Ponn

Symphony on High

With the local G.E.M.I.N.I. branch’s rather alarming lack of agents at the forefront of her mind, Ashley had resolved to talk with Dr. Moller about an idea that could potentially aid with recruitment. While G.E.M.I.N.I.’s numbers in Pax Septimus were few, the city also boasted a sizable pool of freelance espers, and since Finn had started his Esper “career” as a Freelancer before joining up with G.E.M.I.N.I., this was obviously a vast resource just waiting to be tapped. As such, Ashley had proposed a public relations program in which missions would be posted on Shimmer that would pair a freelancer with a G.E.M.I.N.I. agent, who would both promote G.E.M.I.N.I.’s benefits and gauge the freelancer’s receptiveness to the possibility of joining the organization.

Having received the doctor’s approval, Ashley had wasted no time in putting her plan into action. For this initial trial run, she decided to focus on a seemingly omnipresent issue- the goblin swarms that continued to infest the city’s sewers. Although she had expunged one nest of the creatures alongside Agent Silhouette a little over a month ago, it had readily become apparent that this had merely been the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Still, the goblins were a fairly low-level threat, and so would serve as suitable adversaries for this test case.

Upon posting the details on Shimmer, Ashley was pleasantly surprised to find an interested party almost immediately. After confirming the date, time, and location of their meetup, Ashley had prepared a few items she knew from experience would serve them well, namely, a pair of nose plugs for both herself and “Noble Spark”, and a clip light for the freelancer, in the event he didn’t have one of his own. Now, as she waited near the manhole cover, Ashley couldn’t help but wonder what kind of person this “Noble Spark” was. She was in her esper form, although in such a secluded and mostly abandoned part of town, it was unlikely many would take notice. Still, it should allow her partner to be able to spot her more readily, or so she hoped.

For at least one Freelancer, the posting on Shimmr was quite appealing. A chance to work with a G.E.M.I.N.I agent and take out the proverbial trash cluttering the sewers of the city? Count Noble Spark in. It was impossible for him not to know of them, but up until now he hadn't really had any direct exposure with them, mainly due to him not liking the idea of red tape or restrictions getting in the way of enacting justice and also a bias against governmental agencies brought upon by many years of unchecked comic abuse.

Perhaps I will imagine the Suicide Squad less when thinking about G.E.M.I.N.I after this?

Or so was his hope approaching their rendezvous location in a less lively part of Pax Septimus.

Fortunately for Ashley, Noble Spark had not forgotten his phone this trip, learning from his last job, and so she didn't have to wait very long until she noticed some blonde guy wearing a goofy jacket and shades beelining towards her with a big, confident grin and an eager spring to his step.

He stopped shortly before reaching her, giving her a once over. He had to admit she appeared much closer to a comic book hero than he did. But it only caused his grin to widen in appreciation rather than jealousy. "A noble form befitting a classic superheroine! Surely you must be the GEMINI agent Orion," he prompted, letting her confirm before continuing. "I am Noble Spark, a wandering champion for justice and, today, a slayer of goblins! I look forward to fighting these despicable creatures together with you!" he extended a friendly hand for her to shake.

Catching sight of a rather dashing-looking figure that almost certainly had to be Noble Spark, Ashley was quickly taken aback by the young man’s compliment on her appearance. “O-Oh, um, thank you,” she stammered, a hint of crimson coloring her cheeks. “Y-You present quite the heroic appearance yourself,” she added after regaining her composure. “And yes, I am Agent Orion, the Knight of Tomorrow,” she confirmed with a nod, taking the offered hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Noble Spark. Thank you for agreeing to accompany me on this mission.”

Well, one thing was sure, he definitely had a positive attitude. However, Ashley couldn’t help but wonder if his bravado was simply masking a notable lack of experience. Yet, whatever the case, she’d find out soon enough.

“We’ll be entering the sewers through here,” Ashley explained, pointing to the nearby manhole cover. “But first, I have some equipment for you that should prove useful,” she added, opening a pouch on her utility belt and retrieving a clip light and nose plugs. “I can generate an adequate amount of illumination myself, but it’s always a good idea to have a backup light source,” the Knight of Tomorrow noted. “Also, as you might have guessed, the smell can get pretty strong down there, so I’d definitely recommend making use of the nose plugs.”

After they finished their handshake, Noble Spark accepted the nose plugs, but didn't take the clip light, instead tapping the one attached to his shoulder with a finger to draw attention to it. "I have my own source of light, but these noseplugs are very much appreciated, Knight of Tomorrow! Rest assured these will not be forgotten!" he expressed his gratitude. "I must admit in my haste I had forgotten to consider the stench that would be prevalent within these dark depths."

He approached the sewer grate Orion had pointed out, stopping when a particularly strong whiff of what was below hit him. He avoided wincing in disgust, and took a step back, looking back at Orion as though his nose wasn't crying out in despair. "So these goblins I have not encountered yet in my time as a Freelancer, but if they're anything like they are in comics and games, I can only expect success with such a prepared ally at my side! In any case, I am ready to dispense of these pests whenever. Is there anything else to consider before we begin?" Noble Spark asked, poised to remove the grate.

“Well, I believe it would be prudent to at least briefly go over our capabilities,” Ashley replied. “For example, I am most proficient at mid-range combat, with mystical abilities focused on direct damage, protection, and healing,” she explained. “Also, from what I have learned from my last encounter with them, while goblins are fairly weak on their own, they are quite adept at ambush tactics, along with employing traps to weaken stronger opponents. Therefore, we should proceed with caution.”

"Ah, then we will make quite the dynamic duo! My speciality happens to be close-range, and my powers facilitate me being there. I can move around the battlefield as quick as a bolt of lightning, and keep the pressure up!" he informed, making quick gestures with his arms as if to sell his swiftness to the GEMINI agent. He listened to her explain goblin tactics and nodded in understanding. "I see! Yes, they skulk about in dark places so such cowardice makes sense! In that case, I shall have to watch my step, but I'm sure with an experienced goblin slayer in our midst, that should still prove simple enough!"

Once more, Ashley did her best to keep from blushing at Noble Spark’s overly-embellished compliment, but despite her valiant efforts, her cheeks continued to redden. She also couldn’t keep a small giggle from escaping at her partner’s flamboyant speech and mannerisms. “It sounds as though we’ll synergize quite well,” the Knight of Tomorrow noted with a smile upon regaining her composure once more. “If you don’t have any further questions, I suppose we can head down now,” she added, moving over to the manhole cover.

Descending into the depths, the pair activated their clip lights and cautiously proceeded forward. So as not to make themselves too obvious a target for any goblins potentially lying in wait, Ashley ensured that her light’s beam was canted downwards and advised her partner to do the same. As expected, the sewer tunnel was filled with rotted refuse of various sorts, but although the sight was less than pleasant, their nose plugs thankfully kept the worst of the malodorous smell at bay. It wasn’t long before the sounds of rapid movement reached their ears, along with a high-pitched screeching. However, it sounded less like a war cry, and more like a scream of panic. Soon enough, a terrified runt of a goblin rounded the corner ahead of them, its reedy arms raised high. Screaming its head off, it ran past the pair of espers as if they weren’t even present, obviously terrified out of its feeble mind by whatever had prompted its flight.

“W-What the…?” Ashley stammered in response to the unexpected sight, her energy shield and techno wand raised in preparation for an attack that apparently wouldn't be coming. Eyes wide behind her green visor, the Knight of Tomorrow watched as the goblin continued to flee down the tunnel.

There were many other creatures that could have taken residence in these sewers that were far higher than mere goblins on the food chain, but a closer look at the fleeing greenskin’s tiny, malnourished form revealed that its hunter was likely something quite a bit different. Seemingly unnoticed by the goblin, a stick of dynamite protruded from the waistband of its loincloth, and in the tunnel’s darkness, a flickering spark could easily be seen making its swift passage towards the end of its fuse…

An instant later, a loud detonation reverberated down the tunnel, coupled with an angry burst of flame as the goblin was violently blown apart. Although the explosion generated by a single stick of dynamite wouldn’t normally be very large, the fact that the sewer was filled with flammable gasses meant that the ensuing firestorm was a considerably greater threat to the two espers observing the goblin’s demise than would otherwise be the case.

“Get behind me!” Ashley instructed as she raised her shield to block the brunt of the incoming torrent of flame, before conjuring a larger green energy bubble to completely cover the pair. The next few seconds were harrowing, to say the least, but when things had settled down enough for Ashley to take stock of the situation, she was pleased to see that neither she, nor Noble Spark, had even been slightly singed. “Well, that was certainly unexpected,” the Knight of Tomorrow noted with a relieved exhale. “Are you all right?” she asked her partner.

Noble Spark stood up as he tried to make sense of what they had just seen. After a moment of simply staring at the site of the explosion, he spoke up, "I was not expecting the goblins to be THAT different!" he exclaimed, stepping out from behind her. He scrutinized himself to be sure he wasn't injured and then smiled at her. "I remain unharmed thanks to your protection. Thank you. Now..." he turned his attention from where the goblin exploded to the direction of the corner the goblin had rounded, his confident demeanor a little less intense. "...all jokes aside, what sewer-dwelling beings make use of dynamite? Perhaps someone else took it upon them to exterminate them?" he wondered, punching his palm shortly after. "Well, suppose we'll just have to see."

Hoping he wouldn’t have to hunker down behind her shield again, he took point once more, stepping past Ashley, moving quieter than he had before. It seemed he intended to take this a bit more seriously now that explosives were a potential issue.

“My thoughts exactly,” Ashley agreed in a low voice when Noble Spark brought up the possibility of another party hunting the goblins as well. “Based on what we just saw, I think it’s very likely that another esper, or group of them, got down here before us, with the same idea we had. With that in mind,” she added as she resumed her slow advance. “We should still be on our guard for any additional unexpected surprises, especially since there’s a non-zero chance that whoever planted that dynamite stick might also be hostile to us as well…”

Since she was sure no other G.E.M.I.N.I. agents were at this location, whatever other espers might possibly be in the sewers would either be Freelancers, or members of Maverick Alternative. Needless to say, encountering the later would be far more problematic than the former. As such, Ashley was thankful that Noble Spark had chosen to take the lead, the freelancer hopefully providing a less threatening first impression than an obvious G.E.M.I.N.I. agent like herself.

Proceeding around the corner from which the goblin had first appeared, the pair were greeted with the sight of a sizable hole that had been blown through the tunnel wall. A goblin’s scrawny, blood-spattered body was draped limply atop the pile of rubble at its base, a combat knife protruding from the back of its head. It appeared that, like the first goblin they’d encountered, this one was in the midst of an attempted escape, but he clearly hadn’t made it as far as his companion. What they had been trying to escape from was now finally visible beyond the gaping hole. At the center of a torch-lit chamber, and surrounded by dozens of charred and mangled goblin corpses, was a female goblin, savagely smirking as she drove her sword through the back of the last remaining goblin, even as the pitiful, emaciated creature feebly attempted to crawl away.

A closer look at the still-grinning goblin girl revealed that she was markedly different in appearance to the other goblins that littered the chamber, seeming to denote that she was perhaps a member of a different breed or tribe. That would certainly provide an explanation for the brutal, single-handed slaughter she had just concluded, Ashley reflected. Regardless, she was obviously a powerful fighter, and so the Knight of Tomorrow assumed a combat stance, ready to respond to any attack at a moment’s notice. However, the next few seconds saw the potential for impending combat swiftly diminish…

“Dere!” the goblin girl declared with obvious satisfaction. “Dat should be da last of ‘em!” Then, oversized ears twitching as she registered the approach of the two espers, she snapped her head towards her visitors, her grin shifting into a look of surprise. “Oi!” she yelped, before relaxing considerably. “Oh, crap… Ah ‘spose yer ere ta deal wit dees shiteadz, too, huh?” she asked, pointing a thumb at the piles of corpses surrounding her. “Welp, az ya can see, ah’ve already taken care o’ dis lot,” she added with a toothy smirk. “But if ya like, ah’ll split em’ wit ya, a third fer each o’ uz,” she offered, taking a more relaxed pose as she rested one hand on her sword’s hilt and the other on her hip. “Whadaya say?”

Noble Spark clenched and unclenched his fist in anticipation of the upcoming fight as he rounded the corner, spotting the remains of another goblin and a giant hole presumably made by dynamite. Then, of course, came the bodies of the goblins deeper in that had seemingly been caught in the blast. But standing in their midst was a single female goblin, delivering a coup de grâce to what appeared to be the last goblin of the bunch.

"That's... not how this was supposed to go," Noble Spark muttered in obvious disappointment. His grin faltered as the wind seemed to be taken out of his sails, and glanced at his GEMINI partner with a look that said, "What should we do now?" But if that wasn't enough he also spoke those exact words to her.

As he stepped forward to get a better angle into the hole to see if maybe they had missed something, he accidentally alerted the goblin girl to their presence. Instead of instant aggression like Noble Spark was expecting, the goblin instead seemed to understand why they were there and even offered an even share. That was the most surprising part, honestly.

He stepped forward, though there was still decent space between him and the goblin. "A-a generous offer. But I'll pass..." Noble Spark declined with a strained smile. He motioned to the carnage she had created. "You're clearly much 'more powerful'-" he emphasized that particular observation. "-than the rest of these guys. I wouldn't dare deprive you of the reward, miss...?" he prompted her for a name.

“Ya can call meh Elzy,” the goblin girl replied. “An’ it’z cool if ya don’t want any o’ deez guyz,” she added as she began to pluck serrated combat knives from several of the goblin corpses and place them in her belt. “Dat juz meanz dere’z more fer meh!” she declared, licking her lips.

For her part, Ashley simply stared at the small creature with a look of complete bewilderment. “Are… Are you going to eat them…?” she asked, not even trying to hide her disgust.

“Dat’z right!” Elzy confirmed with a big grin. “Dey may not look like much, but if ya know ‘ow ta cook ‘em, dere fuckin’ deliciouz! Oh, ya mind tossin’ dat over?” she asked, pointing to the knife embedded in the goblin sprawled across the hole in the wall.

“O-Oh, um, sure…” Ashley replied, squatting down to yank the blade free. “I, um, don’t usually assist monsters,” she added, although for whose benefit, Nobel Spark’s, Elzy’s, or her own, it wasn’t entirely clear. “But you don’t seem hostile, and you did wipe out these other goblins, so…” With that, she threw the knife at Elzy, who skillfully caught it between her thumb and two fingers.

“Monster?!” Elzy chuckled as she stowed the blade. “Ah ain’t no monster! Ah’m human! Dis ‘ere’z juz mah esper form!” she added, spreading a clawed hand and gesturing to her green-skinned, goblinoid body.

“Oh! So does that mean you’re a freelancer?” Ashley inquired. Elzy could have also been a Maverick, of course, but since they didn’t like harming monsters, and she had just finished slaughtering a goblin nest, the Knight of Tomorrow didn’t think that was particularly likely. At least, she hoped it wasn’t…

“Yup!” Elzy confirmed, eliciting a mental sigh of relief from Ashley. “An’ Ah’m guessin’ yer both wit GEMINI, huh?”

“Just me, actually,” Ashley corrected. “Agent Orion, Knight of Tomorrow, at your service,” she introduced herself with what she hoped was a friendly smile.

"I must commend your adamantine stomach, Elzy. I do not think I would have even dared to try!" Noble Spark chuckled. "As for introductions," he puffed his chest out proudly. "I am Noble Spark, Voltaic Knight of Justice, and also an aspiring goblin slayer. I can shelve that dream for the time being for a fellow Freelancer though," he smiled, though it was clear he was still a bit disappointed at the missed opportunity.

“Deemz some fancy namez ya got dere,” Elzy noted with an amused chuckle. “Maybe ah should start callin’ m’self ‘Ellraizin’ Elzy da Goblin Slayer’?” she reflected. “Den again, I dink dat last bit’z already taken…”

"I don't suppose you happen to know of any other nests?” Noble Spark inquired.

“Not at da moment,” Elzy replied. “Dis wuz prob’ly da only one ‘round ere,” she added. “Dhough ya might ‘ave better luck on da uver side o’ da city.”

"Quite unfortunate. But not surprising," Noble Spark replied with a resigned smile.

“Well, thanks for taking care of this one,” Ashley told the goblinoid esper. “It really goes a long way towards keeping the city safe.”

“Tell meh about it,” Elzy replied. “Deez gitz’ve been fuckin’ ‘round wit all sortza placez up top,” she added, pointing a finger towards the ceiling. “Dat’z why ah come down ere’ ta git rid o’ ‘em from time ta time,” she explained. “So no need fer da danks, even if dey are kinda nice ta ‘ere,” she told Ashley with a wink.

“U-Um, y-you’re quite welcome,” Ashley stammered in response, somewhat taken aback by Elzy’s playful teasing. At least, she hoped that was all it was… “I, uh, guess we should probably get going,” the Knight of Tomorrow added, turning to Noble Spark. “I’m sorry we didn’t really get a chance to work together all that much,” she apologized, although if she was being honest, she much preferred an uneventful patrol to encountering an unexpected threat of significant power level. “That said, I wouldn’t be averse to teaming up again, if the opportunity presents itself,” she added with a smile.

Noble Spark shook his head. "No need to apologize for something beyond your control. As a Freelancer, such a possibility was something I dismissed as unlikely, so if anyone is to blame it would be me for not encouraging us to be earlier birds, so to speak," he shrugged, pretending that wasn't exactly how he saw this situation. Of course, Ashley's hope for another chance to work together was immediately reciprocated, with Noble Spark grinning widely. "Neither would I, Knight of Tomorrow! In fact, I almost expect it! Rare is such an anticlimactic teamup not eventually followed by a more fulfilling one in a later issue!" he laughed. "If not for that reason, then also because I owe you for the quick thinking earlier. I admit my ability to no-sell explosions isn't my strong suit."

“It was my pleasure,” Ashley replied. “After all, what kind of defender of the imperiled would I be if I didn’t protect my own teammate?”

With all his talk of comic book heroes, Noble Spark greatly reminded the Knight of Tomorrow of her younger brother. Indeed, with how greatly the esper state could change one’s appearance, there was a not insignificant chance that the freelancer beside her was actually someone around Adam’s age. If so, then Ashley supposed going along with his comically heroic banter was far better than to reveal her desperate need to keep what had happened to Su from happening to anyone else who had been placed in her care.

“And I agree,” she added with a confident grin. “When next we unite, the evildoers of Pax Septimus will rue the day they chose to make this city their home!”

As she watched the two espers depart, Elzy smirked and shook her head.

“What a pair ‘o dorkz…”

March of the White Rabbit: A Roll-Your-Own Magical Girl Roleplay

Chapter Seven-
Gotta Catch 'Em All!

Part Three- Nova Lux, A Magical Girl School!

I wonder which has the higher academic ranking, this place or Marrywell Academy...
-Kate

On average, most universes in which magical girls exist feature a form of “masquerade”, which serves to hide supernatural activity from the mundane masses. Yet, as far as Kate was concerned, that only made the universes that didn’t possess this veil significantly more interesting places to visit, universes like her next destination.

In this particular universe’s version of the mid to late 21st century, a mountain-sized eldritch abomination suddenly appeared, throwing the world into chaos. This creature, which future generations would call the First Void, not only left a trail of cataclysmic devastation in its wake, but flooded the world with an otherworldly substance called Nox. Sweeping across the Earth’s surface in dark, roiling clouds, Nox reshaped the planet, and, more significantly, its inhabitants, violently twisting anything it touched into nightmarish landscapes and savage monstrosities known as Voids. Like the First Void that spawned them, these lesser Voids seemed utterly impervious to any and all conventional weapons. They did not sleep, did not tire, and did not stop killing everything in their path.

Humanity seemed doomed, its last pitiful remnants huddled atop the highest elevations and behind hastily erected barriers, but then, in humanity’s darkest hour, a light of hope emerged. Nox, it was discovered, could be refined to power weapons capable of harming the Voids, and even more astonishingly, some exceedingly rare individuals proved capable of harnessing Nox to perform extraordinary feats. Armed with these new, “magitech” weapons, and fighting under the command of twelve magically-gifted heroines, humanity was ultimately able to slay the First Void and stave off extinction.

That was over a hundred years ago. Although the First Void was slain, dense clouds of Nox continue to smother much of the planet, forcing what remains of humanity to live in a collection of fortified “Sanctum Cities”, scattered across the globe. Even so, hope continues to burn brightly. Although Nox and the Voids spawned by it continue to be a threat, humanity, united under the banner of the Novus Orbim Imperium, refuses to surrender their planet, working tirelessly to reclaim the world that has been lost to them, even as they defend against the Voids’ continued attacks. At the undisputed forefront of these efforts are the Magical Girls, or Ars Magi, gifted females who are capable of harnessing Nox. Yet, in a world as dangerous as this one, natural gifts are not enough. They must be both amplified and refined, and in all the world, there is only one place in which these things can be accomplished- Nova Lux Academy. Located in the Sanctum City of Palmyra, a coastal metropolis once known as Vladivostok, it is the pride of the Imperium, and where it cultivates its greatest hope for the future.

It is also, unsurprisingly, extremely heavily guarded, and while Kate had no doubt that she could infiltrate the academy if she put her mind to it, the photographer quickly came to the decision that it would be far easier to wait for her target at the arcade the Ars Magi supposedly frequented. And so that was where she currently found herself, waiting for a slight, dark-haired girl to defeat the final boss of Area 51.

“Okay!” the girl called as she fired several rounds from her light gun into the boss’s weak point. “Almost got him, so get ready!”

“All set,” Kate confirmed, holding up her camera and focusing on the climactic confrontation before her.

An instant later, and the boss was vanquished, its vaguely flying saucer-shaped form blasting apart in a golden starburst. At that very moment, the girl spun to face Kate and struck a pose with her light gun, giving the camera a wink and a bright smile. The explosion was only onscreen for a split second, but Kate wouldn’t be a top-notch photographer if she didn’t have perfect timing.

“Check it out,” she told the beaming girl with a grin of her own as she showed her the camera’s display. Not only had the image been captured with perfect clarity, but the use of a low-key flash had created a small sparkle on the prominent fang poking out of the girl’s mouth.

“Awesome!” the girl cheered, her golden eyes gleaming as she shot a fist into the air. “Thanks a lot!” she added as she returned to the screen to put her name on the game’s scoreboard. “Can ya take one more when they show the high scores?!” she asked, while shooting the letters “D”, “A”, “N”, and “A” onto the line presented.

“Sure,” Kate confirmed with a nod.

Right after the final letter was inserted, the still-grinning Dana spun around once more and flashed a victory sign.

*SNAP!*

“Looks like we’ve got another winner,” Kate noted with approval as she examined the display. “In more ways than one,” she added with a chuckle.

“You can say that again!” Dana agreed with a giggle. “Not only was that the first time I’ve ever gotten one hundred percent accuracy, but I met a totally awesome photographer to help me celebrate my victory! Is this my lucky day, or what?!” she added, before jabbing a finger at the name directly below hers on Area 51’s scoreboard. “Eat that, Oros!”

“Uh, speakin’ of Oros, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about her, would ya?” Kate inquired. “I hear she’s pretty famous in this place, so I was kinda hopin’ I’d get a chance to take her picture.”

“Sorry, but I’ve never seen her,” Dana replied with a frown. “Not many people have,” she added. “Word is, she sneaks in when the place is closed and plays pretty much every game, gettin’ a top score on each one. She even hacked some of em’ to let their scoreboards display four letters instead of three, just so she could write her whole name, which is pretty cool, since now I can write my whole name, too!” the sunny sharpshooter added with a giggle. “Y’know, I even heard a rumor that she’s a member of the Duodecim, but it’d be totally crazy if it was true! I mean, most of the nobles I’ve met are like my teammate, Vanna, super refined and stuff. The only way she’d come to a place like this is if we dragged her! Then again, there was that girl Aiya who Nicole met at the ball, so maybe Oros is more like her?” she mused, before stopping abruptly as her auric eyes caught sight of something of interest. “Oh, hey!” she called to a girl sitting at a nearby table, while waving at her with considerable enthusiasm. “You’re that Ice elementum girl from Team 5! Crystal, right?!”

The girl being waved at blinked and looked up from her sketchpad. Her jaw was working to chew what could only be bubblegum, and she gave a slow wave back. ”Yes, I am. Crystal suddenly regretted not following through with her plan of reading over the student roster yet, because she didn’t recognize this girl. ”May I ask your name, then?"

“It’s Dana Noel!” the grinning gunslinger replied as she darted over to Crystal’s table, with Kate following behind her at a considerably more relaxed pace. “I’m a Light elementum specialist from Team 3, though we like to call ourselves Team Radiant Storm!”

“Kate Carson,” Kate added with a peace sign. “Just an ordinary photographer.”

“It’s really nice to meet ya, Crystal!” Dana continued, holding out her hand for a shake. “Oh wow!” she exclaimed upon catching sight of Crystal’s sketch pad, her golden eyes gleaming even brighter. “That’s some awesome artwork!”

Crystal nodded at the two girls, pulling out a pack of bubblegum. ”It’s nice to meet you too. Both of you. Gum?” She held out two sticks of regular flavor to the girls while putting one in her own mouth. As she saw Dana look at her work, she smiled. ”Thank you. I’m trying to get a little better at backgrounds, so drawing the arcade will hopefully help with that.”

“Well, you’re off to a great start!” Dana told her after popping the offered gum in her mouth. “I know people who’d kill to be able to draw as good as this!”

“Yeah,” Kate agreed as she chewed on her own piece. “You’ve really captured all the major details. Do you come here often to study the layout?”

”I tend to go a few places, this being one of them. I’ve got some from the roof of the school, too. That’s where I usually draw from.” Crystal carefully turned to another page, showing a view from the rooftop of Nova Lux. ”But I’m a little surprised at a photographer being at an arcade. Or are you here on break?”

“Oooh, sweet!” Dana declared, while taking a closer look at the sketch of Nova Lux’s lavish campus gardens.

“Actually, I’m here to photograph someone,” Kate replied. “I’ve heard there’s a girl named Oros who’s managed to get the high score on nearly every game in this place, and I was kinda hopin’ to get a picture of her,” the photographer explained.

”I haven’t heard of her. You came all the way here for a local arcade story?” Crystal was somewhat surprised. But she also didn’t fully understand photography anyway.

“I’m a freelance photographer,” Kate replied. “Takin’ pictures of interestin’ stuff’s kinda my thing,” she added with a shrug.

“Yeah, like me beatin’ Oros’s high score on Area 51!” Dana declared with a grin as she finally looked up from Crystal’s sketchpad.

”Huh. How did you find out about this ‘Oros’ person? Am I just out of the loop? … That wouldn’t be surprising, actually. Crystal turned the page back to what she was working on. ”Though, congratulations on beating the high score, Dana. If this person beat almost all the games, then beating their score in even one is impressive.”

While the girls conversed, the arcade continued to move. At this hour, the arcade was mostly filled with the pizzeria’s customers that were waiting for their food. They’d order, play a few games, then eat in or take their food directly home. It meant that the arcade was seeing plenty of action, but most weren’t sticking around for more than a few minutes.

Most, but not all of them.

Among the many faces in the arcade was one that didn’t look like she could see. Her bangs veiled her eyes, unlike what her outfit did for the majority of her body. She was holding a tray with two hotdogs on it, and there was a third one in her mouth. Her “gaze” was set on the Area 51 machine, which was currently displaying all the top scores. She pushed the hotdog into her mouth as she watched the screen change.

Area 51 wasn’t sophisticated. It was an on-rails light gun game that scored you based on your accuracy, kill streak, and damage taken. The game looped forever, and it was just a matter of time before a player’s fatigue set in and their health ran out. Getting a high score required endurance and memorization, as well as accuracy. Reloading your gun at the wrong time or missing a cue could turn into an instant game over.

She set her tray aside and finished eating the hotdog she was chewing on. Then, she slid a few coins in the machine. She picked up a light gun with one hand and another hotdog with the other.

It was game time.

Mutants popped out of cover, but they were never fast enough to overwhelm their adversary. She knew exactly where they were all hiding, and when they were going to be a threat. Sometimes an enemy would shamble onto screen, but she would target a newly arrived that would have been faster to the draw. Her bangs danced side to side as she fired in one corner, then the other. When there was a dull moment, she reloaded her gun. If there was a really dull moment, she’d take a bite out of her hotdog. It seemed like she missed a few shots but- Did she just enter a secret area? She didn’t even bother looking at the stat screens, and dismissed them as quickly as she could. She was on level three and also on her third hot dog.

“Well, her name’s on the scoreboard of pretty much every game here, so it’s kinda hard not to know about her,” Dana was explaining with a chuckle. “Have ya even played any of these games, or do ya just come here to sketch?” she asked Crystal with a teasing grin.

Yet, for Kate’s part, the friendly banter had been pushed to the background as she focused her full attention on the young woman who was now playing Area 51 and… eating hot dogs at the same time…? To Kate’s further astonishment, the girl even seemed to be entering secret areas that even Dana had been unaware of, and doing numerous other things that appeared to go well beyond the game’s original specifications.

I-Is she hacking it while playing?

“Uh, guys,” the photographer spoke up. “I’m pretty sure that’s her,” she added, subtly pointing a finger at the hotdog-munching young lady who was even now putting the finishing touches on the game’s third level.

”You caught me.” Crystal said to Dana just before Kate spoke. The girl in question just happened to show up as they were talking about her? She looked over to the game, but without any knowledge of how it was played she didn’t catch what was so special about this girl. ”What makes you say that?”

The contender made the first three levels look easy, but as Dana knew, the difficulty really ramped up on that fourth level. That was the second to last proper level before the fight against the mothership. There were some difficult sections, but she had enough grenade power ups to push through them. But her reserves were starting to run thin, and there weren’t enough secret rooms to top her up anymore. This was the end of the game. It was hard.

As soon as a scene transition started, she reached for the tray beside her, only to grasp at thin air. She looked at the empty tray in horror. ”Oh gosh! Oh dear!” She looked around in a panic. It wasn’t long before her eyes rested on the group of three girls looking at her. ”You there!” She tossed the gun to Dana. ”Keep me alive! I forgot part of my order!” She picked up her tray and rushed into the pizzeria. Meanwhile, the screen was starting to fill up with aliens and zombies.

“Well…” Kate began to explain, before the girl they were observing had a minor freak out and literally chucked her light gun at them.

“U-Uh, o-okay…!” A startled Dana called back to the mystery girl as she deftly caught the light gun, before racing to stand in front of the game’s screen, still not quite sure what exactly was going on, but ever willing to help someone in need.

“Um, as I was saying,” Kate continued in a dazed deadpan. “That girl’s clearly making the game do some stuff it wasn't intended to do, to say nothing of the fact that she was eating hotdogs while playing a light gun game and still doing well at it.

”She was?” Not knowing what was or wasn’t ‘what the game was intended to do,’ and being on a team with a very talented markswoman, Crystal still wasn’t sure what the issue was, but she decided to take Kate’s word for it. ”If you say so. Maybe she’s just really good, though? It would be bad to assume she’s cheating if she’s not.”

“Yeah, well, I may not have played Area 51 all that much,” Kate conceded. “But after watchin’ Dana’s playthrough, I’m pretty familiar with all the standard secret rooms, so I think what this girl’s able to do is down to a bit more than simple player skill. Still, hacker or not, there’s one way to know for sure if that’s really Oros,” the photographer added as she readied her camera. “And I’m gonna use it just as soon as she gets back…”

Which wouldn’t be long. The possibly Oros barreled around the corner. There was a pizza box in her hands and another hot dog sticking out of her mouth. ”Mnk mugh!” She handed the pizza box to Crystal before taking the light gun back. With her hand free, she removed the hotdog from her mouth. ”Thank you!” The fourth level had just ended. The final level was here, as the one after was just a fight with the alien mothership. A better photo opportunity might have been to wait for the boss, but all Kate needed was a photo of her subject.

*Snap*

The dark arcade was filled with a brilliant flash. The girl groaned and threw her arm in front of her eyes out of reflex. A wave of mutants greeted the newly arrived with a hail of bullets… and the continue screen started to tick down.

In the pursuit of a high score, continues were pointless. Having your score reset to zero to continue the game at this stage might as well have been a game over. She tapped the trigger to skip the countdown and end the game. What followed was a prompt to enter her name into the leaderboards. Her score was high, but without the rest of the level, she only made it to fifth place.

”Hmmm…” When prompted for her initials, she typed out “LADA” before the game accepted her score. ”You know, I think I missed a ‘Chow Palace’ on the Tarmac level. There’s a lot of power ups in there, I’ll do better next time.” She pointed at a table. ”Did you guys want some Pizza? I ordered it and forgot how big they were. Heh heh!”

Hmmm… Maybe she’s not as good as everyone thinks, if a simple flash is all it takes to distract her… Kate mused. Even so, a quick look at her camera’s display revealed that this was indeed this universe’s Oros.

“Oh wow! I’d love some!” Dana was saying in response to “Lada’s” offer of pizza. “Thanks!” the irrepressible Ars Magi added, taking a slice.

“Guess it wouldn’t hurt to have a slice myself,” Kate noted as she took a piece of her own. “Sorry about ruinin’ your game,” she apologized. “I coulda sworn I had the flash turned off.”

”It’s no biggie! If hot shot here wasn’t here to hold them off while I got my food, they would have over run me anyway.” Lada stacked two slices of Pizza on top of each other and took a bite. Mmmm, sausage and bell peppers! The fact that it was synthetic crossed nobody’s mind. ”But why take a picture of me?” She waved a hand. ”Well, I don’t really mind. But if we’re going to eat pizza together, I’m going to need some names!” She grinned and puffed out her chest. Something that was probably not all that necessary given her shape. ”I’m Lada! Pleased to meet everyone!”

For her part, Crystal was still mostly confused. But everything seemed to be working out, so she simply went along with things. ”My name is Crystal. It’s nice to meet you, Lada.” A thought occurred. ”Do you know anything about the record holder? They seem to be good at most of the games here.” Preferring her bubblegum, she simply held the box for the others without taking any for herself.

Lada looked at the scoreboard. ”Dana? I don’t think so.”

“She meant Oros,” Kate clarified. “That’s Dana,” she added, pointing her thumb at the sunny sharpshooter.

“Light elementum specialist from Team 3, aka Team Radiant Storm!” Dana followed up with a big grin as she finished her slice of pizza and held out her hand. “Nice to meet ya!”

“And I’m Kate,” the photographer introduced herself with a peace sign. “Just an ordinary girl who likes takin’ pictures of interestin’ stuff.”

”Oh!” Lada looked at the area 51 scoreboard again, then at every other arcade in view. Sure enough, Area 51 was the only one that didn’t have OROS at the very top of the high score screen. On some cabinets, Oros had multiple entries. On a few, that was the only name in all the high score entries. ”That’s the super-hacker-Duodecim-gamer-tresspasser who breaks into the arcade every night to get the highest score on all the games, right? Or at least, that’s the legend.” Lada crouched down in front of the arcade cabinet, and a motorized screwdriver appeared in her hand. She had finished eating her pizza sandwich. ”It’s fine, the owner trusts me.” After taking off a few bolts, Lada slid the panel off to the side and the game’s electronics were laid bare. ”You really can’t ‘hack’ an arcade cabinet of this vintage. There’s no wireless interface, be it wi-fi or magitech based. Many players point out the fourth initial as proof that the games have been tampered with. And it was, but not through hacking. It’s a mod kit.” Lada pointed at some components. Among the mess of wires was a large printed circuit board (PCB) with some large chips on it, but just beyond that was a second,smaller PCB. It was far newer than anything else inside the cabinet. Lada pointed at it. ”When arcade games were still a novel idea, players were getting too good and beating the games too quickly. I’ll skip the history lesson, but it’s not uncommon for people to make third party mod kits that can enhance a game. Just sodder and splice a few connections, and you can override parts of the old game or add completely new ones. That’s why this version of Area 51 lets you add a fourth initial, and the score doesn’t cap out at 999K.” She put the front panel back in pace and screwed it back down. ”So I don’t believe any hacking was involved. It’s possible Oros is the owner of the arcade, given the new scores seem to go up when nobody else is around to witness them. That, or maybe Oros is a group of people. Like maybe there are several people who call themselves Oros that frequent this arcade, and nobody ever notices them. Either way...” Lada grabbed another slice of pizza. ”It’s pretty nova.”

That was impressive. ”That’s impressive. How did you learn so much about arcade games?” Crystal carefully set down the pizza box on the table, away from her sketchbook, and looked around. ”But you’re saying that most of the games here have been altered physically? That sounds like it would be a huge undertaking, which implies it took quite a while to do. Did nobody notice the changes over time, or did it all seem to happen at once?” She asked her question to no-one in particular, since any of the three other girls would probably know the answer.

“Wow! That’s really cool!” Dana marveled as Lada showed them the modifications made to the game’s hardware. “Well, word is, it took about a week for Oros to dominate all the scoreboards,” she added in response to Crystal’s question. “But I was too busy preparin’ for my Field Readiness Exam to see any of that myself…”

“I’ve only been in Palmyra for a short while,” Kate explained. “So I don’t really know much more than what I’ve heard via word of mouth.”

Of course, Kate knew a lot more than that. Thanks to her camera, she had the full story and then some. Still, the photographer was mildly curious as to why Lada wished to conceal the truth, especially if the arcade owner trusted her as she claimed they did. Plus, based on her attitude and choice of attire, she certainly didn’t seem like the shy type.

“Gotta say, though, it was a pretty smart move for Oros to make her big reveal the week leadin’ up to the FRE,” Kate pointed out. “Since that’d ensure way less people than usual would be hangin’ around this place to catch sight of her, even if she came in after hours.”

”Sounds more like a no-brainer than a big-brainer if you ask me. As for my knowledge about video game tech, it’s just surface level. I’ve only written basic programs and just have some passing knowledge about arcade hardware because I read about that sort of stuff. My real passion is my magitech inventions.” Lada looked at the scoreboard. ”Even though Dana here shot the pants off of Oros, Oros is still at the top of the duo board. If we really want to reclaim the arcade, we’re going to need to beat them here too.” She pointed up in the air. ”And I have just the tool for the job! We could easily secure victory if we gave it to Dana, but um, Crystal?” She stepped in front of the arcade game and pointed in front of her. ”Mind standing in front of me? It’ll be kind of hard to walk once it’s activated.”

”Ugh, please don’t remind me of the Readiness Test, thanks.” Lada’s question… That was slightly ominous. ”Sure thing.” Crystal picked up her sketchbook and stood, going over to where Lada wanted her to stand. ”Here? What are you planning to do?” She stood still in case the “tool” required it and looked at Dana.

”Ah! You also like to play shooting games with a totem object!” Lada ‘looked’ at the sketch book Crystal was holding. ”I prefer to hold onto some food myself. But that’s fine! The only issue is that two-player mode requires two hands. This is a problem for you, since you only have a single hand free to hold a light gun. But this handicap can be remedied with technology!” Lada grabbed Crystal’s arms. ”Initiating spider protocol: Black Widow!” Lada took Crystal’s arms and slid them through her suspenders. She made transformation sounds with her mouth as she scooched her feet under Crystal’s heels. This forced Crystal to half crouch against Lada. The back of Crystal’s head was against Lada’s stomach, and her breasts hung over the artist like the demons of her past. Crystal was only a few inches shorter than Lada, so she had to bend her knees quite a bit to fit inside the cockpit of Lada’s “invention.” ”Now you have two extra hands, and even another pair of eyes to focus on other threats! There’s no way you can lose now!” Lada pointed in two different directions. ”Dana! Get us the light guns! Kate! Get some pizza for ‘Crystal’s’ Extra hand. This is going to be super nova!”

What the fuck…?

At first, Kate had thought Lada would be outfitting Crystal with an actual magitech device, one which would grant the girl some additional appendages, but instead the tech wiz would apparently be serving as those extra limbs herself, all while putting the clearly reserved and introverted Crystal in probably the last position she’d ever want to occupy. Yep, Kate reflected, this was definitely an Oros.

For her part, Dana was equally taken aback by the “deployment” of Lada’s “invention”, although she quickly snapped out of her bewildered daze when the well-endowed Ars Magi called her name. “O-Oh, uh, sure thing!” she acknowledged, grabbing the two light guns and offering the blue one to Crystal and the red to Lada (or rather, Crystal’s “extra hand”).

“Here ya go,” Kate added with a chuckle, handing “Crystal’s” other extra hand a slice of pizza from the nearby box. “Uh, good luck you two,” she told the comically incongruous pair with an amused smirk.

How did this happen? On the list of things that the Ice Elementum user was expecting, this was not on it. Also, a totem object? She supposed that was somewhat accurate. Her sketchbook did have a little bit of a calming effect on her. If Crystal were honest with herself, this would have been much worse before her FRE, though she was loath to admit that Mara had done anything for her benefit. Before she even considered taking the light gun from Dana, she quickly put her sketchpad under her armpit to trade out her gum, pulling an apple flavored stick from a pack of its brethren. Once she had it in her mouth and the previous piece put away in the wrapper and into her pocket for throwing away later, she began to chew and the password was accepted.

”Alright, I guess?” Admittedly the chest of the girl above her was somewhat cumbersome, but she could only assume that was even worse for their owner. ”I wasn’t expecting this, and I don’t know how it could help with this sort of game, but I’ll try to be helpful to you.” With that, she pulled her sketchbook back to her left hand and grabbed the gun with her right. ”Outside of class and drills, I haven’t really shot anything for a while, so I might be rusty. Apologies for that.” Also unfortunate was that she couldn’t stand the way she had been trained with the other girl engulfing her, but that didn’t need to be said aloud. Instead she simply pointed the gun at the screen and allowed the passcode for her mind to do its job, the flavor allowing her focus to sharpen and for her to push away the discomfort, somewhat.

”I’m sure you’ll do fine. Now! Someone start this game up!”

Once the credits were inserted, the game started.

There may have been twice as many players, but the game compensated by putting twice as many enemies on screen. Not only that, but it was more difficult to keep a score chain going if you were constantly wasting bullets on targets your ally already shot. There was also an extra mechanic where a meter at the top of the screen showed which player had more “agro” and would take damage when the aliens and mutants fired back.

”I’m going to let you lead. Just fire at the aliens as they come up. I’ll focus on activating secrets and assisting with durable targets. When things get frantic, just focus on your side of the screen and I’ll take care of the rest!”

It was a rough start. Lada pretty much carried Crystal through the early stages of the game. But as the game progressed, her training started to come back to her and she started to do better. The difference in their skill level seemed to shrink as the game went on. Though it was a bit more apparent if you bothered to look at their individual scores. Once they got to the harder stages, Lada activated her invention's “drone mode,” Which was initiated by having Kate and Dana unclip her suspenders. So that the two could stand side by side. There were some close calls, and they had used all of their grenades, but they got to see the alien space ship blow up.

”Wait for it…” After displaying a congratulatory message for beating the game, Crystal and Lada were prompted to enter their initials. They were at the very top of the duo scoreboard. ”Hyper nova!” She patted Crystal’s shoulder before typing in her name.

“Great job, guys!” Dana cheered, her golden eyes gleaming as she punched a celebratory fist in the air. “That was totally awesome!”

“Yeah,” Kate agreed. “Gotta say, I’m surprised that little… ‘configuration’ of yours worked out so well,” the photographer added with a smirk.

Perhaps less surprisingly, she had snapped a picture of the pair in their initial “Black Widow” mode, as much for her own amusement as for use as potential blackmail. Yet, with the two Ars Magi so focused on the game, and with Kate wisely choosing to forgo the use of a flash, the odds of either of them noticing were minimal.

Crystal exhaled a breath she didn’t know she was holding as the space ship began to explode. She’d not played an arcade game in quite a long time, so it was gratifying that she was able to do well, even though her partner had blown past her in score. ”Yeah, it’s shocking that standing like that didn’t affect us as much as I thought it would.” Though she was much more comfortable once “drone mode” was active… It was still pretty fun, once the focus wore off enough for her to notice. Though the thought that Oros might have been playing alone for her previously best score made her pause. It’d be one thing if she were paired with someone like her roommate Rivka, but to do so while duel-wielding… Would that be easier or harder?

”I’m telling you, my inventions really work!” Lada flashed a grin. ”The real thing will be a bit more comfortable to wear, but the ‘prototype’ is passing all kinds of benchmarks.” She yawned. ”Welp, the food’s gone, and I got two pretty long games of Area 51 in. I should probably get going, but we should make this a weekly thing! We can play ‘Gearmantic Hearts’ next time!”

“Yeah, that sounds great!” Dana called. “I’m a big fan of that game, too! Hmmm… I wonder what character she likes to play as…” the sunny sharpshooter wondered aloud. “I like Sixshooter Synthia and Necroid 99 myself, but if I had to guess, I’d picture her as more of a Tsubotica fan…”

“So, do ya play against your teammates often?” Kate inquired.

“Not really,” Dana replied with a frown. “Vanna and Cordelia are both super busy, and Nicole prefers dancing games,” she explained. “I did try to get Penny to play once, after telling her there’s a character that shares her name, but she wanted to go with the Altea expy, who really isn’t all that good, and well…”

“Crushed her that badly, huh?” Kate asked with a chuckle.

“Yeah…” Dana confirmed. “She said she was gonna leave the fighting games to me and focus more on her actual combat training. Do any of your teammates like to come here, Crystal?” she inquired.

”Mmm…” Crystal hummed in thought as she traded her depleted gum for a new stick of raspberry. ”Maybe, but I haven’t heard them talk about this place much. I could see some of them coming once in a while, though I’ve only ever seen Aoife here, and I didn’t see what she was here for.”

“Huh, well that kinda sucks…” Dana noted. Then again, it didn’t look like Crystal was all that enthusiastic about playing arcade games herself, so maybe her teammates’ lack of interest really wasn’t too big of a deal. “Hey!” the grinning gunslinger exclaimed with an excited gleam in her auric eyes as an idea occurred to her. “Did your team get invited to the big boat party tomorrow?!”

”Boat party?”

“Yeah! This Duodecim girl my teammate Nicole met at that fancy ball invited her and the rest of the team to this big party she’s havin’ on a boat!” Dana explained. “Supposedly, there’s gonna be a lot of officers and Ars Magi there, so I was wonderin’ if your team got invites, too.”

Crystal cocked her head to the side. ”No, I don’t believe so. At the very least I wasn’t invited, so I don’t think my teammates were either. Be sure to be safe while there.”

“Oh, uh, yeah, will do,” Dana replied with a nod. “I’m just sorry you’re gonna be left out…” she added, while awkwardly scratching the back of her head.

“Maybe it’s for the best,” Kate noted. “I could be wrong, but Crystal here strikes me as more of the introverted type, so a big boat party probably wouldn’t be her kinda thing, right?” she inquired of the artistic Ars Magi.

”I”d say that’s accurate.” Crystal smiled at Dana. ”So it’s not a worry that I won’t be there. Thank you for coming over to talk to me, this was an interesting experience.”

“No problem!” Dana replied with a grin. “I love makin’ new friends!”

“Well, I think I’m gonna get goin’ now,” Kate announced. “Still got more photos to take after all.”

“Okay, see ya later, Kate!” Dana called to the departing photographer. “I think I’m gonna try and beat this thing with both guns!” she added, pointing her thumb at Area 51, before heading over to take hold of the game’s twin pistols.

“Good luck!” Kate called back with a chuckle, holding up a peace sign before stepping out of the arcade.

Oros the Inventive, huh? the photographer mused as she rechecked her camera’s display. Gotta admit, she sure does pull off the whole ‘obfuscating ineptness’ thing like a pro.

*Tap tap*

As soon as Kate moved past the threshold of the door, A pale finger prodded her shoulder. Sure enough, it was Lada.

”Hey.” She waved. ”I have to admit, you’re a lot different than most professional photographers I’ve encountered. Most of them at least try to blend in with the locals. But they aren’t as much fun to hang with.” She grinned. ”Anyway, would you do me a solid and delete those pictures you took of me?”

“Oh, uh, hi,” Kate greeted, not exactly expecting to bump into the eccentric Ars Magi again. “What, don’t want news of your next big invention getting out prematurely?” the photographer quipped with a smirk. “And I’d like to think I blend in just fine,” she added.

In this universe, at any rate…

”Better than I do I suppose.” She stretched her arms over her head. ”But no. You know who I am. And once you publish those pictures, so will everyone else.” She placed a hand on her hip. ”It’s not possible to live a normal life as a Duodecim, but I enjoy the carefully crafted existence I’ve made for myself. My true identity needs to remain a secret.”

“No worries on that front,” Kate reassured the Ars Magi, holding up her hands in a placating manner. “I don’t plan on publishing any of the photos I took, so your secret’s totally safe. Truth is, the photos are actually a present for a friend of mine, who’s something of a secret admirer of yours.”

Lada clicked her tongue. ”How fortunate! You’re going to hand the pictures directly to someone obsessed with me. Then they’ll be able to obsess over every square inch before deciding to make a duplicate for their own ends.” She stepped closer to Kate. ”Please get rid of them. Take a picture of someone else. They’ll never know the difference.”

“Pretty sure they will,” Kate replied, moving back a step. “Plus, they’re a total recluse who doesn’t even use social media, so I doubt it’ll cause ya any problems if I give these photos to ‘em. But if you’re that camera shy, I guess I could trash those pics,” the photographer conceded. “I mean, you’re probably the least important person she wanted me to take a picture of, so I doubt she’ll be bothered all that much.”

”I wonder why you even wasted the effort. Well, sounds like no great loss.” Lada grinned. ”I have to admit though, I didn’t think my ‘secret fan’ was going to be a girl. What’s her name?”

“Nikki,” Kate replied. “She loves following the exploits of creative individuals, such as yourself, but she’s super socially awkward, so she has me take pictures of ‘em to put in an album she’s making,” the photographer explained. “She’ll probably be a little bummed out you didn’t wanna have your picture taken, but I’m sure she’ll get over it.”

”Hmmm… See, this is what I don’t like about people in your profession.” Her smile vanished. ”Information brokers like yourself are never straightforward. You’re always telling half truths and whole lies.” Lada came closer, and Kate backed away to maintain distance. ”I mean, you’re taking pictures of me for someone, but is it really Nikki? Is she really socially awkward? The mental image you’ve painted makes me want to picture a nerdy little girl. One with twintails and a smile. Maybe some nerdy looking glasses and the most nova comic collection the world has ever seen. But I’m really filling in the blanks with that, aren’t I? Serial stalkers are also socially awkward, right? Do we know this all ends as soon as my picture gets slotted in an album?” Nanites crept out of Lada’s collar and constructed a helmet over half of her face. Kate had looked at enough of Lada’s profile to know this was her endless eclipse. Her back bumped into a wall. Lada had her cornered. ”I did a little digging on you as soon as I left, but I wasn’t able to turn up much. And this Nikki girl? I don’t even think she exists. But you have to be getting those pictures for someone, right? See what you think of this…” The nanites crept off of her face and scurried down her neck. ”The nerdy girl you’re taking pictures for…Is you!” She thrust her gloved finger in Kate’s direction.

As she watched Lada begin to transform, while the dark clouds of one of Palmyra’s frequent storms menacingly flashed with lightning overhead, Kate’s mind raced to come up with a way out of her current predicament.

“Uh, nice theory, even if it is completely wrong,” Kate replied. “Full disclosure? The reason you can’t find any info on Nikki, is because she really values her privacy,” the photographer explained. “As for your guesses about her, I’d say she’s pretty nerdy, and while she doesn’t wear glasses, she does wear goggles. She’s not a fan of twin tails, though,” she added. “In fact, her hair’s usually really messy… And if ya don’t believe me, we can just get Dana out here to prove it! She’s a Light Elementum, right? They’re practically living lie detectors! _{Or does the Light Elementum not work like that here? Aw crap, I don’t think it does…} Well, whatever, none of this matters, since I said I’d get rid of the pictures, so I’d appreciate it if you chilled the fuck out.”

”Chill the- Wha?” Lada lifted a hand to her mouth. ”What brought that on all of a sudden? Are you okay Kate?” She moved beside the photographer and placed a hand on her shoulder. ”You’re kind of tense. Is it the mask thing? That’s just uh, my magic. I can create a mask that can see the truth.” She began to lightly massage Kate’s shoulder. ”Is this about the Nikki thing? I guess that was a little insensitive. I was just excited because you know, I also use a persona of sorts to live the life I want to. So you know, if you, hmmm, Nikki were a shy nerd with…goggles? And they decided to act as an adventurous photographer? I think that’s really cool. But if you say that’s not what’s going on, I believe you.” She grinned. ”Now that I know the whole story, how about we go back to my place and I’ll let you take a few pictures of me? Something that doesn’t tie me directly to the arcade. I’ll even let you keep those other pictures. If you say you won’t publish or share them, I believe you.”

“O-Oh, uh, well…” Kate stammered, taken more than a bit off guard by Lada’s sudden change in tactics. “You were the one acting all threatening…” she muttered with an annoyed pout. “And, uh, I guess I could drop by your place,” the photographer conceded, albeit with some clear reluctance. “I mean, it’d be cool to see some of your other inventions,” she added with a slightly nervous chuckle.

At first, Kate wondered how the hell things had escalated so quickly, but then she remembered that this was an Oros she was dealing with. No doubt the girl was planning to do something perverted to her as some twisted form of revenge. Heck, she could even be planning to torture and/or kill her. But even so, Kate was confident she had the necessary tools to deal with all of those potentialities, and she had to admit, the chance for an inside look at the gadgeteer genius’s abode was rather appealing.

”That wasn’t really my intent. I’m sorry” She sighed and lowered her hands into her pockets. ”Let’s continue this elsewhere...”

---

The Duodecim might have been the highest members of society, but Lada was still trying to make due in a school that was made for everyone, or at least the best and brightest. Getting Kate inside wasn’t an issue with a guest pass.

Lada did have a private dorm room, but it wasn’t all that interesting. It was exactly what you’d expect someone on a tech high to have. Everything was sleek and modern, with a minimal amount of decorations. There was a bed, a small office space, and some yellow-green mood lighting. At least everything looked tidy, and the bed was made!

As Kate looked over Lada’s room, she was somewhat surprised by how normal it was. At least, nothing worrying seemed to be in evidence.

”I really just use my dorm to sleep.” Lada pointed at the room. ”I had a professional designer come in and set it up before my parents visited me, and I’ve just kind of kept it that way. But if you really want to see where I live, we need to go to the magitech lab.”

The photographer was quite relieved when her host led her to the nearby laboratory. A stroll down a few hallways later, and they had arrived. Presumably one of several on the sprawling campus, it looked a bit like a combination between a computer lab and a kitchen. There were several computers set up facing an island table, which held an empty glass dome on top of it. The rest of the walls were filled with counter space that held everything from beakers to vial mixers. There were also a few sinks, and what looked like (but most certainly wasn’t) a trash disposal unit. Still pretty normal, as to be expected of a communal space. But this lab was almost certainly the foremost among its fellows, even if it didn’t hold a candle to the wondrous weirdness of Nykannis’s workspace.

”Tada!” Lada waved her hand at everything. ”This is where the magic happens!”

“Well, I would hope so with a name like ‘Magitech Lab Alpha’,” Kate replied with a wry smirk. She knew from her research that the greatest miracle of magitech would actually be found in the school’s medical wing, as it was there that the Ars Armaguses, the magitech gemstones that allowed a magically-sensitive girl to actually become an Ars Magi, were implanted, stored, and, rumor had it, created (although the NOI was pretty tight-lipped about such matters for obvious reasons), but even so, Lada’s own lab was still pretty impressive. “Not too shabby,” the photographer noted with an approving nod. “So, what kinda stuff do ya cook up in here?”

”Oh! I don’t make anything here!” Lada laughed. ”If you want to see that, we need to go a bit deeper…”

The inventive girl strode into the room and placed her hand on the side of the island table. A small orb the size of a fist popped out of the side of the table. Lada promptly removed one of her gloves and placed her hand over the sphere. There was a chime, and then the tile floor beside the island table lowered into a set of stairs. She waved Kate on before venturing into the belly of the school.

”You’re held to high standards as a Duodecim, but on the upside, you can get nearly anything your heart yearns for. My sisters wanted mansions, my brothers wanted their own companies, I just wanted a secret workshop. I’m not really working on anything too secretive, but it does make my work feel more important when it happens away from the world.”

After walking down what felt like the silent hill stairs several stories worth of stairs, the two stepped through an archway into the workshop. It was massive. The room had to be four or five stories tall with massive pipes running along either side. It almost looked like a particle collider, the way the pipes all seemed to feed a circular tank at the far side of the room. It had a giant viewport on it that showed a concentrated black mass floating around. Kate didn’t have to ask what it was, she knew it was Nox.

”Most of the research I do involves finding ways to safely store and use Nox for other purposes, specifically for those without strong magical abilities. The biggest hurdle presently is that it’s not the most efficient. It takes so much energy just to use Nox for anything that it can’t be your sole power source. I have made machines that are more efficient, but they are large and not suitable for household use.” She pointed at the far side of the lab. ”This is effectively a backup generator for the academy, but I use it to run my experiments.”

While the generator’s size was impressive, there were other things in the lab as well. The whole wall was lined with appliances. A washer and dryer, several fridges and freezers, an oven, and even an arcade machine. Though there wasn’t any clear markings as to what it played.

”Another thing I mess around with is depleted Nox. The machines I use to turn Nox into electricity leave behind a chalky residue. But it can be synthesized into microchips, or something similar to it. You can make magical circuits on a depleted Nox chip that are much finer than that of modern microchips. Look at this!” She walked over to the arcade machine. ”One thing that lets home game systems beat out arcade cabinets is that the player can save data locally. Nobody wants to carry around a memory card when they visit the arcade, and nobody who owns an arcade machine wants people slotting just anything into it. But look at this,” She pulled what looked like a credit card out of the machine, but upon closer inspection... ”This is actually a memory card! It’s thin enough to store in a wallet or purse, and has a crazy amount of space! Now you can get the console experience at the arcade!”

“Wow, that’s pretty sweet,” Kate admitted, and so it was, by this world’s standards. “Since you’ve done so much research on Nox, I’ll bet you’ve also looked into maximizing the conversion capabilities of Ars Armaguses,” she added. “Y’know, increase their max Nox capacity so an Ars Magi can get even more of that good ol’ magic power outta ‘em to do cool shit with?”

”Ars Armaguses, heh, yea…” A frown slowly crept across Lada’s face as she turned to “look” at Kate. ”No, the Novus Orbim Imperium guards their secrets carefully. I may be a Duodecim, but I’m still a student and not a teacher, researcher, or anything that earns a salary. Ars Armaguses isn’t really the direction I want to head in with my research anyway. One of the reasons it works so well is that it works with your body to convert the Nox into, magic, stuff, and all that.” She cleaned her ear with her pinky. ”It’s kind of archaic if you think about it. They slice you open, implant some foreign device inside you, and then you absorb hazardous chemicals into your body to later expel as spells. It’s not a solution for everyone. You’ve likely noticed that all Ars Magi are girls. Seems we’ve forgotten about half the population, and it’s about time someone corrects that.” Lada approached one of the refrigerators and opened it. ”Do you know why they call me Oros?” She pulled a ham sandwich out of the fridge and shut it. ”Because it’s short for Oroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. Because I like to eat. That’s my most noteworthy trait to these people.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Kate noted with a nod. After all, the girl had been eating pretty much non-stop while playing an arcade game only a short while earlier. “But back to this grand plan of yours,” she continued. “You’re seriously trying to find a way to create male Ars Magi?” the photographer asked with a chuckle. “Talk about turnin’ the world on its ear…”

Lada shook her head before polishing off her sandwich. ”I think I may have given you the wrong impression of what I do here. I am not a scientist, I’m an inventor. There’s a lot of overlap between the two, but the biggest difference is our end goal. Scientists search for truth, inventors search for solutions. My current goal is to find a way to arm everyone with magic. If that means turning men into Ars Magi, so be it. But I’ve already mentioned that Ars Armaguses are not an ideal solution. There are people who aren’t healthy enough to survive an operation like that. But we’re getting off track a bit, aren’t we?” She placed her hands on her hips. ”Tell me, Kate, have you ever heard of the ultimate portfolio picture?”

“You mean, like, the best picture a hypothetical photographer ever took?” Kate asked. “The one that got all kinds of awards and is basically their signature photo, the one everybody remembers them for?”

”Typically a portfolio is filled with several pictures of a photographer’s best work, sure, but it’s also there to demonstrate what they can do. Given your interest in photographing people, I would say that’s probably your specialty. Your portfolio, if you have one, likely contains many shots of people. Though some are portraits, others might be more easily classified as street or wedding photography. If an animal is in the shot, it might qualify as a pet picture. If it’s off the wall enough, it might even be considered experimental. You see what I mean? There’s a lot of different genres for photography. The ultimate portfolio picture takes advantage of how different genres of photography overlap to make one picture that’s representative of an entire skill set!” Lada smiled. ”I doubt such a picture would be ‘good’, but I think it would be a fun thing to attempt.”

“Well, I’ve taken some landscape pictures of battle scenes, so I guess one of them might count,” Kate mused, tapping a finger against her chin in thoughtful contemplation. “But I’m pretty sure you already have a specific point you’re tryin’ to make with all this, right?” she asked with a smirk.

”No ‘point’ really. I just thought it would be absolutely nova to take an absurd picture for Nikki, and I figured maximizing the number of genres the picture could be classified under would be a good way of doing it.” She pulled an apple out of the fridge. ”If you took a picture of me holding this apple, it would qualify as a portrait, as well as food photography. If we got you in the shot it would be a self portrait.” She moved beside Kate. ”Hmmm, we need more structure. Good pictures tell a story, right? What else could we do? The lab may look bare but I can get access to most everyday objects on short notice. Just tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Well, if you’ve got an invention you’re particularly proud of, maybe we could put it in an anti-grav field so that it’s hoverin’ behind us?” Kate suggested. “Or, I guess you could just throw up a hologram of it, if that’s easier. Either way, it’d let anyone lookin’ at the photo know exactly what kinda place this is.”

Lada laughed, very loudly. ”I’m a little surprised to hear a photographer suggest using a hologram. Isn’t the entire point to capture the world as it actually is?” She shook her head. ”But fair enough. I’ve recently been working on some magitech nanomachines. They can take nearly any shape, but require such vast amounts of nox to operate that they can’t really function outside this room. So…”

The space around Kate and Lada started to fill up with a mist, and that mist took shape immediately. It coalesced behind the two girls to make a puffy looking couch. Another cloud turned into a bear skin, while another turned into a fireplace. A set of walls started to form, but stopped half way through.

“Nice,” Kate noted with an approving grin.

”We can leave the room in a kind of incomplete state. Between the generator in the background and the hovering nanomachines, a viewer should know what’s going on.” Lada started counting her fingers. ”Let’s see, a picture of both of us here would qualify for self portrait, people, landscape, technology, food, possibly clothing, Hmmm….” She trailed off. ”We should also be doing something, to make it an action shot. Got any ideas?”

“Well, I’ll be taking the picture, while also appearing in it, so I’d say that counts for action, right?” Kate replied. She honestly didn’t know what other action they could do that wouldn’t also be extremely awkward for various reasons, although she had a worrying feeling that such activities were exactly what Lada had in mind…

”Sounds cryptic. And here I thought you were just going to time the camera on a tripod. But I am curious to see how this photo shoot goes!” Lada was about to pose when she spun over to Kate. ”I got it! I know what our picture is missing! This is going to be super nova, possibly hypernova!” Lada grinned like a demon. Kate could feel a pit expanding in her stomach before she even spoke. ”We should replace our clothes with nanites! Then we could pretend to be freaking out as they dissolve in the wind! Then it could be classified as comedic and contain artistic nudity! Wouldn’t that be silly?”

​​“Uh, yeaaaah… How about if it’s just you doing that?” Kate suggested, trying, and failing, to hide her discomfort. “T-That way we can have a nice contrast between the two of us!” the photographer added, doing her best to convince Lada that her idea had merit.

But imagine convincing an Oros to change her ways?

”I’m going to be honest, Kate, I think we actually have a lot of similarities. But we can do a picture both ways.” Lada had already unclipped her suspenders and cast her shirt to the side. Fully revealing her body conforming undershirt. ”I understand you’re nervous, and honestly, I am too! I’ve invited a photographer into my most private workspace. It would make me feel a lot more comfortable if we did it together. Given you didn’t outright object to the idea, you must know Nikki would absolutely love the photo! And isn’t that who we’re both trying to impress?” Lada reached an arm around Kate’s waist and gently pulled the two of them together. ”This is great! Yes! I see it now! We could be hugging each other as our nanite clothes dissolve. Any ‘overly exposed’ bits can be hidden behind my arm holding the apple. And then we just cast our gaze upward, in awe and terror!” She grinned at Kate. ”But if you wanted to highlight a difference between us, maybe you look less frightened? Yea! You could be grinning, and maybe you have a magnet in one of your hands, and it’s just pulling the nanites off us. I can almost see it on the cover of a magazine! ‘Lada Expose!’ or something like that. Yea, we’re definitely doing something like that. Too nova to pass up!”

Or maybe I could just glare at the camera, while flipping it off?

“Uh, you do see how, uh, underdeveloped I am, right?” Kate asked with a concerned frown. “Things could get really awkward really fast if people thought you were into that kinda thing, y’know? But, that magnet idea of yours could still work!” the photographer hastened to add. “It’d just be even better if I still had my clothes, since it’d look like I was pullin’ a prank on ya!”

”Of course we’ll do that! I just think we should take the opportunity to do a photo shoot. I have so many ideas, and it would be a shame to wrap things up after taking a single photo. As for what people might think should they see them, why do I care? No one thinks highly of me, and you’re not sharing these pictures with anyone but Nikki. So I shouldn’t have to worry about what other people think, right? This is just two friends doing something silly together!” Lada clapped her hands together. ”Come on, Kate. Just one photo. It doesn’t ever have to be published. Then we can do whatever you like for the rest of our photo shoot.”

“Alright, fine…” Kate muttered with a defeated exhale. “We’ll do one picture to satisfy your perverted fetish, but I’m keepin’ my shorts on,” the photographer insisted. It was bad enough she’d have to be topless in front of Lada, even if there wasn’t all that much to see, but she drew the line at having the rest of her exposed. “I mean, the photo’s gonna be from the waist up anyways, right?”

Lada had her back turned to Kate while she removed her undershirt. ”The goal is to make it look like our clothes are unraveling into nanites. In my mind’s eye, this effect starts at the top and works down, so keeping your shorts on is fine. Though maybe it would be easier just to crop out everything down there anyway. ” A plate with several tiny cups on it floated to Lada’s side. She dipped her finger inside one of the cups, and when she pulled her finger back, it was coated in a yellow-green paint. She started to trace something on her chest. ”I’ve heard that models will often paint over parts of themselves that they don’t want to end up in a photoshoot. That’s something I happen to keep around for my projects. It’s all water based, dries fast, and is totally non-toxic.” She dipped another finger in some black paint before the plate moved over to Kate’s side. ”Maybe you’d like to put some on to avert my judgemental stare?”

“Nah, it’s fine,” Kate replied, giving Lada a dismissive wave of her hand. “I think usin’ my arm will work just fine, since, y’know, I don’t have anywhere near as much to cover as you,” the photographer added with a wry smirk. “Plus, I couldn’t really care less what ya think of me,” she noted with a shrug.

”Well, I offered.” Lada used a rag to clean off her fingers. ”As an agent of truth, you can’t call me a pervert now.” She whipped around and tossed the rag to the side. Sure enough, she had painted two smiley faces over the most sensitive areas of her chest. Their black eyes seemed to gaze directly at Kate, their irises as black as the abyss. ”I will be attempting to cover up everything with my arm and apple as well, but you know.” She grinned. ”But I still don’t know how good your camera work is.” The nanomachine fog collected on Lada’s skin. It gradually built volume and changed color, until it looked like the top she was wearing just a bit ago. She didn’t bother clipping her suspenders back up. ”Let me know when you’re ready~” She spread her arms and wiggled her fingers.

Kate tried to ignore the twin smiley faces painted on Lada’s oversized chest, instead focusing on removing her jacket, hoodie and undershirt and setting them within easy reach. “Alright, let’s get this over with,” she said with a tired sigh, moving in close to Lada and holding out her camera to face them, while covering her chest with her free arm.

”I’m sure you’ll look back on this moment with fondness!” Lada wrapped an arm around her waist and scooched up against her. While Kate could ignore how Lada looked, ignoring how she felt would prove to be a lot more difficult. Lada’s form was pressed pretty firmly against her own. Once her nanite clothes had started to disperse, there wasn’t much separating their bodies. Lada’s chest threatened to swallow Kate’s shoulder, and it wasn’t like their shorts covered anything below the thighs. That, and Kate could feel that Lada’s belly wasn’t exactly flat. ”Almost in position, your nanites will be ready in a moment.” Lada took a bite out of her apple. ”Mmmm!” She swallowed. ”I may not look it, but I’m actually a little nervous right now.” She sighed before moving her arm into position. ”I can hear your heartbeat, and you feel different than I thought you would. You even smell different. Is it weird to say that?” She chuckled before looking towards the dispersing nanites. Lada made the most horrified look she could manage, which looked pretty campy.

Everything about this is weird… Kate grumbled to herself. Nonetheless, she got her camera ready to snap the picture, her face forming a cringing visage that seemed to come naturally to the photographer.

“All set!” Lada announced. “Let’s go on three!”

“Okay,” Kate acknowledged. “One, two, three!”

*SNAP!*

“There,” Kate declared with obvious relief, lowering her camera and extricating herself from Lada as fast as possible. “Now that we’re finished catering to your little fetishistic fantasies, I’m gonna put my clothes back on and then we can…” The photographer’s voice trailed off and her eyes widened in horror as she saw two familiar faces enter the room. Oh fuck..

“Hey, Lada!” Dana greeted with her usual cheerful exuberance. “Ya forgot your hotdog, so we decided to… woah… Uh… A-Are we, um, interrupting something…?” the sunny sharpshooter inquired, her formerly grinning visage now mirroring Kate’s look of horrified embarrassment.

Crystal, for her part, chose the better part of valor and turned her head away with her eyes closed the instant she saw what was going on. ”Sorry to barge in like this… With how Lada had acted earlier, we thought the food might be a good reason to do so. Are you two alright?”

There was no indication that Lada was feeling any embarrassment. She stood there like a statue, one with smiley faces painted on her chest. Before long, a grin crossed her face. ”Ah! Just a moment!” Without bothering to grab her shirt, she scuffed her way over to the newly arrived to recover her hotdog. ”Thank you! Um, but to explain…” She turned to look at Kate. ”I just kind of bumped into Kate on my way back home. She was enthusiastic about seeing my other prototypes. I took her here, one thing led to another and…” Lada trailed off. ”How did you find us so fast?” She took a bite out of her hotdog.

“O-Oh, um, well, we talked with the arcade owner, and he told us where to find you,” Dana replied, her face turning red as she joined Crystal in averting her gaze from the shameless inventor. “Uh, t-this is some crazy secret lab ya got here,” she added with a nervous chuckle.

“This was all Lada’s idea,” an equally beat-red Kate was quick to clarify, even as she scrambled to put her clothes back on. “Basically, the only way she’d let me keep the pictures I took of her was to indulge her fetish for exhibitionism…”

The smile ran from Lada’s face. ”Okay, first of all, I said you could keep them well before we came here. Secondly, you were fine, enthusiastic even, with the idea of pulling my clothes off with a magnet. You’re only fussing because I wanted us both to do a picture where we were mutually exposed first. You know, as a trust building exercise. Thirdly, we both consented to the idea, even if you only did so begrudgingly. Fourthly, thank you Dana, I’m glad you think my workshop is super nova! And fifthly…” She pointed at Kate with her half eaten hotdog. ”I used body paint to cover up! You are the one who refused to wear any! You can’t call me an exhibitionist!” She ate the rest of her hotdog in a single bite. ”But who cares? Have none of you bathed in a hot spring before? Seeing someone with the same equipment as you isn’t that shocking, is it?” She turned to the Nova Lux students and started eating her apple. The smiley faces continued to look on with a judging stare.

”I haven’t been to a hot spring, actually… But it’s polite to not look when someone doesn’t want to be looked at. Since that’s more likely than the alternative, I’ll just wait until you two are clothed, if that’s okay.” She hadn’t been super bothered by the glimpse she had gotten, but what kind of person would she be if she didn’t respect others’ privacy?

“Uh, I haven’t been to a hot spring either,” Dana noted with an awkward frown. “And even if I had, there’s a big difference between seein’ someone naked in a place where ya expect that kinda thing, and what we just walked into, y’know?” she added, still doing her best to avoid looking at the unnerving smiley faces.

“Whatever,” Kate muttered in response to Lada’s annoyed comments, having by this point fully reclothed herself. “However ya wanna frame it, it’s finished. So, do ya wanna take some normal pictures now, or just call it quits?” she inquired.

Lada had just finished her apple. The entire thing. Even the core, even the stem ”I did say we could do whatever you wanted afterwards, and I always keep my word.” Lada’s clothes seemed to fly into her outstretched hands. It didn’t take her nearly as long to get dressed as Kate did, but that probably had more to do with how little Lada had been wearing. Once she was done, she turned to look at the two newly arrived and threw her hands into the air. ”We’re dressed! You can look now!” Lada grinned. ”Sorry about that everyone! I usually remember to lock the door, but I hope we’ll all be able to look back on this and laugh in time. Until then, would you like to be in a few pictures with me?”

Crystal slowly opened her eyes and turned to look at the two. ”If we can stay clothed, I don’t think I’d mind taking some pictures, or being in them.”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Dana added, clearly relieved that Lada finally had her clothes back on. “So, uh, what kinda pictures were ya thinkin’ of?”

”I’ll leave that up to the photographer. But why don’t we start with just a regular group photo first?” Lada reached out and pulled Crystal and Dana to her side. ”You might as well be in this one too, Kate!”

“Something normal sounds great to me,” Kate replied, placing herself in front of Lada and holding out her camera. “Everybody ready?”

*SNAP!*

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

It's Tempest Tuesday, Roche. Accept no substitutes.
-Nyxia Torrentia, Neon Tempest of the Ultraviolet Rainbow

Unsurprisingly, Suki didn’t even try to hide her disgusting depravity, causing Nyxia’s disdainful sneer to remain fixed upon her amethyst-tinged face. Tsubomi’s entrance was, as usual, the epitome of understated, and thus went without acknowledgment from the Neon Tempest. Instead, the teal-haired young woman focused her attention on the ‘artistic rendition’ of Hibusa Town’s newest Magical Girl that Suki proceeded to reveal to them. Despite her contempt for the blood witch, Nyxia had to concede that the image was surprisingly well-composed for a thrown-together collage. If the mystery Magical Girl in question was actually real (and at least vaguely resembled Suki’s recreation), then she certainly seemed like a force to be reckoned with. That said, Nyxia’s hunger for violence was primarily directed at the Miseria. She had no real interest in fighting another Magical Girl, regardless of if they were light or dark. Speaking of, there didn’t seem to be any indication of what side of the “spectrum” this dragon girl belonged to, although, if she was dark, it was a good bet that the ‘too cool for words’ Rei had already made contact with her. Then again, Rei had been even more enigmatic than usual of late, so maybe this new girl would be able to escape the Detention Club’s suffocating grasp? Though even if she did, she might not be so fortunate to escape Suki’s…

Yes, Nyxia reflected, the real reason behind the romance-obsessed Suki’s desire to find this girl was nothing more than a desperate attempt to acquire yet another romantic partner, ideally one who was depraved enough to tolerate being around her for an extended period of time. Still, the idea of seeing the mystery girl in action, especially if that action was beating the shit out of an overly-affectionate Suki, was reason enough for the Neon Tempest to tag along on this little expedition. Indeed, if this dragon girl was as fearsome a presence as she was claimed to be, then she’d no doubt draw no small number of Miseria to her (even if Suki hoped to meet her before the fall of night was complete), and Nyxia delighted in the thought of slaughtering them all before dragon girl could even get in a single strike…

“Why not?” Nyxia mused. “After all, seeing all your pitiful hopes get smashed to pieces never ceases to bring me joy.”

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

I'm back, bitches.
-Nyxia Torrentia, Neon Tempest of the Ultraviolet Rainbow

The months following her induction into Rei’s Detention Club had passed in a dizzying blur to the Neon Tempest, the depressing monotony of her horrid home life punctuated by equally depressing and monotonous club meetings, marked by tiresome attempts at socialization and team-building, along with the cherished moments of glorious exhilaration that came with slaying Miseria in their hundreds. One would think that, over such a considerable span of time, Nyxia might have made a deeper connection with at least one of her club mates, yet, aside from a general agreement to keep her caustic commentary on her fellow Dark Magical Girls to the level of “harmless” teasing, the Neon Tempest was still as anti-social as ever. Even her initial “bonding session” with her teammate Roche, aka Earthshaker, had resulted in little more than her displaying the most minor level of cordiality to the code keeper. However, while Nyxia might now treat the track star with more respect than the average club member, she was still merely a teammate, not a friend. Suki “Oros the Joyful” Oyama, on the other hand, wasn’t even that…

“Now why am I not surprised a pathetic worm like you is crawling around on the floor?” Nyxia quipped from where she was perched upon the club room’s open windowsill, her mouth curled into a mocking sneer as a light breeze played through her bright teal hair. As usual, she had arrived to the clubroom transformed. Since she was far too sickly to attend classes, running across the rooftops in her magical girl form was the easiest way to make it to club meetings from her family’s palatial estate, and since she would never willingly allow anyone to see her true self, she didn’t bother changing back once she’d arrived. Today, both Roche and Suki had arrived before her, although she ignored the former to focus her caustic attention solely on the latter. “Are you looking for ingredients to make more monsters for my precious baby to kill?” the Neon Tempest inquired as she lovingly caressed the enormous energy cannon propped up against the wall beside her. “Or are you just trying to find a snack for your disgusting self?”

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

Norika/Nyxia

• Appearance:

Norika

Nyxia

• Name: Norika Tsukishima

• Title: Nyxia Torrentia, Neon Tempest of the Ultraviolet Rainbow

• Age: 18

• Emblem: A pendant shaped like a small retro ray gun. It hangs from a necklace kept hidden under her clothes.

• Devil Arm: After transforming, Norika’s innocuous pendant becomes The Omega Obliterator, an enormous technomantic energy cannon.

• Magic: Death Rays! Not only is Nyxia’s weapon a death ray, but she can also shoot them from her hands, her eyes, and even her mouth. In addition, she can pump magic into The Omega Obliterator to supercharge it with extra power (causing it to grow larger and even sprout additional barrels), as well as conjure a pair of hovering, ray gun equipped drones to provide additional firepower or point defense as needed.

• Background: Born into the wealthy and prestigious Tsukishima family alongside her twin brother, Kaito, it soon became clear that Norika was his complete opposite in every respect. Where Kaito was brave and confident, Norika was timid, her self esteem virtually nonexistent. Where he was skilled, she seemed to fail at everything. And where he was healthy and strong, she was sickly and weak, to the point of being almost constantly bedridden for most of her young life. That said, she loved her brother dearly and never cursed his good fortune.

For his part, Kaito was equally caring towards Norika, showing her the affection their parents refused to give to such an “utter disgrace of a child”, and using the gifts they lavished upon him for her benefit, rather than his own. He would play video games with her, read her stories, and even gift her with a VR headset so that she could experience what it felt like to play outside under a sunny sky. Truly, he was the sole bright spot in Norika’s otherwise bleak and hopeless life.

Alas, even this fragile beacon would all-too-quickly be snuffed out…

On their eighteenth birthday, Kaito reluctantly informed Norika that their parents had decided that he would study abroad after graduation, at a prominent foreign university. He would only be able to see her a handful of times each year, but, even so, he promised that their bond would never falter. Even as he spoke these words, he presented his tearful sister with a small toy ray gun, explaining that it would grant her courage and strength, even if he couldn’t be present to provide those things for her himself. It was by far the most cherished gift he had ever given her, and it greatly helped to mend her breaking heart. However, nothing could withstand the soul-destroying horror that came only a week later, when she learned that Kaito had died in a car crash on the way to the airport.

Her grief was so strong, it felt as though she were being suffocated by it, as if it were a palpable force that was literally choking the life out of her. That night, while she was crying in bed, the nebulous force fully revealed itself. It was a nightmarish horror, which seemed to rise up from the floor, a writhing mass of slimy tendrils and segmented limbs with the head of a demonic mosquito. At first Norika was frozen in fear, but then she realized that the monster was frozen as well, and that a strange cat with a tv for a head was now sitting in front of her on the bed. It spoke not a word, but its flickering screen showed exactly what this monster had done the night before, exactly whose head had been impaled upon its spiked proboscis, and upon seeing this, Norika’s fear turned to blazing, glowing, incandescent rage…

In that, the darkest moment of her life, even darker power surged into her, remaking timid, weak Norika into someone altogether more terrifying. In a blast of dark radiance, Norika was reborn, her toy ray gun now a weapon of horrible potency, and she wasted no time in making use of it. Giving voice to a scream of anguished fury, the transformed Norika annihilated her monstrous visitor, the ruinous energies of her death ray violently rending the nightmarish creature asunder.

Although she passed out shortly afterwards, Norika knew that what had occurred the night before had been no mere dream. There may have been no trace of the tv-headed cat or the monster’s myriad goopy remains, but the fact that her toy ray gun had now become a small, slightly glowing pendant was all the proof she needed. She knew what had really happened to her brother, she knew what horrors haunted the night, but most importantly, she knew she now had the power to kill them. To kill ALL of them…

Each subsequent night, she would transform into her psychotic alter-ego and kill as many Miseria as she possibly could. Already enjoying a euphoric high from her nightly slaughters, she soon discovered that each Miseria killed also increased her own power, making her even better at cleansing the streets of them. And then she had a twisted epiphany. If she could become powerful enough, her death rays could do more than tear though Miseria and mundane objects. They could tear trough the very fabric of reality, letting her travel back in time to the night of her brother’s death. They could let her save him! With this deranged video game-inspired goal at the forefront of her mind, Norika, or rather, Nyxia, has made it a personal vow to kill as many Miseria as it takes to achieve it, and pity anyone who dares to stand in her way…

• Sample Post:

Sample Post

In the otherwise silent depths of the night, the sound of muffled sobs filled the opulent bedroom, their source barely visible as a small, shuddering lump underneath the covers, dimly illuminated by the star-shaped nightlight in the corner of the otherwise shadowy chamber. This had been by far the worst day of Norika’s life, and as the night’s darkness threatened to smother her frail body, so too did an even more profound darkness threaten to smother her heart. “K-Kaito… K-Kaito…” she whimpered as she clung to her ray gun with all her meager strength.

It was an incredibly juvenile thing for a young woman of eighteen years to be doing, objectively speaking, yet Norika had always been meek and childish, something not helped by the scrawny, almost emaciated appearance of her illness-ravaged body. Yet, Norika didn’t care. This “toy” was a precious gift from the one person to ever treat her with kindness, and now that he was gone, it was all she had left of him. He had said it would give her strength, and she desperately wanted to believe his words. How often had they practiced using the gun to banish fears and unhappy thoughts. “Pew pew!” she would voice as she pretended to shoot those phantasmal foes, taking courage from the “weapon” her brother had promised would protect her just as well as he had. She tried to do that now, but the words wouldn’t come. Only tears. In the depths of her broken heart, Norika knew the truth. She was utterly, completely powerless and utterly, completely alone.

Yet, as she would soon discover, neither of those things were true…

The sudden flickering of her nightlight was Norika’s first indication that something wasn’t quite right. Peeking out from under her covers, the timid girl gave voice to a frightened gasp as she watched the shadows swirl and coalesce into the menacing form of a nightmarish monstrosity, a chittering, writhing mass of viscus tendrils and segmented, insectoid limbs, all tipped by wickedly curving spines. Eyes wide as she shuddered with indescribable terror, Norika instinctively whipped out her ray gun and pointed it at the monstrous horror’s mosquito-like head. “P-P-Pew, p-p-pew…” she whimpered in a barely-audible voice as she ineffectually squeezed the trigger. Tears continued to stream down her cheeks and her weak heart pounded like a jackhammer, threatening to completely give out at any moment. Yet, even so, she noticed that while her “weapon” might not have managed to harm the monster, the creature had stopped moving forward. In fact, it had completely frozen in place.

A moment later, the terrified girl realized that a cat had sat itself down on her bed. A cat with a static-filled tv screen for a head. Even as Norika’s eyes were drawn to that flickering screen, the static faded, only to be replaced by a scene even more nightmarish than the one she currently found herself in. It showed her brother’s limousine being attacked by the very creature now frozen before her bed. It showed her brother being violently pulled out of the mangled wreckage. It showed the creature’s spiked proboscis extending. It showed…

Norika screamed. It was a scream of anguish, a scream of horror, but also, far more than anything else, it was a scream of rage. In that instant, Norika’s heart shattered completely, only to be reforged an instant later by a dark power of unimaginable potency. Glowing, sickly energy surged from deep within her, remaking the fearful and fragile girl into something, into someone, far stronger and far more terrifying… Like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, Nyxia Torrentia, Neon Tempest of the Ultraviolet Rainbow emerged from the pitiful remains of Norika Tsukishima to utterly annihilate the wretched thing that had dared to kill her beloved brother. The ruinous beam disgorged by her massively enlarged ray gun utterly rent the hapless monster asunder, splattering its smoldering remains all across the once-immaculate chamber.

Her mouth spread wide in a sadistic grin as she gleefully took note of her accomplishment and reveled in the gleeful euphoria it filled her with, Nyxia tossed her head back and unleashed a deafening peal of psychotic laughter.

“YES!!!” she cried in deranged delight. “DIE YOU MOTHER FUCKING SHIT STAIN!!!” she screamed as she fired at the creature’s remains again and again. “DIE, DIE, DIE!!! HAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!”

Collapsing back onto her bed in utter exhaustion, Nyxia hugged her enormous energy cannon tight to her heaving chest.

“T-Thank you, baby,” she whispered, before giving the weapon an affectionate kiss. “Y-you really did protect mommy, didn’t you…” she murmured, before slipping off into a deep and contented slumber.

It might have been the worst day of her young life, but it was also unquestionably the best night.

• Other: Due to a combination of her poor health and her family’s vast wealth, Norika was home schooled (when she was even healthy enough to attend lessons), and so is not currently a member of Hibusa High’s Detention Club.

Very Good and Original 1x1 RP ideas (No Stealing)

I suppose...

Very Good and Original 1x1 RP ideas (No Stealing)

Just thought you'd like to know, your image links are all busted.

And you call yourself a giggachad...

How pathetic.

Symphony on High

Cool character!

Two small problems, though. One, none of his Glamours have grades, and two, Long Guns are limited to doing Physical damage, unless modified by their Special to allow for a different damage type.

Symphony on High

By the time Ashley returned to the briefing room, she had shifted back to her mundane appearance, but although she had composed herself following her minor altercation with Mika, it was clear to see that her demeanor was considerably more somber than it had been when she’d departed for the interrogation room. Sitting down in a chair near the back of the room, the bespectacled young woman focused her gaze upon the floor, her bowed head displaying a visage of mournful contemplation.

Could we have done more to save her? she wondered. Could I have done more…?

Over and over, she forced herself to replay the horrific scene in her mind, the desperate battle on the rooftop amidst a torrent of hail, frogs, insects, and blood. The last moments of Agent Breacher’s, of Su Fang’s life. Yet despite all her efforts, she couldn’t find a course of action that would have prevented her comrade’s brutal fate. Things had just happened so fast, their foes had been several orders of magnitude above them in power. Indeed, it had been a minor miracle that no one else had perished, that they had ultimately won…

This isn’t like a cartoon show… she reflected bitterly. Sometimes you can’t save everyone… Taking a deep breath, she refocused her gaze on the brooding Mika, the sight of the girl’s own anger filling the Knight of Tomorrow with renewed resolve. But I can sure as hell try…

---

?

I SURE AM glad @Izurich isn't around to possibly click on this hider, since it's my professional opinion that if he read what follows, it'd have a SIGNIFICANT chance of causing his brain to literally explode. So, yeah, he totally dodged a bullet.
-???

If we were to peer into a secluded corner of a certain reality plenum, if we were to look deep within the hidden depths of a fold in the dimensional fabric, we would find a particularly intriguing pocket universe. Although its creator simply calls it The Lab, it is much more than that. Much, much more… There is the expected profusion of super-scientific paraphernalia, of course, but instead of occupying a small room, or even a vast chamber, it sprawls across an entire continent, a vast, mind-boggling landscape of technorganic apparatuses, a bizarre fusion of mega city and gargantuan living organism. If we were to examine its technomantic, technorganic topography in even greater detail, we might find towering techno spires reaching to the very heavens, their ever-watchful oracular nodes crowned with menacing quantum quills, from which spew forth crackling arcs of actinic lightning. Perhaps we would observe a plethora of power accumulators of the most esoteric types as they whirred and spun, glowed, gurgled, and hummed, their multicolored rhylythian reactor spheres, poly-phasic power cores, and cross-continuua containment pods drawing forth the starkly inconceivable energies of hypercane swarms, quantum singularities, and the birth pangs of several newborn universes, all in the effort to fuel the creation of inventions too impossible to describe.

Yet, if we wished to make an admittedly feeble attempt, we might perhaps mention the rank upon rank of pulsating cybermantic techno wombs, an artificial mountain range rivaling the Himalayas in size, and within, a legion of biomechanical titans waiting to be unleashed on an unsuspecting multiverse as they gestate in bubbling amniotic fluid. Or perhaps we might direct our gaze even higher, and consider the tens of thousands of transdimensional warships, the myriad hypernoughts, meganoughts, gigganoughts and omninoughts that rest in a labyrinthian latticework of repair cradles set against a yellowy-green nebulosity, even as a swarm of moon-sized, arachnoidal caretaker drones weave technorunic defensive matrices of cosmic string, and ensure that each vessel’s infinite polycyclic neutrino particle cannons and hyper aetheric transposition fields are fully charged, in anticipation of the grand day upon which their creator will make her triumphant return to the omniversal stage.

Perhaps we could ruminate upon the monolithic mobile fortresses guided by soultech AIs, and capable of unleashing multiple megatons of destructive power every second, or the tri-plenumic perpetual motion machines, polyphasic transdimensional techno-wraiths, technomystic teleporters, tetra-tachyonic time machines, hyper-quantum infinity colliders, vita-voltaic resurrection wells, poly-harmonic trans-planar psionic pulse conductor choirs, technorganic mezomorphazoids, technomantic cybermagimechanical dragon-chimera bioweapon beasts, and the staggering variety of death rays too numerous to count. And of course, we could always consider the obligatory galaxy-shattering doomsday devices and seemingly endless vat clusters, within which Apex Pageless, S-Class Voids, Mega Miseria, and genetically enhanced cyborg dinosaurs hang suspended in glowing ectoenchantech fluid.

However, since knowledge of all the aforementioned wonders and horrors of super-scientific supremacy would utterly and irreparably shatter a certain individual’s oh-so-fragile sense of calm, we shall refrain from doing so. Instead, we shall focus our attention upon the Wise Scientist, the creator and master of this stupendous realm, as she and a very lucky guest observe the recent happenings in Pax Septimus and provide their most insightful and enlightening thoughts on said matters…

“Nyahahahaha! What a fucking dumbass!” the Wise Scientist cackled as she watched the results of Kira’s diplomacy attempt play out in gruesome detail upon a panoramic holodisplay. “I mean, trying to parlay over common experiences is one thing,” she conceded. “But leaving yourself completely open to attack in the admittedly likely event things don’t work out? That’s right up there with what’s-her-tits trying to use logic and common sense on someone as inherently irrational as MDP! Seriously, did you see that turning out any different?” she asked her guest.

"Hmm..." Jennifer focused her attention on the holodisplay, furrowing her brows in thought. The whole operation was a right mess itself with none of the players having proper coordination, and even when he hurried over to help. That being said: "Nah, she's a lost cause no matter what. Soon as they secure the truck she's gonna delete Shimr and skip town as quick as possible." Jen explained. "First job in Pax and she runs with her tail between her legs ‘cause her Esper form lost her arm? Compared to the shit the other all-stars endure? Girl's performative, and I don't mean it as wordplay."

“Yeah, she definitely seems like a drama queen,” the Wise Scientist agreed. “But then, what other kinda of person would voluntarily choose to become a street performer? Anyways, I can’t really fault someone for noping out of a total shithole like Pax Septimus,” she continued. “It shows they’ve still got a least some braincells left. Your pet masochist on the other hand…”

By this point, Oros had revealed herself and begun charging towards Finn, while ranting about how this time, she’d kill him for real.

“Oh wow, the Aigorost-worshiping cultist who looked vaguely like Oros actually was Oros,” the Wise Scientist deadpanned. “What an unexpected plot twist. Though she’s really starting to sound like a broken record with all this ‘I’ll kill you for hurting Betty!’ crap,” she noted. “Pretty ironic, too, all things considered.”

"At least he knows he can't beat her. Buuuut...." The Exodus trailed off.

“That knowledge ain’t gonna help him if he keeps putting himself in these kinda situations,” the Wise Scientist finished, even as she watched a feeble attempt to save the boy fail miserably. “And now he’s missing more body parts,” she noted dispassionately as Finn’s legs were unceremoniously sliced off.

"He'll be fine." Barring the extra trauma he'd gain from THAT. "His luck is another story. He has well intentions, but the way things go isn't exactly in his favor, is it?" Jen explained. It never was. The kid had the worst luck... "But he still keeps goin'."

“Which is a significant improvement over the OTHER one,” the Wise Scientist observed. “And speaking of others, I gotta say, Miss ‘I’m So Obsessed With Money I’d Eat My Own Shit For A Shiny Object’ was probably the last person I expected to have knowledge of the multiverse,” she added, pointing to Himiko as the gold-clad esper boldly approached and began chatting with Oros. “It doesn’t really change anything, of course,” she clarified. “‘Oros the Greedy’s’ still nothing more than a cheap knock-off at best, and I won’t be legitimizing that title by adding her to my little collection, either.”

Jen shrugged. "Perhaps Aigorost has a fan."

“Speaking of insane fans, what the hell was up with that palemancer nutjob? I mean, how desperate and/or delusional do you have to be to pin all your feeble hopes on the most cowardly and pathetic dragon in the multiversal cluster?”

"Something something golden dragons representing fortune and power in culture? I dunno, I think it was just a fake out. Or people are just weird." She shook her head. "Soooo, how's the other shithole goin'? Still going at a snail's pace?"

“How’d you guess?” the Wise Scientist replied with a wry smirk. “They’re preparing to launch a preemptive strike on storybook land, but you know how indecisive they all are when it comes to committing to a major course of action. I mean, just look at everyone’s favorite failure. Even after setting everything up for him, even after all the gifts I bestowed upon his unworthy, angsty ass, he still ultimately runs away like a pathetic little pussy! With your help, I might add,” she clarified, while casting an annoyed glare at her guest. “I just hope you’ll be a bit less of an enabler to this one when his pitiful little mind inevitably snaps like a fucking twig,” she added, gesturing to where Finn was looking about a gothic-themed room like the confused child he was.

"Still hung up on that, huh...?" Jen slowly looked back at her host as she ranted on. "If it helps, I still have his data set aside so you can just, like, refund everything for the next one or yourself. But you know, things change, stuff comes up, and suddenly you're disposing a few corpses under the pretense of mercy cause they've been rendered defectives." She lightly tapped a familiar scythe she had been holding against her shoulder. "Sucks I had to take that Oliver down with, but what can ya' do? There's more than plenty of the two of them you can torment to your heart's content."

After a moment, Jen added: "Well except for one branch." Her brows rose.

“Oh, I don’t care about tormenting them,” the Wise Scientist corrected with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I’m completely done with them. I hate wasting time on ultimately pointless endeavors,” she went on. “Thankfully, my little Ashley has yet to disappoint me,” she added with a pleased grin.

_{All things being considered, that's probably a good thing.} Jennifer mentally sighed in relief. _{Don't wanna draw anyone's ire to this side of the multiverse, the people behind Project Bronze OR otherwise. Especially not that one.} Even if the result would be entertaining to watch, that side quickly turned wary of her soon as they noticed something amiss about her presence. If they knew the full extent of it all?

It wouldn't end well.

"What's your end goal with her, anyways? Forgot whether or not you've elaborated on it."

“Well, I was initially going to use her to exact my revenge on a certain butterfly-loving smug bitch, but now I just want to see how strong she can get,” the Wise Scientist replied. “The Vessel’s very existence is so insanely improbable that it pretty much begs to be studied in the greatest possible detail, and out of all the potential bearers I could have gifted it to, she was the best candidate by far,” she explained. “If anyone’s going to make the most out of its staggeringly vast potential, it’s her. In fact, she’s been doing so well recently, I think it might be time to unlock another facet of The Vessel’s abilities for her…”

”Cool, cool.” Jen nodded along. Ashley and Esper Finn were due to get their gold upgrades soon, finally. Hopefully a new weapon will help the latter fight better than he did with a fencing rapier. ”You sure we won’t cause a paradox by watching these guys? I mean it’d probably be worse if we were there in person, but still, the boss might notice us prying.” She asked, pointing up when she mentioned the Grand Magistrate of Pax Septimus.

“Y’know, that’s a very good point,” the Wise Scientist conceded. “This particular reality plenum has all sorts of markers that all seem to indicate its relationship to the wider multiverse isn’t nearly as cut and dried as it might initially appear.” An instant later, a tray piled high with food materialized atop the Wise Scientist’s hovering command throne, while a glass filled to the brim with a glowing, yellowy green beverage appeared in a cup holder on one of the armrests. “Want something to eat?” she asked her guest, before digging into her meal. “I conducted a little field test just before you arrived, and that always works up quite the appetite. Plus, this stuff’ll serve as a nice visual aid.”

The Exodus shrugged. ”Hadn’t had lunch yet, what’cha got?”

“Anything and everything,” the Wise Scientist replied. “Just say what you want, and it’ll be created for you, utensils and all.”

”Theeeeeeeeen… Fuck it, ya’ got any Chinese food? Takeout? This one place I used to go to had some good chicken.”

No sooner had Jen finished speaking, then a large tray, full of Chinese takeout packs materialized in front of her.

“Now, back to what I was saying,” the Wise Scientist continued as she grabbed a rectangular slice of something that might have been a Sicilian pizza (if Sicilian pizza was covered in french fries, macaroni noodles, and strips of bacon), dipped it into a large bowl of gravy, and took a massive bite. “The first major problem is all the temporal issues. I mean, take Mika.” At this, she used her free hand to retrieve a small piece of cheesy bread from a tray piled high with them, and placed it in front of her. “At first, I thought she was the same iteration as the one from the reality plenum this one ‘spun off’ from, since she said as much when she went through that portal at the beach,” at this, she moved the cheesy bread to a plate full of massive baked potatoes with copious amounts of butter, gravy, sour cream, cheese, noodles, and bacon bits piled atop them, tapping its short end on the tray to simulate it “walking” over to the new “universe”, before swiftly bringing it back to the original cheesy bread plate. “But then she shows up again in fucking Ethiopia, of all places. Is that one an alternate? A copy? A future version of this Mika who went back for whatever fucking reason? Something even more convoluted?! Then there’s the edgier iteration of our favorite failure,” she continued, taking hold of another piece of cheesy bread with considerably more force. “Y’know, the one who does nothing but brood, whine, and stare moodily into the middle distance with his one good eye, because the other one is all bandaged up like some total fucking chuuni?” she asked, the nail of one finger elongating into a fiendishly sharp talon, which she promptly plunged into the unfortunate visual aid, gouging out a hole near the top of the cheesy bread’s “head”. Then, a set of five injectors materialized next to “The Failure”, filled with cheese, gravy, sour cream, butter, and chocolate, respectively. One by one, the Wise Scientist took each injector and stabbed it into her helpless victim, filling it to bursting with their contents. “The one I gave SO. MANY. FUCKING. UPGRADES. TO. Only for him to nope out of all our grand plans like a TOTAL FUCKING PUSSY!!!”

By this point, the previously scrawny piece of cheesy bread had nearly quadrupled in size, its horrifically bloated form barely holding together, even as cheese, sour cream, chocolate, butter, and gravy had begun leaking out of its nearly ruptured sides. Thus it almost seemed like an act of cruel mercy when, at the height of her enraged rant, the Wise Scientist flung the hapless visual aid to the far side of the chamber, where it smashed against a glowing power tube with a wet splat, its engorged form detonating like an overinflated balloon.

For several seconds, the Wise Scientist glared at the cheesy bread’s messy remains, before returning her attention to her guest. “Where was I? Ah, yes, the two failures (I know there are more, but for now only these two matter).” With the snap of her finger, a localized chronological reversal took place, rewinding the unfortunate piece of cheesy bread’s personal timeline to the point just before it was “injected”. Then, placing it between her spread thumb and forefinger, she pulled away a perfect duplicate to rest beside it, although it wouldn’t remain perfect for long. Compressing her fingers, she shrank the copy until it was about half the size of the original, before hovering her thumb over its gouged out “eye” and restoring it to its former state. “Anyway, the simple explanation is that this substantially less annoying version is just a separate iteration, but there’s still the possibility that some insanely powerful being, or beings, managed to snatch the other one away, right before you could mercy kill his worthless ass, and turned him into this one.” As she spoke, the Wise Scientist applied the same procedure to the first piece of cheesy bread, until it appeared identical to the copy. “Or maybe they just made a perfect copy of him and used that instead. Regardless, I’m sure you’ve discovered that there’s more than the standard metaphysical link between the two of them, right?”

It took a bit for Jennifer to follow the…colorful explanation, up to where the host brought up the implications from her recent findings. She perked up in response. ”There is more. A lot more. Even I lost count of how many branches there are, and that includes dead plenums and ones yet to form. The kid’s an anomaly in himself!” She explained. ”Still don’t know exactly why though! There are theories, including yours about them all being the same one in different points in time via reincarnation or whatever, maybe that whoever or whatever’s behind the puppet’s strings so to speak was personally close to him in the past, maybe he’s some sort of horrorspawn or something or-” Jen cut herself off with a shake of her head. ”Basically what I’m saying is, there’s a lot.”

“You can say that again,” the Wise Scientist agreed, finishing the remainder of her pizza slice, before taking a few gulps of her glowing drink, which instantly refilled itself. “But even he’s got nothing on Oros,” she added, grabbing a “normal” slice of pizza topped with Oreos and chocolate icing. “There's obviously a multitude of variants, but this one’s ostensibly the same iteration as the one that appeared in the other universe and then left because she’s a fucking coward who can’t handle a little adversity. To her credit, though, she did come back a few times, culminating in the one-eyed reject ‘killing her’ in a fucking grocery store,” she continued, an extra set of limbs forming to provide air quotes, while her original pair began twisting the Oreo pizza as if she were wringing a wet towel, before ultimately tearing it apart, the Oreos having long-since crumbled into grainy bits. “Now, the simple explanation here is that she just faked her death, or instantly resurrected herself, but there’s also another possibility,” she noted, swarms of shimmering nanites cleaning her hands even as the damage inflicted on the Oreo pizza completely reversed itself. “The Oros that died could have been a future version of the one that’s currently making the population of Pax Septimus hate their lives, or maybe this Oros is a future version of that one,” she went on, before shoving the Oreo pizza into the mouth of a small tentacled creature that emerged from a just-opened portal on the far side of her food tray. “Regardless, any Oros is guaranteed to be an S-rank shit magnet, so the fact that this one has made Pax Septimus her own personal playground means all the idiots living there are in for some very interesting times.” As she spoke, several additional portals opened, disgorging several more bizarre creatures, which all began tearing the first apart in an effort to get at the Oreo pizza.

Jen hummed in agreement. ”That or, if Kate’s recent adventure is anything to go off of, Oros of Pax Septimus and Oros of Penrose are separate entities, albeit related in name only.” The case of Luana Roycroft was something to note. ”So while one let herself die, another can easily take her place so to speak.”

“That’s certainly a possibility,” the Wise Scientist agreed, even as a portal opened beneath the newly-arrived creatures to facilitate their equally swift departure. “Although both seem to have the same metaphysical trans-plenumic signature, so if they are alternates, they’re virtually identical ones. As for the ‘others’, I’m glad you’ve been enjoying following along with Kate’s little quest as much as I have. The place I’m thinking of sending her next is particularly interesting. It’s a universe in constant flux, completely bereft of a stable rules framework, making it pretty much the utter antithesis of Esper World. Needless to say, such a place is literally overflowing with possibility particles, so naturally I’ve set up a series of techno-arcane quantum syphons and poly-phasic power accumulators to harness them for my own purposes,” she added with a maniacal grin.

”Oh really? What’s it called?”

“The World With No Name,” The Wise Scientist deadpanned. “And no, I’m not making that up. But on the subject of universal peculiarities, the last point of note regarding the oddness of Esper World is the very makeup of the reality plenum itself. On a trans-plenumic level, it’s uniquely detached from the surrounding multiversal cluster.” In an effort to illustrate this, she took a slice of the overloaded Sicilian pizza and placed it in the space between three of the piled-up food plates. “That said, it still has a rather strong link to our favorite magical girl-centric shithole. Obviously, there are a lot of possible reasons for this, but I think the most interesting possibility is that Esper World IS that universe (or a copy/alternate that’s such a perfect replica as to be utterly indistinguishable), only an indeterminate time in its future and altered to a state that’s almost beyond recognition.” As she spoke, a spray can of cheese whiz materialized in her hand amidst a swirling of yellowy-green techno-mystic energy, which was promptly employed to inundate the pizza slice in multiple layers of thick, goopy cheese. “Y’know, someone’s idea of an ‘upgrade’ to improve all the myriad fucked up bits, just like how I improved this slice of pizza here with all this extra cheesy goodness,” she explained, before taking a large bite out of her bizarre culinary creation. “It has a completely different facade,” she went on after gulping down her first mouthful. “But there are still some vaguely familiar landmarks, like the contours of these noodles and bacon strips,” she noted, pointing to the cheese-coated items in question. “Of course, it could also be someone’s dream (or nightmare), and if that does turn out to be the case, I can think of two very likely candidates. Speaking of,” she added, pointing to the scene playing out on the panoramic holodisplay. “I gotta say, I was almost certain Esper Amanda was The Pounder, but instead, she’s some slutty vampire goth chick.”

The Exodus turned her focus back on the scene. ”Makes sense she’d appear in a dream. But I get why you’d think it’d be Pounder. Parallels and all that, connection to MDP being carried on to other iterations. Not always guaranteed.” Jen furrowed her brows. ”That’d have to be a pretty strong dream if your theory’s right. Like, cosmic horrors level of dreams. Who would ever have that kind of power…?”

“Uh, cosmic horrors? Things beyond even them? There’s really no upper limit when it comes to power levels,” the Wise Scientist replied as she took another bite of her meal. “But since we’re on the subject, mine’s certainly high enough to break through pretty much any barrier that might feebly attempt to inhibit my passage. You of all people should be familiar enough with chronological manipulation and paradox circumvention,” she continued after taking a few sips of her drink. “In this case, just a simple Contrivance Engine was all I really needed to break through Esper World’s plenumic barrier and do some sight seeing, although that’s about all I plan on doing, as I’d like to take a hands-off approach when it comes to this particular experiment I’ve got going on here.” At this point, the image on the screen shifted to Ashley overseeing the conclusion of the casino operation. “She’s certainly progressing rather nicely, wouldn’t you say? Aside from that minor breakdown she had a while back, I think she’s shown some excellent improvement. Yes, I think she really was the perfect choice to serve as The Vessel’s bearer, as well as the instrument via which I can explore this universe’s myriad intriguing peculiarities in greater detail,” the Wise Scientist observed with a satisfied nod, as she grabbed the two cheesy bread Finns and chomped both of their “heads” off.

Ooookay, don’t elaborate then.
Jen silently furrowed her brows at the execution of the faux Finnegans. Then went back to eating her own less heart attack inducing food. ”So what are you gonna do until then? Keep trying to salvage Penrose?” She asked.

“Why would I give a fuck about what happens to that shithole?” the Wise Scientist asked, her voice filled with incredulity as she grabbed another massive pizza slice. “Aside from preparing some entertaining surprises for the big ‘final battle’, I’m basically done with those idiots, although it looks like the same can’t be said for a certain smug bitch,” she added as the scene on the holodisplay shifted to Finn conversing with Dr. Webber. “Talk about stubbornly clinging to an idea… And people call you pathetic,” she noted, glancing over to her guest.

Jen narrowed her eyes at Sharr. ”Thank fuck I got a copy of that little creation of her’s before this. And hopefully if he’s lucky enough, he’ll never need to resort to that.” She frowned at the thought. ”Ifrit was one thing, but Fable’s still just a kid.”

“Yeah, and far less taxing to observe,” the Wise Scientist agreed. “Hopefully he won’t snap like a twig before he can achieve his full potential. Honestly, though, I’m surprised Parr’s little visit had such a big impact on him. Needless to say, I’m VERY interested in following his journey to full mastery of interdimensional travel.”

”He will. Even if they don’t think his ideas have any weight, he’ll find a way soon enough.”

If the others are anything to go by.

”You got any drinks? Need to wash this down somehow.”

“Of course,” the Wise Scientist replied, taking a swig of her own instantly-refilling beverage. “Just think of something and the nanoscopic energy to matter replicators’ll make it for ya. But back to Time Boy, you’re not thinking of lending a helping hand are you?” she inquired with a knowing smirk.

At her instructions, the Exodus formed a bottle of cola in her hand. ”Nah.” She cracked open the cap and took a swing as if it was whiskey. ”Oros and Aria are enough for that place, I think it’d explode if I stepped in. Barring that, I fear my interventions will have to be a bit more limited. Timekeeper’s off limits.”

“Good choice,” the Wise Scientist commended with a nod. “Why do you think I just stick to passive observations and the rare pep talk? Hmm… Let’s fast forward a bit,” she suggested, even as the display sped past Finn’s bookshop meeting with a certain bespectacled bookworm, Ashley and Not Vampire Justin’s admittedly anticlimactic goblin cleanup, and Mika’s encounter with Himiko, before stopping at Ashley’s hallway conversation with Olivia. “Now here’s someone who never ceases to be entertaining to watch,” the Wise Scientist noted, pointing at the shorter and considerably more verbose of the two bespectacled girls. “I can’t say for sure exactly why Wisdom decided to send her to Pax, but if she’s hoping to break her innocent little mind with all of this plenum’s assorted fuckery, then she’s in for some major disappointment. Olivia might seem like nothing more than a harmless moe blob at first glance, but she’s a LOT stronger than she looks, and that’s before even getting into the fact that she’s completely batshit…”

”She still has that horror with her, yeah? That’s gonna be hard to explain without her looking like another cog in the current cult craze.” Jennifer looked back at the host, her brows raised.

“Only if he actually makes an appearance in the Grand Magistrate’s Incident Chronicle,” the Wise Scientist clarified, holding up a cheese-covered finger for emphasis. “And he’s also officially classified as a behemoth, so it’s not quite as OP as you might think.”

”Aren’t behemoths named after music?”

“Only ones G.E.M.I.N.I. learns of and assigns codenames to,” the Wise Scientist replied. “And I think it’d be more accurate to say he’s only equivalent to a behemoth, as opposed to an actual behemoth as this universe defines them.”

”Oh. Fair enough.”

“Back to Olivia, though, I guess it shouldn’t be all that surprising she somehow got Finn of all people to be her tour guide,” The Wise Scientist quipped.

”Eh, not really. Besides his interest in the multiverse, he’s still personally researching everything esper-related, and that still includes the monsters they face. So he gets an excuse for further research and she gets to see supernatural phenomena up close.” The Exodus surmised with a shrug.

“I suppose when you put it that way it makes sense,” the Wise Scientist conceded. “But what’s this?” she inquired as Finn was shown tentatively interacting with the now-cured Betty. “Are the two of them actually becoming an item?!”

Jen grinned once the scientist pointed out Betty asking Finn out, even if it was just to see if they were compatible, it was nice to see the two finally making proper amends. ”Awww, he’s red in the face! Hopefully they’ll hit it off when they’re free for their date. …Or that the demon won’t make him accidentally fuck it up somehow.” Another swig of her drink.

“Yeah, his little ‘demon problem’ is quite the intriguing turn of events, to be sure,” the Wise Scientist agreed. “But then, so is Rule 63 Rachel’s recent interest in ‘Totally Not Crystal, Honest!’,” she added with a wry smirk. “Yes, things are really starting to heat up in Esper World, and I can’t wait to see what happens next…”

Symphony on High

The days following Binky’s recovery had been a whirlwind of activity. In addition to the expected debriefings, training sessions, and patrols, a second abducted G.E.M.I.N.I. researcher, one Doctor Webber, had also returned to the fold, a development which had captured Dr. Moller’s near constant attention. Indeed, it had nearly prevented Ashley from speaking to the director about potentially initiating a Freelancer outreach program as a way of possibly aiding in recruitment, an urgent necessity in Ashley’s eyes, especially in light of how woefully understaffed the Pax Septimus branch currently was. Thankfully, she had managed to secure just enough of Dr. Moller’s precious time to receive approval for the project, and the subsequent trial run had been rather promising, as had her efforts to unlock more of her Grimoire’s power. In particular, she had discovered its ability to tap into a hitherto unknown energy source, enabling her to use less mana when employing melodies. Thus, when Dr. Moller announced that she would be holding an important briefing for all active agents, Ashely couldn’t help but feel a sense of optimism at what would be discussed. Yes, she reflected as she stepped out of her apartment, things were really starting to improve in a meaningful way.

“Hi, Ashley!” a chipper, if rather nasally voice called as soon as she had closed her door.

“Oh, hello, Olivia,” Ashley replied with a smile at the sight of her scrawny, bespectacled neighbor. “How has your, um, field trip been going?”

“It’s been going great so far!” Olivia revealed, her azure eyes seeming to sparkle with excitement. “I’ve been seeing so much of the city, and learning a lot about its history, too!” she explained. “There’s this really beautiful library in the historic district that didn’t really suffer too much damage during the hurricane, and they had so many fascinating books on the city! Oh! And then there was this really cool bookshop run by this funny old man in a wizard’s outfit! Or maybe he was a magus? Or perhaps a sorcerer…? Anyways, he was super helpful! He told me all about a bunch of local myths and monsters! I was really hoping to see one, but the only exciting thing that happened was when these two guys in robes tried to get me to be a sacrifice in this ritual they were planning. It’s okay, though!” she hastened to add upon seeing the horrified look on Ashley’s face. “I told them that they could see an eldritch creature without having to sacrifice anyone, and then I showed them Xolys! And then they both ran away screaming... I really don’t know why so many people have that reaction…” she added with a puzzled frown.

“U-Um, that’s… Q-Quite the story…” Ashley mumbled, still in a bit of a daze after listening to Olivia’s bizarre ramblings.

Who even is this girl… she wondered. And who or what is Xolys? At first I thought he was just an imaginary friend, but now…

“U-Um, Olivia?” Ashley asked tentatively, her voice lowered to little more than a whisper. “Are you an esper?”

“No, I’m not,” Olivia replied with a shake of her head. “I’ve heard that term a few times since coming here, but I don’t really know what it means. Why do you ask?”

“W-Well, because espers are people with extraordinary powers,” Ashley explained. “And I was wondering if you, or perhaps your friend Xolys, might possibly be one.”

“Oh, I see!” Olivia said with an excited nod. “That sounds extremely fascinating! I guess they’re like this place’s version of Magical Girls, then, huh?!”

“U-Um, yes, I-I suppose you could say that…” Ashley replied cautiously.

Magical Girls…? I can’t tell if this girl just has an overactive imagination, or if she’s actually being serious…

“Oh wow!” Olivia gushed. “In that case, I really hope I can meet one!”

“I-I wouldn’t be too eager for that, Olivia,” Ashley cautioned. “Espers can be very dangerous, and usually only appear in response to equally dangerous situations, so I wouldn’t advise seeking them out, even with your friend Xolys to protect you.”

“Oh, don’t worry!” Olivia reassured her with an amused giggle/snort. “Darling Xolys always keeps me safe!”

“Okay, well, in that case, good luck, I guess,” Ashley bid her exceedingly odd neighbor with a departing wave as she headed for the stairs.

“Thanks, Ashley!” Olivia called. “See you later!”

What a strange girl…

---

Upon arriving at GEMINI HQ, Ashley found only two of her fellow agents waiting for her in the break room. Even as she greeted Finn and Estelle with a polite and gentle smile, she couldn’t help but notice how the virtually empty room threw their distressing personnel shortage into sharp relief. Mika was probably around somewhere, but the girl’s pronounced anti-social tendencies were beginning to worry Ashley. Binky and the other researchers were busy working away as usual, but Ellie was suspiciously MIA, a fact that didn’t exactly bode well for an organization tasked with protecting a city as large as Pax Septimus.

“How have things been going, Finn?” she asked the branch’s youngest agent in an amiable voice, before switching to a more subdued tone. “Have you made any progress on your… investigation?”