Marathon in the Park

Shard-Strike Universe created by Au Goose

Written by HarmonyMotion with Au Goose

Edited by Au Goose

Chapter 1

"Today is October 30th, and with a year between us and the Shard-Storm, folks are looking forward to getting back to normal. Though some academics are warning that strange phenomena could increase during this, the most spoooo-oooky time of the year. Mayor Bhasin is urging all parents to be especially vigilant this year if you are taking your children out for trick or treating. Police will be performing extra neighborhood patrols until 3AM and our own Los Angeles heroes, the Golden Guard will be on standby if there's any paranatural threats..."

"Boring. Magic most divine, change to channel nine!" Melody sing-songed.

Her modest flatscreen flickered as she continued to brew her potion in a little black cast iron, stirring the nasty-looking brew with an electric hand mixer. She had it on the lowest setting, doing her best to follow Auntie Eunji's secret recipe. One she'd found in the tome which she had inherited the day the world caught fire.

Before the firestorm...

Auntie Eunji was a crazy old bat. Everyone said so. But family was family, after all. The three Park sisters, Melody, Helen, and Jane, often went to visit Eunji in her decrepit studio. Their crazy maybe-Wiccan maybe-who-knows-what aunt had refused to go anywhere else, repeatedly claiming that 'the leylines were strongest there!'

Eunji had grown more and more erratic the longer she isolated herself. She was always telling stories about witchcraft to the girls when they were children, but what their family thought was merely entertaining fairytales grew more zealous as time went on.

Helen, the oldest, insisted on going, calling it a familial duty. And because she was the eldest, Melody and Jane had to respect her wishes. Their mother approved. Helen would make a good wife and mother someday.

Jane, overachiever that she was, despised having her time wasted on mystical mumbo jumbo. She just wanted to study, do her homework, and practice violin.

But Melody... Melody was truly fascinated by Auntie Eunji's tales. And their Auntie latched onto her like a drowning person gasping for air. Finally, someone in the family who had an interest in things not easily seen!

The family didn't stop visiting, but Jane and Helen soon brought their own activities to entertain themselves at the old study, while Melody hung on Eunji's every word. A period of upheaval was coming, she'd whisper conspiratorially to her only student. Melody had to be ready. Had to study the art of potion brewing, hex recitation, that kind of stuff.

The old lady became more and more frenzied over the years. While the rest of her family became more reluctant to visit, Melody always went without reservation. Her presence brought Auntie Eunji some comfort, she insisted. Her parents grew more nervous, but they wouldn't deny the strange woman that.

Only looking back did Melody piece the whole timeline together.

Auntie Eunji passed away on the very first day of the Shard-Storm. And... it sure seemed like she had known it was coming. They found her body on the floor, lying on its side within a large hexagram inscribed in a circle drawn from chalk. In between her hands was a picture of Melody. Neatly printed on the back of the photo: "My time has passed. Your time is now."

Melody received Auntie's heirloom tome. Helen tried to suppress a snicker, but failed. Jane did not try to suppress it. They also received a few items from their aunt's estate, as per her wishes, but they were simple tokens. A bit of art, a few other belongings that were surprisingly appropriate. Even Jane cried when she received the chair she'd taken to curling up in during their many visits. Eunji had let her be, but she had clearly noticed Jane's fondness for it.

They were each grieving in their own way, and the news was full of fire and monsters and maybe superheroes. Many of their friends called the sudden lightning strikes that were sweeping away the old safe and boring world a hoax. A gigantic, synchronized hoax. Maybe one organized by anonymous members of an internet site.

But by the end of that long, terrifying week, there was no denying it: superpowers were a part of the world now.

But only Melody knew magic had come back too.

Chapter 1 (cont.)

So Melody studied, diligently, every day since she'd received her Aunt's treasure.

It turned out that witching was hard work. Rhyming couplets were the source of a witch's spontaneous power. Being tongue tied or distracted in the heat of the moment usually spelled a witch's doom.

Pages upon pages of common rhymes filled well over a third of the manual. Perhaps that was why the mean girls in school held so much power over others. They always knew just how to twist someone's name or something they said into a brutally mocking caricature.

The more powerful the spell, the more lines required. She committed pages of the stuff to memory, like a multiplication chart. Who knew, in this new and dangerous world, when she might need to call upon it?

A black cat sat on the inside of her windowsill, hissing and clawing at a dead raven on the other side of the glass. There were flies on its rotting corpse.

"Noir, what is it, baby?" Melody walked over to examine. "Oh, gross!"

Noir hissed even louder and ran away as Melody grabbed a disposable wooden chopstick, opened the window, and gingerly pushed the carcass off.

Shuddering in disgust, she threw the stick away and turned on the TV.

"Channel Nine News, Sophia Gomez reporting. Five masked men, dressed in brown military uniforms with red armbands depicting swastikas, entered an all-female school via paranatural portal. As most of our viewers know, women are statistically far more likely to gain powers in the aftermath of a shard-strike. Authorities suspect the crime is gender hate crime related.

Thankfully, Marathon arrived on the scene before any harm was done! The iconic superhero is truly a miracle--not only one of the most powerful beings the world has ever seen, but he is male!

The city's champion suffered minor injuries: a few gunshots to his arms, one to his torso. But after subduing all five of these self-declared Nazis, the bullet wounds were already healing by the time he gave an after-action interview.

This has been Sophia Gomez, reporting live for CNN."

Melody didn't watch the footage, but she only needed her imagination to see Marathon in her mind's eye. Despite being born second generation to Korean-American parents, they were still quite traditional. She imagined bringing home a rugged, lean, white man, face adorned with a scraggly five o'clock shadow, him towering over her by a full foot, and introducing him to her parents.

They would probably freak! Well, it would serve Helen right for demanding that she find a boyfriend and settle down. She could be just as insufferable as their parents about it.

The pleasant daydream quickly brought her back to reality. Melody just could not land a good date! So many of the men were too intimidated by a confident woman. Especially one as beautiful as she.

...And who could turn them into a toad if they got too grabby. Not that she would ever admit it publicly.

Still, she just needed to find a man she was interested in. And with the scheme she was brewing, it would definitely be a good date. A perfect date, even.

Chapter 2

Potion brewing was a slow, torturous, methodic process, to be followed to the tee. Or so the book said.

"Eye of newt, toe of snail?!" Melody cried in disgust. "What the hell are these?"

"Fire burn, cauldron bubble. And do I really have to do this over a fire pit with... green flames!?"

So her first order of business had been to create cleansing or disenchantment salts. If something went wrong with a potion, she could always throw a handful over her shoulder and undo any calamitous effects.

Assuming that she still had a hand to use, or a shoulder to throw it over. Magic was fun that way.

But it turns out witches were luddites. Or their technology just really was that old. Maybe there was something to this Rebirth of Magic theory being batted around on the OccultWeb... it would certainly fit the timeline suggested by her spellbook.

Melody had spent most of the year slowly transcribing her own versions of these recipes. Eye of newt? Find a frog. Toe of snail? Escargot! Electric stove on and cast iron bubbling. Stir with electric hand mixers. It wasn't so bad. Probably witches of olde didn't have the convenience of big box grocery stores and online shopping. Economics still ruled the world, after all.

Tomorrow was a big mixer party in their shared offices. Surely there was someone in that twenty floor building that she would find more than palatable to spend a few hours with.

The potion's solid ingredients finally began to dissolve into the fluid soup. It soon changed from a cloudy, steaming grey to a deep purple. She had discovered that a sudden shift in color always happened when a potion was done brewing. Nice design.

Cleansing salts at the ready, Melody pinched her nose and dotted a drop on her tongue. She shivered and gagged. Oh, was it bad! Good potion visual design, but awful on the taste buds. She spat it out, held back her hair, and shoved her face under the faucet. The water ran down her cheeks and seeped down her neck, but she just gargled and gargled.

Heaving over the sink, saliva dripping down her chin, her black crop top stained with trails of water, Melody fought the urge to gag.

Well, at least she hadn't turned into a toad. Unlike one of her particularly nasty ex-boyfriends, whom she had transformed with twenty lines of rhyming couplets. After letting him hop around aimlessly for an hour while she practiced her incantations on his most treasured possessions, transmuting the poses in photos, or turning his video game console into a large purple dildo, she turned him back into human form--though maybe an inch or two shorter.

He kept a wide berth from Melody now.

Melody spat repeatedly into the sink, trying to scrape that vile taste off her tongue with her fingers. How did witches ever survive drinking these vile concoctions?

She went back to the stove and reached into the upper shelf. Vanilla extract, almond extract, plenty of nice, modern tools at the ready. She poured a bottle into the purple potion and monitored it.

No hissing. No color change.

She'd already done this a few times with concentration and persuasion potions. They had worked perfectly fine. If there were a witches' academy out there somewhere, they would probably kill for her delicious newt-snail-bat-vanilla recipe.

Melody scooped another small spoonful and drank it down like medicine. Her other hand clasped the cleansing salts, lest something terrible happen. Maybe the salt would accidentally sprinkle over her shoulder.

Ten seconds passed. Twenty. A minute. She felt fine.

The potion would wear off by tomorrow. She'd have it ready for the party.

Her perfect-date-guaranteed potion.

Chapter 3

"October 31st, Channel Nine News reporting.

More petty theft and larger-scale heists stopped in their tracks today! The Golden Guardians, led by Marathon, are keeping our city safe!

We have actual, on the scene footage of Raceway and Titaness foiling a major armed bank robbery."

The clip played in slow motion. All that could be seen in the background were Titaness's calves, a testament that she really lived up to her name. At her maximum size, she stood taller than the entire highrise building.

Even in slow motion, Raceway was a blur. A thin, red streak zipped in and out of the building, depositing criminals in one pile and hostages in another. Only when they were all rounded up did the super-fast hero stop moving, allowing her masked face and short brunette curls to become recognizable to the naked eye.

Some of the empowered criminals tried to escape, but a large shadow loomed above them right before Titaness's boot came crashing down.

She pinned them in place with her two-story high footwear, scanning the rest of the city from her high "perch," waiting for the meta-police to arrive.

"Another day in the books for Los Angeles. Will criminal activity slow down anytime soon? Are we running out of prisons for para-enhanced criminals? Will we forever require the services of Marathon and his team?

This has been Sophia Gomez of Channel Nine News."

Melody put on her scandalously sexy witch costume in preparation for the party. Luckily, the criminals had chosen someone else's bank to rob! God forbid they hit her place of employment and ruin the office party for tonight.

Examining herself in the mirror, even Melody had to admit, she looked absolutely stunning. Was this too revealing for an office party?

To call the neckline of her black dress plunging was only half truth. It was positively scandalous, the front slit running down all the way to her cute belly button. She'd need tape to keep herself looking decent in public.

She'd always been proud of her breasts, and for good reason. They were so beautifully large, yet still firm and perky. She couldn't resist tracing a single finger over the curvature of her swells, outlining her exposed cleavage. The fact that a short, pure-blooded Asian girl could have a chest like this only made her more of a unicorn. Though to be fair, it ran in the family.

Melody laughed at her sleeves that flared out below the elbow. She loved swishing them around, feeling the fabric rub against her wrists.

The lower half of her getup was just as scandalous as the top. Another long slit on her left ran all the way up to her hip, exposing her proportionally absurdly long legs on full display. She might need some more tape or a pin to keep that part from swishing a bit too much. It would definitely titillate, and that's what she wanted for tonight.

Fluffing out her purple hair, she ran a comb through it out of habit more than anything else. Thanks to the first potion she'd ever dared try, it never seemed to need maintenance, always free of knots and silky smooth. That had been a spell seriously gone right. But it felt nice to run her hands through those thick, luscious tresses.

Grabbing her mane in one hand, she deftly tied it into a tight ponytail and cocked her head left and right, examining her whole visage. Neck? Long and elegant. Shoulders? Bare and smooth. Skin? Porcelain white, which she took great lengths to maintain.

She took off her glasses and flipped her hair. Nah, glasses back on.

For the piece de resistance, a wide-rimmed floppy witch's hat, whose tip was bending over at the top.

A laughter emanating from deep in Melody's belly burst from her lips.

Screw old, classical witches! She was rewriting their recipes. And now, she was going to refashion them as well. The typical witch image definitely needed a facelift, and that's just what Melody was going to do.

Soft, inaudible footsteps padded toward her. Her black cat announced its appearance, rubbing against her ankles, purring contentedly.

"Aw Noir, what do you think? Think I look good? Think I can land a date?"

Noir had her eyes shut, still bumping the top of her head with her cute little prick ears against Melody's limbs.

"Too bad you aren't really a familiar," Melody chuckled to herself. She wasn't experienced enough to figure that one out yet. And she certainly didn't want to risk it with Noir.

"So what are you saying, girl? Think this outfit needs something else?" Melody swiveled her torso, letting the wide-brimmed dress flow.

Melody chose her words carefully.

"I've got it!

Prettier than a new rose,

Clad me in black pantyhose!"

A silky nylon clad her feet and climbed up her slender calves, creeping its way past her knee, and then weaving dense strands up to her upper thigh. She examined the material by touching it with her lone index finger, enjoying the feeling of her ivory skin rubbing against her conjured garments. Little goosebumps formed on her skin, prickling her thighs and forearms.

Melody squealed in delight. She bent down at the waist to stroke her cat, gasping at the sight of her pendant cleavage on the way down.

"Oh my god, Noir," Melody whispered as she scritched furry companion's neck. The purring intensified. "I really might have a guest over tonight. Be nice to him, okay?"

A loud snapping noise startled a hopeful Melody. The corner of her full-length mirror had somehow been scarred with a deep crack. Noir scampered off again to whimper in Melody's bedroom.

"Wow. Bad luck today, huh?" she said to no one in particular. She examined the deep gouge... it almost seemed like a dark shadow disappeared as soon as she leaned in closer.

Nah, probably just a trick of the light.

"Wisps of wind and morning dew,

Fix this mirror to brand new!"

As the magical energies repaired the crack, Melody threw on a denim jacket to cover her torso and made her way downtown.

Chapter 4

Strutting past Los Angeles Koreatown in a pair of heeled boots at 7:00 PM, Melody confidently walked into the lobby of the office complex where her bank was located. Her fancy footwear clacked on the sleek, polished, black marble floors.

She greeted the receptionist and gave her name.

"Montgomery Party." Those two words were almost as potent as one of her rhymes. The woman handed her a nametag with a barcode.

"Elevator, floor 15."

"Thanks!" Melody smiled. Oh, she was going to get lucky tonight, for sure! She patted the inside pocket of her witch's robe to double check that her little vial was still there.

Swiping her barcoded nametag in the elevator with a loud beep, she rode it up to near the top floor, fidgeting with her floppy witch's hat in her hands, butterflies whirling in her stomach.

The chrome doors slid open, revealing a dark room with impressive mood lighting. A cloud of fog swirled around everyone's ankles. Displays of jack o'lanterns, some screaming, others laughing, and yet others just displaying the logos of various companies, outlined the room. A photo booth with three neon skeletons sat in the corner of the room, with a line of people waiting to use it. The camera shutter flickered rapidly, taking multiple shots per second, while people played with props and moved in slow motion.

In the center of it all was a slightly raised dance floor with an old-fashioned disco ball. Someone had taped black construction paper to the mirrored orb to give it a jack o'lantern's eyes and toothy grin, projecting its shadow onto the entire room as it spun.

Melody's heels clacked on the hardwood floor. She gasped. She'd never had clearance to come up here before! The open space was huge!

"May I take your coat?" asked the door check.

"Why yes," she answered with a huge grin, getting into the mood. She should fit right in!

Adjusting her dress to make sure it covered just enough, she flamboyantly put on her hat and began to make the rounds.

Deftly grabbing a martini off of a passing waiter's serving tray, Melody made her way to a long, brightly lit table, burdened with a near-orgy of cheese and meats. Picking her way through the extravagant array, she found some nice-looking meat quite quickly. Of the upright and two-legged variety.

She sidled up to her handsome Asian target, his short, glossy black hair spiked with gel, a strong neck and jaw just like Melody liked. He carried a blood red pitchfork, and a pair of devilish horns peeked out from the spikes of his hair.

Cute! A witch and a demon--like a match made in Heaven. Or... the other place. Whatever. Melody approached him, poised to strike up a conversation.

"Hi! I'm Melody! I work at One Capital on the third floor." She tapped the nametag she had attached to her dress, right next to her alluring decolletage. She was trembling in anticipation for her moment to pull out her potion and chug it surreptitiously.