Magical Girl Mechanical Heart

Holy cannoli I'm going to college again. I don't even have crippling depression this time. This is surreal as hell.

Also surreal: I recognize some of these people. I'm technically signed up as a third year, which is the year I would have been in if I had actually completed my sophomore year and not been kidnapped by a crazy lady. I don't know most of their names, of course—I never talked to people much—but the familiar faces and names keep ringing in the back of my head and reminding me of a time where I was so much less. That contrast is constant. I no longer feel dread trudging into classes, I'm no longer one long blink away from passing out at my desk, and I no longer start dying of boredom as the teachers hand out the same set of rules and rubrics as every other teacher on the first day of classes inevitably does. I just… work.

Gliding through the day with ease, I quickly finish my assigned reading between classes and end up with nothing to do once the final one ends. Castalia and I had one class together earlier, but while we sat next to each other there wasn't really anything to do or say on the first day. I could seek her to hang out, but… I've kinda been procrastinating on my duties all week, so the pantry back at the castle is probably getting sparse. May as well take care of it all now.

Heading over to the parking lot and getting in the old clunker of a car Nana bought me, I double-check my own data with the incursion tracking app to confirm the portal to the castle is active today before driving to an out-of-the-way grocery store to minimize the likelihood I run into anyone I know. Hmm. Looks like several portals are likely to be active within the next few hours. Eliza's going to have a busy day today.

I still feel awful about that. As much as Nanaya wasn't acting her best that day, she still screwed over the people responsible for making sure no one in town gets eaten by monsters, and seeing the impact it had on Eliza rather than just hearing about the injured kids was… rough. That poor girl does not know how to take care of herself. Reminds me a lot of what I used to be like, honestly. It disturbs me.

Well, for now I have a job to do. I begin my rounds, collecting a hefty mix of fresh produce and nonperishables so Nanaya can make a big enough meal for everyone to have leftovers and pair it with a smattering of other foods to get the girls through the week. Everyone has their own preferences on 'easy' meals to chow down on between the big family dinners, so I make sure to get a variety. Thea is apparently a huge fiend for sugary cereal, Nanaya wants a bunch of stuff for making various kinds of cold sandwiches, Anath has specifically requested 'peanut butter flavored protein meal shakes' (which is a phrase that makes me incredibly glad I'm no longer capable of eating), and Melpomene…

Melpomene has not put in a request. I wonder if this was consideration on her part or merely guilt. Unfortunately for her, this doesn't really help me with my whole thing for her, as now one of my background tasks is running through every memory I have of her eating something—literally every single one—and judging her reactions to it in order to establish a dataset to determine her preferred flavor profile.

Let's see… she never complains about primarily spicy food, but she never reacts with much excitement towards it either. Similarly, she never goes out of her way to eat sweets. Both times Nanaya has made lemon pepper tilapia, she's been particularly excited and happy before and during the meal. The pattern persists across foods with an emphasis on umami or sour flavors. She also has an above-average preference for salt compared to the rest of the Dark Rebellion, often adding more onto whatever Nanaya makes. I get her some citrus-flavored yogurt, frozen potstickers with a soy- and rice-vinegar-based sauce, some canned beef stew, pickles to snack on, and some Warheads candy, the last one mostly as a joke.

Despite her lack of requests, she ends up with more food bought specifically for her than anyone else I'm buying for. That feels wrong, but it also feels right. Ugh. Best to just let those emotions pass and move on, I think.

After checking out and loading everything into my car, I drive near the edge of the evacuation zone, park somewhere out of the way, and load up twelve bags of groceries into my arms at once. Thank god for sturdy handles. I used to do shit like this when I was human and I didn't have superstrength, and it was a terrible idea, but my brain insisted it was better than taking one extra trip. Now it's just actually efficient instead of trip-and-shatter-half-your-stuff efficient.

The liminal space is as quiet and lonely as usual, the monster-filled portals expected to open today likely still dormant for now. I make my way quickly through, pass into the Dark World, and rush to the castle, pushing my way inside. Hopefully the Dark World miasma doesn't infect fresh produce. Now, where is everybody… oh, they're all in the main room. A meal or a movie, I wonder? I head upstairs and poke my head in… oh! A movie. I'll be quiet.

They all look pretty cute together, enraptured by the TV like that. Anath sits on her beanbag, clutching the edge with both her hands and feet, her tail sticking straight up behind her. Thea, Melpomene, and Nanaya all sit on the couch together, Melpomene in the middle, her huge ass barely teetering on the edge of the cushions to make room for her tail. It curls around to one side, taking an entire seat between her and Nanaya, who carefully avoids the sharp crystals growing out of the back to use it as an armrest. Her elbow is split into the three thinner arms to more easily wedge between the hazards, though they all join back up at the wrist into a single bigger hand. Thea leans against Melpomene, sitting on the intersection of two cushions to stick her tail between them, wrapping it underneath her so it sticks out from the couch behind her legs. It doesn't look comfortable at all to me, but the bladed tip is wagging slightly as she pays attention to the movie, so I guess it works for her.

I quietly put away the groceries, using a pad of sticky notes and a marker to denote which items I intend for each person, since I ended up getting everyone a couple things they didn't ask for, just in case they might like them. I manage to finish getting everything organized and start to clean the kitchen before Anath finally notices me, perking up and pointing my way.

"Luna's here!" she shouts over the movie, leaping off her beanbag and scampering towards me on all fours.

"Careful! Careful with your sharp edges!" I caution her as she leaps forward for a hug. "No stabbing the skinsuit!"

"Awww!" Anath whines, settling for a more subdued hug than she prefers. "Take that thing off so I can give you a real squeeze!"

"Hey, Luna!" Thea says, also getting up to greet me. "Everything still going well? I've thought of a few potential optimizations, but I don't want to mess with anything without your input."

"Hello, Luna," Nanaya sighs, pausing the movie and rewinding it ten seconds before getting up and stretching her back. "You could have spoken up earlier. It's just a movie."

"You all looked like you were having fun!" I wave her off. "I'm just doing chores anyway. It's what you pay me for!"

"Mmm. That is true."

Melpomene, somewhat predictably, does not say hi, instead turning away from me and remaining on the couch. My presence makes her uncomfortable. I should head to a different room. Or should I finish cleaning first? It might be more annoying if I leave my work half-finished just because she's around.

"Anyway, I'm just here to drop off some food and pick up the empty emotion batteries," I say. "Also any artifacts you want to sell, if you have any."

"Oh, oh, even better!" Thea says brightly. "I have original tech to sell! Let me go grab it!"

She patters off, heading down to her lab. Original tech, huh?

"Have you guys ever sold Thea's tech before?" I ask.

"We have not," Nanaya answers. "For several reasons. The materials are hard to come by, as many of the more exotic components need to be salvaged directly from artifacts. Her creations tend to be mainly useful to us rather than anything that would particularly interest our buyers on Earth. And finally, we suspect that the Preservers may consider us a greater threat if we begin manufacturing and distributing our own magically powered artifacts because it will prove that we know how to make them, and aren't just using salvaged tools, which we believe to be their current assumption."

"Buuut none of that really matters anymore!" Anath says happily.

"Indeed," Nanaya nods. "The Antipathy printer Thea uncovered is capable of taking mundane inputs like scrap steel and converting them into more advanced, magically significant alloys, giving us a renewable source of materials. That means we don't need all her efforts to be towards things that enable our survival, and can mix in other goals. And finally… well, the ship where the Preservers considered us a non-threat has officially sailed. We are at the point where we must make good on our lofty ideals and produce results."

Huh. Yeah. Come to think of it, the 'Dark Rebellion' hasn't really done a whole lot of rebelling against anything for most of its existence, has it? I imagine the early days of its formation involved a lot of touch-and-go desperation, with a focus on finding a safe place to live more than anything. They've probably only recently stabilized enough to look into things like recruitment. Which is how I got here, I suppose.

"Man, things have really turned around for you guys since I showed up," I joke.

"Yes," Melpomene suddenly chimes in from across the room. "They have."

Oh. Uh. Well. Um.

"Thank you?" I manage. Anath gives me a weird look, glancing between me and Mel. Uh-oh.

"Okayimback!" Thea blurts as she rushes back into the room, holding what looks like… a gun? Double uh-oh! "Here it is!"

She hands it to me and I accept it gingerly, not having any idea what to do with the damn thing. It looks like a small rifle, about a foot and a few inches long, with a simple, boxy construction, no magazine, and a rectangular barrel bore. It looks simultaneously very sci-fi and very boring.

"You made a magic gun?" I ask. "I thought we had magic guns. You blew open a wall with one of them."

"Yeah, but those ones were injector-fed, and we don't have the tech to make injectors so we can't go handing them out," Thea answers. "I wanted to make a rechargeable firearm that humans could use!"

"Isn't that… I don't know. Really dangerous?" I hedge.

"Well… yeah," Thea blinks. "It's a gun. It's supposed to be dangerous. If anything, I'm worried it might not be dangerous enough."

"Are you guys seriously planning on arming people to fight magical girls?" I ask. "What part of any of this seems like a good idea? Selling salvage from the Dark World is already the main thing that puts us in the Preserver firing line, and you want to start making custom-built weapons? They'll flip. Whose idea was this?"

"Mine," Melpomene snaps, finally standing up. "And before you continue disparaging it I encourage you to remember what our actual goals are here."

"…Protecting people from the Preservers?" I ask. "You want to arm people to fight the Preservers? Yeah, that seemed to go really well for the last universe that tried it."

"No, Luna," Melpomene growls. "Not to fight the Preservers. To depower them."

"What, is it like a special magic-slurping gun?" I ask, seeing how long I can keep this going.

"She's talking about soft power," Nanaya butts in before Melpomene can yell at me. Darn. "Think. What makes the Preservers a necessary force on Earth? Why does our planet tolerate them housing and training their own private army of magical soldiers? It is because we have no alternative to them. Conventional weaponry is exceptionally poor against the reality-warping effects of magical defenses. Human armies would take unsustainable casualties from monster forces, and would be entirely helpless against kaiju. They're nothing more than a liability in magical combat. But what happens if that paradigm shifts? What happens to the Earth Guardians if the military can do their job?"

"…They become obsolete," I answer, my mind flittering between the various implications. "Even if it's ultimately less effective than magical girls, governments will want to hold that power and society in general will want adults handling things instead of children. At minimum, we get specialized military forces backing up magical girls and reducing their casualty rates. At best, we get anti-kaiju weapons and replace the Earth Guardians entirely."

"Exactly," Nanaya nods. "Believe me, Luna, I am not becoming an arms dealer out of any particular love for it. But humanity must be able to manufacture magical weapons in order to deal with magical threats on their own terms. It is a necessary step, and Thea can not only make them, she can instruct people how."

"I'm drafting up documentation for it already!" Thea agrees proudly. "It's harder than expected, I'm not really good at like… explaining this stuff. It mostly just comes to me naturally."

"We still have the issue of materials being manufactured only by a single blackboxed device in our basement as well," Nanaya says. "But we will not be the only people who understand the importance of these weapons. We will soon have many others working on the same problems we are. We will start a magical technological revolution."

"But… isn't that insanely dangerous?" I ask. "Like, if the Preservers are what we think they are, they are not going to let this happen, right? They'll crack down hard. There's a reason they're suppressing the artifact trade on Earth and refusing to share any magical knowledge or technology."

"Then this will force them to show their true colors," Melpomene spits, "and we can make progress that way, too. The more people that understand their evil, the easier our job will become."

Hnngh. Callous, but I can kind of see it. As wary as I am of provoking an obviously dangerous species, it's less of an 'if' and more of a 'when.' And given what I've seen of Uma'tama, I doubt their answer when we ultimately do provoke them will be to blow up the planet or whatever. They might blow up us, but that's a much more comfortable risk to be taking.

Still, there's one more big problem here.

"Part of me wants to start this question with 'aren't you worried about,' but I know that would be stupid," I say. "I know you're worried. So I guess my question is… what are we going to do about the possibility that these weapons end up getting used in a war? Like… not a war with the Preservers, but a war between humans."

Nanaya sighs, crossing her arms across her chest. When I first met her, I probably would have thought that was a gesture of irritation. Now, I can tell she's nervous.

"…We're aiming for a sweetspot," she says. "Magical weaponry is not necessarily more dangerous than bullets and bombs in a vacuum. It is merely more effective against magical defenses. A spell designed to negate unwanted applications of force simply isn't going to buckle against a purely physical projectile, not without a truly absurd amount of power, but it can't manage anywhere near that level of energy efficiency against opposing magic. Most monsters have relatively weak magical defenses, but they're still magical defenses. Our weaponry should be very effective against them, while not being more damaging against non-magical targets than conventional firearms."

"…Until someone figures out magical shielding," I point out. "Which is also something I know you've sold."

"I doubt they would be able to reverse engineer it, but yes," Nanaya admits, "it is a risk. A terrible, unfortunate risk. But it is not as though this weaponry does not exist elsewhere. It is merely being monopolized by foreign powers to impose their will. So in that light, I find it quite infuriatingly familiar."

"No doubt," I frown, looking over the gun with my full sensory package, trying to map out its internals. "Do you want me to test it before I sell it? There are some other convergences today."

Hmm. Crystal-powered. With a chamber for inserting loose crystals? Oh! Does she intend to power the gun with shards of crystal scavenged from monsters? That's pretty clever, actually.

"Oh yeah, it definitely still needs testing," Thea nods. "We were gonna go out after the movie, but if you wanna take care of it your sensors are probably better than anything I could use to get data anyway."

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Sure, I'm down," I shrug. "I pretty much blocked off the rest of the day to help out. Let me take this skinsuit off and I'll go shoot up some monsters."

There's definitely a chance I'll run into an Earth Guardian or two if I go looking for monsters, so I'll need to be in full robot mode the whole time. It would be kind of an embarrassing way to break my disguise to just walk up to Eliza with a magic gun.

"Well make sure you come back when you're done!" Thea insists. "I wanna download your logs and talk to you about it and hear about any flaws you've found and—"

"Thea," I cut her off. "Of course I'm coming back. I just said I'm leaving my skinsuit here. Did you expect me to just wander back into the dorm I share with Castalia in full artifact-mode?"

"What!?" Melpomene suddenly snaps, startling the hell out of almost everyone. "You're rooming with Castalia!?"

"Kehehehehe! Oh my gosh, that's hilarious!" Anath laughs.

"Wh—Nana!" I accuse, turning to her. "Did you not tell any of them!? This is her fault, I didn't choose this on purpose!"

"That's even funnier!" Anath howls.

"Oh my gosh, isn't that super dangerous?" Thea squeaks.

"I am sure that with your technology, she will be fine," Nanaya dismisses. "She certainly has been so far."

"Yeah, Castalia's pretty chill, honestly," I agree.

"She's a socially inept oblivious moron," Melpomene growls. "Having her learn anything of note about another person is not what I'm worried about."

Aww! She called me a person! That warms the cockles of my cold, crystal heart.

"What are you worried about then, Mel?" I ask. "Though I'm honestly not sure I agree with your assessment. She seems to be putting in a real effort to be friendly!"

Melpomene snorts.

"As if," she grumbles. Uh. Huh.

"You haven't seen her for like six years," I remind her. "You know people can change, right?"

Maybe that's why everyone seems to have a high opinion of you. They look at you and remember someone they used to love, ignoring the person you've become.

"Can you honestly tell me Castalia has gained some measure of standard social graces?" Melpomene asks.

"Well there's nothing standard about her, I'll give you that, but why would I have a problem getting along with weirdos? I still hang out with all of you."

Melpomene clicks her tongue and refuses further comment. Wow. Can we say 'unresolved emotional baggage,' kids? I let out a synthesized sigh, despite the fact that I could have just done a real one with the faux lungs of my meatsuit.

"Look, point is, I'm keeping an eye on her for everyone. Making sure she isn't going to come blow up the castle or whatever. Gonna see if it's possible to make her sympathetic to the cause without revealing myself, too. Either way, I don't think I'm in much danger. The suit has been great."

"If push comes to shove, I'll take care of her myself," Melpomene scowls. "At least one of us hasn't been wallowing in retirement for years. I was her match before, and I'm her better now."

Oh. That's… quite a claim. I haven't seen Castalia do a whole lot, admittedly, but I've definitely seen Melpomene in action. It's hard to see it at first. She doesn't carry that same oppressive weight as her former teammate, nothing like the overwhelming power constantly radiating off of Castalia whenever she's awake. Just by comparing their auras, they aren't even close. But then I think back to how I've seen Melpomene casually block two different Catharses, no-selling overwhelmingly powerful attacks that warped the very face of the world they were used in, and remember how she wasn't even in her incarnate form either time.

In fact, I've never seen Melpomene's incarnate transformation. Not once. Since I first got enslaved by her, she's been swatting magical girls like flies and this quite literally isn't even her final form. The idea of a second person on par with Castalia's power is terrifying, but the idea that Melpomene might even be superior?

My power reserves have increased to 50%. Heh. I can't even burn fear all that efficiently, yet here we are. I've been getting close all week, but that's a pretty notable milestone. First time reaching half charge. How cool is that?

"…I doubt it'll come to that," I pray to whatever might be listening. "In any case, I'm going to go strip naked and shoot monsters with a magic laser gun. Enjoy the rest of your movie, everyone!"

"Oh! U-u-uh, yeah! Have fun, Luna!" Thea squeaks. "Er, if that's fun for you. I don't, I mean, it wouldn't be very fun for me, but if it's fun for you I want you to have fun and thank you for doing it anyway if it isn't and—"

This time, I just cut her off with a hug, earning myself another embarrassed squeak. She's just so squeaky! It's the otter bits, I bet. And also the cute bits.

"I'll have a great time," I assure her. "See you in a bit!"

I head to the nearest bathroom to take off my clothes and skinsuit, stashing them both on the table in Thea's lab in case she wants to do any maintenance before I get back. Gun in hand, I head out, swapping my physical habit set from 'intentionally human-seeming' to 'intentionally artificial-seeming' as I walk out of the castle, out of the Dark World, and into the liminal space between universes. Feeling out the magical currents, I start heading towards the next-closest portal, moving at a comfortable thirty-mile-an-hour jog. It doesn't take long to sense the fighting.

My plating secure, I calculate a precise jump to get up on the rooftops with a feather's step, sneaking into position for a good firing line. I guess I don't actually know the effective range of this gun, so now's as good a time as any to find out. A street away, I spot Fulgora engaging a modest collection of monsters, mostly small ground-based threats but a few flying ones as well. They'll make for good targets, since I don't want to aim for anything near her and end up accidentally shooting the poor girl. She has enough on her plate already.

Of course, it's a little difficult not hitting her when all the monsters are trying to swarm her like that, but I manage to line up a shot with one of the flying monsters as it swoops far overhead to attempt a diving attack. Well, I say 'sight,' but this gun doesn't even have sights, so I'm kind of winging it and just hoping the shot will emerge in a straight line from the barrel like it's presumably supposed to. The weapon is fear-powered, which might normally help aim the attack away from friendly targets and towards dangerous ones, but it's not powered by my fear. It's charged up by someone else's, and I can't charge it myself this close to an Earth Guardian because that would require opening my plates.

She doesn't even see me right now. She's probably about to. I pull the trigger and the shot lances forward as a beam of green light. The energy starts to fade a little as it travels, but it strikes true, catching the small pterodactyl-looking beastie as it tries to attack. It squawks with pain, staggering enough to lose control of its flight and falling directly into range of Fulgora's staff. She finishes it off with a single blow, quickly looking behind herself to try and figure out where the shot came from… but I've already moved. I'm not gonna make it that easy on her to find me. I'd rather avoid a confrontation if I can.

I get a little closer this time, circling around to get a better angle to hit the monsters in the back before they can reach Fulgora. My next shot hits from inside the gun's optimal range, searing half the face off of one of the wolf-lizards. It doesn't go down, but a second shot successfully finishes it off.

Not bad. Unfortunately, taking the second shot gave Fulgora enough time to actually spot me, which… kinda sucks. Hopefully if I help her kill enough monsters I'll earn the brownie points needed for her to actually let me go. The glare she's giving me doesn't make me super confident about that, but a girl can dream, right?

I manage to fire off seven more shots before the eighth ends up looking kinda anemic. Out of juice already, huh? Not the best storage capacity, but fortunately there's ammunition literally falling out of our enemy's corpses like a goddamn video game. I hop down into the fight, goomba stomping the closest lizard monster and yanking one of the green crystals out of its back before crushing its head. Popping open the top of the gun, I drop the crystal in, load it back up, and take another shot.

It works! Nice! Monster crystals tend to disintegrate alongside the rest of the monster when said monster dies, but if I can grab 'em fast enough or yank them off of living monsters, this should be fairly sustainable, right? Assuming they give enough power, anyway.

I only get three more shots before I need to dump the crystal in the gun and replace it with a new one, which only gets me four more shots from that. If my plating wasn't closed, I could probably recharge the gun with some of my own fear, pumping it into a crystal pathway on the handle to supplement its charge, but I'm not sure how reliable that would be for humans and it's probably best to test without that feature.

Other than the terrible ammo capacity, though, this gun is performing pretty well! It can reliably two-shot most monsters if you hit the same place twice, or one-shot them if you hit 'em in the eyes. Double-shotting isn't even that hard because the weapon doesn't have any recoil. I can see what Thea means about being worried it doesn't have enough power, but that would probably make the ammo capacity even worse… I can definitely see why the actual Antipathy weapons we got used injectors instead of crystals. Still, this is revolutionary. When the final monster ultimately falls, I am admittedly impressed.

Time to run the fuck away now, though.

Without any preamble, I turn and bolt away from Fulgora, looking to try and make it back to the castle before she forces a confrontation. I've fought her several times when she was Minerva, and I feel like I've gotten pretty good at it, but come to think of it I've never actually fought her in her Fulgora form, have I? I fought with her against Anath, kind of, but that's about it. She seems… different from back then. Faster, stronger, more precise. Comparing my mental records of her bout with Anath and the way she was moving against this swarm, it's obvious she's gotten more powerful. I guess it has been… what, over three months since then? I can't assume I have any idea what she's capable of anymore.

"Oh, no you don't!" Fulgora snaps, rushing after me. Oh shit, she's fast! Please, Fulgy, don't make me fight you! Anath will be so mad at me!

"Fᴜʟᴍɪɴᴀɴᴛ—"

Oh hell, here we go. I swear to god, that's her favorite word. 'Fulminant,' 'Fulminant,' 'Fulminant,' something is always fucking fulminating, Christ. She sights down her staff at me and I look backwards, preparing to evade.

"—Sᴛᴇᴘ!"

Wait, Fulminant wh—

Proximity alert!

—at oh shit! I duck under the swing aimed at my head and earn myself a knee to the face for my troubles, shields protesting the shot of magic the contact rams through them. Okay, I guess she can do that! We're fighting now! Righto! She tries to follow up on her blow, but I'm not reeling the way an organic enemy would be so I avoid her strike and sweep her legs, waiting for her to jump before I unleash a spell of my own.

"[M ᴇ ɢ ᴀ B ᴜ s ᴛ ᴇ ʀ]" I declare, firing a shot from my mostly-concealed palm. She blocks with her staff, but the force and her lack of leverage launch her backwards, giving me a bit of room to optimize my approach. What's my objective here, really? Escape, obviously. Protect the gun, too. It's a valuable product, after all. Hmm… that'll be really hard. The gun absolutely will not survive even a single blow from Fulgora, possibly not even if I shield it. I wish I had Nanaya's storage cloak. That's probably an artifact too, right? One that the Antipathy made. So the Antipathy must know how to do that, which means there's a chance… ah. Yep.

Unlocking magical control, indexing relevant spell. Casting…

"[Sᴋᴇᴛɪsᴏʜ]"

The Antipathy word meaning 'put away' rolls out of my frame like a crashing wave, and I lift the gun into the air, placing it inside somewhere that cannot be seen. Fulgora casts an immediate defensive spell at the same time, expecting an attack, so I have all the time in the world to make sure the gun is secure and settle back into a ready fighting stance with both hands free.

"The hell was that…?" Fulgora mutters. I, of course, do not respond. I do not even move. "Well, if you're just gonna stand there, then—"

That's when I move. I can't help myself if she's gonna give me a perfect opportunity like that! With her fancy new teleportation spell there's no way I can outrun her. Unless… I also use teleportation spells? Amaterasu's Flash Dance is effective, but extremely costly. It wouldn't be worth it at all to try to outrun her by spamming it back to the Dark World. So in that case…

I take one step towards her and juke to the side with a quick burst from my thrusters—

Opening plates to perform thrust-assisted combat actions holds minor risk for emotional discovery, but the risk is within allowances. The odds of anyone detecting identifiable emotional patterns from a second of in-combat burn are next to nil, as it would both require someone paying close attention to my feelings during a fight where I normally don't have any, and also somehow connecting those feelings to my secret identity, which is an enormous leap in logic to make given my current emotional state is heavily modified from digital adrenaline and high-speed calculation. This isn't even taking into account the fact that using my thrusters at all intrinsically involves venting a burst of highly concentrated magical energy into the atmosphere, which would completely overwhelm any emotional readings someone might be attempting to interpret in the first place.

—to step past her and increase the distance between us even more. I just need to keep an eye on her, bait her into trying the teleport again, and… oh, shit! I forgot that she's just really fast!

Fulgora simply catches up with me the old-fashioned way, forcing me to turn around and face her as she takes another swing with her weapon. I move to avoid it, guiding the staff to the side with a push from my forearm at the cost of a couple percent of charge. Even without her actually hitting me, touching her incarnate weapon is bad news, but it's charge well spent because it means I can actually step in close enough to attack her back.

At this range she can move her hands to hit me with the butt of the staff in addition to the far end, but for all her advantages she's still only human. Or… well, she's more human than I am, anyway. She has to decide on her actions without knowing how I'm going to respond, attempting feints she doesn't know I can see through and committing to attacks whenever she thinks she'll get a hit. She fights with practice, instinct, and experience, reacting to my aggression using techniques honed from years of battle.

It makes her predictable. I've been practicing spars with Nanaya, and I've noticed she has the same weakness: a normal person only has so many different ways to react on instinct. If I attack in exactly the same way twice, I might get two different defenses, but there's a good chance I won't. Normal humans use this in combat, too: they figure out the habits and patterns their opponents prefer and set a trap that forces their foes into acting exactly how they want, enabling them to get in a perfect textbook counter. I can take that a step further. I don't even need to set the trap if I don't want to. I can just wait for someone to start an action I've seen before, and execute a pre-planned response.

There's something invigorating about this dance. I don't have to feel as bad as I do when I'm fighting children, and though I can't say I'm happy I have to fight Eliza, I'm at least way less stressed about doing something to her that I can't take back.

Duck, arm control, grapple, shoulder throw. Fulgora's on the ground, on her back . It'd be optimal to continue the grapple and wail on her, so I leap backwards instead.

"Tʏᴘʜᴏᴏɴ Bᴜʀsᴛ!" Fulgora casts. Gotcha, bitch! My preemptive movements dodge the attempt at shaking me off, letting me reverse thrust and grab her out of the air as she attempts to use her own attack's shockwave to leap back to her feet. With another overhead flip, I slam her ass back onto the ground where it belongs. Sit down, time out, leave me alone and go home!

"Lɪɢʜᴛɴɪɴɢ Aʀᴄ!" Fulgora casts, and I move to dodge a wild attack from her staff while she's grounded only to get smacked in the crotch by her foot coming up between my legs. Jesus! Glad I got nothing down there now! It still knocks me off of her, and she immediately gets up on one knee to aim a shot as I stagger back.

"Fᴜʟᴍɪɴᴀɴᴛ Tʜᴜɴᴅᴇʀ!"

Ow! So much for my power reserves hitting fifty percent today! One more hit like that and I'll be down below forty. I have to disengage and get to the Dark World. I have to. The only other way she's gonna stop is if I beat her hard enough to knock her back into human form, and I really don't wanna do that. I ride the force of the attack, deploy my thrusters again, and boost as far as I can towards the portal home.

Fulgora tries to line up another shot, so I dodge behind a building and end up ambushed almost immediately as she teleports in front of me. Another goddamn Fulminant Mixup! Bullshit-ass attacks all having the same startup animation, I swear to god. I sidestep her swing and boost again, launching off a Megabuster shot to slow her down. She starts to teleport again, so I bite the bullet and do the same.

"[F ʟ ᴀ s ʜ D ᴀ ɴ ᴄ ᴇ]"

Costly, costly, costly! And now I'm not enjoying myself at all, so I'm not recouping most of these costs with emotional intake. Yellow is not a good combat emotion for me, it's just good for day-to-day life. Which is very much what I'd rather be doing now! Uugh, I wish I could just tell Eliza to go home!

Nearly a full ten percent power reserves later (holy shit, Fulgora has gotten way more dangerous) I finally make it to the Dark World portal. Freedom! Safety! I burn another percentage point to boost straight through, sliding to a stop on the other side as the mists swirl around me. Okay. Alright. I should be good now. Even if she's crazy enough to follow in after me—and that would be suicide for Fulgora, she's apparently at the age range where the changes start particularly fast—there's no way she'd be able to find me. The mists are simply too thick. I can hide just by existing, and she'll have no way to see and no way to predict where I'm going to go. I can cat-and-mouse her ass until she either gives up or one of the others decides to see what the ruckus is about and boot her out.

Still, I stay close to the portal for now, waiting a few extra seconds just to be sure I'm in the clear. But no, she stopped on the other side. She would have come through by now if she was still chasing me. We should be… uh.

A pulse of magic power emerges from the portal, and all at once the thick mists are blown aside, giving me clear line of sight all around me. Minerva floats through the Dark World portal, hesitantly at first, a swirling barrier of air banishing the mists in over a twenty-foot radius around her. Because… you know, storm powers. Of course she can fucking do that. Damn it! And now she looks like a kid, so I really don't want to fight her! Gaaah!

Minerva stares at me, taking a deep breath of what is probably the cleanest Dark World air in the entire fractured universe.

"…Hey," she says. "Quick question. What happens if I don't fight you?"

I stare at her. She stares back, not moving to engage. Huh. Well… my job right now is to return to the castle, so… I guess I'll do that. After a few more moments of hesitation, I turn away from her and start heading back. Behind me, I feel her follow, her personal air bubble moving along with her.

"Told you this would be easier," she mutters under her breath for some reason. "Now to hope I don't get killed."

Yeah, you know what? Likewise. Because apparently I'm now leading an Earth Guardian directly into the anti-Earth Guardian clubhouse. I'll be lucky if Melpomene's relapse only punts me through a few walls.