Plank Sinatra

Nova Lux: A Magical Girl Game

---

Underneath the thin sheen of sweat and the heavy plate of her armored ego, a small pinprick of offense had begun to poke at the dance-hall duchess' mood with all the mild irritation of a horsefly bite. She wasn't quite sure what it was. Maybe it was just that Nicole, with her pleasantly cosmopolitan background and her voracious hunger for the lights and sounds of nightlife, was just now being confronted with the true meaning of wealth - an opulent yacht that looked like it could have glided from the ocean directly into outer space, fellow cadets who could go fit-for-fit with the enfant terrible of the Nova Lux High Fashion Association (membership currently two) and still have enough drip to last them through the rest of a fortnight after Nicole herself had exhausted all her nicer clothes. Or maybe it was a lingering affection for Astrelle, who was at least no stranger to partying in general, if not in something of a different tax bracket than her; maybe it was seeing Dana and Penny so hesitant to truly plunge into the vibes of the evening, which she could hardly fault them for given their backgrounds, but would have made the evening a bit less of a guilty pleasure.

Or maybe it was that she had already pre-gamed before arrival through a couple back channels (Hastan girls having natural inclinations towards finding black market channels was just a stereotype, damn you!) then drank more throughout the first part of the evening, and had finally started taking shots to the dome of some kind of brandy that would be giving her granddaughter phantom headaches someday. So many of her lingering, mild irritations could have just been the fact that she was drunk and taking things too personally. Like hearing a girl she vibed with and liked musing on how quaint it was that she could be sent to die at any moment. Or hearing that girl playfully charge her teammates, her little sisters in arms, the girls she'd taken under her wing and coaxed onto this yacht in the first place, with pet-sitting Nicole. Or the smug nature of the toast.

Stretched languidly along the bottom half of an L-shaped couch, long legs stretched slim so that her tights could brush the smooth, organic textures of the boat's nerve center, Nicole swallowed those misgivings down with another sip of that brandy and told herself it was fine. She don't know any better, a drunken, unfamiliar voice in her subconscious soothed. She don't go outside.

Huh. You're probably right. Thanks voice!

And with another gulp, the misgivings vanished. Tonight was all vibes, after all. They were among friends. Or, given the predatory gleam in Aiya's face as she brandished her empty cognac bottle like a status-granting jambiya, people who wanted to be more than friends.

"I," Nicole slurred, sitting up and curling into a regal, princess' posture. "I wanna play Spin the Bottle."

A slight gust of wind brushed through Aiya's long, elegant fingers, and hugged at the lip and stem of the bottle.

"I can't leave my rookies alone without a vet."

Nova Lux: A Magical Girl Game

---

Nicole had always tried her best never to get sucked away in parties.

After all, she wasn't a stranger to them. Hasta was renowned around the world for its freewheeling nightlife, for the garrisons of arcades, dive bars and dance clubs where the only answer for the sound of rolling thunder and the hiss of rain on the street lights was rolling bass and hissing synths. Then, as now, Nicole was a thrall to the vibes at play in her home; she still remembered the first impression of Palmyra as a dim, unwelcoming place bereft of fun and vibes, and though she'd found her share of fun in the city it was still hard to shake off that initial sense of incarcerated dismay.

And then, as now, she'd played a specific role in the group dynamic - the girl who always tried to keep an eye on every friend, keep everyone together, make sure no one was too drunk or not having their share of the good times. It was a way to make sure everyone got home safe, no one got anything funny dropped in anyone's drinks, and no one was tempted away for the night by anyone too untoward...but it was also a way of making sure everyone felt included, and that the night would remain a positive memory for everyone to share. She'd assumed that tonight, Radiant Storm would all be--

-ehheh--

-ahhah--

--in the same boat, in that regard.

But there were signs early on that Penny and Dana viewed this whole shebang in a different light than Nicole did. Both of them resisted her attempts to buy them trendy swimwear with a voraciousness she found admirable as their team leader, but confusing as their friend; in the end, Dana opted for more simple garb that at least fit her personality, while Penny had ceded to Nicole's sense of taste but looked as uncomfortable as Nicole had ever seen her once she actually put the swimsuit on. You would have thought Nicole was sending her to the trenches at the bottom of the ocean with no armor on from the way Penny fought and stared at the swimsuit in disdain. Even now, the two of them seemed content to prank each other and begin dividing up an armory's worth of water guns between each other. Nicole wouldn't fault them for that. She knew enough to know that the two girls wouldn't find much comfort in the embrace of electronic music or by licking salt and lime juice off of a rich girl's hand or midriff.

but Nicole was a simpler girl, made of weaker stuff than water gun wars. And Aiya's eyes were always watching her.

They were even watching her right now, playful amber oculars glinting as Nicole slung her head and neck back to gulp down a quick drink of rum. Her body below the collar continued to move on its own; she ruled the dance pad at the moment on a particularly upbeat, heavy disco-funk beat with plenty of driving synth and the occasional orchestral gong to herald Nicole dropping to the floor or twirling in place. She had put down four competitors in the space of twenty minutes, and was now about to vanquish her fifth, so the richer cadets and blue bloods had slowly begun trying to ply her with alcohol mid-dance routine. As if cerebral impairment had anything to do with slowing down a girl's footwork. That came from the vibes system, not the nervous system. Nervous systems were for nervous people.

And right now, Nicole was dancing on the wind in front of the eyes of the global elite.

"This one goes out--" she whooped between another GONG "--to Dana Noel! Queen of the gunslingers!" She spun on her heels and began dancing backwards, the lights of the dance machine glinting off the gemstone in her navel as she pointed two finger guns in the direction of the girls on the railing - just to show there were no hard feelings in refusing to engage in some of the more risque activities.

"One of you pick the next beat! These rich people want to see me loooose!" she shrieked. "They don't know I caaaaan't!"

Nova Lux: A Magical Girl Game

---

Ooooh shit a boat...?

The haptic feedback on Nicole's touchscreen was giving Nicole's thumbprint the massage of a lifetime right now. The redhead's eyes were half-lidded, one leg languidly slung over the armrest of a common room sofa; two fingers on her left hand were idly playing with the untied shoelaces of a modern-looking pair of white sneakers, zebra-striped with the stark, bold-fonted words BISEXUAL SPACE PROGRAM horizontally, vertically and diagonally, black scars across the shoes' pale surfaces. Nicole's digits stroked the obsidian laces like locks of hair. Her eyes traced the text chain from Aiya for the twentieth time that morning, and yet the words still felt new to her. Not out of shock that the sensuous Duodecim royalty owned a boat. No.

She was tweakin'. And geekin'. And tweakin'. And geekin'.

She blinked with all the alacrity of a particularly sleepy lizard, and read the texts for the twenty-first time.

...

Ooooh shit, a boat...

Let's rewind. Two weeks prior, Nicole Cognoscenti's vibrations has been knocked askew by a grueling, Machiavellian test of her leadership qualities that had toppled a legendary Ars Magi from the heavens of hero worship and had done as much to solidify Nicole's position as the center of their group of friends as it had to make her question her place among them. In the opening days of their two week break, the Hastan girl had been spaced out and distracted, preoccupied with thoughts of her time at Nova Lux so far and the stresses of encroaching leadership to join in on the binges or breathless stories about her exams. Most of what had been whispered about Nicole's exam had come from hearsay; she said little on the subject personally. But she listened to the stories of some of the others, the feats of strength, speed, and ingenuity, and felt a little twinge of envy at how cool they all sounded. How...normal.

Nicole had always thought of herself as just a normal girl.

Enter the blessed angel Cordelia, butler to the stars, Nicole's current roommate and another potential candidate for the BISEXUAL SPACE PROGRAM. Cordy had intimate knowledge of the faces and attitudes that girls their age adopted when depressed, and had taken it upon herself to go out into some of Palmyra's more adventurous street food vendors or semi-reputable dive bars and seek out a cure for Nicole's ails. Some of the coffees she brought back were tasty and invigorating. Once she'd brought back a pizza from a small chain called Mirror World, whose claim to fame was that the pizza they served was not pizza at all, but cheese-wrapped breadsticks stuffed with sauce and toppings, which triggered Nicole's fight-or-flight instinct and for a time brought her back to her old self. But nothing quite touched the sketchy edibles that poor, faithful Cordy had brought back the other night from one of the nightclubs she'd seen Nicole return from with pamphlets. No doubt her old, wealthy patrons had partaken frequently, and Nicole wasn't about to act like a total saint herself. But if the victory of life was knowing oneself, Nicole liked to think she had won before she even left her teenage years - and one thing she knew about herself is that she did not play off being high super well. But she didn't want to be rude, and to be honest, they were kind of fun. Even when she had finally cajoled Cordy into taking one herself earlier that morning, and hadn't...seen her...since...

Hmmm. Uh oh! ...Uh oh.

Thankfully, the other girls didn't know her as well as she knew herself. So they probably thought she was still just tired. Yeaaaaaah.

"Mm? Oh. Yeaaaaaah." Nicole lifted her chin up and murmured absently at Penny and Dana, though it could have just as easily been a verbal acknowledgement of their stories as it was a response to Penny's questions. "Hey, did either of you two actually pack a swimsuit? And I mean like...a swimsuit. We gotta impress here, girls. I saw you two at the gala, I'm not the only one with something to lose on this love boat. So if you're not sure if what you brought is gonna be cute enough to be hit on, you gotta let me know right now while we have time to fix it."

...

"I'm not gonna look cute enough to be hit on. Oh God. God, I gotta go." Nicole moved her thumb away from the touchscreen, gasped a little at the sudden halt to the haptic sensation of her phone, and then moved it back. She eased herself to her feet and exhaled deeply, before realization struck her that oh God, she had to be careful doing that, or she may tear the common room apart with a hurricane gale. "I gotta go now."

Nova Lux: A Magical Girl Game

---

"Hey, how about this - have you ever seen an Ars Magi hit a moonwalk?"

"Is that including myself? I was a master moonwalker, back when I still had young knees." The self-deprecating joke was served with a wink and a playful smile, but there was something darker beneath her instructor's good humor; one of Ciara's canines had a glint that made the tooth appear wolfish, and her scarlet eyes were deep and gave nothing away. She scared the hell out of Nicole. It wasn't that she believed the veteran Ars Magi would do her harm - just that she was clearly capable of it. Enjoyed it, maybe, beneath the ditzy attitude. Those were just hunches, though, vibes beneath her vibes, married with whispers of Ciara Gallagher's reputation.

When Nicole had heard who would be handling her exams, she had been sure there was a mix up in the paperwork somewhere. Ciara Gallagher was one of the school's legends - the charismatic godhead of Team 00, the Valkyries, five of the most gifted students in Nova Lux's history assembled under one team banner. Each of them had gone on to be a Wing of Justice in their own right, working security for one Duodecim family or another or doing morale pieces for some Imperium cause celebre, but Ciara was undoubtedly the one who got the lion's share of the important missions. Most of what she had done was still classified; the rumors of what she got up to, from assassinations of the Imperium's enemies, fights against Voids the size of airships, to secret missions that rivalled some of the best spy movies, were all that abounded. Why would someone like her be assigned to work with a goof like Nicole? And why would she care about Nicole's dancing? Moonwalking had to be one of the least of Ciara's talents. It was stupid to want to show hers off like she was really doing something.

Or, you know, it was like a bonding moment. Showing off didn't have to be stupid. The two of them had been drilling the usual physical exams, sparring, testing the limits of her endurance and her aerial control for the better part of six and a half hours. Ciara had promised a ride back on a spacious military craft that bordered on being one of the smaller airships she'd ever seen, floating languidly back over the MEZ, to a fancy dinner at one of the better Hastan restaurants in the city she knew. It was a little unorthodox, flying such a craft directly over the Zone, but it seemed like Void activity had gone down since their mission with Aiya and the other cadets, and there was probably no one Nicole was safer with than Ciara. That went for matters of combat or matters of dance.

Nicole laughed and stood up, giving her legs a little wiggle and splaying them out slightly, feet slipping across the floor of the craft's hull as she tested its friction, and then pivoted ninety degrees to her right and began to glllllide on back, stepping through the air, seeming to slip parallel along a gravity-less surface. Ciara's eyes widened a little, then her lips curled in a huge grin, coupled with excited applause. Part of that was just the buoyant personality she'd been putting on since their exam had begun, but Nicole could tell; she'd actually impressed a legend. She beamed, spun again, glided on back towards her seat. The four soldiers escorting them seemed less impressed. There were two mounted on each side of the uncomfortable wall-mounted benches that lined the cabin's walls, but none of the quartet sat. Or, you know, had even moved, really...

Imperium discipline, maybe. Pretty creepy. She wondered if some of the bright-eyed, talkative cadets that had befriended Dana and Penny would end up that ramrod someday.

"What about you guys? Any special requests? Wanna see me hit a dance?" she asked one, trying to see if she could make them move a muscle. Ciara's shoulders shook, a knowing Cheshire grin along her face.

"I'll give it to you, Nicole. That's certainly a better moonwalk than mine is. Hmmmm..." she made a slight show of pursing her lips in thought, one finger to her cheek. "Here's good." She banged twice upon the side of the transport, hard. Hard enough that it seemed like the craft had shaken with the force of her blow, and Nicole had to shift her feet to steady herself, but after a moment she realized the cause of her leftward lurch. The craft had stopped.

"Ma'am?"

Ciara Gallagher stood.

"Just one more test before we celebrate, Nicole," the veteran Wing of Justice instructed as she swung an arm behind her head, cracked it, rubbed her shoulder, repeated. A preparatory movement disguised as lazy ambulation. "I've been instructed to oversee your field leadership exam."

Nicole couldn't have been more floored if she was told she was the secret love child of Demonetta. She blinked at Ciara - this ridiculously hot, legendary Ars Magi, the kind of superstar that girls around the world aspired to be - and laughed in her face.

"Ummm, field leadership...okay." Nicole laughed. It was hollow even to her own ears, bemused and a little anxious. "Do all the girls get that? No one mentioned it to me..."

"Mmm, no." The catlike amusement hadn't left Ciara's scarlet eyes, empty but for her unsettling sense of humor at this whole situation, but her full lips had tightened up into a stern line, only barely curled at an edge. "How many leaders do most things normally get?" She raised that same single finger and laid it against her cheek again. "This one is allllll about you. Congratulations."

"Ummm, thanks, but--"

"Why? Because you're such a regular girl?" Ciara seemed to have anticipated this hesitation, and her own tone brooked no room for it. "I'm a very busy woman, Nicole. I don't always have time to come back to Nova Lux and help oversee these exams. But the faculty and administration seem to think they have something very special on their hands with you, Nicole, and in the time we've spent together this evening I can understand why. Not every girl who comes through this academy has the head for the power they wield, but you certainly do. You're charismatic, resourceful, talented, fun. You definitely do have a killer moonwalk. But if you're going to be the kind of Ars Magi they want you to be, you're going to need to embrace who you are inside. Not the 'regular girl.'"

Nicole blinked. And who is that? she wanted to ask. It was the question Ciara was daring her to ask. But if she admitted she didn't know, it would only lead to a real reprimand - and the truth was, she did know. She'd known it from the first moment her power had turned on.

"But..." she hesitated again. "Vanna is--"

"--a talented Ars Magi and a young woman from a helluva bloodline. In battle, do you follow her? Do they? Does she use her name to overrule your orders?"

"What?" The question honestly made Nicole a little defensive. Vanna would never do that. "No. Never."

Ciara shrugged her other shoulder languidly. The four guards were doing an incredible job of acting like there was no conversation going on at all. Their muted armor, black ceramic with none of the Imperium's neomilitarist flair, didn't even move with their breathing. What was their deal?

"I can understand the thought making you nervous. Four other girls put their lives in your hands, every day. And from what I've read of your training exercises thus far, in the field, you take that responsibility very seriously. But as soon as the fighting is done and the school uniforms go back on, there you are again - 'just a regular girl.' Do you think I stopped commanding my girls just because there weren't Void trying to kill us?" Ciara grinned ruefully. "If that were the case, none of us would have survived Nova Lux - and not because of any monsters other than the ones who shared our dorms. My team was nowhere near the group of friends yours was, Nicole. There were always fights. Fights over missions, fights over boys, fights over girls. Fights over nothing at all. One of my girls took a member of the Duodecim as her lover before she'd even graduated. Another descended from a crime family in Hasta, probably not far from where you grew up. My best friend was a light elemental who honestly believed she was a lizard. That was the secret of the famous Nova Lux Valkyries. We were fucking delusional. A group of wrecks and morons. And every day it was something new, some new test. Some of them went well. Some of them went horribly. You know the one outcome we never, ever had?"

Nicole had been stuck on the 'one of the girls thought she was a lizard' thing for a few seconds, but enough of what followed had filtered in that she gave a numb, assenting head movement. Her brain wouldn't have processed the answer. Her single word response came from her soul.

"Regular."

"Regular," Ciara Gallagher purred softly. "Because no Ars Magi is regular. Not just because they're a lizard girl or a Mafia princess, not because she's a girl who thinks she's in an anime, and not even the slut next door. And especially not me. Because I was the girl who was born to lead them. You are, too. Let me prove it to you."

Behind her, the cargo bay door hissed open. The wind began to roar through the cabin; normally its bellows and howls were a source of comfort to Nicole, even during the storms that seemed to rock Palmyra endlessly, but now the weather made her apprehensive. Its very presence in the cabin seemed to be darkening it, nibbling at the edges of her vision like hungry rats, swarming her healthy eyes with cataracts, parasites--

In the growing darkness, Ciara's smile cut like a knife, and Nicole had a feeling she knew what her field leadership exam was about to entail. The next feeling she had was of a hand, patting her on her ass, and two fingers moonwalking up the skin of her back. She was almost completely blind now. Nicole felt her hairs stand on end, from the feeling of blindness, from the Ars Magi's touch, from the far-too-suggestive way that Ciara Gallagher's command slithered into her ear.

_{"Show me how a Hastan leads."}

Those two fingers shoved Nicole from the aircraft with the force of shotgun barrels. She felt a lurch in her stomach as the wind ripped the darkness from her eyes, giving her a panoramic view of the buildings of Palmyra, a city that resembled a lumpy mattress, haphazardly made with blankets and sheets of rain and wind. A regular girl would have become a stain on that mattress fast. Nicole's eyes, stinging from velocity and rain, fixed on a safe point on the ground.

The wind is on my back.

May my sword cut like my smile.

"Vi faccio vedere come lotte un Hastano."

The words, and the feeling of transformation, had always given her comfort before. Now they were an air raid siren in her head, screaming of danger beyond a simple fall. There was evil at her back. As she decelerated and began sustaining herself in flight, Nicole rolled over in the air, staring up in the direction of the airship--

--and watched as one, two, three, four suicidal escorts whizzed past her in formation. She very much doubted they would be transforming on her mark.

What the fuck--

Then came a violet flash, a wicked star in Palmyra's clear night sky, as Ciara Gallagher transformed too. Nicole watched as the Ars Magi grew from a dot to a silhouette; her flight was controlled, as Nicole's was, with two pitch black wings of Darkness elementum sprung from her back. If she danced as well as she was gliding through the storm, Nicole could believe that she really did have a killer moonwalk. An inane thought to have as four guys below her were falling to their fucking deaths. What was her problem?

How many of them are like this by the time they graduate? She thought for a second of Astrelle. It doesn't matter. It won't happen to me. Me, or my girls. We didn't sign up so dudes could jump out of planes to prove some point about responsibility. We signed up to kiss dudes. Kiss dudes, babes, and save the world. And everyone in it.

Ciara remained at a distance from Nicole, who served as a barrier between her and her quartet of bodyguards. She was just observing, not interfering. The redheaded Hastan spun back around in disgust and kicked her feet through the air once, like a swimmer, to close some distance between herself and the falling soldiers. She outstretched a hand and harnessed the wind to keep them in a makeshift diamond formation, controlled, and clear of the imminent high-rises they were bound to drift into and smear against without her help. For five, ten seconds, everything seemed normal enough.

Then the first shadow bolt flew over her shoulder. What the fuck?

What was she playing at? They had sparred and run through elementa training for six hours, what was she playing at sparking another duel now? It was taking everything she had to keep her team in one piece, let alone focus on--

--

--the mission.

It was a cruel way to hammer the point home, but suddenly, Nicole got it. This was no different from plucking Astrelle from the air, or helping Penny topple a mech. There was nothing special about this circumstance from a hundred others she would face in her life. There would always be a Ciara. An obstacle. And there would always be a team. She had to take it all in, accept the unfairness, the strain...

...and do the damn thing regardless.

The second shadow bolt flew over her shoulder, six seconds after the first. At the very least, Ciara wasn't attempting to outright paste any of her own men, so bare minimum for human decency there, Nicole mused. What she was trying to do instead was break the diamond formation, make one stray away from the pack, and force Nicole to chase after him at the expense of the others. She hoped that meant she wouldn't have to concentrate on outright dodging, although she had a feeling Ciara's shots would start lancing closer and closer towards her as they neared the ground. She needed a way to relieve the pressure until that happened.

The third shadow bolt flew over her shoulder, four seconds after the second. The fourth came three seconds after the third. Out of frustration, the wind lashed out at Ciara Gallagher, causing her wing constructs to beat a little harder to remain steady.

The fifth shadow bolt came seven seconds after the fourth, and Nicole knew what she could do to win.

She tried to call out a head's up to the soldiers, but the wind ripped the words from her throat. She had no idea if it would carry them for her or not. They probably wouldn't give a crap if they did. They fell like bricks from a crumbling building, one among hundreds in the MEZ, hands still linked in military precision. There was something, something that wasn't clicking in the clusterfuck of sudden variables...

All she knew for certain was that she could do it.

The sixth shadow bolt came five seconds after the fifth. Ciara was recovering. I can fix that.

Nicole changed direction, shooting towards the legendary Wing of Justice like a bullet. Despite her speed, the world felt slowed to a crawl by her adrenal gland - slow enough that she could see Ciara blink in confusion, see the bemused laugh come to her lips. Then Nicole shot past her, and the Valkyrie's face was gone. Ciara turned, and saw Vedfolnir shimmer in Nicole's outstretched hand. It swung downwards, a tool of righteousness, cleaving through the twin shadows and shaving against Ciara's shoulder blades. Small pinpricks of pale and scarlet appeared in the rips Nicole had made in her top's fabric. Ciara's descent, momentarily, became uncontrolled. Nicole shot past her again, to the freefalling soldiers.

The seventh shadow bolt, and the last, was erratic. Ciara had to focus her elementa into a new pair of wings, to avoid becoming the paste she'd almost made out of her escorts. By then, Nicole had reached them again, scooping them up in a forceful wind and ramping them to the ground. It wouldn't be the same gentle landing she would try to secure for Dana or Cordy, maybe, but all four were on the ground by the time Ciara Gallagher touched down. Nicole touched down last; Ciara had already stepped over to inspect the unmoving tangle of ceramic-clad limbs. It was then that Nicole realized the trick, a second before Ciara, giggling to herself, scooped a helmet away from a 'soldier's' body and tossed it into Nicole's arms. It bounced from her chest into her hands, and she stared through its murdered-out visor - to stare deep into the empty, painted eyes of the mannequin within.

Of course. Victoria hadn't needed an escort during their initial trip on the Laurus. Why would Ciara?

"No one was in any danger," Nicole said, in a tone both relieved and uncharacteristically irritated. In the weeks to come, when she looked back on this exam day, she would be able to acknowledge that all the work she had put into preparing for exams had been harder than the day itself. But right now she felt like she could sleep for a week. And like she would never fantasize about an older woman again.

"Well, I was, for a second there," Ciara winked. "Neat thinking. I wouldn't have expected that from you, with your file. No wonder the Mars family wants to draft you right out of school."

Nicole wasn't in the mood to take that as praise, and she definitely wasn't about to discuss Aiya with a woman who thought this kind of thing was what made for constructive life lessons. "That's not the kind of Ars Magi I want to be. I want to be--"

"Alexis? Altea?" Ciara asked softly. For the first time, there was no putting on a sultry act or playing up her ditzines. She was acting her age - late twenties, with the lived experience of twice that and more than her share of horrors. "We did too."

There was silence after that for a moment. Nicole, Ciara, and four mannequins all slumped with equal lifelessness.

"You still want dinner?" Ciara finally asked.

No, Nicole wanted to grumble, before her stomach grumbled for her.

"Yeah."

But the meal was more of a blur than a celebration, and that night Nicole took her shower with no fuss, no tablet playing retro anime for her to recite to, and no platonic cuddling with Cordelia. And though the rumors of her successful (with commendation for dynamic thinking, in Ciara Gallagher's own words) field leadership exam flew through the school, growing more embellished with each cadet's retelling over the next few days, Nicole spent those days mostly keeping to herself, wandering around the common room with a cup of coffee and her earbuds in to deter small talk.

And despite the constant presence of music in her ears, it was days before any of Nicole's friends would see her start moonwalking again.

Clad in Iron, War of the Worlds and Mecha

I love steam, personally

Nova Lux: A Magical Girl Game

---

Nicole slumped against a small piece of rubble on the ground, graciously accepting Priya's fist bump but otherwise sitting apart from her teammates. She watched each of them proudly accept the adulation of the cadets and other Ars Magi, basking in their accomplishments - Penny, equal parts fearless and discombobulated after her full frontal assault, and Dana, ever the markswoman and optimist. Even Cordy was getting in on a little of the love, and it was for her that Nicole felt the fiercest pride. She could tell her roommate was still focusing on filling the shoes of a girl she'd never known, and Nicole empathized with that. She knew she could do a better job of treating Cordelia as her own person and not a stand-in, and it was something she was working on. But by the same token, she felt a little proud of herself; this was their first op since Astrelle had vanished from the world, and Cordelia was a natural fit for--

"--does the name 'Team Radiant Storm' sound? A little pretentious, but I think it fits us nicely..."

Nicole winked. A natural fit for a Radiant Storm.

"I think it whips ass. Just like you, babes. We'll squeeze it down into something that can fit on a jacket."

Tomorrow, maybe. Or...whenever.

---

_{neon city racing queen}

She had finally gotten the hang of this dumb faucet. Warm water cascaded down her shoulders and the small of her back, its smooth passage to the drain occasionally broken by small cuts or the rough texture of wind-chaffed skin. In the morning Nicole would pick up her moisturizing routine again, but right now her body was sore, tired, and ached from old wounds - or, as the ancients called it, nostalgia. A tablet computer, propped up carefully to the right of the bathroom sink at an angle best for audio fidelity, served as her knife, carving the overwrought lines of sci-fi post-cyberpunk pre-apocalyptic tragically-romantic fuckin' goodness into her heart and pulling the familiar words from her lips. She mouthed along lovingly.

"Promethion was designed to be a bargain, and I've always held up my end."

"I don't need you to tell me how Promethion was designed, Commander Shourichi."

"Man-machine interface, isn't that what you insist on calling it? A bargain between man and machine. And you hate it. You designed the greatest weapon in humanity's history, pulled the whole thing out of that big brain of yours, but you just hate that it needs me to run. You hate me. But most of all you hate yourself, Ryouma. Because you and I are meat. No design involved. The way we're made is dumb and messy and physical. And one person never gets all the credit."

The young Nicole Cognoscenti had watched this a hundred times, and then a hundred more, until she wore the screenplay's scars inside her heart. The retro-future stylings of Studio Quada's Giga Assault Hell Smasher Promethion had made it a cultural smash around the time Nicole was born, but it was Ecumenopolis, released when she was only three or four, that had sealed the franchise's spot in the great canon of filmmaking. The two hour movie concluded the tragic saga of hot-blooded, hedonistic, humanist Commander Corinne Shourichi, her brilliant but insular counterpart Dr. Ryoma Kougami, and the other defenders of the planet-spanning city of Vaucanson from the grotesque aliens who sought to wipe them out. Nicole had been way too young to see everything that conclusion entailed when her father smuggled her into the theater, but many of the images - beautiful, tragic, and horrific alike - had imprinted on the blank canvas of Toddlerscenti's brain, and she had sought the movie out when she was a bit more mature to refresh herself on its entirety.

Since then, the movie - especially its first act, the final moments before the apocalypse came calling for the doomed cast, where twenty-six episodes worth of pieces began to finally fit together - had become a comfort food for Nicole, as fulfilling as fresh bedsheets or a good slice of pizza. Nicole had promised Penny and Dana that she would keep going with her Altea binge watch, and even as she had gotten their finnicky shower to Goldilocks temperature she'd meant it. But tonight, as she washed the rain, rubble, and blood from her person, what she craved was something familiar.

"You're right. I built the greatest weapon in human history, and you...you drink all the time, you play arcade games and pachinko so much you basically fight for free, you spend every night with someone new because you think you'll never see tomorrow. Maybe you don't even want to."

"Maybe."

"But tomorrow always comes, and Promethion always rises. Without you, and your attitude, and your yelling, the greatest weapon in human history would be scrap. Corinne, I don't hate you. I'm in awe of you."

"You're the most human being I've ever met," Nicole Cognoscenti whispered.

"You're the most human being I've ever met."

Despite the heat of the shower, there were goosebumps along her arms. Nicole hugged her chest, rubbing her hands up and down her shoulders to her elbows and shimmying her shoulder blades. She had tried showing a few of her friends this movie over the years, and even the boy she'd had a thing for, but all he wanted to know is why they just didn't mass-produce Promethion's chest laser at any point.

The whole movie kinda needed context to work.

"You always dreamed humanity would overcome. I always dreamed of the stars. If we survive this--"

"--when."

"If we survive this, you'll be the one to take us there."

"I burn hotter than any star, Ryoma."

"I burn hotter than any star, Ryoma. Some of them are dead already, and even more are winding down. Even if we left tonight, the party would be over anywhere we go. The stars have had you distracted since the day we met, Ryoma. There are no stars. There's only you, and me, and what happens here tonight."

"...And tomorrow?"

"What about it, doc?"

"What about it, doc? I can burn forever if I've gotta."

"Holy crap, I'm so aloooonnnnnnne!"

That was about all Nicole could take for one night, thank you very much. She turned off the water and hurriedly stepped from the stall, extending an arm to pause the movie before any muffled sounds of passion carried through the door. A few drops of water lingered on the screen, sliding down its smooth surface the same way water slid down Nicole.

Bad enough that Cordy might have even heard that pathetic confession over the twin sounds of shower and sci-fi soap opera, but after this love scene always came the inevitable denouement - the deaths of beloved cast members, the final wave of alien attacks, the layers and layers of betrayals and conspiracies that come home to roost. On nights like this, when she wanted a moment to feel fuzzy, she would always stop the movie here. That was one of the things she loved most about movies. When things were at their best, freeze them there.

And nothing else had to ruin them.

She smiled wistfully and reached for a towel. When she did, she felt her muscles ache.

But even that felt good.

Nova Lux: A Magical Girl Game

---

"Then it's help you'll get, beautiful," sang the wind.

Dana, as always, had done splendid work in thinning out the onslaught of missiles; it seemed to Nicole's eye as though half, maybe less, of the munitions the robot had unleashed in its death throes now remained intact and buzzing. That was more than enough to turn the average city block - and the average cute girl defending it - into cinders and craters. But this testing dump was no average city block - and Nicole and Dana were definitely not the average cuties.

With a wave at the direction of her team's sniper and her trainee cohorts, Nicole buzzed by parallel to the ground team, slowing her roll slightly, so that the intent tracking on the missiles would be tempted towards a similarly aerial target. The shift in their trajectories was barely perceptible, but it was there; enough for Nicole to grin in resigned triumph and began flying to evade again, kicking a little more speed out of her long, outstretched legs.

Nova Lux: A Magical Girl Game

---

Above the trinity of Ars Magi, an angel shimmered into being - shooting forth from a pool of splintered glass, a scarlet valkyrie flitted nimbly through the skies, dodging fire and weighing her fateful choices.

As Penny had gone for her most tried and true method of problem solving, and Dana's little body had swelled with determination to save her dance partner's group (uhh-dorable!) Nicole had elected to go draw fire from the beleaguered Priya and Blair. One was playing a game of evasion as best she could while the other tirelessly sawed at the war machine's limb like so much lumber; it was a potent combo in theory, especially against an opponent slow to recognize physical detriment, but as Nicole watched Blair hurtle into a pile of rubble and shake herself off, claymore still gripped in hand, she had to figure that it sucked for robots to lose legs too. The Ars Magi couldn't imagine she would have been too thrilled if anyone started hacking at her lovely legs with a pizza cutter.

With Blair momentarily taken out of the equation, the brunt of the mecha's assault fell upon Priya Khatri, glimmering like a vermillion bird on the ground below her. She was putting up a valiant hybrid attempt at offense and evasion, but neither were serving her much good without Blair to fight in tandem. Nicole put her superior speed and agility to work, crowing in exaggerated delight at the feeling of wind and rain whipping her hair behind her as she strafed closer to the mecha. It served her well for a time, although she could feel her Parma singing slightly at the occasional close call with a magitech blast that felt uncomfortably close to what she imagined plasma would look like.

She would file a complaint with the fashion police about it later.

It was still taxing work, but much as Priya and Blair had non-verbally communicated a gameplan, so too did Nicole and Penny - with the heady brew of brash confidence, never-say-die attitude and hoarse vulgarities that came naturally to Penny and made her beloved amongst her team, her teammate began hammering away at the robot and found at least moderate success. The craters that pocked the militaristic behemoth's surface like pores were proof that if you dumped mints into a magical girl, shook her up and dropped her from the mesosphere then the resulting boom would be enough to leave a hole in just about anything. But like Blair, Penny's fearless fighting style had been punished. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her bespectacled teammate slide from the side of the robot with only as much grace as she could afford, and her landing looked anything but soft.

Visibly, Nicole's flying changed.

What had been a focused, but harmless enough attempt at diverting magitech fire away from street level was suddenly whetted with malicious intent, as Nicole stuck her legs to the side and skidded to change direction as though she were skating on the air itself; though skateless, her long legs worked like serrated blades themselves, rending holes in the very air. Her eyes had changed too, her bright-eyed, guileless stare squinting, sharpening, and sucking what dim light the stormy evening afforded them. The hue around her figure made up for the warmth her gaze lacked; she glowed orange as a star, and with her right arm pointed to the heavens for succor, she resembled a creature of myth - bedecked in white samite like an angel or a faerie, with all the skies of the world as her lake.

"Whoa whoa, hey now," she muttered at the mecha in a tone of warning.

The winds swirled around her outstretched arm, and at their mistress' command they congealed to form a sabre. She saw Penny and Blair standing up as one, dusted off and ready to rejoin the fight, but first it would be up to Nicole to give them an opening - or rather, for Nicole to capitalize on the progress her forebears had made, and for them to stand on her shoulders in turn. That was why they put Ars Magi in teams.

And that was why Ars Magi always killed their monsters.

Mecha sense my power and seek the life essence.

More wind began to swirl around Vedfolnir, turning what was a slender limb and blade into the beginnings of a burgeoning tornado. Her gaze fell upon the robot's gimped left leg.

I do not avoid mecha.

Nicole's body curled up into a crescent as she wound back her right arm in a pitching motion--

But I do deny them my essence.

--and hurled, aiming her frustration and power at the rend in the war machine's limb, to teach it a valuable lesson about tossing around her girls.

Nova Lux: A Magical Girl Game

---

Nicole was grateful for the moment to catch her breath. As she plopped down, she felt her knees lock together for a moment and thought back to her school days - kids circled around each other, daring each other to lock their legs together into rigid planks and see who passed out last, playing their stupid kid games. Of course, Nicole was no exception.

But she was totally grown-up now, and way beyond testing something that dumb, so she made sure to unlock them after just four seconds. After she'd made sure she had a bit of the old 'staying conscious' magic. Penny approached her just as she spread and stretched her legs, testing her ankles with little twirls. She grinned coquettishly back at Penny as her bespectacled teammate inquired about their relationship status, and leaned in to give an emphatic smooch to the Siscian girl's freckled cheek.

"Nahhh, we're like this," she confided, locking her index and middle fingers in a tight cross. "Thick as thieves always, Penny, you know that. Great firepower out there."

She leaned in and munched on her own energy bar while she listened to Aiya stoke Dana's fire a little. She had to giggle. Aiya was as relentless a flirt as Nicole herself, but it was brilliant watching Dana completely no-sell it and start going off on another tangent about Guardian Gunslinger Alexis and making friends.

"You tell her, Dana!" crowed Nicole in support of her teammate, when she was between mouthfuls of granola. "Youuuu tell her. Nothin' wrong with it at all. You're doing great, babe."

Cordelia was a little less prepared for Aiya's onslaught, and Nicole felt her mouth twitch in empathy for her roommate. She knew that, despite her best efforts, Cordelia was still adjusting to the idea of replacing Astrelle - a phantom that the new arrival to their team had never even seen before, yet still hung over her as surely as the grey and indigo storm clouds above. Nicole was still grappling with some of the implications of her friend's transfer herself, but she was doing her best to treat the one-time butler with every bit of the encouragement and zest she fronted for the rest of the team, too. Maybe they all needed to go out together. Force her to enjoy town the same way Nicole herself had, and Vanna too.

Her smile widened and she swung around on her perch, lifting up her legs and wrapping them around Cordelia's midsection. Nicole's right leg tucked between her midriff and her tightly drawn legs, wedged underneath her head protectively.

"You girls don't think I'm that jealous now, do you? Think I need to try and keep all the hotness to myself?" she asked the two nobles playfully. "You can dance if you want to, Cordy. All my best friends love to dance. Especially with each other."

Nova Lux: A Magical Girl Game

---

Nicole bared her teeth in a proud grin as Cordelia manipulated the fields of ruined glass to guide in their extraction. Her roommate had made a poorly kept secret of trying to fit into Astrelle's shoes, but clearly she didn't suffer from a lack of ability as an Ars Magi. It wasn't just pride that made the redhead grit her teeth, though; she was doing as much as Cordy was to keep them masked from the drones, and though her adrenaline was doing much to keep the winds at her beck and call, she was beginning to feel the tugs of effort upon the muscles of her limbs and face.

It was enough strain to give any average girl some unsightly, premature wrinkles. She had no idea what the benefits of an Ars Armagus were when it came to the aging process, but Nicole wasn't about to use the core in her tummy as a crutch. Her fate and her skin care were just where she liked them - in her own hands.

Her eyes landed upon the two larger machines that Cordelia and the officer cadets pointed out. As much as she would have liked to completely ghost this extraction, she recognized the two machines and their specifications, at a glance, as the much gossiped about mecha from the gala. If she were a bit fresher, maybe she could have done more to completely mask them - but it was just as likely that, being such cutting-edge prototypes, they would have been found no matter what. That was more likely, given the parameters of the exercise. So she quit beating herself up over the unattainable dream of a "perfect record" and continued delegating.

"Alright, Cordy, I think we've done all we can to trick them from here. Focus on confusion instead of evasion with me, we'll see if we can keep them from targeting us directly. With our firepower we won't even give 'em a shot to react. Penny!" she called out to Team 3's smallest member, giving her the same exhausted, wolfish smile and sticking a thumbs up. "It's time to do what gotcha to the dance, babe. If you can kill them, great. If not, focus on weak points. Let's crack the biggest, most expensive parts we can eyeball wide open and let Dana shoot 'em up, yeah?"

Man, I love this.

Being alive?

No. Something way less obvious than that.

Being an Ars Magi?

No. Something even more egotistical than that.

I feel like such a boss.

Yeahhhh. She loved that.