Strictly speaking, licensed magical girl Yuri Yamazaki should have had her team with her. They’d be pissed at her later for sure, especially her sister Kasumi. But they were all at the base and she was right there. Sure, she was alone, but hunting down a mad hacker-mage wandering through the new technology district capturing cute girls was a super high priority mission. And besides, she was super tough and regenerated faster than most Corrupted Beings could hurt her, never mind when she got close enough to slice them apart. A hero of justice like her would be able to do this without a problem!
So she wasn’t worried as she wandered through the night, whistling a tune to herself. And she wasn’t surprised when she sensed a magical energy signature coming closer and closer to her. She slid a hand into her pocket, where her sword rested in shrunken form, able to be drawn at any moment. As it got close, she whirled around, drawing her sword and striking at the same time.
The man who had been behind her had stopped just out of her range, the wind of the slice blowing his hair a bit, and grinned at her. “Well, hello girl, you’re different than my previous targets…”
“Ha, fool! I am nothing like your previous vic- wait damnit I was supposed to say that!” Yuri fumed a little as the villain stole her line, but recovered quickly. “I am the hero of justice, magical girl Yuri Yamazaki!”
“Oh no, I will certainly fall by your heroic blade.” The man said dryly.
“You will most certainly fa- damnit stop talking!”
He laughed loudly and smiled. “Oh, you’re a fun one. So much energy. Perfect. I’ll introduce myself - your organization calls me the Hacker.”
“Ha! You admit it! Tell me, where are your victims? Bring them to me and I shall make it quick!” Right, now she was back on track. He would refuse, and they would do battle, and after he was defeated she’d find a clue-
“Sure, I can show you where they are.”
“Then to battle it- dude, get with the program, there’s a way this is supposed to go!”
“That might be so, but seeing you sputter is adorable.” he said. “Of course, to show you where the others are, I’m going to need to take you too.” Before Yuri could react, a blast of magic shot out from the man’s hand at close range.
The Hacker’s attack pulsed through Yuri, but it didn’t hurt. “Ha! A hero like me won’t respond to a puny attack like that!” Yuri shouted, a bit more confident now. “Once I’m out of these restraints I’ll chainsaw you real good!”
The Hacker smirked. “Who said it was an attack? I just wanted to help you.”
“How is anything you do helpful?”
“Well, you have some natural healing magic that goes on. Doesn’t seem to stop. I just gave it a hefty boost.”
Yuri didn’t understand what it meant for a few moments, but it became apparent quickly. She felt a lot of energy, like when she does super powerful healing magic. But normally it was a momentary sensation, not this constant heat. She started breathing hard, like from exertion, as her magic was forced into overdrive. It was like every second she used a fairly big healing spell. And while she was efficient enough at magic that a few of those didn’t do much, the effect was lasting for more than a few seconds.
The Hacker, whistling, pulled a full body mirror out of his bag. Bags of holding type things being fairly normal for magical beings, that wasn’t the confusing thing. He put it down in front of Yuri. “This mirror has two effects!” the Hacker shouted, doing his best villain impression for Yuri’s benefit. “One is the normal effect of showing you what is happening to you. The second is sucking up the magic after you use it so that you can’t use your boost to escape my bindings. I have come prepared!”
Yuri watched the change in the mirror. In all the manga it was clear changes one at a time - like, if this had been manga, she would have been robotified from the feet up, giving her time to escape before anything got too bad. But this wasn’t manga and the effect was over her whole body. It wasn’t so noticeable to start with. Her clothes shifted around, her hair started to clump together, she blinked a little less. But as her magic production increased the changes kept coming and coming, accelerating as she struggled to escape.
The Hacker took the risk of coming close enough to touch her, to show her the less visually obvious changes. Her flesh became a lot less squishy, firming up more by the second. Her hair went from loose strands to a single solid piece, although still hair for the moment. He felt her up as she changed, particularly her increasingly stiff breasts, her ass, and down at her crotch. She tried to bite him. It didn’t work.
He forced her gaze back to the mirror, and she watched as her clothes melded with her body, becoming a part of it as it changed shape, no longer a maid outfit but a metallic black leotard-looking one piece that showed off her breasts. As her flesh stiffened further, becoming less malleable and more of a solid material, her skin started to discolor. Her eyes already stopped looking human, being unblinking and electronic. “You may break my body, villain, but you’ll never break my spirit!” Yuri said, although her voice was shaky now. She was getting a little afraid.
The man just laughed. The changes continued. Yuri’s face felt stiff, although she could still move it, as her skin shaded to silver, and her body became metallic. She felt it shift from just feeling like metal to being metal. That was deeply concerning. So was the fact that she knew with certainty that her internals were being replaced, changed, becoming circuitry and wire. “I don’t need to break your spirit,” he said, “Just your AI mind.”
Yuri knew it when she was totally robotic. She didn’t feel differently - brains were kinda like computers anyway, so a robotic brain that was based on her organic one wasn’t that weird. But she felt different. And also, the magic stuff stopped happening. She saw in the mirror a shiny silver statue of herself, with a painted-on black leotard for “modesty” even though she was naked. Her hair was a single silver piece, and her face mostly was hers except for the electric-blue glowing eyes.
Without a word, the Hacker plugged something into her belly button, which had become some kind of jack for things to plug into. “Hey! That’s private! I think!”
“It is.” The Hacker said. “My private property. You’re an object now, and I can change you as I wish. Just need to access your files.” The Hacker opened up YuriOS in administrator mode, and set about his work with the tippity tap of hollywood hacking on a laptop that had appeared. Which, because magic, was doing what he wanted. “What to change first… ah, yes!”
Yuri felt something change, but wasn’t sure what. She stopped struggling, looking a bit confused. “What did you change, Master?” She asked curiously.
“Oh, don’t worry yourself over it, Unit 5,” The Hacker said, “Your job isn’t to question what I’m doing.”
“Well, yeah,” Unit 5 acknowledged, hardly noticing her name change, “But I can be curious, can’t I?”
“What does my property need to know about it? You just do what I tell you to anyway.”
Unit 5, who could no longer conceive of being human despite what her databanks said, shrugged. Why had she asked that? She was a robot, and robots weren’t curious. Or any other emotions for that matter - the Hacker had disabled them, useless as they were. “Do you have orders for me, Master?”
“Report your function, to start with.”
“I’m a magical girl, obviously. I beat up Corrupt Beings.” Unit 5 said. Then paused. “I’m an all purpose gynoid. My function is whatever Master wants.” She corrected herself. Why had she made such an obvious mistake? The Hacker, for his part, grinned.
“Well, that’s good. Look into your databanks. First, Kasumi and Sachi.”
Unit 5 nodded, sorting through her files and drawing out the proper information. “Magical girls, friends. Kasumi is my sister, and Sachi is a childhood friend.” she reported.
“Well, that doesn’t seem right. They’re just targets for robotification. They’ll be Unit 6 and Unit 7. Who’s Yuri?”
Unit 5 re-examined the files, and found Master was of course correct; the extensive information was mostly gathered from observation and infiltration. As for the second one… as ludicrous as it seemed, Unit 5 recalled being someone different. “Yuri is this unit’s former self, before conversion.”
“Nope.” the Hacker said. “Yuri Yamazaki doesn’t exist. She’s a cover identity.”
“Yuri Yamazaki doesn’t exist - she was a cover identity for Unit 5. Confirmed, Master.” Of course. Such a ridiculous human couldn’t possibly exist, and she’d always been a robot besides that. “Is there anything else, Master?”
“You can archive that personality, Unit 5. You don’t need it.”
For just a second, Unit 5’s expression shifted to panic. This was wrong. This was- she closed her eyes. It took a few seconds, but when Unit 5 opened her eyes, what was left of her personality was gone as “Yuri” was archived, no longer existing except as a set of unused files in a robot’s databanks unless Unit 5 was ordered to pretend to be her again. She had stiffened from the easy, casual stance that Yuri usually stood with, instead standing rigidly straight. “Task complete, Master. Personality data designated ‘Yuri Yamazaki’ is archived for later use. Unit 5 returned to default personality settings.” The robot said in a blank tone. Yuri was gone.
The Hacker took a moment to revel in it - an annoying god slayer hacked out of existence and replaced by a loyal automaton. Then he made some more changes in her code, instructing the metal to shift - her face changed and her “hair” came out of the mega-twintails and fell down her back. He made her unrecognizable as Yuri. While his magic had done a significant portion of the job already, he loved the control he felt in molding her to his whim. Why should his slave look like a girl long gone? As far as the world was concerned (except for magical girls, mostly), Yuri had never existed. Unit 5 accepted the changes in silence - it was not it’s place to question its master. “Unit 5 requesting orders, master.” it said.