(2025 Edit) Technomancer: A Magical Girl's Sidekick [Post-Apocalyptic][Mecha][Magical Girls]

Celestial Sonata

"How is she?"

I looked down on the unconscious form of Red Riding Hood laying in her bed, hooked up to machines. Her skin was pale, her eyes closed. A breathing mask was over her mouth. The heart rate monitor beeped slowly.

"Critical," the winged girl said with a solemn face. a doctor answered. "But she's stable."

Miracle Angel Caduceus was a petite girl with long blonde hair and blue eyes, her outfit was white and gold and a large halo adorned her forehead. She was one of the few Magical Girls with true healing magic - though her healing required time and recovery.

"I...I can't believe it. Seeing her like this," I said, shaking my head.

"She'll pull through," Caduceus replied. "Miss Red's a fighter. She's been through worse, and come out on top."

"I know. It's just...she's always been such a strong woman," I said, tears welling up in my eyes.

Little Red Riding Hood was a living legend, a role model, a hero, and a mentor to me.

"Red is strong, but she's not invincible. She makes mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes are fatal."

I looked over to where the winged Magical Girl stood. She wore a long red cape, a white robe with golden embroidery, and a silver circlet with wings on it.

"I should have been there..." I said, my fists clenched at my side. Getting myself injured over something so petty and stupid in my civilian life...it felt humiliating, that the others had been forced to fight a Duke without me.

"No one could have predicted what happened," she said.

"But if I had just been there..." I trailed off.

"No," she said firmly. "This is not your fault. Red would never want you to blame yourself for what happened. And besides, you have your own problems. We all have two lives to manage. That doesn't make yours more or less important than anyone else's."

"But...but..."

"But nothing," she insisted. "Now, let me take a look at that leg again, while I'm at it."

I hesitated for a moment. She was right, of course.

While in a transformed state, even grievous injuries sustained in our civilian lives would dull just enough that they weren't as debilitating as they should have been. A broken arm or leg wouldn't be able to move, sure, but it also wouldn't be as painful. Muscle and ligament strains would be slowed to the point that the only way to know you had them was by how difficult it would be to lift heavy objects or do high speed maneuvers. Concussions and internal injuries would still leave you with a throbbing headache or make it hard to concentrate, but they were survivable.

It was part of what made the job of a Magical Girl so taxing on our health - our transformed state would hide injuries we received as civilians while damage when transformed would carry over. The fact that we had access to a magical girl in Shoreline City with actual healing magic was a huge advantage for us. Unfortunately, it was also a resource in limited supply. Miracle Angel's abilities allowed her to keep Magical Girls and soldiers fighting far longer than they would be capable of on their own - and even allowed them to get back in the fight in situations that would normally be debilitating.

I sat down on the bed next to her, and she placed her hand on my thigh.

"This might sting a little," she warned. She pressed her palm to the skin, and I felt a tingle, followed by a burning sensation. I grimaced, gritting my teeth, and she removed her hand.

"Thanks," I said. She nodded. I sat back up and sighed. "Shame you can't just wave your hand and fix it, eh?"

Caduceus chuckled dryly. "I wish. I can only use your own luminal aura and mana to stabilize injuries and accelerate healing. There's nothing I can really do with a torn tendon."

"Yeah...I guess," I muttered.

"Well, that should do for now," the winged Magical Girl said, stepping away. "I'm going to go see to the others, make sure no one else needs my attention."

"Right," I said, standing up again and walking over to where Red lay. Her breathing mask fogged with each slow breath. I took hold of her hand and squeezed it gently.

"Hang in there," I whispered.

"I'll leave you two alone," the other Magical Girl said. She turned to go.

"Wait!" I called after her.

"What is it?" She looked at me questioningly.

"...thank you," I said quietly.

She smiled sadly, and nodded. "Don't mention it." With that she left me alone in the infirmary with Red Riding Hood. I sat down on the chair beside her bed and stared at her. She seemed so small, so fragile, so unlike herself. And it was my fault she was in this state.

More than that - the attempt to repair the negentropy generators had failed. Although her strike team had taken down the Blightbringer, there were enough monsters in the area that the Nightmare Zone continued to sustain itself. If she hadn't gotten injured, Red would be out in the field with the others.

But now, she was here, lying in a hospital bed.

"Dammit!" I shouted. "Dammit!" I punched the wall, slightly denting the metal frame, and I cursed myself for being so stupid. I leaned back in the seat and put my hands to my head.

There were three S-Rank Magical Girls in the city, and two of them were in this room.

One was in critical condition, and I was only a week off from a stupid mistake when I knew I had an operation to prepare for.

From her team's field report, the portals were something I could have shut down with my Signature.

I'd have made up the difference.

The door opened, and I turned around.

"Miss Sonata?" a woman's voice greeted me. Commodore Williams stepped into the room.

"Hello," I said.

She was a tall woman of African descent with bright silver hair in a neat bun, and she wore a Coalition military coat decorated in badges and medals. Her sword hung from her belt, and her boots clicked against the floor as she walked in.

Commodore Sophia Williams looked tired, but not exhausted like everyone else. Her eyes had a soft look in them. "How is she?"

"Not great, but stable," I answered.

"I see. Well, that's good to hear. Have you been able to get any sleep?"

"I tried, but I couldn't really...not really. I kept waking up thinking about what happened."

"Ah, I'm sorry to hear that."

I shrugged. "I'm fine. I'm just worried about her."

"She's a fighter. She'll be okay."

"I know."

The two of us stared at her in silence for a minute.

"Her team saved my life once, you know?"

I looked at her.

"It was over a decade ago during the Fourth Chaos War. You would've been too young to remember it, but I was part of the task force sent to help Earth. My husband was part of the diplomatic mission as an engineer and scientist representing Sisyphus. We even had our two year-old son with us, too."

The officer pulled up a chair beside me and sat down.

"I was a captain back then. And Earth was just starting to experience its first low-level Chaos Events. The city we were in, San Francisco, had a series of hordes erupting out of portals. We thought it was going to be a simple job. Just some packs of Fomorians with steadily increasing frequency. We had plenty of soldiers and firepower to spare to help our counterparts deal with the problem."

She looked at her hands, her eyes glazed over. "Of course, we all know how that turned out."

"The Imperator descended," I said. I had read about that Chaos Event. "It was a disaster, wasn't it?"

"It was a slaughter," she replied. "A city of nearly a million people all but wiped out in a week. Cascading across the entire state. We had suspected an Emperor was involved in the dimensional phenomenon that connected our two worlds, but it'd failed to appear on Terra despite years of Novel Aberrants appearing on our side." Williams smiled bitterly. "One Imperatore every forty to eighty years. That was the pattern we'd grown accustomed to on our world. We had made all the preparations expecting it to show up on our side."

"But it showed up on Earth instead," I murmured, remembering the news footage from that day. The footage of the massive monster that looked like a pixelated clump of abstract shapes and geometric designs, constantly changing in appearance as if it were made out of a living alien liquid.

"Right. We were just there for diplomatic aid. A skeleton crew of a hundred or so. The technology that Earth had to offer had literally propelled us decades forwards in terms of energy generation, infrastructure, agriculture, and engineering in just eight short years. But none of that helped when the Imperator attacked."

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Williams took a deep breath. "It happened... so quickly. Earth didn't have centuries to build their societies around dealing with Chaos Events and the monsters that poured from the Chaos Zones. No early warning systems. No negentropy barriers. And their cities were built for millions of civilians. So fragile and weak to an assault."

She looked up at the ceiling.

"And so... one day they're just gone, millions upon millions of people. Have you ever been to its counterpart on our side? New Teotihuacan?"

"Yes ma'am, but I was... really young at the time," I said. "I don't remember much of it."

"Well, New Teotihuacan is a beautiful place," she said, a fondness in her tone. "I visited it when I was younger, before I became an officer in the Defense Force. It was my first time seeing such a large city. There are so many people, so much history there. Teotihuacan Bay's counterpart is just as pleasant."

Williams shook her head and sighed. "It was such a beautiful day when it happened. Jacob and I were taking our son down to San Diego when my communication crystal lit up. We were confused at first. Why would it be doing that? We weren't expecting anything out of the ordinary that day. But then we saw what was on it."

"A monster?"

"An army of them. Pouring out of portals in an area called Sacramento. I had Jacob get us off the highway immediately. I called my team, told them we needed to get back up to Fort Irwin."

"Was it close by?" I asked. I wasn't too familiar with the geography of California, though I had lived in its counterpart for a bit as a toddler.

"No, it was practically on the other side of the state. We'd never make it back in time."

"So you tried anyways?" I guessed. She nodded.

"Yes, we tried anyways. I had husband and my son stay at a hotel in Los Angeles while I drove up. I couldn't just abandon my Company and I knew that if I could get there, maybe we could get reinforcements from Sisyphus to evacuate the area."

Williams closed her eyes. "The base was in complete chaos when I arrived. Soldiers were scrambling everywhere, trying to figure out where the hell they should go. The Bay Area itself was a nightmare - people were screaming and running, trying to escape, and there were monsters everywhere. The U.S military had dealt with small packs led by Baron-class beasts with little trouble for a few years now, so the National Guard and U.S. Army weren't afraid of the monsters. The Coalition's forces were more than capable of handling them, too, and I had my company head towards the portals while I tried to get a bird's eye view of the situation. They flew me out on a transport helicopter with some recon operators to try and get an overview of the battlefield. That's when I realized the situation had escalated beyond anything anyone could have prepared for."

"The Imperator descended," I finished.

"Yes. It had already reached San Francisco. The U.S. Army and the coalition's forces were doing everything they could to stop the thing, but there's only so much you can do against an Emperor Class."

"Didn't they try their atomic weapons?" I asked.

"Ha!" She let out a bitter laugh. "They did, but that came far later when California had already fallen. I'll spare you the details, but I was in that chopper and the Imperator was just rampaging through the city. Rampage wasn't the right word for it, though. It was almost... eerie how it was able to corrupt and zombify the populace so easily. It just sort of... flowed into the city. It didn't destroy buildings. It just flowed through, and when it did... there was just death everywhere."

"Sounds like something straight out of a nightmare."

"Oh, it absolutely was," she replied. "It was a waking one, too. You've seen pictures, but it's impossible to understand how terrifying it is to see something so massive, something so incomprehensibly large, moving so fast. And not just massive. It was one of those things where you didn't want to look at it too long because it made your eyes hurt."

"How'd you make it out?" I asked.

"I didn't. Not on my own, anyways." Williams looked over to the bed where Little Red lay. "A flying chaos beast it summoned knocked my helicopter out of the sky. It hit my chopper, but the pilots managed to get us to crash-land onto a highway right at the city limits, and we miraculously survived the crash. I thought I'd be fine after that. After all, we'd managed to land without any major injuries."

Williams shivered, closing her eyes. "I thought the worst of it was over, and I'd managed to get out with three of my men. But that wasn't the end."

Williams' face hardened as she recalled her story. "I'd never heard of Little Red Riding Hood at that point. She and her team were just coming into their primes as B-Ranks and A-Ranks at the time. I figured we we were safe south of San Francisco itself and could commandeer a vehicle and escape. The Coalition had established multiple outposts across Earth, so we planned to drive to the nearest Coalition base, but then a portal opened up right in front of us."

She paused for a moment. "A portal opened, and the next thing I knew we were staring straight into the eyes of a Mikado."

"A Mikado? A Marquis-class!?"

"It was," Williams confirmed, nodding her head. "That was when things started going wrong. Mikados... are as terrifying as the stories make them out to be. One scratch with its claws or tail, no matter how shallow or small, and they'd be dosed with an infusion of chaos energy thousands of times more concentrated than a Beowulf or zombie bite."

"What did you do?"

"It was a busy civilian highway, even though it was outside of the city itself," Williams explained. "People were panicking and driving erratically. The traffic was bumper-to-bumper and there was no escaping. And the Mikado had a pack of wendigos with it."

I gulped, imagining the sight. Most Marquis-class chaos beasts were only a small inconvenience for me at this point, but for a squad of regular soldiers? It'd be an unwinnable fight.

"We were screwed," Williams said. "Without specialized weaponry, we had no means to kill the damned thing. There's a reason a single one of those beasts is enough to warrant an evacuation order. They're an army killer. We were completely surrounded, and we couldn't escape. I thought I was going to die that day."

"So, how did you escape?"

"I didn't," she replied simply. "My men died before they could even raise their weapons. A commando with us managed to push me out of the way right as it lashed its tail out, and it got him instead. He didn't know what was happening, but he managed to pick me up and rush me down the busy highway even as... as the blue cracks began to spread over his body, his flesh turning necrotic."

"Chaos Corruption," I said.

I knew exactly what was going to happen. It had happened to countless soldiers. Even with the early warning system and evacuations that the military and the Magical Girls were able to perform, the spread of corruption and mutation from the chaos beasts could not always be avoided. If someone was scratched or bit by a low-rank chaos beast like a beowulf or ayakashi, there was still hope. But for higher-rank monsters? The end was always inevitable. I couldn't imagine how terrifying it was to have that knowledge.

"The Mikado was fast, but the bravery of that man, who pushed me away from the chaos beast's attack, gave me the time to call for support. I was still a captain then, and my request was approved. No matter which side of the portal we're from, the lives of our men and women are worth protecting, even if the rest of the world is going to be sacrificed."

I shuddered. "Did you see him die?"

"In a sense," Williams answered, shaking her head. "He told me to run before the chaos beasts could reach us and to call for help while I could, and I did. Somehow his mind was intact even as his eyes turned blue and the cracks spread over him. I don't think he was even twenty-five years old. I was in a civilian's vehicle, watching as his body began to change. He didn't even scream, he just... let out a laugh."

"Laugh?" I repeated. "That's..."

"His name was Kaden Smith, a Corporal with the U.S. Army. He saluted me and thanked me for being a part of his life before pulling a grenade and running into a horde of zombies beginning to form, blowing himself up before he could turn."

Williams let out a breath and looked up at me. "But I managed to make that call, and... I didn't know if I would live. There were hundreds if not thousands of civilians on that highway, with car accidents piling up and a Marquis-class chaos beast rampaging. There's a primal aspect to being hunted, you know? The chaos beast wasn't targeting me specifically, but... I was prey. It's... it's the worst feeling in the world."

I knew that all too well.

"I drove the open vehicle as far down the highway as I could. It was only a matter of minutes, and the Mikado was moving fast. I'd gotten a head start thanks to Corporal Smith's sacrifice, and I managed to make a few calls to the nearest Coalition outpost and let my husband and child know I loved them, but the monster was so close to catching up to me. I couldn't see it, but the sounds of screeches and cars crashing were growing louder and louder, and then..." She trailed off.

"I crashed as well," she said, voice growing distant. "There was just too many abandoned cars on the road. The Mikado's ability to manipulate friction and inertia froze a semi's tires, and I ran straight into it. My escape plan was over, and the Mikado was gaining. It'd taken less than three minutes from me getting into the car until then. I was still on the line with my family when I got into the accident, and the Mikado was... close. So close."

She reached out, holding Little Red's limp hand with both of her own. "She arrived just as I was about to give up hope, as I had resigned myself to the fate of dying on that road, with those people. She and her team. I will never forget the sight of that young soldier's final salute. And I will never forget her red cloak fluttering in the air, the smell of sugar in the air as her blades cut the Mikado down. I'll never forget Cinder and Snow's spells that decimated the wendigo's and zombies that were beginning to swarm the highways."

"Red Riding Hood saved you?"

She nodded. "She and her team did. A small part of me feels guilty, because there were so many other civilians there, and so many people died. I was only seconds away from death myself, but Red found me and rescued me. The others evacuated the survivors. It's hard to think that you were chosen over others, but Red made the difference between life and death."

She paused. "And now... she's the one lying on a bed, fighting for her life. You and I, and her team, and everyone else fighting for humanity... we're all alive because you're all willing to put yourselves in danger every single day. She's a hero. And Sonata? So are you. I want you to remember that, okay? No matter how bad things seem right now, you've saved so many people, just as Little Red and the others have. But the guilt from knowing that young man shielded me with his own body stays with me."

I smiled sadly at her, understanding what she was getting at. "I..."

"I've watched you for a while, Celestial Sonata," she said softly. "I've watched your actions, your battles, and how hard you fight. You are a hero. Don't forget it. And I know that the losses at Jo Loon hurt you. But there was nothing anyone could do. And such was the case last tonight."

"I just... it's hard not to think about what could have happened if I was there. It's not even a hypothetical. I'm the absolutely worst thing a Blightbringer could face, with my magic. I'm a living, breathing, negentropy generator."

"And what if you had been there, and Red was still injured? Would that have changed the outcome?" Williams asked, shaking her head. "It doesn't do anyone good to dwell on what might have happened or could have been done differently, Celestial Sonata. I know you want to believe that your presence would have made all the difference."

"Would it?" I challenged. "My Signature can-"

"No," she said firmly, cutting me off. "You are powerful, yes, but the outcome may not have been any different. You are not infallible. The enemy is not a predictable, static force, and you can never know for certain how any given situation would turn out."

"But..." I began, before trailing off.

"You can't be everywhere, Celestial Sonata," Williams said gently. "Even the most powerful Magical Girl cannot be in multiple places at once. There are things even the best of us cannot do, and the burden of being responsible for every single person's safety and happiness... it's too heavy of a load."

I nodded quietly. She was right. Regular human or not, it really helped to get the perspective of someone like the commodore, someone who had seen so much.

"You're a good person, and that's why we need you," Williams said, squeezing my shoulder gently. "I know you don't want others to get hurt because of something you feel responsible for, and I admire that about you."

I looked at her, meeting her gaze. "Thank you," I murmured.

"In any case. I think it would be for the best if you stay off your feet for a weekend or two," she suggested. "You need time to recover. My advice? Be a teenager. Be young and dumb and stupid, like I was at your age. Go have a milkshake with a friend."

"I... I'll try."

She smiled. "Good. And if you need anything, just give me a call."

"I will."

And then she stood up and walked out the room, leaving me alone once again.

I let out a sigh as the door closed behind her. The Commodore was right, and I was being stupid. I'd let my own personal feelings get the better of me and had acted rashly. Several times, even. I hadn't been on my A-Game since coming back to this city. I had been sloppy, and that wasn't okay.

I sighed, manifesting a bass-clef-shaped phone, staring at the screen.

A part of me wanted to go back in time and prevent myself from even going on that stupid, childish, and selfish little pissing match. But the she was right. I'd already made my mistakes and the only thing to do was to move forwards.

My fingers moved across the holographic interface of my phone, switching my number from the one associated with the Hammurabi Nexus to my personal number. It was time to take the mantle off for a weekend or two while I healed up.

"Mmm..."

I scratched my chin, tilting my head with a pout.

"I do wonder if it's a bit too last minute..."