Elsewhere on Earth...

Brilliance, formerly also known as Aiko Lafever, was
cursed with two powers.  Most girls would die to be a
magical girl.  The rumors said some had tried that
path, literally, but not always on purpose.
Brilliance envied them.

Her first power was a supreme analytical talent.  In
theory, she could ace any test without studying, solve
problems that would put the school geniuses to shame,
and more.  She had time to indulge this power now, but
in the past, it was almost useless to her.  She could
only invoke it as Brilliance - but if she transformed,
no matter how well she disguised herself, her magic
made her look different.  Her teachers saw someone
else taking Aiko's place in class, while Aiko was
absent.  Nothing she did as Brilliance could be
credited to Aiko.  At least she could see this was a
deliberate effect of the magic, while the fact that
Aiko felt utterly stupid when deprived of Brilliance's
mind was merely a product of her own psyche.

Her second power was invulnerability.  She actually
felt this power first, when the magic first washed
over her and the hunter's attack that should have
turned her into hamburger simply bounced off.  While
she could still feel, any pain above a certain
threshold simply cut out.  Once she was alone, she had
experimented with this.  Pleasure was not affected,
but even sleep and starvation were now foreign to her.
She supposed she would probably not age, either,
unless she reverted to Aiko.  But if she did that, at
least for the next several years, she would not age
appreciably either.  The toxic levels of radiation now
seeped into every tissue of her body would see to
that.

And that was the limit of her powers.  No enhanced
strength.  No magical attacks to dispatch the hunters.
Just an ability to survive while everyone she ever
knew was torn to shreds around her, and an ability to
deduce for certain there was absolutely nothing she
could do about it.

Worse, her double powers seemed to be a beacon to
hunters.  Other magical girls might see a hunter a
day, at most.  Within a week of her first
transformation, Brilliance was surrounded by at least
a hundred hunters, most of them going crazy trying to
find a way to kill her.  The town she had been raised
in did not survive their rage.  At least one hunter
must have been trying to induce suicide: it forced her
to see it slowly rape, torture, and digest many of her
friends.

The military tried to evacuate her, but the hunters
fended them off.  One soldier did manage to throw her
a radio at the cost of his life, over which she
briefed the fallen man's commander about the
situation.  She half-jokingly advised nuking the area.
They took her seriously.  Her radio was ground zero.

Surprisingly, the artifact survived along with her.
It seemed the magic extended to anything she carried.
Like her, it did not need power.  She supposed she
would always wonder just what the look on the
general's face was when she reported in after the
blast.

It was also the only thing that saved her sanity.
With the radio, she could talk.  By talking, she could
advise, analyzing difficult situations in other parts
of the world.  They had parachuted in a PDA and
satellite phone some time ago, to let her serve better
while they sent another nuclear warhead her way every
week or so.  With the proper walls to alter wind
patterns, and low enough warhead tonnages,
environmental effects beyond the immediate vicinity
were made negligible.  While there was no precise
count of hunters worldwide, those she spoke with
estimated she was at least a significant drain on the
supply of hunters.  And on the worldwide stockpile of
nuclear weapons.

Even the bombers said she was easy to target, day or
night.  She was pretty certain they had meant it as a
compliment, however stumbling.  By now, Brilliance was
indeed brilliant - even if seeing your eyelids glow
when you blinked got old fast.

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