Chương 3: Goading

Stacy and Tracy sat at a table in a pub, sipping glasses of lemonade, staring at the bar where a disgustingly handsome guy was chatting up an entire party of girls. The pair had transformed out of their magical girl forms, mostly because the perception filter had limits—there was no way they could order drinks and expect the bartender not to notice them—but partially because they simply weren't needed and the bulky costumes were a pain to sit down in, literally.

The decorative frills were enough to make even the softest seating uncomfortable.

"The number of things I'm seeing that I thought only happened in movies keeps climbing," sighed Stacy.

"And there's nothing we can do?" asked Tracy, as the Bane French-kissed one of the girls, the others jeering in response.

"He's not hurting them and he's not forcing himself on them," answered a voice from under the table, causing the patrons on the next table to look around in confusion.

"He really is only taking enough to ensure he doesn't starve. To those girls, it'll feel no worse than if they'd had an extra drink or two. From the looks of them, it's obviously not an unpleasant experience." Decay finished his nourishing kiss—his 'victim' a little wide eyed and spacey, but pulling a big, dopy grin that made it obvious that 'not unpleasant' was something of an understatement—and flashed the girls' table a wink. Stacy mimed throwing up. The Bane smirked back.

"This is stupid," said Stacy.

"Let's go home."

"No. We need to keep him under watch," said Tracy.

"Why? He's just rubbing it in."

"And if we weren't watching, what would stop him taking just a little more than he needs? How much energy would he need to drain to balance out a shift of volunteer work? We mustn't let him experiment."

"We can't keep watching him forever, and besides, from the way he acted yesterday, he obviously didn't know he'd be immune until Mary attacked him. That means any experimentation would require us to attack him repeatedly, in which case the moment his protection does break, he dies. He's every bit as stuck as we are."

"Maybe we could capture him?"

"Oh, that's some scary stuff for a pair of such young girls to be saying," he said from the bar.

"The heck?! How good is his hearing?"

"Just ignore him."

"We can't keep him under twenty-four-hour watch forever, though. There are only four of us, and we have school to worry about."

"Let's just leave," interjected William.

"If he starts draining more energy, I'll sense it. We can check up on him again later."

"Fine. There's no point talking about him here when he can hear everything we say. Let's go update the others on what we've learnt." Decay poked his tongue out at the girls as they left. Stacy responded in kind.

"That's ridiculous," said Natasha, sometime later, the girls having gathered in Stacy and Tracy's shared bedroom. It had become the squad's official meeting point mostly on account of it being the biggest, although Natasha also appreciated their extensive games console collection.

"You can't just act good. It doesn't mean anything if you don't believe in it. He's still an evil monster, however he behaves."

"Is he?" asked Mary.

"Legally speaking, the vast majority of global laws only forbid specific actions, not the contents of someone's head."

"Only because no government has yet invented a device to read minds," opined Tracy.

"I bet we'll see a whole host of new laws the moment someone does."

"... Well, there's a dystopian nightmare I'll be having the rest of the week," sighed Stacy.

"But Mary has a point. I can want to kill Nat as much as I like, and no-one's going to stop me."

"Hey!" exclaimed Natasha.

"If I start researching poisons and how to dissolve bodies in acid, maybe someone would take notice, but it's not really until I start buying acid that I'd get into serious trouble. Even then, I wouldn't be charged with murder. Not unless I'd actually done it. Attempted murder, or conspiracy to commit murder, but not murder itself."

"Can you stop talking about murdering me, please?"

"You're... right, aren't you?" said Tracy.

"What Decay actually wants doesn't matter as much as his actions, and he's acting 'good'. To be honest, we don't even know what he wants. We're just assuming he wants to watch the world burn."

"He scared Mary half to death!" complained Natasha.

"Not to mention beating up the rest of us. How is that 'good'?"

"It was in self defence," pointed out Tracy.

"He didn't touch us this afternoon, despite all his sneering."

"And despite us saying some openly antagonistic things," nodded Stacy.

"You can't claim what he did to Mary was self defence. No young maiden should need to go through that indignity!" The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"It wasn't that bad," claimed Mary, despite giving a small involuntary shudder at the memory.

"I mean, yes, at the time I was convinced I was going to die, but in the end he didn't hurt me at all. I got off lightly compared to you three."

"Speak for yourself. I'd much rather be punched than wet myself," said Natasha.

"But what else was he supposed to do? If he'd simply released me, I'd have attacked him again. With the benefit of hindsight, I prefer what he did to if he'd simply beaten me unconscious, or left me bound by magic that none of us could break."

"... Putting that debate aside, I must admit, I have no idea what to do next," said William, speaking up for the first time in the conversation.

"He's unambiguously evil, and his mere existence in this world requires him to feed on the energy of humans, but for as long as he puts on this act, your powers can't touch him."

"Then we just need to defeat him without our powers," said Tracy.

"Huh? How?" asked Natasha.

"There's no way we can stand up to him without magic!"

"No, I don't mean we should get into an untransformed fist-fight with him. We can use our powers as magical girls, just not on him directly."

"What do you mean?" asked Stacy.

"Oh, I see," said Mary.

"Rather than hitting him directly with Hydro Blast, I could, for example, hit the supports of whatever building he's in and collapse it on top of him."

"Exactly. We have lots of options. Heck, we could go full Acme and drop an anvil on his head. Dig a big pit-trap in front of the factory and fill it with snakes. Wrap up a stick of dynamite in wrapping paper, light it and hand it to him."

"... As funny as it would be, I'm pretty sure none of that would work in reality."

"Ooo, this filter we have to stop people noticing us in our magical girl forms? Just how good is it?" asked Natasha.

"Could we—to pick a random example that I'm not at all planning on doing—walk into a military base and come out with a sack of machine guns and grenades?"

"... You're totally thinking of doing that, aren't you?" sighed Mary.

"Please don't do anything illegal."

"Aww. But isn't it the dream of every maiden to fire an RPG at least once?" The other three girls peered at Natasha.

"... No," said Tracy carefully.

"I am reasonably sure that it is not."

"Easy for you to say. Your Pyro Bullet attack is practically a rocket already. All I can do is conjure up a bit of wind."

"As much as I mock your ice-cream obsession, please don't replace it with whatever the hell this is," said Stacy.

"Putting Natasha and her proclivities aside, we have two questions we need to answer," said Mary.

"Coming up with a way of taking out Decay is secondary to the question of whether we want to take him out. He's not hurting anyone, and as long as he's here, no other Bane can get through. Why not keep him?"

"I don't disagree that he's better than other Banes, but there are logistical issues with 'keeping' him, as you put it," said William.

"You must continue to provide checks on his activities indefinitely, because the moment he feels he's no longer under watch, he's likely to start acting up. Perhaps he'll never attempt to widen the rift, because he knows I'll detect it, but there are so many other things he could do. I can't imagine he'll be content living in an abandoned factory forever. Perhaps he'll murder the owner of a larger mansion somewhere and alter his appearance to replace them. Perhaps he'll resort to theft or fraud.

It's not like he can get a real job without any sort of national ID."

"Oof, did anyone else just get a weird image of him in his suit on the floor of a stockmarket, waving a folder around?" asked Natasha.

"... That's oddly specific," said Stacy.

"Although I'll admit that suit does make him look like some sort of high-powered businessman."

"Don't get distracted," sighed Tracy.

"So, the first question; do we remove him or tolerate him?"

"I don't think we have any choice but to remove him," said Mary.

"We don't have the capability of keeping him under watch forever, and we know there are a limited number of Banes. Yes, getting rid of him will let another replace him, but we'll just get rid of that one, too. We'll keep going until there are no more Banes left to invade."

"I don't disagree, but I would like to make an observation," said Tracy.

"You keep using terms like 'remove' or 'get rid of'. Don't couch this in misleading language. You're proposing the murder of a sapient being who has, morally speaking, not done anything seriously wrong." Mary winced, the other girls looking distinctly uncomfortable.

"Perhaps it's true that we've spent long enough fighting the Banes that we've grown... well... racist," said Stacy.

"It's not racism if it's true," spat Natasha.

"What other options do we have?" asked Mary.

"We can't send him back through the rift; he said himself that he wants to, but can't."

"Then why's he here in the first place?"

"I think there's only one way to find that out; ask him," said William.

"As much as this pains me to admit, we might need to talk to him. Properly."

"You mean negotiate?" asked Tracy.

"With a Bane? What's the point? How can we hold him to any promises he makes?"

"He started by offering to be friends," pointed out Stacy.

"He did offer me ice cream," cautiously added Natasha.

"You're all seriously considering making peace?" said Mary.

"You call it murder, but do Banes even 'die' when we purify them?"

"Yes," stated William.

"What did you think was happening? That you were sending them back to Midnight mildly chastised?"

"They kinda blow apart into clouds of dust..." pointed out Natasha.

"Hard to survive that."

"I know! That's why I assumed something weird was happening. Most people leave corpses when you kill them."

"So all this time, you've believed you were saving the Banes?" asked Natasha incredulously.

"... No," admitted Mary, quietly.

"It's what I wanted to believe, for sure, but deep down I knew what I was doing. I just didn't want to admit it, because if I admit that, then I need to admit that we're not better than they are." Natasha blinked.

"Huh?"

"You're too bright for your own good," sighed William.

"Huh?" repeated Natasha.

"If you went out onto the street right now and stabbed someone to death, what would happen?" asked Mary.

"Uh... I'd get arrested?"

"Exactly! Then you'd have due process, a proper trial, and if you lost, you'd be imprisoned somewhere you couldn't hurt anyone else. What wouldn't happen is that a bunch of random schoolkids would swoop in from nowhere and vaporise you."

"Oh. I see your point. But the Banes are monsters! It's not like we can arrest them."

"They're intelligent, and, as Decay has proven, they understand the difference between good and evil. Just because they generally choose evil, what gives us the right to kill one that doesn't?" Natasha opened and closed her mouth as she floundered, unable to come up with a response.

"That's simple," said Tracy.

"This isn't 'crime', it's 'war'. We aren't law enforcement dealing with criminals, we're soldiers dealing with an invasion force. We've had every right to kill the previous Banes."

"If we use that logic, then the Hague is going to want words with William," said Mary.

"But yes, that logic does make me feel a little better, but it simply doesn't apply to Decay. He's not leading an invasion. The worst we can call him is an illegal immigrant."

"That's enough," declared William.

"You're just talking yourselves in circles, and it's not going to achieve anything. He's back in the factory. Let's go have a little talk."