OCR is Not the Only Font

Clockwork and Cats

Challenge #7: Write a story that includes a magical girl and a magnificent bastard. One is to be inverted, and one is to be played straight.

“Hey, Karen. Is it just me, or is your necklace glowing?”

“What?” Karen looked down. Her necklace—given to her by the Interdimensional Council—was glowing. It was a message from Arthur. “No,” she said, hurriedly flipping the pendant around so the flashing green stone wasn’t so visible. “No, of course not. That’s just…the…uh…Northern Lights! But now I have to go for a totally unrelated reason.”

“That sounds like the sort of thing someone would say if they were a secret agent. Or a witch. Ooh! Or both! Some kind of magical secret agent!” A peculiar expression crossed Jane’s face. “Wait…I feel like I’ve said that before…”

With practised ease, Karen retrieved the copper pocket watch from her schoolbag and wound the mechanism, holding it up in Jane’s face. “No,” she said, in a mysterious voice. “I made a really good excuse, both polite and perfectly reasonable. An excuse like… Clarinet lesson! I have a clarinet lesson. That’ll do nicely.” She snapped the watch shut and returned it to her bag. The Dark Prince of Time might have been causing all sorts of trouble in any number of worlds, but wow did his diabolical inventions come in handy sometimes. Hurrying down the stairs and out the school gates, Karen ran to met Arthur.

Arthur was, as always, asleep on the sofa. Karen’s mother never stopped complaining about the hair.

“I got your message,” she said. “What is it.”

Arthur blinked and sat up, pausing to wash his face with a well-moistened paw. “Watch.” Stepping most dextrously on the remote, he changed the TV to a 24 hour news channel.

“…the biggest single acquisition in over forty years. But, Mister Grimgoul, this purchase was a tremendous—and some would say rash—expense for your company. With stock prices already plummeting in response, can you really justify taking over what is very nearly the entire clockwork toy industry?”

Mister Grimgoul leaned forward in the studio armchair, a toothpick dangling from his bottom lip. The camera changed to focus on his face, cold grey eyes seeming to reach hypnotically out of the screen. “Can I justify it?” He leaned back again, fingers arched. “Perhaps not. But although I own GrimCorp, GrimCorp does not own me. Sometimes…” he smiled. “Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to get ahead.”

“But do you think your shareholders would agree with you?”

“Eventually…” there were those eyes again. “Eventually, I think they’ll have to.”

“Do you see the problem?” Arthur asked.

“Clockwork toys. Is he planning to make some kind of army?”

“The toys themselves would be too weak: it’s the children he’s after. This is the Dark Prince’s most sinister plan yet. We must waste no time.”

Karen quickly threw on her witches’ robes and grabbed the broom from beside the back door. It was a modern plastic one and didn’t really match the outfit, but it worked as well as any other broom and her powers would prevent anyone from seeing her while she was in the air.

The GrimCorp offices loomed over the city, twice the size of the next-tallest towers. Karen landed at the very top.

“You! Girl in the funny cloak!”

She had not expected there to be security guards on the roof, but given Mister Grimgoul’s fiendish genius, she should have expected it. He seemed like the sort to have a plan for everything. As the guards rushed towards her, Karen quickly unzipped her backpack and took out her old ironwood wand.

Zap! With a puff of lavender-scented smoke, one of the guards turned into a dark and brooding elm.

Zap! The other, somewhat unexpectedly, became a cheery-looking pear tree. Apparently Grimgoul was capable of recruiting even reasonably good people to further his dastardly schemes. As a servant of the Dark Prince of Time, he himself, however, could not be anything but pure evil. Leaving the guards—who would change back at midnight—Karen hurried down the stairs.

“In here,” said Arthur. “There’s a sort of terminal. It’s how he’s going to control all those toy factories.

“That’s some impressive scrying,” said Karen. Arthur, not having thumbs, wasn’t normally all that good at working a crystal ball.

“I heard about it on the news,” he said, modestly.

Once more, Karen wound the copper watch. She had never before tried to use it at a distance, but as she tried, she found that the Dark Prince’s vile mechanisms had a certain affinity for modern machines. It was easy enough to send its energies through the wires to all the factories. “Break all the machines,” she said, into the microphone.

“Foolish little girl!” No sooner had she finished, Mister Grimgoul burst into the room. “You have no idea what damage you could do.”

Stumbling backwards, Karen managed to take her wand out of her pocket, but she was still caught off-guard. Her spell missed Mister Grimgoul and hit the desk chair just beside him. Using every ounce of her power that she could muster, Karen forced it to sprout vines to entangle the entrepreneur. He toppled to the ground.

“I’ve foiled your plan,” she said, taking off her necklace and placing it around his neck. “Now to free you from the influence of the Dark Prince of Time.”

She performed the incantation, but nothing happened. The green stone didn’t even blink.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “It worked on all his other minions.”

“Ask him,” said Arthur. “He can’t lie while he’s wearing the necklace.”

“Aaah!” screamed Grimgoul. “A talking cat!”

“Spill it,” said Karen, getting frustrated. “What were you going to do with all those toy factories?”

“What?” Grimgoul blinked, his sinister grey eyes seeming perhaps a little less sinister than they had on TV. “I just wanted to sell the toys at Christmas! Sell them, and give a few tens of thousands to orphans to improve GrimCorp’s image. But now there’ll be nothing for Christmas! Nothing!!!”

It was a sad journey home. “Everybody makes mistakes,” said Arthur.

“Shut up,” said Karen.