Camelot
Luckily, the patrol proceeded without incident. For their part, Camelot, Burning Heart and Lilac Shimmer saw no further action past the initial confrontation with Midnight Tsubasa. In large part, this had everything to do with Camelot merely using her senses to give Dynasty Queen a heading, upon which the martial Magical Girl would proceed to speed off and slaughter anything evil that looked at her funny in that general area. While this didn't do much for the group's team cohesion as a whole, it did allow Camelot to show them her basic patrol routes.
For her part, Camelot, for once, was gladdened to be free of conflict to directly partake in. The searing heat within her was nigh overwhelming, and though it ebbed and flowed at times, she had found that her headache was only getting worse as time went on, even the slightest of jolting movements enough to send spikes of agony through her skull. She could barely manage a light jog, much less a fight.
Dehydration.At this point, that was her best guess as to the major issue. Above and beyond the flames eating her from within, the steam she was expelling with every breath was clearly loosing her far more water than she could feasibly regain at this time. The only thing keeping her on her feet was her Scabbard's healing. Otherwise, she quite suspected she'd have collapsed... for more than one reason. The rain was absolutely no help. Despite any desire to intake even a single droplet to offset some of her losses, the water around continued to evaporate faster than she could ever hope to imbibe it. Her mouth felt as dry as a desert, and she had resorted to not talking, lest her rasp be apparent. The only solace to be found was that what rain managed to soak into the cloth of her armor took a small -if almost insignificant- bite out of the intensity of the heat.
At some point, Lumiere's team joined them, and listening to casual conversations on the return trip informed Camelot for certain that they had indeed been the ones to handle the Apex Pageless in the clouds. Despite the presence of both Captain Goodhope and Ethereal Rose, Camelot found herself in the awkward position of having to avoid them. The heat inside her was truly oppressive by this point, bathing her surroundings in a swelter akin to a noonday desert. Even were that not the case, her dry throat put a kibosh on any desire to communicate... assuming she could even speak without seething the words out in obvious pain.
The return to Marrywell brought feelings of mixed relief and apprehension. While the heat within her was bad, she could make a moderately confident assumption that it was an issue with her magic and transformation. So, surely, reverting to normal would undo it, right? If not, she still had Wilhelmina nearby, whose healing magic could save her if her Scabbard wasn't around to do the job, give her enough time to transform again. On the more distant horizon, her need to do something about her team composition was an issue she wasn't looking forward to visiting, especially while effectively disabled.
The group was beginning to split off to handle various matters of personal business, and Camelot couldn't help a small spurt of bitterness brewing inside her at the fact that not a single one of them had seriously inquired after her well being... not even Wilhelmina. From her own team, it was understandable at least. She'd thoroughly burned those bridges as surely as she was being burned from within, but... maybe she was just doing too good a job of internalizing things? Was her discomfort not obvious? Geez, she really was hopeless, trying to stubbornly stay strong while Goodhope and Lumiere were around to heal her?
Shaking her head of those poisonous thoughts, Camelot decided she'd just have to do as she usually had before, and figure this out alone. She barely concealed a stagger, as she moved away from the splintering group and towards the fountain in the Academy's courtyard. Immediately, to her trepidation, the water began to steam and warble, but the girl steeled herself. If the heat persisted, even this would be better than scorching up from the inside. It would be like her body was a blade being quenched, cooled down enough to not melt outright. And if nothing else, the explosion of steam from her little dip would hopefully make sure her state of distress didn't go unnoticed.
Grimacing, Camelot hesitated, biting her lip, before squeezing her eyes shut and reverting her transformation.
Immediately, the sense of relief was just...
indescribable. Chinami shuddered with joy at the feeling of finally being pelted by rain properly, the sweltering, scorching air around her quickly being drowned out in the absence of the source of heat. The fountain was still steaming somewhat, but the injection of rainwater was rapidly doing the job of simmering it down, as Chinami leaned over the fountain, awaiting the moment it was cool enough to scoop a handful out of.
For her sheer relief, even now, was being tempered. The heat inside her... was far from gone. Rather, it instead seemed to have been reduced to something approaching tolerable, more akin to being baked by the summer sun instead of being boiled alive. Uncomfortable by far, especially in combination with her throbbing headache, but it was nothing she couldn't handle... for now. Another note of worry was her Grimoire. The second she'd reverted, a sharp feeling had stabbed into her left breast like being poked with a branding iron... a heat that emanated directly from the magical book currently stored within her jacket's inner pocket.
By this point, Chinami had stripped off her jacket in a hurry, the zipper of the pocket far too hot to even think about trying to get the Grimoire out now. By this point, Chinami could be certain that her torment was none of Burning Heart's vengeful doing on behalf of Lilac Shimmer. No, this was her own damned Grimoire! Glaring at the discarded jacket currently sitting on the wide lip of the fountain, Chinami found one hand drifting to her chest to massage the point where the searing book had briefly contacted her, even through multiple layers.
She could still feel the
heat thrumming through and breaking down her body, muted and suppressed to some degree... but omnipresent all the same. Her Grimoire was flooding power into her body completely uncontrolled and ignoring all her attempts to stem it. Even now, her breaths still misted, releasing short-lived puffs of steam in the chilled London air. It was like a valve of a highly pressurized pipe of magical power had been broken between her Grimoire and body, and there was no stopping it until it accomplished its purpose. She wasn't even sure
what it was trying to do or even if it was
safe to stop whatever was happening from properly resolving.
There were...
some silver linings to found in all this, however. While her jacket was effectively unwearable for the time being with her searing book trapped within it, Chinami could now fully indulge in the coolness of the rain and leaned back, sitting down on the wide lip of the fountain and facing the sky to allow the chill to permeate her aching head, even lapping up a couple droplets that fell into her half-open mouth. It was the closest she'd felt to relaxed all day, even with the lingering throb in her everything.
The second note of good news was that with the heat brought down to a more manageable level, she finally had the presence of mind to feel at the sensation and try to get some clue as to what was going on, which was when she noticed it. Similarly muted through it was, the cool restorative sensation of her Scabbard was unmistakable. Whatever the hell was going on with her Grimoire, that shattered open pathway to her body so too allowed her Scabbard to attempt to counter the problem, to protect her even whilst outside her transformation.
After thinking about it, honestly, Chinami wasn't even surprised that this was possible. Magical Girls didn't typically age, and they most certainly didn't grow to any state that could visually be defined as "old", even outside their transformed state, which meant that they either maintained some sort of fed connection of power from their Grimoire at all times... or that they were physically transformed upon first obtaining it in such a manner as to never age even without its direct influence. Given the current situation, and her lack of ability to mitigate the inner burn even by experimentally putting distance between herself and her Grimoire, Chinami was inclined to bet on the former.
An explosion rumbling through the school grounds put an end to her relaxation, and with teeth grit, Chinami stumbled to her feet and made her way towards the disturbance. Her gut burning and throat dry, she was in absolutely no shape to fight, but since when had any real hero ever let
that stop them? If there was trouble, she was capable of doing
something, and that would have to be better than nothing...
Even so, the very thought of transforming again, of the all-encompassing
heat put a stop to any plans of immediately doing so. In all reality, the most she could manage was snagging the neck of her discarded jacket and bringing it with her, trying greatly to ignore the uncomfortable heat emanating from it.
Luckily, the disturbance turned out to not be some manner of terrorist attack, Pageless strike, or -in the most absurd possibilities- a Magical Girl "school shooter" of sorts. Instead, from what she could gather, it was merely a student's spell gone wrong in a training incident. The incident in question had reduced the entire room to rubble, including collapsing the ceiling.
Must have been a hell of a spell, Chinami mused with her eyes half-closed. Without the rain to take the bite out of the heat and the school's artificial lights overhead, her headache was back in business, especially given she'd yet to find an opportunity to intake a significant quantity of water and rehydrate again.
Valeria Weizenbaum... one of the newer teachers on the block (by comparison to some others at Marrywell) but far from a "new" Magical Girl on the whole. Like Lumiere and Ozma, she was an
old Magical Girl, one that had roots as far back as the second World War. She was certainly a distinctive figure, what with her cybernetic magical limbs, the sort of things that Chinami could guess would well and truly have kept her from living a normal life in proper society. Something like that was simply too blatant to hide without going to great lengths to conceal. The technology to provide what she had simply didn't exist, so to flaunt it was to attract far more attention than Chinami was sure the Grand Ministry would generally approve of.
She also already had quite the reputation as a fine purveyor of the glorious religion of "MOR DAKKA"... a tendency that most certainly wasn't helped by her ability to actually fix most things. As a result, the concept of "property damage" seemed to be much less of a concern than one might typically expect from a Magical Girl so senior.
On a personal level, Chinami was also far from enthused with Valeria's militaristic teaching methods. She flinched from her position leaning against a wall some distance away from the heart of the incident, when the older girl's arms morphed into canons pointed at the crowd... only to settle down when only harmless fireworks popped out. Listening with half an ear as Valeria made a brief "inspection of the troops" and seemingly found Nessie in particular wanting (which was hardly fair in the face of the girl's complete novice state), Chinami struggled to stem the brief painful burst of increased power from her Grimoire, shaking as she halted the initial stage of her transformation and wound back down, outwardly displaying only a deeper lingering breath of
smoke.
Coughing lightly, Chinami grimaced at the ashy taste on her dry tongue, and she had to suppress another surge of coughs from wracking her body reflexively. Mere steam seemed to be not enough for whatever the hell was going on with her any longer. Now that she revisited her internal stirrings, the burning pulse in her stomach was somehow...
thicker, as though congealed now. She
really did need to get some water in her as soon as possible.
Shaking herself from those considerations, she forced herself to focus on the situation at hand, on the slips of paper that were being handed out to all the members of she and Lumiere's teams, barring the leaders themselves notably. An abrupt summons for a combat training session in Training Ground B with leaders invited to observe from the sidelines. Chinami decided, ultimately, that it would be worth going to said session later that evening... after she'd had a damn nap and about a gallon of water, of course.
Looking around, Chinami could see that, despite the destruction, there had only been a single "casualty" in the whole affair, and they'd been unharmed on the whole, aside from getting pinned down by some rubble. With Charlotte having handled that issue quite handily and Valeria in the process of clearing out the remaining smoke and fires, there was nothing left that she could do here, not as she was.
Chinami wordlessly returned to her dorm.
A quick trip to the Academy cafeteria on the way back to her room netted her a plethora of water bottles, numbering over a dozen, which she promptly chugged in sequence upon her return, billows of steam and smoke leaving her lips in the aftermath of each, as though molten steel were being quenched within her own stomach. It was more than clear by the state of her strangely dry clothes and jacket that her body was still emitting excessive heat even now, something that gave her the distinct impression sleeping in her bed would quickly become a sweltering sweaty affair, even if she didn't use the covers.
Instead, Chinami settled for a long, bone-deep soak in cold water, occasionally changing out the bathwater when her overheated body inevitably leeched the comfort from it and rendered it a makeshift sauna. With her eyes closed and finally hydrated, she was starting to feel moderately better. It was a half-doze really, since she wasn't quite so tired as to allow herself to fall asleep in such a precarious position and drown. That would be rather embarrassing.
Keeping an occasional half-eye on the digital clock on the sink counter, she stayed that way till the evening bell was nigh to toll, and then, with a sigh of reluctance, she rose to the call of duty once more. If team placement changes actually went through, then it behooved her to get a visual measure of their abilities and potentially demeanors beforehand. She was quite decidedly opposed to being caught off guard so badly again.
Training Ground B, otherwise known as Valeria's personal stomping grounds, Chinami mused wryly, currently chugging yet another water bottle, before slipping the crumpled plastic junk into a trashcan along with several of its brethren. A fresh cloud of steam and smoke escaped her mouth, but with a sip from a new water bottle, the irritation and urge to cough was washed down. Rather, after her nap, the gusts of steam escaping her throat had been strangely less irritating than before. She wanted to put it down to the water and even just subconsciously tuning the sensation out... but that didn't feel quite right.
It felt like her body was finally on the path to...
acclimating.
To
what, exactly, she still really couldn't say.
Glancing around the area, strewn with broken glass, dismembered machinery and mechanical fluids, Chinami eventually spied a flash of red up on one of the railed balconies and began to make her way over. Quite uneager to revisit...
that feeling in its full intensity any time soon, the Goth was rather disinclined to make a frivolous use of her transformation to leap up and save time. Instead, she stepped off the main battleground and took the flight of stairs like a normal person, lugging a large pack of water bottles with her in one hand. Her other was still occupied with her doffed black jacket, her Grimoire still burning uncomfortably within, leaving the girl in jeans and a dark blue t-shirt.
Reaching the appropriate floor, Chinami briefly hesitated at the sight of Charlotte. Her display from the patrol mere hours ago had been... a complete embarrassment, a horrible showing for someone that was supposed to be acting as an appointed leader.
Which wouldn't be a problem if the so-called "All-Seeing Grand Minister" had just avoided saddling me with a team to begin with. I'm clearly not fit for the role, her brain sourly supplied, but Chinami shook it off, wincing at the brief flare-up that abrupt movement provoked from her still dying headache.
Swallowing her apprehension, Chinami strode over, set her water bottles down nearby and plopping her jacket a few meters further from that position. She was in no hurry to have all her water boiled by proximity to her out of control Grimoire. It had already effectively taken her jacket from her for the time being; it would not have her refreshments ruined as well if she had anything to say about it. On
that note...
Chinami took a swig from her current opened bottle, exhaling a thick -if short lived- mist of steam and smoke after a moment and stepped up beside Charlotte, leaning against the railing and propping her forearms atop it, the now closed water bottle dangling deceptively lightly by the cap from her fingertips. She just didn't want to hold it directly with her far warmer palms for extended periods and risk melting the plastic or warming up the beverage.
As the students began to filter in down below, she mused aloud, too quietly to be heard from below without particularly enhanced hearing,
"Well, that patrol was a complete disaster." And she used the word "patrol" lightly to be honest.
She wanted to ask some stupid question, like "why pick me as a leader?" but didn't, because she felt she already knew the answer. She'd dwelled on it long enough by now to come to the simple conclusion that she was the best of lackluster options. Amongst the eight of them, Lumiere was the only tried and true leader, endowed with a commanding presence, experience and the confidence to demand obedience through sheer charisma. Olivia was too new and naive by half. Nessie was just
painfully green, despite her impressive power. Suzuya was too impulsive, too prone to emotional actions... and seemingly at the mercy of her Grimoire's whims. Bonnie was... not
okay, not alright in a way that Chinami had never managed to grok to before today... not consciously.
The thought provoked a flare up from the fire inside her and a frustrated smoky spurt of coughs that she quickly washed down with another gulp of water.
Tesni was... fucking
Tesni. Chinami just couldn't understand her, the impulsive bipolarness of it all... The sheer unpredictability and violence combined with raw power
scared her, and it was likely that amongst other things that robbed Dynasty Queen of the spot, despite having sufficient strength to hold the position. Wilhelmina was... kind, too kind in some ways, naive in some others, too quick to be a follower. She just wasn't someone bred for leadership, despite her socialite talents. She could easily be the "heart of the team", but she didn't have the will to push people around, even when necessary.
Which just left Chinami, the lone wolf who went out of her way to take care of the people under her aegis, who concerned herself with the issues of the Alters and homeless, someone with the raw power, talent and combat experience to be able to actually pass something down to those under her command. She had the strength needed to make sure everyone came home alive and demonstrable altruistic intentions. Just... she had no idea how to
actually lead. Her habit of distancing herself from unfavorable situations had crippled her in this respect. She was so used to treating everyone around her as equals, that being granted authority in such a sudden way had left her out of sorts. She had no experience whatsoever with balancing when to be hard and when to be soft, with how to treat others as subordinates, equals and students in equal measure, and with Tesni on her team, any hope she had of managing that was set on fire and thrown in a dumpster. And yet, despite all this, she was forced to suck it up and walk the party line, or rather, hadn't even had much of an opportunity to voice her concerns to begin with... a strangely militaristic position.
She knew more than well enough that if she decided to allow her Grimoire-induced instincts to take charge, leadership would be a breeze. If she allowed herself to lean into the militaristic drives that told her to strike down dissent firmly and even physically if need be, that told her how to bowl over arguments and demand her way or the highway, then she could be just like Lumiere... But no, Chinami rejected that style of leadership. There was plenty good reason why, despite her liking for martial pursuits, the military had never appealed to her in any capacity, even as a joke. She believed in personal freedom, and even if it was unfair, she inherently viewed military structures as tyrannical. She had no desire whatsoever to visit that structure upon others in any form. It made her feel dirty, like an utter hypocrite.
And in a direct display of this disturbingly militaristic structure that she loathed, she'd had no say in her teammates.
Tesni she'd have initially rejected out of hand if given the option. Bonnie she'd have hesitated on, because ultimately she liked a certain "work/life" balance, and her room was her safe quiet space. Having a teammate who she also roomed with... would feel like she was always on the job in some capacity. She'd feel like she always had to be an example, and it would be
exhausting. To be honest, the only one she'd have been inclined to possibly choose herself was Suzuya... but those bridges seemed fairly well burned by this point.
But that was rather digressing from her original line of thought, which concluded quite firmly that she was only made a leader for being the least bad option behind Lumiere, a trial by fire, sink or swim... It sounded
far too much like Lumiere's preferred teaching methods for Chinami's tastes.
All she wanted was to be part of a team of equals. No leaders. No absolutes. Just good people doing the best thing for each-other, the people and the situation at hand. Was that really too much to ask for? To have
that instead of being pointed at by some all-seeing entity from on high and proclaimed as some innate leader despite any evidence to the contrary? Was it so much to ask to not be shackled by her very own "Sword in the Stone" moment? She didn't want to be
delegated the damn position. If she was going to lead, she wanted to be chosen by the people she was to lead to begin with.
Glancing at Charlotte, Chinami's expression grew somewhat sullen.
"So, if I recall your words correctly..." You completely rejected my entirely reasonable request to have input on team changes, despite that being the entire reason this clusterfuck occurred to begin with? "-already spoke to the Grand Minister I take it?" She took another sip of water to quell the brief flare in her gut and kill the fresh series of coughs before they could be born.
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