowed down to check me out? It wasn’t every day you saw someone the same color as ooze, after all. Most of them probably just thought it was distasteful body paint, though. After a moment of looking at me, their attention scattered.

Just go up to customer service and borrow a microphone, Chrys suggested. That’ll get some attention.

“Or I could just amplify my voice with magic,” I pointed out.

Or that. If you want to deny me the fun of you trying to politely ask to borrow a microphone for threat-making.

…Right. No. Voice-amplifying magic it was! I focused, the same way I did when I made Chrys’s voice audible to others. It was just a matter of concentrating on my intentions, so that the ooze particles in the atmosphere could pick up and amplify my voice. I probably could have just turned some ooze into a megaphone or something - it would have taken less magic power if I had, in all likelihood - but I wanted to cut a more… dramatic figure.

Which is why my eyes began to glow as I spoke loudly to the room. “Humans of Marty Mart! I stand before you with a warning. No longer shall the ooze rain mindlessly upon your streets! No longer shall the slime eat mindlessly at public goods and concrete! From this day forth, it will act with intelligence. It will act at my command. And all of you shall tremble before it.”

…Nice speech. Though you kinda lack the power to back it up, you know? Not like you can control the ooze on a global scale.

‘Shut up, I’m trying to get into character!’ I grumbled, focusing. I wasn’t Olivia, the scared maybe-trans girl right now. I was the Violet Queen, ruler of the Ooze, and sole person capable of controlling it.

To that end, I did the most reasonable thing I could think of in the moment, and… ate a cash register. Not with my mouth, or anything, of course. I  just sorta stretched my hand out to grab a cash register and then let the ooze slide over it and consume it, and next thing I knew I’d… eaten it. Or at least the metal bits? I was pretty sure I hadn’t eaten any of the dollar bills, which made sense since it was mostly organic materials… Meaning I’d basically just stolen a bunch of cash and stored it in my stomach, but… I was meant to be a villainess, right?

Either way, my performance had an effect. People were staring at me, eyes wide with fear and shock. I decided to lean into it, smirking like this was all some sort of grand plot and not just me winging it. Then I focused on something new. Something I hadn’t tried before, but which made a sort of sense to me. I took the mass I’d eaten, and rather than reconstituting it into material, I tried to turn it into more ooze. It worked, too - I could feel myself becoming more… full, I guess? Denser, maybe? Like there was more of me than there’d been before.

Then I focused on expelling that extra mass, to form a large glob of ooze. One that quickly twisted and shifted in shape, taking on a… somewhat simplistic, but still recognizably female form.

The new creature I’d created looked to me, and though its eyes were just shallow impressions on the round blob that passed for its head, I could tell that it was in fact staring. Not just staring, though - waiting. For instructions.

“Go forth little minion,” I told it. “Go and eat all the inorganics you can get your grubby violet hands on - and then spread. Multiply! Grow! Take over this store! By the time those magical girls get here, we’ll have the place emptied!”

…Well, as close to ‘emptied’ as we could get when the slime couldn’t actually eat half the store’s stock. Inorganics only, after all.

Still, it was a start, right? And hopefully it would get the Magical Girls’ attention off the college if they had to keep fighting me everywhere else.

 

***

White Heart

***

 

“Everyone ready?” I asked my team, glancing between Red and Violet Heart.

“Of course, dear,” Red replied, a small smile on her lips. Not a surprise - she was always pretty put together. She was the team mom, in a lot of ways - the nurturing one.

“Of course I’m ready!” Violet practically spat at me, by contrast. Again, not a surprise - she was the trouble maker in our group, after all. If anything, I was just happy to hear an affirmative buried in her spite. “Ready to take that violet bitch down a peg.”

“We’re not here to settle scores,” I reminded Violet, frowning. “We’re here to stop a threat. That’s it. No getting carried away on personal vendettas.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Violet replied, rolling her eyes in a way that indicated she very much didn’t. “Just as long as I get to punch that violet bitch in the face.”

I sighed, shaking my head at my teammates. Why couldn’t they just follow the script? I had all of our best interests at heart. I just needed them to follow my lead…

It’s okay, White! Heartemedies whispered into my mind. Every leader faces such struggles! I’m sure a successful battle against the Violet Queen will do wonders for binding you into a proper team!

I nodded, noncommittally, ignoring the questioning glance from Violet. Red at least seemed able to guess who I was talking to. The minimum I would expect from either teammate, considering they both had crystals of their own.

Regardless, it was time to get to work. Our crystals had found reports of a purple skinned woman making a mess of the Marty Mart, after all, and now we were hovering in the parking lot before it. It looked surprisingly normal from the outside, with no sign of the monster within - except perhaps for the crowd of people outside its automatic doors, snapping photos with their phones.

“Get ready for some attention,” I told the others, pasting a bright smile on my face as my heartpad flew towards them.

“Coming through!” Violet called out, looking fully ready to plow straight through the crowd in order to get to her destination.

“Oh dear,” Red murmured, even as the first people began to turn around to see us.

“Slow down, Violet!” I called, even as those closest to her widened their eyes and leapt out of the way. 

Violet just snorted, tilting her heartpad to go up and over the crowd, before dipping down to the empty space between them and the Marty Mart. For all their crowding, none of the civilians had wanted to get close enough to actually open the automatic doors, meaning there was in fact space for Violet to proceed - and proceed she did. Directly into the glass doors, which failed to open due to her floating above the pressure plate.

“Do you need a bandaid?” Red called out, loud enough to be heard above the murmurs of the crowd.

“I’m fine!” Violet called back, as if she hadn’t just stumbled off her heartpad and landed on her ass. At least the doors were open, now. For better or worse. “I’m going in!”

“Could you at least wait for us to catch up!?” I demanded. Not that Violet listened, striding right ahead. “Sorry, everyone, but I’ll need to be following…” I spend up a little, myself, going up and over the crowd as Violet did. Unlike my violent teammate, though, I made a point of actually landing on purpose and walking inside. As did Red, behind me.

Thank the heavens for actual useful teammates.

“Come on out and face me, Violet Queen!” Violet screamed at the top of her lungs, even as I came in after her. 

The scene before us was… disastrous. Food, absolutely everywhere, most of it lying upon the ground. Everything inorganic, from metal shelves to plastic bottles, had been consumed, leaving behind only a mass of organic matter.

Otherwise, the place was largely empty. The walls were intact, the people had all been evacuated - other than the Violet Queen herself. A better set of circumstances than I could have hoped for, going in, in all honesty…

Except, instead of one Violet Queen, there were three.

“What’s the meaning of this!?” Violet demanded, glancing suspiciously between the three figures. “Since when can you multiply?”

“Oh, only one of us is real,” said the figure on the right.

“Though it wouldn’t be quite right to call the others fakes,” giggled the one on the left.

Violet, for her part, immediately lifted her wand and readied it to shoot the one in the middle, without even waiting for her to speak. A move that made me want to slap her, especially when the one in the middle began to giggle.

“Careful,” she warned. “We-” The blast went off, forcing the middle figure to duck. “Hey! Who just shoots in the middle of-” Another shot went off, forcing the girl to bend backwards. “Are you trying to hit the civilian?”

“The civilian?” Violet asked, snorting. “Funny. I don’t see a civilian here.”

“Well, look closer!” the shot upon violet figure declared, straightening up again. At the same time, I couldn’t help but notice that the other two figures hadn’t moved much - only smirking at the display. “I might seem to be the Violet Queen, but…” Suddenly, the violet skin upon her face shifted, pulling apart to reveal a completely different face - a younger looking one, with bright green eyes and pouty lips from which whimpers were currently escaping.

“What-” I began, caught off guard.

“Hostages!?” Violet demanded, as the violet skin closed up again, the Violet Queen’s familiar visage taking over for the poor girl beneath.

“It could be a trick,” I warned the others. “If she’s capable of making herself look like a person, then-”

“We don’t actually know if she can do that, though, do we?” Violet interrupted. “That’s just your pet theory for why we can’t find her, right?”

“That’s…” I grit my teeth. “It’s still a real possibility.”

“But it’s also possible that there’s a civilian under all that, right?” Violet demanded.

“You…” I glared at her. Not because she was wrong, but because I didn’t think she really cared about being right. She was just arguing with me because I was the one to present the theory.

“Ah…” Red raised a hand. “I um… I think I saw the Violet Queen piloting a man’s body around, once… She left him behind and fled when I was on her trail.”

“Then…”

The Violet Queen laughed, again. “So what’s it going to be? Will you come after the civilians? Or will you give me what I want?”

“We’ll never give you what you want, bitch!” Violet called out. “Ever!”

“Now don’t be like that,” the Queen called out. “I haven’t even said what it is you’ll need to do to earn those two civilians back…”

“Other than just beating you up?” Violet asked, her wand glowing again.

“And potentially killing the hostages?” the Queen demanded.

Still gritting my teeth, I grabbed Violet’s wand and forcefully pushed it down. “At least listen to her before consigning civilians to death.”

The three Queens smirked, in unison. “There you go,” said the one in the middle. “How about this - two of my bodies will go outside, with Violet and Red, and the other will remain here and have a pleasant chat with White. I’m willing to sacrifice the mass holding the civilians, so you’ll get them back after me and White are done.”

“You’re trying to separate us again, aren’t you?” Violet accused. Surprisingly astutely.

“Yup,” The Queen confirmed. “What are you going to do about it?”

Violet looked like she wanted to say plenty, but I held up a hand. “It’ll be fine,” I said, through grit teeth. “Just… go outside, alright? I’ll take care of everything.”

The Queen was still smirking, even as Violet and Red eyed me with anger and worry respectively.

“If anything goes wrong, I’m breaking in,” Violet said after a moment.

Red nodded.

“Nothing will go wrong,” the Queen promised. “Now be good little girls and go outside… Or would you rather swap things around, with me going into the crowd and you staying in here?”

“Your proposal is fine,” I said, before the other two could speak up. “I’ll talk to you. Just as long as you promise to release your hostages afterwards.”

“Of course,” the Queen on the right side, with a sly smile.

“Would I lie to you?” asked the one on the left.

The one in the middle just kept smirking.

This… was going to be an interesting conversation, wasn’t it?