CODENAME: Magical Girl Space Princess Pizza Margherita

ALTER EGO: Margherita Della Mozzarella

FAMILIAR: Pepper the dalmatian puppy

CURRENT AGE: 20

THREAT LEVEL COMPETENCY: 7.9

MAGITECH: Culinary

“Evildoers beware, for I toss the dough of justice, and justice is never half-baked!”

In an age when humanity faced the prospect of extinction at the hands of man-eating vegetables, comfort food came to the rescue.

Member of the fabled Mozzarella crime family and a direct descendent of Benito Mozzarella himself, Margherita can make you a pizza you can’t refuse. While working as a waitress at a pizzeria, she fed a stick of pepperoni to a starving puppy, only to find that the dog was actually a visitor from Planet Italia, who rewarded her for her good deed by anointing her princess and granting her the Power of Pizza.

Armed with a Vorpal Pizza Slicer, Pizza Margherita could fire boiling tomato sauce from her hands, hurl razor-sharp pepperoni slices like shuriken, fire gooey cheese whips, and toss dough without ripping it. Flying over the city on her Pie in the Sky, she was ever vigilant against the forces of evil.

It was no doubt fated that King Tosser, the caesar of the nefarious Salad Soldiers, would become Pizza Margherita’s nemesis. After his latest act of wanton destruction, Margherita could often be seen standing in the smoking ruins, shaking her fist at the sky, and crying, “Ooh, that Tosser!”

Her most famous (and destructive) battle occurred in Anno Principis 238, when a giant, tentacled bell pepper attacked city hall. Bravely standing her ground even after several other magical girls had fled the scene, Pizza Margherita shouted, “You can’t fight city hall!” and leapt into the fray.

She successfully sliced and diced the killer capsicum, but not before the nasty nightshade had exacted its due: the final count of those dead or missing was three hundred and twelve. During the funeral that followed, the High Priestess of the Temple of the Moon Princess famously and poignantly intoned, “Ask not for whom the bell pepper tolls. It tolls for thee.”

Margherita at last confronted her final boss on the eve of her eighteenth birthday. Their battle stretched across thirty stories of a downtown highrise and ended on the stroke of midnight when she landed the fatal blow with her Vorpal Slicer. When it was over, that Tosser lay dead, and Margherita was a mere mortal: like all eighteen-year-old girls, she had lost her powers. She thus ended her career with a respectable competency rating of 7.9, Tosser’s official threat level as determined by the city’s Threat Assessment Board.

Margherita publicly revealed her secret identity shortly after her retirement. Though no longer in service, she remains active in the magical girl community and has often been seen braving even the fiercest battle zones to replenish the girls’ needed supply of juice boxes. She currently runs her own pizza parlor.

In spite of her years of service to the city, some now regard Margherita as a nuisance on account of her political campaigns. Her attempt to instate Vegetable Awareness Month and Pizza Appreciation Day met widespread derision, as did her anti-vegetable “Toss Dough not Salad” billboards. After she petitioned the City Fathers for a restraining order that would require salad to remain at least a hundred yards from pizza at all times, she was banned from attending any further City Council meetings.

CODENAME: Magical Girl Grease Pencil Marionette

ALTER EGO: N/A

FAMILIAR: Takumi the hologram

CURRENT AGE: 16 (simulated)

THREAT LEVEL COMPETENCY: 5.1

MAGITECH: Artistic

“A girl robot infused with hopes and dreams and the power of imagination!”

Magical Girl Grease Pencil Marionette is a fully functional magical girl simulation system. She is the creation of a genius scientist who dreamt of a day when an army of robots might protect the city from monsters and thus leave its young girls to live their lives in peace. Alas, he died upon activating her, so she is the first, and most likely the last, of her kind.

Whereas most magical girls must only serve until their eighteenth birthdays, Marionette does not age. She has fought for the city for over two hundred years now. Before the Ascension, she was even a personal friend and confidant of the Moon Princess, who often referred to her as “my pet.”

Although the magical girls are officially under the command of the High Priestess, Grease Pencil Marionette, as the oldest active magical girl, has become their de facto field commander. She is almost solely responsible for the communication network that makes the girls so effective at repelling the constant threats to humanity’s continued existence. She encourages the girls to support one another, and she practices what she preaches: rumor has it that she has recently formed a close bond with Magical Girl Card Collector Kasumi, and their relationship has been the subject of much speculation in the press.

But Marionette does not relate so well to girls who step out of line: in recent days, she has butted heads with the mysterious Magical Girl Pretty Dynamo, who has garnered a reputation (and much popularity) as a maverick who plays by her own rules.

Marionette’s magic is the power of imagination. Anything she can imagine, she can draw, and anything she draws with her magical grease pencil becomes real. She often uses her power to create for herself weapons or vehicles, though she cannot create anything that fires projectiles, as such projectiles inevitably revert to mere grease. However, her pencil is unbreakable and can punch through any substance, since she can simply imagine what it touches becoming fragile.

Because of her lack of ranged weapons, Marionette is most effective as a melee fighter. Do not let her modest competency rating of 5.1 fool you: threat assessments are for individual monsters only, but Marionette has effectively battled multiple enemies simultaneously.

Not only is she extremely deadly at close range, but Marionette also has significantly greater stamina than an ordinary magical girl. Equipped with a fusion reactor in her chest, she can operate for long periods on only a little water and does not, like other girls, require juice boxes to replenish her magical energy.

As a simulated magical girl, Marionette has no true contract. Instead, she has a simulated familiar, Takumi, an independent AI program. Takumi is sub-sapient, but contains a complete set of Marionette’s ethics algorithms and data on previous engagements, so he is able to advise her both morally and tactically.

In order to give her the ability to use magic like a real girl, Marionette’s creator had to program her with desires and dreams she can never fulfill. Marionette would like most of all to settle down and dedicate her life to her art, but duty constantly calls her back to the fray. However, the Moon Princess told her that there was a slight chance—very slight—that if she served faithfully throughout her long and weary existence, Grease Pencil Marionette might one day acquire that which she desires most of all: a human soul.

CODENAME: Magical Girl Rifle Maiden

ALTER EGO: Unknown

FAMILIAR: Bossy the Holstein

CURRENT AGE: 15

THREAT LEVEL COMPETENCY: 6.4

MAGITECH: Gunnery

“Magical Girl Rifle Maiden atcher service.”

Not much is known about Rifle Maiden. Armed with a rifle and a pair of revolvers, she can fire explosive bolts or stun blasts, and apparently never runs out of ammunition. However, her energy consumption is quite high, as she has difficulty sustaining power in prolonged combat without a steady supply of juice boxes.

Rifle Maiden is most effective when she teams up with other girls; fortunately, a sunny and straightforward personality enables her to befriend her fellow magical girls easily. In recent days, many have observed her working closely with Voodoo Queen Natasha.

Although Rifle Maiden has the same supernatural physical abilities as most magical girls—she leaps effortlessly over small buildings—she is less effective in close quarters than at a distance, as she apparently possesses few if any pugilistic skills. She has a deadly aim with her rifle over a long range (she has struck down human-sized enemies at three hundred yards), and with her paired revolvers can cut down large numbers of swarming monsters. Those who have observed her using her pistols often say she “sounds like a machine gun.” Because her spells are integrated into her weapons, she has no need to call her attacks and is therefore able to fire as rapidly as her superhuman strength and speed enable her to pull the triggers.

Rifle Maiden is extremely effective against small or medium-sized enemies and against monsters that swarm or hunt in packs. Her skills are especially useful for exterminating zombie infestations, which she describes as “like ducks in a barrel,” though nobody knows what that means.

Her current competency rating is a modest 6.4, where it is likely to remain, as her weapons have proven ineffective against large kaiju, which a magical girl must defeat if she hopes to raise her rating into the higher digits. Rifle Maiden’s admirers, of course, are quick to point out that the threat level system treats all combat as if it takes place between an individual magical girl and an individual monster, a scenario that rarely plays out in real life. Certainly, Rifle Maiden has proven indispensable in a support role by harrying large monsters while other magical girls with more destructive spells administer the coup de grâce.

Rifle Maiden has acquired a significant fan following. Typically, her fans point to her unusually laconic speech and unusually practical garb as her chief merits. Her uniform eschews frills, poufs, and miniskirts. Unlike most magical girls, she also refrains from announcing her presence, preferring a “lurk and kill” strategy that is certainly effective, but which her detractors have derided as both unsportsmanlike and decidedly un-magical-girl.

When asked about her practice of slaying monsters unannounced, Rifle Maiden says simply, “I perfer doin’ the killin’ first an’ the jawin’ later.”

Asked if she would consider developing a short speech to introduce herself, such as most magical girls have, she has replied, “I’m mighty handy with a gun, if’n I may say so, but I ain’t so handy with that there fancy priestess talk.”

Since magical girls serve as role models to the city’s youth, it has become customary for the public schools to invite them to assemblies, usually to talk about hygiene. Magical Girl Rifle Maiden made all the city papers last year when she stood up in front of the gathered students of Kashikoi Elementary, tossed aside the speech someone else had written for her, and said:

“Now, I want all y’all to start usin’ this here newfangled thing they call soap. If’n y’all been out ridin’ the range for weeks on end, an’ y’all head on into town for some comp’ny of the softer variety, if’n ya know what I’m sayin’, them ladies ain’t gonna look atchew twice if’n you got a stank what could choke a hound dog off a month-old carcass. So y’all jest take some o’ this here soap like so, an ya rub it on yer nethers with a bit o’ water like such, an’ it’ll make you smell mighty fine.”

Rifle Maiden ain’t … er, I mean hasn’t been invited to another school assembly since.

CODENAME: Magical Girl Tuneless Ramona

ALTER EGO: Ramona Kawasaki

FAMILIAR: None

CURRENT AGE: 12

THREAT LEVEL COMPETENCY: ∞

MAGITECH: Musical

“With the power of incredible songs that would make me a world-famous pop diva if only someone would recognize my talent!”

There are only two things that can frighten a citizen of mankind’s final city. One is a monster attack. The second is Magical Girl Tuneless Ramona.

Ramona Kawasaki is an unusual magical girl: she has no familiar and no contract. One night, she went out with her friends and sang karaoke. Her singing was so horrific, she spontaneously generated a powerful field of negative musical energy that transformed her into Tuneless Ramona. She has never transformed back.

Tuneless Ramona maintains no secret identity, since, as she explains, that would make it impossible for talent agents to scout her. Her song-and-dance numbers are the most powerful and deadly magic ever recorded; depending on duration and intensity, their effects can range from severe migraine headaches to paralysis to death. And they are as effective on the innocent bystander as on the monsters that so frequently invade our home.

Nonetheless, Ramona has one victory by which she has obtained the highest competency rating on record, a rating unlikely to be surpassed.

Frequent are the attacks on our city by vampires, trolls, kaiju, extraterrestrials, primordial creatures thought extinct, and, of course, demons from hell. Our various magical girls are well equipped to deal decisively with these threats. But there are horrors against which even our girls are powerless: the writhing, mad, multidimensional abominations from beyond the walls of space-time, the great monstrosities—some larger than galaxies and some immaterial—that have turned their baleful eyes on our insignificant planet for reasons we know not.

Whenever these creatures break through into three-space, even the magical girls must suffer.

It seemed the end had come when the eldritch abomination Cuss-Lulu, who in our dimension manifests as a giant octopus with a potty mouth, dropped into the middle of downtown. His huge tentacles crushed skyscrapers and his ten thousand tongues uttered swear words no human can pronounce. Even to attempt to write his words phonetically is folly, for the results always look curiously like @#$% or even [email protected]#$%!

Suffice to say, such vulgarity can drive men mad. This was even worse than saying “butt” in public, and you can only do that in serious essays like this one.

Heh heh. “Butt.”

Grease Pencil Marionette acted quickly. Realizing that it is necessary to fight ugly sound with ugly sound, she did the unimaginable.

She sent in Tuneless Ramona.

Remarkably, a few witnesses of the battle have actually survived with their minds largely intact. One woman states that she saw Ramona moonwalk backwards down the street toward the towering monster. The monster uttered one of its superhuman obscenities, and Ramona replied by spinning around and grabbing her own crotch. At that point, the witness blacked out and didn’t recover until the battle was over.

An unfortunate man, who was unable to speak coherently for many weeks after the incident, had a much closer view. He stated to the police that Ramona performed a few brief ditties while snapping her fingers, and that Cuss-Lulu replied by cussing her out. Then, to his horror, both the girl and the monster started scatting. That’s when, in his words, “things got freaky.”

The magical girl and the monster engaged in what can only be described as a two-person battle of the bands. Cuss-Lulu performed rap numbers for which there are no names in any human language, and Tuneless Ramona performed what she regards as her greatest hits, including “Shake Your Platform Booties,” “Grinding (My Coffee) All Night Long,” and “I Kissed a Girl.”

According to our witness, “The last thing I saw, Ramona was up on her stage, and she leaned back in a chair while water poured into her face. That’s when my eyeballs exploded.”

A final count of the people who died in this, the worst of the city’s many monster attacks, is still unavailable as of this writing.

CODENAME: Magical Girl Sword Seamstress

ALTER EGO: [redacted]

FAMILIAR: Stitches the Ragdoll cat

CURRENT AGE: 13

THREAT LEVEL COMPETENCY: 8.3

MAGITECH: Sewing-based

“A stitch in time stops crime!”

The haughty yet superbly fashionable Sword Seamstress is one of the most admired and effective magical girls in all of Urbanopolis. Some maintain that she is second only to Pretty Dynamo herself.

She slays monsters by the dozens. More importantly, she does it with class.

Ambidextrous, armed with a pair of magical Knitting Rapiers, and impeccable in her manners, dress, and skill, Magical Girl Sword Seamstress can slaughter her enemies without even pausing in her knitting. Not only is she an expert fencer, but, equipped as she is with multiple balls of yarn and an enviable sewing kit, she can create new weapons out of whole cloth … literally.

Her collapsible, magically enhanced swords ride on her garter belts. Once she draws them, she can cut through any substance, yet she can also, inexplicably, knit with them without cutting her yarn. In less that a second, she can churn out such terrible weapons as the Cat’s Cradle, the Strangulation Scarf, and the dreaded Unholy Christmas Sweater Attack. From her sewing kit, she can cast such deadly attacks as the Needlepoint Barrage, a hail of sewing needles.

Besides this, because her swords are actually closer to Tunisian crochet hooks than knitting needles properly speaking, she can hook them end to end and swing them around in a deadly arc, much like Chinese hook swords.

In recent days, Sword Seamstress has courted controversy via her much-publicized conflict with Magical Girl Pretty Dynamo. Asked the reason for this animosity, Sword Seamstress has merely said, “Oh my Princess, are you, like, kidding me? Just look at her.”

For her part, when asked about the conflict, Pretty Dynamo has merely replied, “I zappin’ hate that chick.”

NAME: Jake Blatowski

CURRENT AGE: 14

THREAT LEVEL COMPETENCY: N/A

MAGITECH: None

“I can’t stand magical girls.”

Living in the relatively peaceful Juban District on the edge of Urbanopolis, Jake Blatowski has spent his life at a distance from the city’s perpetual monster attacks. Having never needed magical girls to defend him, he is annoyed by others’ obsession with them.

Convinced of his own maturity, Jake is eager to try out for the basketball team when he enters his first year of high school, but after a computer glitch erases part of his transcript, the school system in its wisdom sends him back—to fifth grade!

Soon after, he has a run-in with Magical Girl Pretty Dynamo, the city’s top defender, and quickly finds himself defying death in her company. Although he’d previously only seen monsters from a distance, he soon learns that he has an uncanny knack for escaping their attacks by the skin of his teeth. He’ll need it: soon after he makes Dynamo’s acquaintance, the enemies who formerly struck the city at random begin to focus on him.

What at first appears to be inexplicably bad luck will lead this ordinary teenager to unravel the mystery of the implacable foes bent on humanity’s destruction; he may even discover that he’s the key to bringing down an intergalactic coalition of evil. And much as he’d love to escape the by-turns brooding and boisterous Pretty Dynamo, he might find that he’s stuck with her—especially after she moves into his house!

CODENAME: Magical Girl Pretty Dynamo

ALTER EGO: Unknown

FAMILIAR: Tesla the lightning bug

CURRENT AGE: Unknown

THREAT LEVEL COMPETENCY: 9.0

MAGITECH: Electrical

“Electrifying the world with love and friendship—and making evildoers feel the wattage of justice!”

At present, there is no magical girl in Urbanopolis more effective against large kaiju than Magical Girl Pretty Dynamo. With a striking face and the powers of electricity at her command, she certainly lives up to her name. Dynamo received her magic when her familiar Tesla called on three gods of thunder … but the gods exacted a terrible price.

Magical girl observers inform us that Pretty Dynamo presently has three known items: the first, and most famous, is her Circuit Board, a flying snowboard that enables her to zoom around the city at lightning speeds. Second is her wand, which transforms into two weapons, a crossbow called the Thunder Bolt, which fires supercharged bolts, and the Lightning Rod, an electrified spear which she can use in hand-to-hand combat or hurl like a javelin. Third is the Surge Protector, a collapsible shield hidden in her left vambrace.

But she is deadly even without her items, as she can electrify any part of her body and even concentrate her energy into her hands to produce her Ball Lightning, a superheated sphere of plasma.

Pretty Dynamo’s most famous move is an aerial assault, in which she flies high into the air, dives straight down, and throws the Lightning Rod. The Rod’s intense electrical charge produces a sheath of plasma that greatly increases its terminal velocity, raising its impact energy to 72 kJ. It is thanks to this maneuver that she has acquired an impressive competency rating of 9.0.

However, Pretty Dynamo is generally less effective against mid-sized or multiple enemies. Her Thunder Bolt is too specialized to be a general-purpose ranged weapon, and her Ball Lightning has limited power and a limited effective range of about thirty yards. Nonetheless, she is an excellent melee fighter against small monsters, even very quick ones.

Pretty Dynamo is known not only for her combat skills and aerial stunts, but also for her sharp tongue and brassy attitude. This has gained her many admirers among the civilians, but has not made her popular among the magical girls. Grease Pencil Marionette has many times remarked on Pretty Dynamo’s insubordination and “attitude problem.”

Although almost all magical girls maintain secret identities, Pretty Dynamo is more reticent about personal details than most. When a monster attacks, she usually appears, slays, and immediately leaves, letting others deal with the aftermath. She has given occasional interviews, made personal appearances, and posed for photographs, but refuses to speak about herself.

Those who have met her usually remark that she, and I quote, “looks really small in person.” This has led to much speculation about her age, but because of her impressive skill, most assume that she is at least in her mid-teens.

In recent days, Pretty Dynamo has been spotted in the company of a young man, probably also in his mid-teens. Currently, his identity and relationship to Dynamo are unknown. This, of course, has led to further wild speculation.

Dynamo does not appear to have any friends, but is it possible that she has found herself … a sidekick?