From Newsgroup: rec.arts.comics.creative

[the cover shows Ligerjack and his crew surrounding a battered
Icosa-Pink. "CURE...OR KILL?" asks the cover copy.]

____________________________________________________________________________
.|, COHERENT COMICS PRESENTS An ASH Universe Story --+-------------------------------------------------------------------------
'|` SHADOW GIRLS #18 - Tempering (Forging the Sword Part 6)
copyright 2026 by Dave Van Domelen ____________________________________________________________________________

The Morning Stars

Tetra-Red Xueli "Julie" Li - The Leader
Hexa-Blue Tamica "Tammy" Sullivan - The Brains
Octa-Green Dhriti "Tee" Singh - The Fighter
Dodeca-Yellow Jessica "Jess" Davies - The Scout
Icosa-Pink Olivia "Liv" Stuart - The Heart
Black Opal II Madelyn "Maddie" Chin - The Mentor

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[August 14, 2027 - Subway beneath Tribeca, Manhattan Autonomous Zone]

Ligerjack sneered at Octa-Green dismissively. "Maybe later, kid," he emphasized the word, suggesting he'd decided she was too young for him. Tetra-Red couldn't help but feel a little relieved, if only for a moment.
The idea of her brother dating Dhriti was a bit ick. "First we take out the pink one, so she can't do to us what she did to Inky!" Okay, relief over.
"Uh oh," Icosa-Pink shrank back as Ligerjack and his crew eyed her with all the predatory gaze that their animalistic hybrid nature permitted. And that was a lot, between the two catboys, the hulking tiger man, a quite literally cold-blooded snake woman, and Ligerjack himself.
"GATSBY!" Octa-Green shouted in her electronically distorted voice, raising her left fist. Tetra-Red and the other girls quickly turned away
from her just before a brilliant green flash flooded the disused subway station. Blue had suggested the codeword for this trick after having done
all that extra studying for English class, and after she'd finished
explaining it, Maddie'd chuckled.
Ligerjack's crew made various sounds of shock and irritation, plus the tiger man's grunt of confusion. Only the snake woman had escaped being blinded, maybe because she was paranoid enough to look away, maybe because
she had trick eyelids. Octa-Green wasn't waiting to find out and launched herself at the still-dazed butterscotch-colored catboy, punching him back
into a tiled wall and cracking it into a spiderweb pattern. Tetra-Red kept a close eye on how the others reacted, but wanted to prioritize keeping them
from ganging up on Pink.
"Shit!" the tiger man blinked, falling back into a defensive posture. "Hey, why can't I smell 'em?"
"They must be using some sort of odor-blockers," Ligerjack shrugged, shoving the tiger towards Icosa-Pink. "At least they're not using that damn orange oil crap!"
"Too bad, I like oranges," the snake woman said, barely avoiding an audible hiss at the end, then leaning back out of the way of Hexa-Blue's high kick before turning it into a backflip and kicking Blue's foot out of the way entirely. Blue grunted and narrowly avoided a cheap shot from the striped catboy as she recovered her balance.
Meanwhile, Tetra-Red signaled for Dodeca-Yellow to join her as she moved between Icosa-Pink and Ligerjack. Pink started to make an annoyed sound over the subvocalized comms, as if she wanted to say she didn't need protection,
but then she realized she probably did need protection if they were
determined to take her down first.
"Might've been more effective if you hadn't said it out loud," Tetra-Red said as she jockeyed for position in front of the tiger.
"You really DON'T want to fight me, do yaAAAAGH!" Ligerjack started to muse before Yellow stomped his instep hard enough that a normal person
would've had a shattered foot...and he didn't seem to enjoy the experience
much either.
That was enough to unfreeze the tiger man, who ignored Tetra-Red and lurched around Ligerjack in an attempt to grab Dodeca-Yellow, snarling and bristling his fur in a manner he clearly expected would rattle his opponent. Julie suspected it had usually worked for him in the past, but he was nothing compared to people like Crusher Rick, and Jess kept her focus on the
definitely more dangerous Ligerjack. Tiger-guy might be top tier as
Bathory's hybrids went, but the Morning Stars had been fighting catboys all summer and even the better ones relied too much on assuming their opponents were normies.
"Opening, Pink, on the striped one," Maddie's voice came over the comms. She must've finished hacking the security cameras in the disused station. Icosa-Pink grinned and jumped to the ceiling and then pushed off to smash
into the striped catboy before he could get around behind Hexa-Blue again.
The snake lady was proving difficult for Tamica to get a handle on, but
neither was she doing much back. The Snow Leopard probably realized that if she committed to an attack and took a hit in return, it would go poorly for her.
The fight had been going on for less than a minute, and already Ligerjack's stated plan to gang up on Icosa-Pink had pretty much
disintegrated. As had the butterscotch catboy, who'd managed to stand up
just long enough to be slammed into the wall again, which was enough to keep him down. Somehow, Dodeca-Yellow was managing to stay in Ligerjack's blind spot, clearly a power she'd been practicing in private and hadn't told the others about. She understood teamwork, she just preferred solitude.
Tetra-Red grabbed the tiger, if by the shoulder and not by the toe, and spun him around to face her. "Hey, Tony," she smiled.
"Who told you...?" he started, before being forced to block a glowing
red fist. "AAAGH!" he gasped as Red felt bones crack. It was becoming
pretty clear that Ligerjack was the only person here with any of Bathory's special enhancements.
Julie spared a glance at Pink, whose opponent was curled up in a ball
and whimpering. "Did you break him already?" she asked.
"Sorry!" Icosa-Pink shouted back, "I really thought these guys were
tough, they seemed to think they could take us."
At that moment, Ligerjack feinted at Yellow and then threw something at Pink, which burst in a foul-looking cloud. Coughing, she reeled backwards, acrid smoke seeming to cling to her.
"Pink!" Octa-Green shouted, dashing across the station but being blocked by the snake woman who had slithered out of Hexa-Blue's reach.
This, however, freed up Blue to act, and she quickly pulled out a small object and threw it down at the ground between Pink's feet. It burst into an orange-smelling mist that displaced the smoke thanks to the pressurized gas that was meant to spread orange oil over a large volume. "We do still HAVE
the 'orange crap,'" she noted as Pink started to recover.

Ligerjack snorted in disgust and looked around to realize that he and
Tina were the only ones still up and able to fight, and at most they'd
impaired one of their foes. This was not going even a little bit to plan. Stripes was retching on the floor, Scotty was slumped below his second dent, and while Laohu was technically still standing, his arm was probably broken
and he wasn't going to be contributing anything to the fight until he got
over the shock.
"Backup!" he shouted down the tunnel.
"Not coming!" a stranger's voice answered from around the corner.
"Does this city do TNR?" he added.
"We sssscrewed up," Tina hissed, no longer trying to hide the speech tic that she hated so much. Ligerjack knew she was scared when she let that out.
"No shit, Tina," Ligerjack replied, blocking another strike against his flank. Then he spun and grabbed Dodeca-Yellow by the shoulder and hurled her towards one of the support pillars. "Time to stop screwing around, I guess!"
Yellow managed to twist in mid-air and not hit too badly, but she still grunted in pain as the pillar cracked on impact. Not the takedown he'd been hoping for, but it was buying him precious seconds. He just had to keep his focus, not rage out like Killgamesh or Crusher Rick did.
"I was hoping we had enough of an edge in experience, but I guess they closed that gap too much over the summer, damn it," Ligerjack added as he lunged towards the still-coughing Icosa-Pink, only for Hexa-Blue to grab her teammate and leap away while Tetra-Red closed in on him.
"I guess it was always going to come to this," Tetra-Red sighed and
moved purposefully towards him.
"Finally willing to face me?" he taunted.
"Time to go down, CHACHI!" she taunted right back.
"What...?" How could she know that, unless she was...suddenly her reluctance to fight him made a lot more sense, this was going to blow everything wide open, if he could get away and tell Bathory...and that realization froze him for just long enough for his kid sister to sink a
glowing red fist into his gut, knocking the air out of his lungs. Then a
very angry yellow blur slammed a fist into his back in a vicious kidney
punch, and the flash of pain nearly knocked him out right then and there.
Not that it made much difference, because it felt like all five had now converged on him and rained down blows. Maybe the pink one wasn't in on it, not that it was much consolation.
"Tina...?" he gasped, but she was nowhere to be seen...and then he
didn't see anything as darkness rose up to claim him.

Tetra-Red panted, more from the emotional release than any actual
physical exhaustion...it really hadn't been a very long fight. "You okay, Pink?" she turned to ask, then saw the dark pink twintails behind one of the pillars.
"Pretty (kaff) good, and a lot better than Tina here, she was trying to slither (kaff) away but while you all were finishing off Ligerguy I got the (kaff kaff) drop on her," she emerged from behind the pillar carrying a limp snake woman by one arm. Meanwhile, Yellow was putting the tiger man down for the count, and Julie tried to ignore the crunching sounds.
"Do you feel sufficiently recovered to attempt your purification
process?" Hexa-Blue asked while she tied the striped one up with a spool of high tension fishing line she'd pulled out of a beltpouch.
Pink nodded, suppressing another cough. "Jack's the only one I get the vibes from, but that makes sense. The rest of them are just regular catboys and one snakegirl and a year ago I would never have thought that there was
such thing as a normal catboy you know, but like dad says time makes fools of us all?"
"How about this one?" Weapons Master nodded slightly at the white-furred catboy he had slung over his shoulder. "He has some sort of stealth power,
he was probably their backup and the trap to keep you from running."
Pink shook her head. "Nothing, sorry. Probably a paranormal thing he could do before Bathory made him a catboy. We've run into a few other Snow Leopards with minor powers other than being furry or scaly or feathery
although she seems to really prefer cats even though she's trying to do the vampire thing so you think she'd go with wolves and bats but I guess she's a crazy cat lady."
"Something to keep in mind," Morse frowned, "since you can't undo her basic influence on them, and your team leader blew her secret ID in front of them...the two who were still conscious anyway...you need to figure out how
to deal with that. I can already tell that Yellow over there is fine with murder, but you gotta be really careful before you go down that path."
Maddie's electronically disguised voice crackled over the ancient speakers, "MetaPsych has a clinic on Staten Island where they've been looking into unraveling Bathory's hold, we've already...donated a few ferals to them, I'm sure they have room for a few more. It's not TNR, but hopefully it'll
do."
"Extrajudicial AND sending them to Staten Island...that's cruel, lady.
But yeah, I know, the actual justice system in the Autonomous Zone is pretty suspect too. Sounds like a plan. Now what?" Weapons Master dumped his furry bundle onto the ground next to Blue's. "Maybe his stealth is psychic, I'm
sure Metapsych would love to study that," he added under his breath.
"Now we see what happens to Ligerjack after Pink does her thing," Tetra-Red sighed.
"There is a plausible rumor that Bathory can only hybridize her subjects if she has physical access to the actual animal, which may also explain the relative paucity of non-cat hybrids," Hexa-Blue posited. "It is unlikely Bathory was able to gain access to a Liger, as they are fairly rare, which suggests that at least some of Ligerjack's changes are due to the process by which Bathory empowered people like Crusher Rick or Inky Doo. He is significantly more powerful than even a tiger hybrid, as we just
demonstrated. Thus, it is possible that at least some of his physical alterations will be undone."
"Geez, you're talking more than I do, Blue, and you're all always on me about how I won't shut up," Icosa-Pink grinned. "Okay, here goes...."
Pink placed her hands on either side of the unconscious Ligerjack's
head. "Know yourself," she whispered, and yet everyone could hear her
clearly, as if the words were spoken in their hearts rather than in their
ears.
Her gem flared and filled the station with warm pink light, incredibly bright but somehow not painful. When the light faded, Jaqui Li lay there in clothing several sizes too big for him. No trace of fur nor fang remained.
Julie gasped. "He's back to normal!"
"He LOOKS normal," Maddie corrected over the comms. "We still need to send him to Staten Island to make sure Bathory doesn't have her hooks in him, especially since he knows who you are and he's definitely smart enough to figure out some of the rest."
"At least we're pretty sure at this point that Bathory's connection to
her minions doesn't extend to seeing through their eyes or otherwise having a long range telepathic link, or things would've gone differently the last few months," Dodeca-Yellow pointed out. She'd deliberately set up several opportunities for such a remote observation to reveal itself, and either Bathory was incredibly loath to reveal that ability, or she didn't have it. Restraint wasn't exactly one of Bathory's hallmarks, so....
"Okay, so you're not hopeless in tradecraft," Morse admitted. "Let's
get these guys on the ferry or however you've been shipping catboys to Staten Island, and then I can start giving you all a crash course in...well, not getting dead when whoever's aiming you at Bathory decides it's time to pull
the trigger. I can spare a couple weeks before my boss gets suspicious, and
I think you girls have regular school to get back to by then anyway...."

* * * *

[September 15, 2027 - Manhattan Unified Secondary School #1]

Julie stared at her textbook, but she was having a little more trouble concentrating during study period than the typical student, and that was
saying something.
It'd been a quiet week and a half of school by the standards of a summer spent beating up Snow Leopards, and while the halls were a little bit less empty than last year, the school was still like hand-me-downs you were
expected to grow into. (No, she hadn't had to wear any hand-me-downs from Chachi, but one of her mom's friends had a daughter a couple years older than Julie.)
Julie and her friends were the talk of the school, yet somehow no one
had figured out that the famous Morning Stars were actually Julie, Tamica, Dhriti, Jess, and Liv. Even though Liv had those stupid pink twintails that should've given her away in a second. Maybe they all had a minor version of Jess's "don't notice me" ability? Or maybe no one paid attention to Freshmen and now Liv was getting written off as an Icosa-Pink fangirl even though she had the hairstyle before the Morning Stars showed up. Who the hell knew? At least it was one less issue to worry about right now, and Julie had more than enough to worry about.
Chachi was okay, he'd been cleared by MetaPsych, totally back to normal. But normal Chachi had still run off to hang with the Snow Leopards, and while he wasn't going to repeat that particular mistake, he wasn't coming home either. He said he only had hazy memories of his time with Bathory, and that his transformation to Ligerjack had been extremely painful, but all the
details had faded like a dream. Still, he said he had a job helping one of
the new construction companies as a local guide, and Umbrae valued the rebuilding of his city enough that Bathory would probably stay away from
Chachi for now.
Bathory hadn't shown any particular interest in freeing or otherwise dealing with any of the other "specials" the Morning Stars had defeated, though, so maybe she just was all-in on "use 'em and discard 'em" as a philosophy. They lost, on to the next toy. If anything, the last few weeks had been too quiet, as if Bathory was taking the time to learn from her failures.
Yeah, that idea didn't thrill Julie. Arrogant and thoughtless Bathory
was dangerous enough.
At least Julie and the others had picked up some genuinely useful stuff from the crash course in "tradecraft," although only time would tell if they could stick to the lessons when things got rough. On the plus side, Morse didn't think they needed more in the fighting department than Maddie could continue to provide...he'd clocked Maddie as a genuine fighter and trainer
the same way Jess had figured out he was lying the first time he showed up. Game knows game, as dad liked to say. Annoyingly, he'd refused to share any insight into who'd planted the gems for them to find, saying he'd given them the tools to figure it out themselves. Total Sensei cliche.
"No, they gotta be some Academy kids pretending to be younger,"
whispered a nearby student to her friend. "My dad says there's no way the Combine has cut us loose entirely, and STRAFE's more of a UW watchdog
anyway." They must've been talking for a bit, but it finally broke through Julie's musing.
"Do you suppose they're pretending to be students here too?" the other student asked. They thought they were talking too quietly to be heard, but Julie's hearing was better than it used to be. Everything was better except her peace of mind. Anyway, it wasn't hard to guess that the topic of this particular gossip was the Morning Stars.
Julie was pretty sure they were juniors, and despite the small size of
the student body she was also pretty sure she didn't have any classes with either of them. She certainly couldn't recall either's name.
The first student scoffed. "Yeah, Greetings Fellow Kids. I'm sure.
Nah, that'd be creepy, college kids pretending to be high school students? I think they're just pretending to be teenagers so that their real identities
are better covers. They're probably either not doing the civvies thing at
all, or infiltrating some of the new companies that've been flooding into the city."
Julie suppressed a chuckle. Maybe one of Chachi's new coworkers was a real Combine spy. Then again, those companies were probably riddled with
spies for various world powers, as well as corporates like Walters.
Wait...what if the Morning Stars were Combine spies without even
realizing it? They'd have plenty of access to old artifacts to plant in the bedrooms of disposable teenagers who could had motives to fight Bathory...!

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Author's Notes:

Sorry for the really long hiatus, there will likely be more. In the interim, I've read several more magical girl deconstruction/reconstruction prose works, which will likely inform things going forwards...the Morning
Stars might not really be traditional Shoujo Mahou, given the fact that their origins aren't even what they think (as outlined back in the first few issues and brought up again this issue), but that doesn't mean that I can't bring in some of the tropes I like anyway!
"Tempering" refers to the last major step in forging a sword,
application of extreme heating and cooling to harden the steel. There's
still sharpening to be done, but how the blade comes through the tempering process can determine whether it's going to be a good sword or merely a serviceable one (or just shatter if you screw up badly enough). Saving
Chachi is a major emotional milestone for the team, and this was hopefully
a fight worthy of the reward. This could just as easily have shattered Julie instead of strengthening her if things went differently. Of course, saving
him from Bathory doesn't get Julie the "back to normal" she'd been hoping
for, even if he seems physically unscarred.
TNR stands for "Trap, Neuter, Release," which is a standard method for dealing with feral animals (cats in particular). Some communities subsidize
it or even have their own programs. Other places make you spend hundreds of dollars per animal if you want to do it yourself.
The next arc is tentatively titled Kakistocracy, but I only have a paragraph of outline (and I use the term loosely) for it so far. The core idea, though, will be that Bathory's finished her tinkering around and is
ready to get serious, which means it's a good thing the Morning Stars are (probably) ready for that too! They've clearly outgrown the sort of Warden- level threats they've been facing up until now, although they'll never come close to the Sailor Moon power levels (GOKU doesn't come close to Sailor Moon power levels, she's utterly OP). Still, the quality of opposition is going
to increase, even as the footsoldiers of the Snow Leopards become less relevant. Oh, and while you know and I know that Rex Umbrae is the one
behind the Morning Stars getting their gems, that doesn't mean there aren't some Combine agents ready to come into the open as matters get more intense!
I don't know if I want Kakistocracy to be another six issue arc or twelve...I've long had a vague plan for 26 issues for the first "season" to imitate a common number of episodes in anime seasons of the 80s and 90s, but
at the same time I'm starting to feel like that might choke down some of the plots. Perhaps Kakistocracy will run through #26, and then the final arc of the season will be an OAV miniseries or a few movies. :)
The fifth and final arc of the season is just "Bathory's Endgame" in my notes, and it's less about what will happen than what Bathory would like to happen. Maybe someday I'll write a scene from her POV. Anyway, most of my magical girl story consumption lately has been in the form of prose novels/ novellas lately anyway, I'm not married to the TV season riff and may drop
it.


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