Uberlurker's Challenge Story

[Queen Octavia]

Okays, so I thought about what I wanted to write lots and started today. Expect a chapter or two a day for a week until I'm done. Comments appreciated. Enjoy.

[Queen Octavia]

The Fuku Story



Chapter One - A Crazy Plan

Greg described himself as being a "freelance reporter". That was basically his way of saying he had no job, no paycheck and no money for next month's rent. He was a fresh graduate from a school of middling repute, and his degree wasn't enough to get him in the door of any good publication. What he needed was a story.

So, he walked down the busy city streets, looking for his big break. People honked irritably on horns during gridlock, people jostled by him on the sidewalk. People all around him, and all of them surely had stories. It was just a matter of finding the right one, and getting it out of them.

Was that too-prim woman, looking to be in her 30s and wearing haut-culture designer fashion brands, cheating on her surely wealthy husband? Was there some unconfessed love in the way that man in the coffee shop was staring at the cashier?

Surely any of their stories must be better than the only one Greg had at the moment, his own. He was twenty-three and in debt up to his ears. He paid through his schooling on his own, because while his parents could have helped him they demanded he take a degree in business. Instead Greg had pursued his passion, journalism, but it had cost him. Not just the tuition, but a falling out with his parents. He hadn't spoken to them in almost three years now.

He had only moved to the big city some few months ago, thinking he could find the story that would give him his big break in a place full of hustle and bustle. So far though he had nothing, and the little money he had to cover the rent on the hole in the wall apartment he lived in and the spaghetti-o's he ate was just about gone.

Sighing at his misfortune as he pushed his unkempt curly brown hair back into some semblance of order, he opened the door on a small diner he occasionally frequented. The food was not only good, but more to the point it was cheap. Not only that, but all sorts of folks showed up to eat here. It was in a good location, so it was a lunch break hotspot for all sorts of working types. Even if he couldn't strike up a conversation with someone, there were plenty of them to eavesdrop on.

Greg gave the waitress that came to take his order a smile. She was a pretty blonde, but Greg doubted he had a chance with her. Sure, he had to admit that he had charm and was pretty good looking, even though he liked to be modest. More than one girl had flushed her cheeks as she complimented him on his dreamy eyes, while they stared at his broad shoulders. He thought his facial features were a bit plain and boring, but if women called him handsome who was he to disagree?

However, the reason he didn't have a chance wasn't his looks. The problem was his budget for courtship was approximately zero dollars. While he'd love to flirt a bit and maybe ask her out on a date, he simply couldn't. So he ordered his BLT and kept his interaction with the waitress limited to a warm smile.

He ate with deliberate slowness, to give him lots of time to listen in on what people were saying. As a reported it was essential for him to stay connected to the pulse of the city, even if he didn't get a story here listening to people's take on the latest political scandals and celebrity activities was something he had to keep up on.

Most of it was idle prater, of course. Listening in on ten conversations at once and being able to pick up on what was most important was a skill Greg had more or less perfected in his time in the city. Not only that, but he had to look inconspicuous while doing it. No good at all if people noticed him listening and put their guard up and sealed their lips.

Weaving in and out of the banter, though, was something new. Something strange. Something that definitely caught his ear and sent off alarm bells in his head. Something that just might be his big break.

A construction worker was talking to a laborer at the docks, "Have you heard about the vigilantes in town? Showed up just a few days ago, causing all sorts of trouble..."

A girl chatted with her friend, "So this guy was mugging me, in this totally sketchy alley, when these voices yell out 'Stop, criminal!'..."

A police officer to his partner, "Just causes us more trouble, these do-gooders, if you ask me...."

The laborer replying, "Yeah, I heard about them. I heard some real weird stuff. I think it's just a load of bull, if you ask me. I mean, no way can..."

The partner shaking his head, "I don't know, I think we need all the help we can get, especially with these new cuts. It's got to be some sort of strange prank though, no way it can be real, but you gotta admit justice like that sure must be... effective..."

The friend gasping, "No! A trio of girls stopped the mugger! And they were wearing... school girl uniforms? Are you sure your drink wasn't spiked with something at the club...?"

A nod from the construction worker, "Yeah, definite bull. Girls fighting crime. People are so scatter-brained these days they'll believe anything. I blame it on the internet. Kids need to stop surfing the web and do some honest hard work, that's what I say."

The cop laughed at his partner, "Justice? Hah, I'll say. That guy who tried to stab his wife after she filed for divorce because he had an affair... him being turned into a woman. Guess he won't be having any more affairs, now will he? Still, it's impossible, I don't care what the eye-witness says. All we have are the facts. Some crazy chick in tears holding a knife saying she used to be a man. No prints from these three vigilantes who were supposedly on the scene."

The girl was adamant with her friend, "I don't care what you say, I know what I say. That mugger, he changed, before my eyes. Into a woman. Those girls... they had magic... or something. I was too shocked to even thank them, and they ran off after changing the man. The guy was just as shocked as I was... he couldn't believe it any more than you do, couldn't believe even as his hands felt the changes that had happened. I took off before he tried anything else, but I doubt he'll be mugging anyone ever again."

Greg didn't know what to make of it. Crime fighting magical girl vigilantes who wore school uniforms and turned criminals into woman? A story like that would get him blacklisted from every reputable publisher in the country. Still, there it was, from the lips of three sources. And fresh. Sounded to be less than a week old. He would be the first one to deliver it, if he jumped on it.

He ordered a coffee to mull over what he would do. In the end it was seeing the waitress that made him decide. Even if he had to sell this story to a tabloid, it would give him a pay check, and he could make ends meet for a while longer, and take that chick out on a date. He would get the facts of this story, do some real solid journalism, and get the truth of it.

If only he knew where to start.

In a city this size, who knew how many crimes were being committed at any one point. Sure, he could stake out some dark alleys in the sketchier parts of town, but the odds of him meeting this trio of crime fighters (If they existed at all) were slim. The odds of getting stabbed and robbed were, by comparison, much higher. That didn't change the simple fact that the only real way to break this story, before anyone else did, was to either bring himself to these girls (Who he had no means of contacting)...

... Or to bring them to him.

But that was crazy. To bring them to him, he would have to commit some sort of crime, and there was no way Greg would ever hurt anyone. Besides, it was still a big city, and the chances of them noticing his crime were slim. The odds of attracting the police and ending up behind bars instead were much greater. The only way to get around that would be to commit a crime the girls would have to notice. Make it flashy.

The gears in Greg's head were driving his train of thought faster and faster, and he was afraid of where they were taking him. The plan he had in his head, murky, half-formed, the risks of it were so high. And for what, a date with the sexy blonde from the diner? No, that wasn't it. That wasn't even half of it. The real thing here was the story. The tantalizing allure of being the first person to bring this news out. Greg had a real passion for journalism, and he wasn't about to let a chance like this pass him by.

Maybe his parents were right. Maybe he was nuts for getting into journalism, for not choosing the easy path of taking the reins of the family business. But right now his heart was racing, and he felt more alive than he had felt in a long time. He tried not to think about what he was planning as he walked to the local mall.

He didn't have much cash, so he had to be frugal with his purchases. He was nervous, and wanted to get this over with as fast as possible, but he took his time anyways. First he stopped by a toy store. More than one, in fact.

It was somewhat difficult to find what he was looking for. After a while, though, he found a good candidate. A very realistic looking toy gun. He trembled as he held it, and looked around nervously as he took it to the checkout.

The only problem was that it had a bright orange part on the front of the gun. A trip to a hobby store for some paint normally used on plastic miniatures would quickly remedy that, however. He made sure that the color was a close match to the rest of the gun.

With every purchase added to his bags, he felt as if though more and more eyes were drawing towards him, like everyone knew what he was up to. Rediculous, of course, but that didn't stop the sweat from building up on his brow.

His next stop was a clothing store to pick out a plain trench coat. Cliché, to be sure, but if he wasn't taken seriously then this wouldn't work at all. Finally, he bought a ski mask to help him sell his dramatic bluff. And oh what a bluff it would be.

Greg practically ran back to his hole in the wall apartment. He immediately began to paint over the orange part of his toy gun. He then donned the trench coat, and stashed the "weapon" and ski mask inside, as well as a digital camera, pen, paper, a high quality camera and a voice recorder.

He was now ready. Ready to rob a bank. In broad daylight. With a toy gun. In an attempt to draw out a trio of magical girls in school uniforms who turned criminals into women. The plan was that he would lure them in, reveal his weapon to be a fraud and announce himself as a reporter, and try to get their story. Even if they didn't talk, he would have pictures. He would have the story.

Sure, he might get charged for armed robbery, but the media coverage and the fame would give his story the attention it needed. This would be his big break, for sure.

Maybe his parents were right. Maybe he was nuts. But that didn't stop him, not at all. He walked out of his apartment with a swagger, full of bravado, and ready to go through with his crazy plan.



Chapter Two - A Plan Gone Horribly Right

It was about three thirty in the afternoon as Greg made his way down the street in his trench coat. He definitely looked more than a little bit sketchy, but the people walking around him were so diverse they made oddity seem like the norm. The people all around him surely had stories, but none would be as interesting as the one Greg was about to get.

He had chosen the most upscale bank in town as his target. It was the head branch of a major national bank, just recently relocated from its old location. Greg paid little attention to the gold ornamentation set inside the glass windows and doors as he passed through the large stone pillars outside the entrance.

As he passed within, he felt a moment of dread writhe into his gut. What if the trio didn't show? What if the police handled the situation before they arrived? What if no one took his bluff seriously? Here he was, at the brink, facing all his doubts one last time. He could turn around, go home and... and what? Fade away into obscurity in his terrible apartment? Be forced into flipping burgers somewhere to make rent? Casting aside his trepidation, he donned the ski mask he had been carrying with him in one smooth fluid motion and held the fake gun high in the air.

"EVERYONE DOWN ON THE GROUND!" he shouted in a commanding voice. He almost cringed at how cheesy he was being, basically going through what he had seen in bad action movies. Still, it worked. Everyone turned to face him, shocked, and they dropped to the floor just as if they were following a script. Several women cried, and a few children began to cry out. Greg felt rather guilty about the tears he caused, but he did not let it show.

He knew that he had to stay in control of the situation, act too fast to let people react. His quick assessment of the security revealed that they were armed with tasers, but none had been raised at him. Countless silent alarms had no doubt been raised, and a SWAT team would be here any moment. Hopefully the vigilantes got here first. If not then he would just have to buy some time. Seeing a pretty young girl on the floor not to far from him, he decided his next move.

"You!" he barked out as he gave her a rather gentle kick to make it clear she was who he wanted, "Get up!". Her round almond eyes were filled with tears and her mascara was running. She was scared out of her mind, but she complied quickly enough. Greg had seen enough bad action movies to know that of all the people here she would no doubt be cast as the hostage. He grabbed her roughly and held the gun to her head. Luckily for him, she was too panicked to notice it felt more like plastic than cold metal. "No one else move a muscle!" he ordered, again drawing heavily from the stock dialog he had seen in theaters.

Greg made his way over to a teller, shoving his hostage along in front of him. He cringed inwardly at being such a villain, he was normally a gentleman to ladies, but opening doors for his hostage and drawing out her chair would hardly help his deception. He did what he had to. "Uhh -" he stalled for a moment as he addressed the cashier, and he realized what a fumble that was. He promptly overreacted by screaming "GIVE ME ALL THE MONEY!", then realized he might be coming off a little insane. Then he realized that would probably be a good thing.

The teller was down flat on the ground with his hands behind his head. He was a balding man somewhere in his mid forties. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, the system is locked, I can't get access to any of the cash. Please don't hurt me!" he pleaded for his life, rather cowardly. One major difference Greg noted between his farce and what happened in the Hollywood version was that it didn't look like anyone here was going to be a hero.

That was when Greg first heard the sirens. Spinning around to look outside, he saw that two patrol cars had parked out front and the officers were closing the street off. The response time was faster than he thought it would be. Where were the girls, and more importantly what was he going to do next? He caught one of the security guards slowly reaching for his taser, and Greg gave the man a deadly look and pressed the toy gun harder against his hostage's head. The man backed off, but the fact remained that Greg was losing control of the situation. Fast.

He had to do something to keep these people occupied. He could see the gears in their heads beginning to turn faster and faster the longer he left them alone. "Everyone, listen up!" he demanded, "You're all going to take off all your jewelry - EVERYTHING! And place it in a neat little pile in front of you. That means watches, wallets, necklaces, wedding rings, you name it, and if you'd better hope I don't see you leave anything out."

The people looked around at each other and a few began to slowly comply, but Greg could feel the building sense of resistance. Robbing a bank was hard work. "Faster!" he dictated in a wild tone, and that was enough to get people moving. "You and you!" he pointed his gun at two women who had made eye contact with him, and they recoiled from the gaze of the firearm. "Dump out whatever junk you have in those shopping bags and collect what everyone has in their piles. MOVE!" the two practically jumped to their feet in their haste to obey him, and went about collecting valuables.

For a moment Greg thought he might actually get away with robbing the bank, but then his attention was drawn back to the police outside. There were now a great deal many more squad cars, and someone was talking through a microphone. "We have the exits surrounded," the amplified voice stated with a dull confidence, "Come out with your hands up!"

Greg gulped, and wished he had a microphone to respond with. Or anything more than a toy gun. Then he remembered something he had forgotten about in all those action movies: police snipers. He gulped once more.

His two collection agents had finished their rounds, and he ordered them to dump the bags in front of him. They did so and hastily withdrew several steps. Greg could tell that some of the people nearer to the door were eying the exit and thinking about making a run for it. That would do him no good. "Everyone get against the back wall, now!" Greg gestured with his gun, and herded his assembled hostages into a group. Some straggled more than others, but pointing his weapon at them put a spring in their step.

The police outside were making more demands, and no doubt getting ready to rush in. Greg could also see several representatives of the local media trying to get in past the police cordon, with varying degrees of success. He was beginning to think that he might end up being the story rather than getting it.

And with that very thought, the glass dome in the ceiling shattered with a loud crash, and Greg cursed at the arrival of the swat team. He hadn't expected them to make an entry, not that way, and now time was slowing down, and his plan was falling apart. A bright flash of white light momentarily blinded him - flash grenade, of course. Greg instinctively closed his eyes against the harsh light.

However when he opened them again a moment later, he found his vision returning (Shouldn't it stay gone longer than that?), only to be greeted by a flash of pink light just as bright as the white had been, and then a flash of yellow. What the heck was happening...?

Now that the light show was over, Greg could make out three figures descending from above. They fell at a smooth, constant pace, although he could see no ropes to suspend them. His heart skipped a beat, but now that he could see, even though he couldn't make them out clearly, he knew it must be them.

Each was bathed in their own faint nimbus of light, light soft enough you almost thought it was your imagination, but it was definitely there. The softly radiating light matched the color's of each girl's outfit, and those colors matched the initial three bursts of light Greg had seen. As they descended, they called out in three voices, whose tones were distinct but they picked up where the other left of and spoke in an alternating sort of unison.

"Villain," from the one clad in pink, a high bubbly simmer.

"Evil-doer," from the one glowing yellow, a more robust drone, lower but still quite feminine.

"Despair!" the pure white maiden spoke last, with greatest conviction.

"For we have come to do justice!" they all intoned together, in a righteous chorus.

As startled as he was, Greg barely had the presence of mind to turn on his recording devices. He did so though, moving stealthily under his trench coat with his free hand, after pushing his hostage away from his body. He doubted that the three had noticed him activating the digital camera, set to record a video, although from within his coat only the audio would be of any interest.

The girls seemed capable of super humanly fast movements. As they descended at a too-slow almost supernatural pace, they coordinated their movements. The one in white seemed to be their leader. "Amber, disarm him! Ruby, restrain him!" she directed.

The two girls somehow pushed off against air to propel themselves forward. Amber, the one in yellow, suddenly came to a full stop to hover in mid-air. She performed a graceful pirouette, which caused her flowing blonde hair to whirl around her along with the yellow ribbons attached at her waist and wrists. She brought both her hands in front of her, palms facing out and interlocking her thumbs, forming an "x" shape. A beam of yellow light rippled out from her, impossibly. It zoomed straight at Greg's toy gun and knocked it helplessly aside, the impact jarring his wrist.

Ignoring the pain, he smiled at how his plan had come together so marvelously, and began to speak, "Do not worry, the gun is only fa-".

Unfortunately for him, he was cut off as the one in pink, who must be Ruby, reached him. She gave him a quick jab to the gut which winded him, then she grabbed his arm. It looked almost like a dance move as she spun around him, taking his arm with her, but in a moment more she had him against the ground with both legs and both arms pinned. It happened too fast for Greg to see how it had happened. One of the red ribbons from her outfit had somehow wound around his mouth on its own, and gagged him.

As he tumbled to the ground, Greg's digital camera fell out from his trench coat to land on the ground nearby, and as chance would have it the device landed in a position to capture the scene and if the record light was any indication it appeared to still be working.

In a few moments he found himself surrounded by the three crime fighters. What were they? They were clearly far from the ordinary, but there was no way Greg would believe they were magical like those witnesses had claimed. I mean, they couldn't possibly turn criminals into girls, that was just pure fiction. He would get the real story soon enough, with plenty of eye-witnesses and video evidence to back it up.

The one in white leaned down to address him on the ground, "We are agents of justice, but we are also forgiving. While we have the power to annihilate you outright, we think justice is better served by turning vile evil villainous men like yourself into innocent girls. You will accept it in time. Now come, sisters, attend me. We must administer our justice."

Greg's eyes bulged, and he attempted to shout out against his restraint. That he was a reporter, not a villain. That he just wanted their story. But the gag prevented him from speech. The three girls sat around him, and linked hands. The colors around them slowly began to shine brighter, waxing then waning but building slowly and surely. He tried to flail wildly, but was quite restrained. The trio began a strange otherworldly chant, and Greg began to feel a foreign energy seep into his body.

His plan had gone horribly right.

[Queen Octavia]

reserved

[Queen Octavia]

reserved

[Queen Octavia]

reserved

[Queen Octavia]

go ahead and post, that should be lots of space

[Queen Octavia]

Bump for chapter two, and more space just in case I need it ;p

Sorry to cliffhanger before the first tf like that, I'm mean sometimes.

[Funny Hat + Funny Accent]

Crazy, but nicely done so far. My complaint is with how crazy the reporter/journalist is acting. Then again, I know people like him, so it's not entirely that far-fetched.