Magical Girl Mechanical Heart

Though I arguably don't strictly have to, I wait until Melpomene and Minerva have entirely left the Dark World before I speak. I don't really want either of them to hear me, though each for different reasons.

"Well," I comment, Thea and Nanaya still standing beside me, each lost in their own thoughts. "That was a shitshow."

Nanaya glances at me, and then snorts.

"Mmm. Frankly, that went far better than I expected," she says.

"Merely a shitshow is still a shitshow," I counter. "Better doesn't mean good."

"True enough," she agrees.

"W-wait, what's wrong?" Thea asks. "I… this is everything we could have reasonably asked for, right? We can go to Earth again!"

"We were already going to Earth for just about everything we truly needed from there," Nanaya says. "I doubt this will change much. It is not as though we could go buy a house. We still have to live here."

"What?" Thea asks. "Why?"

"Because everywhere we go on Earth will be surveilled," Nanaya answers. "Even if the truce holds, they will not trust us. If we set up our base there, they will investigate it, and then the truce will end. The Dark World is still the only place we can safely keep artifacts or Antipathy cultural records. Given you spend nearly all of your time with artifacts, we will need to remain."

"Oh. Right," Thea says, drooping a little. "B-but being able to head to Earth to relax in the sun or something is still nice!"

Slowly, Nanaya nods.

"…It is nice," she agrees. "Mmm. I should go deal with Anath. Thank you again for the forewarning, Luna."

"Keep your radio on!" I answer back. "We're lucky Melpomene happened to still have hers in her room."

"Very well," Nanaya sighs, looking way more put upon than the situation really calls for. I'm lucky that the radios Thea made for everyone a while ago still work and I managed to give the team a heads-up before bringing a stray home. Anath probably would have blurted my name first thing and put me in a really nasty scenario if I hadn't. I'm just starting to enjoy my life as normal human mute girl Luna Clio Babbage. Getting discovered this early would just be sad.

Speaking of, I guess I'm sticking around here for a few hours. There's a good chance the magical girls will be watching our portal like a hawk and I'll need to be careful if I want to safely leave. I need better ways of sneaking in and out. Maybe some kind of invisibility spell…? No, that might actually make it easier to find me. Casting spells is intrinsically less than subtle. My best advantage in stealth is the ability to cut off my magical signature altogether.

"So, um… I take it the gun broke, then?" Thea asks. "W-which is totally fine! It was just a prototype, that stuff happens."

Hmm? Oh!

"Ah, no, I still have it," I answer. "Here, one sec."

I call on the Antipathy magic I used to hide the gun away and pull it back into reality, letting it materialize in my hand. I flip it around, catch it by the barrel, and hand it to Thea.

"You were right," I say. "It's a little underpowered, but it works. Making it crystal-powered was smart, but monster crystals don't actually hold that much charge and wouldn't be very safe for humans to try and recover in the field."

"Oh, uh, yeah, that's a bit of an intrinsic material issue," Thea blinks, accepting the gun. "I might be able to increase the total storable charge by making more of the structure out of crystal instead of metal, but that would cut down on durability obvi… wait wait wait, how did you do that?"

"Antipathy magic!" I answer cheerfully. "Under certain preset conditions I can activate some pretty neat spells. That one was 'Sketisoh,' which means 'put away.' I've also got 'Kagchtsoh,' which means 'repair,' along with a good chunk of nameless incantations that manage the general function of my body."

"Yeah, like the cooling spells and stuff, I noticed that," Thea nods. "That's so cool! Wait, but what conditions unlocked a spell that let you repair yourself? Did you get hurt?"

"Don't worry about it," I answer with indistinguishably forced cheer. "The point is, your gun did pretty good overall. I think more stopping power and better ammo capacity is fairly important for it to be a useful firearm for unpowered troops, but it absolutely works. Excellent proof-of-concept."

"Well that's great news!" she brightens up momentarily, though her tail only gets in a couple wags before she starts considering the problem. "…Stopping power and ammo capacity both have the same issue, though. For more damage, the gun needs to use more power per shot, but that would obviously lower the ammo capacity. Power storage is by far the biggest limiting factor… hmm. I guess I might need to figure out how to make those injector thingies after all. Can I disassemble your LCI intake port?"

"Sure, as long as you put it back together again," I agree.

"I mean, if you can do it yourself I'd love to watch you do it yourself," she says, bouncing a little on her toes. "That repair spell seems pretty cool!"

"Eh… I don't want to use it any more than I need to," I say. "It functions by returning me to my original schematics, so it might 'repair' whatever you did that lets me actually talk to people."

"Oh," Thea grimaces. "Right. You're so cool I sometimes forget you're probably intended as a torture device."

"Such charming fellows, the Antipathy were," I nod in agreement.

Thea is about to respond, but at that moment Melpomene walks back into the castle, loudly shoving open the massive doors and grumbling to herself as she heads back up the stairs towards us.

"Hey boss," I greet her. "Didn't get into any fights, I hope?"

I will find some way to make your life miserable if you managed to hurt one of my three non-monster maybe-friends in the five minutes I was forced to leave the two of you alone. I guess Eliza is my maybeist of maybe-friends; I don't really have a good read on the girl. But Chloe cares about her a lot and I think I've made a pretty good impression on her, so she's at the very least a friend of a friend. Probably. I'm really not very good at making friends, I have no idea what I'm doing.

"The child is fine," Melpomene huffs. "And she will continue to be fine as long as she stays out of our business in the future."

"I guess that's the best I can ask for," I grumble. "I've been hanging out with her in our respective human disguises and I gotta say, she's a complete overwhelming mess. Watching what she was like after Nanaya beat up her team was genuinely depressing, but the more I get to know her the more I suspect she's just always like that."

"Mmm. The Preservers use us up as tools and toss us into the grave when they're done with us," Nanaya comments, stepping back into the room with Anath behind her, the girl's tail bunched up tight against the back of her legs.

"Yeah, I can really see that now," I agree, nodding a greeting to them both. "It's sad and it's not her fault. I don't want us to be more of a problem for her than we have to be."

The Dark Rebellion shifts uncomfortably.

"…I don't like her," Thea admits. "I don't like her at all. I know she's brainwashed or whatever but she still tried to kill me. She wouldn't even let me explain myself. And then her team destroyed all that data, all those cultural records that just… ugh. I don't know if I can ever forgive her for that. The Antipathy might be dead but it feels like they got genocided again."

"She is less stubborn than many Earth Guardians I know," Nanaya says, "but that is a low bar indeed."

"I think we would all prefer to not be in conflict with the Earth Guardians, but that simply isn't feasible," Melpomene agrees. "It would be like trying to topple a despotic regime without harming the country's military. At the end of the day, the men and women that signed up to defend a monster are complicit, and conflict with them is unavoidable."

"…Okay, but like, you can topple despotic regimes without involving militaries," I point out. "It usually doesn't happen, but by the same token outright war doesn't tend to erupt without a lot of other strategies being employed first. There are a lot of ways to weaken regimes outside of just killing the people who support them. And by allowing us to go to Earth again, they've inadvertently opened up a lot of powerful avenues of indirect attack."

Melpomene, who has spent most of the conversation being condescendingly dismissive as always, finally turns her full attention towards me, as do the others.

"Like what?" Nanaya asks.

"Can you seriously not think of anything?" I ask. "Isn't one of our big goals getting the general populace to turn against the Preservers? This is a perfect opportunity for improving our PR!"

"Our what?" Thea asks, and then I remember that these women have no education, no internet access, and no common sense. They're a found family of child soldiers that barely manages to function almost exclusively off of Nanaya's sheer pragmatism. She might have a Costco membership and deep relationships with the local black market, but she's certainly never read the Wikipedia article on reputation laundering.

"It benefits us if humanity in general likes us more than they like the Preservers," I say. "Yeah? Yeah. Right now, though, humanity in general barely knows we exist. People are vaguely aware of Nanaya given her history, and the locals know Anath as 'that property damage menace,' but both of those reputations are bad and they're pretty much all anyone has ever heard of any of us."

"…Sorry," Anath mumbles.

"There's no need to apologize further," Nanaya says in about as gentle a manner as Nanaya gets. "Ultimately, we did get a win here. We can go to Earth so long as we do not commit crimes."

"Well, uh, what is a crime, really? In the, um, philosophical sense," Anath tries.

"It is a violation of local government law via action or omission of action," Nanaya answers.

"Oh. Yeah," Anath squirms.

"I know you like Earth, and we will talk about taking trips there with appropriate supervision," Nanaya says. "It will be good for you to socialize more. You've always been less comfortable spending time alone than the rest of us."

"…Yeah," Anath agrees. "I'm sorry. I did something stupid again today."

"I would not call your actions wise," Nanaya hedges, "but I am more angry that you went back on your word than your actions themselves. You did not hurt anyone. You did not hurt yourself. That is… an improvement."

Anath squirms even more, at least self-aware enough to know how pathetically low a bar that really is. But that is the bar Nanaya is trying to help her clear, and the only safe way to climb a ladder is one rung at a time.

"Do you think we can be friends?" Anath asks. "Me and Fulgora?"

Nanaya blinks, turning to me for some reason. I guess I'm the only one who has ever hung out with her in a friend-adjacent capacity rather than a fight to the death, but that only started a bit over a week ago!

"Honestly, Anath?" I say. "I don't think she likes you that much."

"I know…" Anath agrees miserably. "But she could! We'd be really good friends if she was honest with herself!"

I emulate a mildly annoyed huff.

"Anath," I tell her. "Are you saying Fulgora likes fighting the same way you do?"

"She does!" Anath insists. "She's like me. It's the only thing she's good at. The only thing she understands. She'd be soooo much happier if she just accepted it and let loose a little!"

"Maybe you're right," I say. "Maybe she does like fighting. But that doesn't mean she'll automatically like throwing away her reasons to fight, and it certainly doesn't mean she'll enjoy being your rival if you keep endangering the people she cares about. You keep going after her brother. She's terrified you'll hurt him."

"I would never!" Anath gasps. "Jim is so nice! And he smells good. Animals love him and so do I!"

"Even if you don't want to hurt him on purpose, can you honestly say you'll never hurt him on accident?" I ask. "When a fight starts, do you actually pay attention to him anymore? He's human. He could die from a stray chunk of rubble to the head from a completely unrelated attack."

Anath sags with sadness, clearly not surprised by my argument. She knows I'm right. It almost happened the one time I was there!

"Be careful, please," I say. "I'll be really mad if you go to Earth and end up hurting any of my friends. If Fulgora doesn't want to fight you, don't make her. Otherwise, she'll never like you."

"Okay…" Anath agrees miserably. And, well, that's probably the best we're getting for now. Nanaya gives me a thankful nod.

"Actually, on the subject of Earth, I've been curious," Thea says. "What's up with your human body, Luna?"

"My body?" I ask, tilting my head. "I don't know."

"What? What do you mean you don't know?" Thea asks. "Have you not gone to see it?"

"Well… no?" I admit. "I mean, I never really liked that body, and they're not me anymore, so… why bother?"

"How do you know they aren't you?" Nanaya asks.

"Well, they aren't using any of my social media profiles and they haven't talked to any of my friends," I answer, not bothering to clarify that I have exactly one social media profile and exactly one friend. "There's absolutely no way I'd ghost everyone I cared about for months. So… they aren't me."

"Wait, doesn't that make this more concerning?" Thea asks. "Shouldn't we find out who's in your body? It could be an Antipathy! It could be a Preserver!"

"Could it be?" I ask. "Is that how souls work? Can you just stick someone's soul into someone else and have them take over?"

"Well… yes, obviously," Melpomene frowns. "That's what your soul is doing."

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"I'm not sure it is," I admit. "My soul is in here, but so is a complete digital recreation of my brain. Which one is me? What happens if I had one, but not the other?"

Melpomene frowns deeper.

"…I don't know," she admits.

"If anything, that is more of a reason to investigate the other you," Nanaya says. "Or the other not-you, as the case may be."

"Sure, I guess," I admit. "I was kinda under the impression you guys already did that, though? If not I guess you're welcome to. Go nuts."

Everyone else starts glancing at each other, sharing various looks of concern. Oh boy.

"Do you… not want to know what's going on with your body?" Thea asks.

"Honestly?" I say. "I'm doing my absolute best not to think about it. No option is good and no option is something I want to be involved with. They're either some fucked up version of me that doesn't care about her friends anymore, some evil alien hanging out with my parents for shits and giggles—solid evil alien behavior, I'm sure they'd get along—or they're a messed up soul of an alien in a messed up brain of a human resulting in a final product of who knows what. All of these options kind of scare the shit out of me, if I'm being real. I don't want to know!"

"So you've just been… ignoring it?" Nanaya frowns.

"Did you not expect me to?" I answer incredulously. "What, did you think I'd walk up to my parents' house in full fleshsuit regalia, ring the doorbell, and say 'hey, I'm looking for my earthly physical form, is she in her room?' I can't tell anyone I used to be that meatsack and I don't have any other reason to randomly show up at my old house in my new identity. Even if I did, I can only imagine that doing so would be hell."

"Wait, why would it be hell?" Thea asks.

"Because my old body has been willingly living with my parents for months despite all the effort I went through to get away from them," I answer. "My body should be able to get access to my bank account or at least head back to school, but it isn't. And my parents aren't exactly… the most accepting sort of people?"

"Not accepting how?" Thea presses.

"Do I really have to spell this out?" I groan. "Surely you guys already know. Mel looked into me."

"I did," Melpomene confirms. "We don't need to press it if you're not comfortable with it. Suffice to say, whatever your body is, it's no longer you, and therefore you'd prefer to wash your hands of the matter."

"Yes," I confirm. "Exactly."

"I do not wish to impose on you unduly," Nanaya murmurs, "but there is a slight issue with leaving the matter to us. No matter how much you may wish to remain ignorant, the fact of the matter is that we do need to determine who your body is and what they are doing, and I am not sure there is much more we can accomplish on the matter without you. We do not have any way of testing your body's soul to determine its nature or origin. Therefore, you are the person best positioned to understand how much of your brain and your old personality is present in this new entity, and you are also the person best positioned to determine if an Antipathy is now living in your flesh. After all, you speak their language."

I synthesize a sigh.

"Well. That all makes sense, but frankly, I never want to look at my stupid awful original body ever again. I don't want to see it. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to even think about it. You get that, right? There are some genuine advantages to being a robot and all, but the biggest one of all is just not needing to be in that stupid sack of flesh anymore. That wasn't me. It was never me. And just hearing you all talk about it like it is me would make me sick to my stomach if I still had one. So is this really that important? Because if you need me, I'll go. But if you don't… I'm not going to. It's not me anymore, and that's the only thing I need to know."

I stare at Melpomene in particular when I ask that. There is, after all, the fact that visiting my old body could potentially draw a connection between me and my real identity. I'm happy to take that excuse to avoid doing this, but she's a bit of a swinging factor here, both in terms of what I can do and what the others will expect me to do. Melpomene sighs, seeming to pick up on the intent behind my stare.

"…I don't think it's that important," she says. "If Luna doesn't want to, she doesn't have to. The rest of us can keep an eye on her body, see if it starts doing anything suspicious."

"That will almost certainly bring Earth Guardian attention to Luna's old home," Nanaya points out.

"Let it," I scowl. "If you find something important and absolutely need me to deal with it, I'll do it. But I want to stay as far away from my old body as possible."

"Geez. If this is how you are now, it's gonna really suck when you have to leave your incarnate form for the first time," Anath says.

"I'm starting to see why you're getting along with Castalia," Melpomene comments.

"I'm going to choose to take that as a compliment," I say.

"Of course you are," Melpomene answers, rolling her eyes.

"Yep. Of course I am. Anyway, outside of my pathetic discarded flesh, is there anything else I can help you guys with? Because I did block off the day for it," I say, deciding to just change the subject. "I could sell the gun prototype. Unless you need it, Thea?"

"Not really," she admits. "I can't fix the power draw issues by tweaking the original model, I'll need to figure out a plan for redesigning it. I guess I could just make it a lot bigger, but that option feels a little lazy."

"The intention is to eventually arm humanity for war against the monsters, so portability and affordability are important factors to consider," Nanaya nods. "Monsters are so numerous, agile, and dangerous that it would be difficult to handle a swarm with weapons that would need to be mounted on vehicles. Tanks would be flanked and overrun fairly easily."

"What about a more mobile vehicle?" I ask. "Something that could outrun the monsters while a gunner takes them out as they try to follow?"

"That would certainly work," Nanaya concedes. "Unfortunately, it's a tactic that relies on the ability to give ground. If it's the Dark World in front of you and the Earth behind you, there's only so much ground to give."

"It still doesn't seem like a terrible idea," Thea hums. "It might be worth looking into just to see if a turret design would make up for the power requirement. There's still the issue of refueling, though. Even with the best tech I can make, creating or recharging crystals is very, very slow unless one of us actively pours our power into it. I really do think I'll probably have to develop LCIs…"

"About that," Melpomene scowls. "We need to talk about why the Earth Guardians have them. If she was telling the truth, and Uma'tama is the one who gave it to her, then what does that mean? Why would the Preservers hand out Antipathy artifacts? It's the exact opposite of their M.O."

"That was shocking," Nanaya agrees as I mentally run through my memories of the LCIs. "What would cause them to change their policy this drastically?"

"I should go make sure she didn't just steal one of ours and lie to our face about it," Thea grumbles, starting to walk away before I stop her.

"She didn't," I confirm. "The LCI she had definitely wasn't one of ours."

"How do you know?" Melpomene asks.

"Well, literal photographic memory, for one," I say, tapping my finger against my temple with a rhythmic clink. "For two, well, who says they have to be changing their M.O. at all?"

"Are you saying she didn't get the artifact from us or from Uma'tama?" Thea asks.

"I'm saying it might not be an artifact at all," I answer. "At least not an Antipathy artifact. What if the LCIs were Preserver tech from the very beginning?"

"Wait, but you're Antipathy tech, and you have an LCI port!" Thea points out.

"The Antipathy may very well have used LCIs, I'm just saying that they were originally taught how to do so by the Preservers. I mean, for the Antipathy and the Preservers to hate each other so much, they would have had to have interacted a lot. What if the reason the Preservers are so insistent on not letting humanity have any magical tech is because they shared tech with the Antipathy, and then the Antipathy used it to blow themselves up?"

Thea's eyes go wide, understanding the implications first as the only other person here who heard Uma'tama's definitely-not-allegorical story. From Uma'tama's perspective, whatever the Preservers did to deserve so much ire from the Antipathy was entirely accidental. That seems a little difficult to believe, but what if it's true? What if it was the very act of introducing magical technology that ruined their society? What if the Preservers somehow abused a species into extinction by trying to help? All of a sudden, that changes the story significantly. The Preservers aren't dark masterminds of societal exploitation and destruction, they're just a bunch of incredibly powerful dumbasses trying not to repeat a mistake.

"Oh, gosh, you might be right," Thea gasps, moving a hand to cover her mouth.

"But you are probably wrong," Nanaya insists.

"Why?" I ask. "It's Hanlon's razor. 'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.' Maybe Minerva had a point when she was talking about how dumb Uma'tama is."

"No, she did not," Melpomene growls. "It's absurd that you're even considering it."

"Uma'tama is hardly the only Preserver," Nanaya says, "and the annihilation of an entire culture is never something that happens by accident. It may happen callously, it may happen casually, it may happen with nothing more than a single written document from an unfortunately powerful person, but it does not happen by accident. No part of this situation is adequately explained by stupidity. It is only explained by evil."

Thea turns away, cowed by Nanaya's words, and I don't blame her. I can't really argue with them.

"Alright, yeah. That's fair," I concede, nodding at her. "I'd still bet my money on Minerva's LCI being Preserver-made, though. One way or another, I think the technology was shared between them. Minerva's LCI and our LCIs are the same basic product with two completely different manufacturing styles. It's like someone made a cheap knockoff despite having access to the exact blueprints."

"Couldn't it have just been two different groups of Antipathy?" Thea asks. "Or two different groups of Preservers? There are plenty of ways Preserver tech could end up in the Antipathy universe during a war."

"That's entirely possible," I admit. "But… I don't think it's right. I'm not sure how to describe it, but the material composition… there's a big difference. Ours are way more fragile than the one she had in her hand. Like someone was told how to make steel but didn't have any experience as a blacksmith so the whole process got fucked up. It's the same stuff, just… worse for no real reason."

"Hmm," Melpomene considers. "Very well, I'll trust your insight on the matter. I'm not sure what this knowledge means exactly, but we'll keep it in mind."

"Agreed," Nanaya nods. "Now unless you'd like to help me prepare dinner, I don't believe we have any more tasks outside of Earth. You'll remain our underworld contact, if you're amenable; it will be more difficult for me to sneak around if the Earth Guardians are prepared for it."

"Nanaya, I would love to help you make dinner," I answer honestly. "As for the Earth Guardians, I mean… couldn't you just go at night? Most of them probably have eight o'clock bedtimes."

She snorts.

"We will test what is feasible in the coming days. Now let's see what we can do with the ingredients you've brought."

I spend the next couple hours helping Nanaya prepare food and generally hanging out with the rest of the Rebellion. It's a comfortable sort of fun, the same routine I've settled into when staying here since a month ago. Just me, three genuine friends, and the fucked-up insane slave driver I have to pretend is my genuine friend. It's all one big happy family. …Well, it's similar to how I understand family, anyway.

Afterwards, enough time has passed that there's a good chance nobody will be watching the portal directly. I can't take the gamble, of course, so I need some way to smuggle my skinsuit out with me without actually wearing it. Fortunately, I think I might have just figured out a perfect solution. Zipping up the skinsuit nice and snug around my body, I put on some clothes, step out of the bathroom, and smile at a rapidly vibrating Thea as she grins in gleeful anticipation.

"Okay, here we go! [Sᴋᴇᴛɪsᴏʜ]"

My outfit and the clothes I'm wearing on top of it all disappear, leaving behind my usual beautiful shiny metallic self.

"Ta-da!" I exclaim, doing a perfect pirouette. "And now, the moment of truth!"

I return to exactly the same pose I was in when I made my outfit disappear, and then release the spell, putting all my stuff back on my body and once again assuming the form of Luna Clio Babbage, secret alternate identity of Luna Nomiddlename Nolastname. Middle and last names are for people.

"Oh my gosh that's so cool!" Thea exclaims, hopping up and down and clapping. "Is it interfacing with you correctly? SPDP ports can be a little fragile."

"Everything seems to be in order," I confirm, smiling back at her. Man, this kicks ass. I know with perfect confidence that it is extremely important to Melpomene that my identities remain separate, and that means I get to do magic in order to further that goal! I guess most forms of magic would make me more likely to get found out rather than less, so it's still pretty limiting, but I'm gonna take my wins where I can get them. After all, if I don't celebrate the smaller things in life, I'll probably literally die. Hooray yellow magic!

"Gosh I wish I could be you sometimes," Thea wiggles. "You're just so awesome! Super Antipathy robot using secret special Antipathy spells! It's like a comic book!"

"Unlike the rest of your life, which is in no way like a comic book at all," I deadpan.

"Uh-huh!"

I let out a dramatic autotuned sigh, holding out one hand palm-up. Thea takes her prototype magic laser gun, places it in my grip, and then I speak the spell again.

"[Sᴋᴇᴛɪsᴏʜ]"

Gun, clothes, backpack, and skinsuit comfortably in magical storage space, I bow and step past Thea, heading for the exit of the castle.

"You dork!" she giggles, following along behind me. "When are you gonna be back again?"

"I don't really plan things that far ahead," I admit. "A week or less, I guess."

"Well, I'll see you then! Unless I run into you on Earth sometime."

"Just remember you need to pretend like we don't know each other," I remind her.

"I will, I will!"

We wave goodbye as I step out of the castle, strolling into the darkness. It doesn't take long for me to find the portal out, so I step on through, and… woah. What the heck happened here?

The liminal zone right outside our portal is a mess of scorch marks and rubble, looking like the aftermath of a battle. My immediate assumption is that Melpomene lied to everyone's face and kicked Minerva's ass after escorting her out, but then I sense a spell going off nearby and spot Fulgora beating the shit out of a random building off to my left. Huh. Well, whatever jingles her jangles. I think I'll just sneak away before she notices… gosh dang it.

Despite my lack of a magical signature, she spots me almost immediately. I guess there's not a lot to hide behind anymore in this part of the liminal zone. But hey, I'm allowed to be here, right? You just said I was allowed to be here. Or I guess maybe the other you said that? I don't really know what's going on there but at the very least someone Fulgora-adjacent told me I am a-ok to go to Earth. Unless, of course, the fact that I am an artifact means that by definition my presence literally anywhere outside of the Preservers' clutches is a crime, and the offer was only actually extended to the real people in the room. That's also an option.

Fulgora immediately starts to accelerate towards me, and I decide to not stick around and find out.

Running in the exact opposite direction, I do my best to break line of sight behind the first intact building I can see. Fulgora gains ground on me quickly, just flying in a straight line towards my last known location. I calculate the optimal pathing to stay out of sight, and execute my plan automatically while I try to think of backups.

"Is this seriously the first thing you people are doing?" Fulgora snaps. "Sending the artifact to Earth? Really? This is the exact thing we just said we couldn't overlook!"

Ah, yep, offer was just for people. Oopsie whoopsie. Should've known.

I duck behind another building, but unfortunately Fulgora has apparently had a lot of practice destroying buildings. Several of them collapse simultaneously as a massive thunderclap shatters the brickwork and briefly knocks me off my feet before I automatically correct. Right then. New strategy. Full evasion, taking the quickest possible route back to Earth.

I use a burst of thrust to change direction and launch myself onto an open street, sprinting as fast as my body will carry me down the straightaway. Fulgora might be faster than me, but we're both so fast it won't take long for us to pop out of the liminal zone and head to Earth proper, at which point she won't be able to toss destructive spells around willy-nilly. The endless terrain is owned by no one and seems to naturally repair itself whenever no one looks at it for too long, but Earth? Everything is owned by someone on Earth, and you can't shake a lightning bolt without hitting some important part of the local power grid. Or, you know, a human being.

Fulgora, swearing under her breath because she knows my plan is awesome, shoots me in the back like a total sore loser. Oh, shit! When did Fulminant Thunder start eating five whole percent from my shields? That's almost twice as strong as it used to be! Well, that's terrifying, but the good news is that I can use the force of the blast to get myself a little more distance, and before she can drain my batteries down to dangerous levels I am once again tasting the fresh Colorado air with my artificial chemical sniffer. Time to run into oncoming traffic!

"Damn it, damn it, damn it!" Fulgora growls. Man I wish I could flip her off; it would be so fucking funny. Oh well. Maybe someday. Leaping over a car and its terrified driver, I rush into town, heading towards the commercial district to try and lose Fulgora in the chaos. She stops shooting at me, thank fuck, but she can still keep pace with me from the air. I have to be careful about this.

I rush down the street, waiting until I find some open bars. Here we go, two on the same street. Wait until the door is open, and…

"[F ʟ ᴀ s ʜ D ᴀ ɴ ᴄ ᴇ]"

Ta-da! And just like magic, I have made a robot girl disappear! Well, technically I teleported a robot girl into an extremely loud room packed with people, but it should throw my pursuer off my trail for just long enough for me to ignore all the startled drunk people, rush into the bathroom, and lock myself in a stall.

One more twist of will, and no one is here but Luna Clio Babbage, out for a night of slightly underage clubbing. Man, I'm awesome.

Obviously, I don't want Fulgora to run into me here, so I just sit in the bathroom for another hour until I'm completely certain her magical signature is gone for the night. Hiding my gun in my backpack, I casually stroll out of the building before anyone can ask to see my ID and head down the street towards a different, much grungier and much less popular bar. I saunter down the stairs, nod at the bartender, and walk through the Employees Only door, entering the room at the end of the hall. The man inside raises his eyebrows at me, but greets me with a nod.

"Courier," he says. "Didn't expect you tonight."

"It's healthy for an old man like you to keep on his toes," I respond. "Besides, I didn't think you'd want to wait for this one."

"Oh? Do tell."

"I think showing you will do just fine."

I pull out the weapon, place it on the table, and slide it over to him, enjoying the way his eyes bulge.

"We're looking for someone who can reverse-engineer it," I tell him simply. "Think you can find a buyer?"

He looks up at me.

"One billion," he says.

"Please," I scoff. "Fifteen."