Qibli on the Run
Qibli is now a wanted criminal. How is she doing?
- Main Cast
- Time period
- 2039 - present
- Complete
- Tags
- Bauhinia, MSS
After murdering Nebula, Qibli couldn't be a normal member of society anymore. She had to run away to live a life at large.
Pocket dimension
She rested herself in a pocket dimension she created, where there's a treehouse she lives in, and the outside terrain can shift to her liking. In the pocket dimension, and flows normally; and because she will physically enter her pocket dimension, she cannot connect to the internet. Contrast with Sunflower's paracosm.
Discovery
One day, Qibli figured out a way for other people to use her magic — something never before thought possible — and sold it on the black market. The deed was found out when Bauhinian soldiers (along with Mulberry and Blackjack) noticed the Fantoni using dark-purple-colored magic on the battlefield.
While strolling around in Fanton one time after a deal had been made, she got roped into checking out another potential client, not knowing that it was Tsunami. When she told Qibli that Firecrackers was killed by her magic, she felt guilt and remorse, something she hadn't felt in a while.
And now Qibli has got a bunch of people coming after her. Sky of the MSS, for obvious reasons; Trinket, along with her team of Tephra and Melody, also for obvious reasons; and Sparky, because Starcorp wants Qibli to sign an exploitive contract to hand the magic monopoly to them.
Post-war
Qibli, driven by guilt and regret, had only one thing in mind.
Can she revive Firecrackers?
She practiced and practiced. She managed to revive a guinea pig. Time to test it out on the real corpse.
She found the place Firecrackers was buried and started to cast the spell. But she was interrupted by Sparky, and soon Sky and Tsunami, and soon Trinket's team. They had a huge fight. They called her mad for attempting to revive people, which was "one of the few things magic couldn't do."
"The book never said anything about magic having limitations."
In the middle of the big fight, a hand suddenly poked out of Firecrackers's grave. A tall boy with huge horns climbed out of the ground. He still looked 25.
But he wasn't Firecrackers. His eyes were empty. His soul had long ago moved on; only his body was revived.
Qibli desperately tried to believe that Firecrackers was revived and well, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Worse, if she lets go of her magic for just a couple minutes, the body goes back to being dead.
Grieving, Qibli buried Firecrackers back in his grave. Trinket took the chance to bash her in the head, knocking her out and capturing her. She headed back to Flower City and handed Qibli to Kismet, the fake one.
Capture
By this time Kismet had already figured out that magic could be accessed from the blood, from studying confiscated Fantoni spells. He crafted a magic bioweapon and tucked Qibli inside, draining her blood to use it.
Except that it's not working. They took Qibli out again. Trinket suggested that she must've stored her magic in a vessel right before being knocked out. She was ordered to interrogate Qibli on where her vessel is. The real Kismet told her that he was assigned her assistant.
Go — go tell Kismet that. He's a smart man. Tell him, ask him to think about why magicians are only born in Bauhinia in the first place.
The emperors summoning them to the palace did something. Slowly fewer and fewer magicians were born in northern areas. Now, in the modern day, they only appear in Bauhinia's borders.
What does he think would happen if he starts killing magicians this way? Draining all the magic out of them?
This area is outside of both of our expertise, but one thing you left out was that the total number of magicians born never fluctuated. They just changed places.
Because they're migrated. If they're killed en masse, things would be different. Do you think Kismet would risk that? I know he's listening. He can consider it right now.
I can work for you. In exchange for you destroying that magic machine and never attempting anything like that ever again. Is that a deal?
They needn't agree, because Kismet was watching the interrogation and reading Qibli's mind. When she thought about her vessel, Kismet knew of its location — Firecrackers's corpse.
So they dug Firecrackers back up and cremated the motherfucker, returning magic to Qibli, and plugging her back into the machine. Kismet started to trust Trinket after this, and introduced the real him to her, fully accepting her into his closest circle.
Of course, Kismet's a smart man. He had never even considered killing magicians for their blood; he had briefly considered a bone marrow transplant that could turn himself into a magician but was quickly dissuaded by his doctors. Luckily, he could put his magic machine to good use with just Qibli, as long as they don't drain her too quickly and keep her alive to continuously feed the machine. Her movements were heavily regulated; she was tied to the bed at all times with magic chains enchanted by Trinket that prevents her from casting any spells (it's impossible for magicians to interfere with other people's minds or free will; the spell on the chains is designed to neutralize immediately whatever spells Qibli may cast, like those noise-cancelling headphones). If she refused to eat food, they would simply inject nutrients.
She could still manage to enter Sunflower's paracosm, and spends the majority of her time in there.
Sometimes Kismet comes chat with her when he's bored.
As far as I'm concerned right now, this is the end of Qibli's story, and the rest of her long, miserable life is spent in that room getting repeatedly drained half-dry and then recovering to get drained again1.