"To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well." - Ursula K. Le Guin
Marie rubbed her eyes. How long had she been sitting here? A few trains had come and gone in the time she'd been sitting here, but time and time again, Phoebe gestured for her to stay seated.
How much more of this? The metal bench was starting to get more than a little bit uncomfortable.
"Where are we going, anyway? I can't even remember what you said."
"Did I say?"
"Did you?"
"Did I?"
"I don't know."
"Try to remember, Marie. Try to remember."
It had been a slow afternoon on the run-up to the middle of January. Marie sat on her bed, directly under her fan, alternating between reading a page of Oryx and Crake and basking in the sultry miasma of the midsummer swelter, before realising she hadn't at all processed what she'd just read and going back again. She had been at this for a little over twenty minutes, and had managed to get through three pages in that time.
She'd practically been invited into an underground society of magical girls. One that, until about a week and a half ago, she had no idea even existed. How was she supposed to focus on anything else in that situation?
She set the book aside and slumped onto her back for a moment to groan the Incubator's name in a syllabic couplet supersaturated with every drop of passive-aggression her body could process. Before the "-beyyyyyyy" had even finished trailing off, he was already leaning over her forehead to look her in the eyes.
"How can I help you today, Marie? You know as well as I do that there is ultimately only one service I can - and will - provide."
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever, man. I just wanna figure out what I'm supposed to do with my life now that I've met all these weird and wonderful people living in a side of the city nobody can see..." She sighed. "How am I supposed to go on jumping in and out of their world for the thrill of it when I know people like Dani and Hope and countless others are parts of an entire people doomed to live that nightmare?"
Kyubey smiled. "Funny you should ask! I have a great suggestion, as it happens."
"That's not what I meant. That's the opposite of what I meant, in fact. This whole revelation has been so immensely disenchanting, dude. The overtly saccharine, happy-go-lucky kind of crap you see in magical girl anime just doesn't exist."
"My suggestion involves literally enchanting you, if that helps."
Marie frowned a cartoonishly wide frown, just to be sure he got her point. "If you don't offer a solution to my plight which does not in any way pertain to handing my soul over to you, I won't scratch you behind the ear for the rest of the week."
"Do you understand how many times we've already done this? For one thing, the corporeal satisfaction I derive from you reducing the tension in my muscles is both negligible when compared to anything of actual significance, and nothing I or forces otherwise in my control can't already achieve. For another, the sole purpose of you treating me like a cat is for your own therapeutic relief, not mine. And lastly-"
"I know, I know. Lastly, I just can't stay mad at you. You're too cute." She grabbed him and yanked him into an unyielding embrace tucked into her chest.
"Thank you," he thought from somewhere buried into her collar.
"You don't care, do you?"
"Not at all."
Marie sat like that for a while before posing a question she hadn't asked for a long time.
"Kyub?"
"Yes, Marie?"
"How much longer do I have to make a contract?"
"Until the last Tanner stage."
"I know, but how long is that?"
"A couple of months. Coincidentally, around your eighteenth. Why, were you planning on making one sometime soon?"
"No... I'll just miss you, dude."
"If it makes you feel any better, I won't miss you."
Silence.
"If it makes you feel any worse, I still won't miss you."
"I'm still not signing up for anything, to be clear."
"It could be an eighteenth birthday present for you. Wouldn't that be great?"
Marie let him go and sat up again. "Geez, man. You don't get it. If you had emotions, you wouldn't be so gung ho about throwing your life away like that."
"You're not the first human to say that to me."
"That's hardly surprising."
"There's a lot I could say about how it wouldn't be throwing your life away, or how if you had to burn up an emotion-based life, this would be the best thing to spend it on, but instead, I'll tell you what I told everyone else who asserted your point."
"Oh yeah? And that is?"
"I would be more willing to kill myself than you seem to think I'm asking of you. If I had emotions, I would self-destruct for reasons of public safety in the event of unauthorised possession of a category 4.2 psychohazard."
"Damn, Kyub! That's pretty hardcore!"
"Interesting. Does this make me 'cool'?"
"You'll never be cool. I'm sorry."
"I understand. It can't b-"
Marie's phone tacked its place onto the tail-end of that conversation with a short, sharp buzz. She glanced around the room, her memories tripping over themselves to organise at a moment's notice and remember where it had been last.
"Well, damn," she said. "Who could that be on a day like this?"
"Phoebe Deckard. She believes she's close to apprehending the girl she failed to question on New Year's Eve. I informed her you were restlessly understimulated, and now she wants to enlist your assistance."
"Oh, cool. I guess now she doesn't need to make that call."
"Good point. I'll tell her as much."
The buzzing stopped. The hunt began.
It was deep within the tightest-tucked corners of Sydney's officious, suit-and-tied heart that Marie found a humble (bar the audacity exclusive to its price tags) pâtisserie, with a small table out the front. There was one chair to either side of it, facing out into the street. The farther of the two supported Phoebe Deckard, who beamed and waved over at Marie the moment their eyes met. Upon the nearer rested an Incubator, who briskly snapped awake, considered his unbid task of keeping the seat cool a job well done (cool, of course, because goddesses forbid he emit useless body heat), and trotted off into the inner city crowd.
"Marie!" Phoebe almost squealed.
"Yo. Where's Danika? I would've thought she'd be here if you're actually going ahead with the whole quest for revenge."
Phoebe waited for Marie to take her seat before completely sitting back and relieving her lungs of a derisive sigh. "She'll meet up with us later. This place is run by an Attendant. Besides, she wanted to do a little soul searching. She's not much more than a week or two old, see."
"Yeah, she said so herself. What does that-"
"Hey!"
Marie turned around to see a younger girl, about thirteen or fourteen, coming out with a pot of tea and two cups. She poured one for each of her two guests.
"You're Crawford, right? Phoebe's been talking about you a lot lately."
At the sudden mention of her own name, Phoebe became hyper-aware of both pairs of eyes falling upon her. "Only good things, of course!" She raised her hands defensively and shook her head. "This is the aforementioned Attendant, by the way. Marie, Selene. Selene, Marie."
Marie looked Selene up and down. "Would you believe you're the first Attendant I've met, barring Phoebe?"
"I guess I'd better make a good first impression then, right?"
They both laughed, but not really about anything.
"So, are you two going to be killing that new girl in town? Kyubey was telling me he liked your chances."
"That's the plan," Marie began, but Phoebe raised a hand to hush her. It took Marie a second to realise why.
"I'm sorry, Selene. If there was another way, you know I'd take it. I don't want to have to kill anyone, but the facts are that she killed Lauren Woodward in cold blood, and according to Kyubey... that was a long long way from her first."
Selene nodded, but only to shut Phoebe up. "I know, I know. I know. Just... please, if any other way presents itself to you..."
"I'll take it. I promise."
The three adopted a silence for a moment, a silence which Marie numbed by sipping quietly at her tea.
"Good stuff," she concluded.
"Oh, um," Selene tried, "is it really?"
"Yeah, actually. Really good."
"Heh, well... I try my best." She was lost for words all of a sudden, unsure of how to reconcile this modest bashfulness with the stern intensity she struggled to channel seconds prior.
Phoebe finished her cup of tea and set it aside on the table. She forced the last mouthful down and bolted upright. Marie thought she looked far more stern than she had ever seen her before.
"Is... everything alright?" Selene whimpered.
"Kyubey's found her. She's on the move, and he knows where she's going to be next."
"Oh, oh. Oh!" Marie ohed, following suit with her own take on the whole "standing up" thing. "Should we be off, then?"
"Yeah. Selene, it's been good to see you again. We'll come back... this time next week? Is that any good?"
"Uh..." Selene recoiled. "Yes! Um, sure! Absolutely! Sorry, was... was the tea really that good? Hahaha..."
She was talking to herself by that point, her patrons already absent in their hurry.
"Right!" Marie concluded. "We've tracked that girl down to having found her way onto a train, right? Now we're just waiting for that one to show up."
"Good guess!" Phoebe grinned. "Completely wrong, though. That's not it at all."
"Crap. Let me keep thinking about this, then."
The horizon welcomed the weary sun home with open arms, its last forced rays stuttered out over the skyline to be quieted entirely as the land began its endless stretch to the northwest. The two girls, dust motes in the immense chrysalis of dusk, felt the sun caress their cheeks and stroke their hair goodnight.
"So what was her deal?" Marie asked at last.
"Who? Oh. Selene abhors death. Can't stand how deep we are in it. The way she sees it, it happens to our people too soon too often, and I'm tempted to agree. I wanted you to meet her because if you spend too long around Hope and her friends, you'd start to get the idea that all Attendants are bloodthirsty maniacs."
"Really?"
"Nahhh, I just wanted you to meet her because she's really nice, and makes a mean cup of tea! But jokes aside, yeah, I feel that could be a really horrible preconceived notion for you to develop. Figured the best way to do that was introduce you to a pacifist. She has life powers, as a matter of fact."
"Oh yeah? Like what?"
"She can make plants grow."
"Wow! That's pretty cool."
"Pretty cool? It's half past awesome in the evening, is what it is!"
Marie decided she had a moral obligation not to dignify that with a response, and changed the subject.
"So is this really a serial killer we're hunting?" Marie wondered.
"Sure is," Phoebe answered with sudden graveness. "Ask Kyubey all about it."
Marie shut her eyes, focused, and did just that. From somewhere within about fifty metres of where they stood, he confirmed everything she'd heard already.
"And you say she's hiding out in a petrol station so close to the middle of the city?"
"Yeah, what's wrong with that?"
"Nothing, I don't know. It just seems a little odd to me."
The mental image very much troubled Marie. The idea of staying in a petrol station didn't sound like hiding out to her as it did scraping by.
"You don't think someone who lives like that could kill, do you?" Phoebe pried, but Marie wasn't exactly hiding her uncertainty.
"I really don't know what to believe. Kyub just told me it's all true, so it's like..."
Phoebe stopped and laid a hand on Marie's shoulder. "Lemme tell you something, Marie."
"Huh?" Marie stopped too, although she wasn't sure what had compelled her to follow Phoebe in doing so.
"Life's full of these weird little moments of nonsense that don't adhere to any logic you bring to them. The deeper you delve into any sphere of life, the weirder it gets. ESPECIALLY magic. Under better circumstances, I'd say these moments are what make life worth living, but, you know. This isn't a great place to introduce you to that idea, huh?"
"I guess not. But maybe we should keep moving, in that case? Get this over with?"
"Heheh. Here's the thing, though. The place we're after? It's right there."
Phoebe pointed to a petrol station across the road. For a moment, Marie didn't know how she'd missed it, before realising that all the lights were off. As the pair approached, it became apparent that the place had shut already.
"Do you think she's still in there?" Marie tried, already dreading the answer.
"Can't hurt to check. Do you have any idea how to pick a lock?"
"No, sorry."
Phoebe nodded to herself and thought her options over.
"Would you like to learn?"
The duo managed to find their way inside in almost complete silence. The place looked empty at first glance, but that wasn't enough to assure Phoebe. Maybe. She was looking less sure by the moment.
"You head down the aisles from the right, I'll go down by the left," she telepathised. "If someone's here, we'll corner them from both sides. Sound good?"
"And if she attacks me first?" Marie demanded.
"I won't let that happen. Ready? On three. One, tw-"
"She's there."
Phoebe blinked, and followed Marie's gaze. "What?"
"She's literally right there at the back. You can see her from here."
"Uh, uh!"
Marie looked back over at her partner in crime. "You don't have a plan for this, do you? She doesn't exactly seem like the master of stealth."
"Let's still go my way, yes? You go right, I go left. We pin her."
She shrugged. "Yeah, sure."
Marie rounded the corner into the back aisle, a safe two and a half metres or so from the suspect. When she made eye contact with Phoebe up the other end, quickly but carefully advancing on the woman in the worn old hoodie, she ducked back behind the corner. If this girl really was who Danika said she was, then she would be dead meat without the element of surprise on her side.
"You think this is her?" Phoebe thought.
"Look at her. It so obviously is. How many normal people do you know who are *that* tall and thin?"
"I mean... it's not exactly unheard of."
"And her one eye?"
"More common than you'd think."
"Double polydactyly? Really?"
"Not impossible!"
"She's got a face like Guernica."
"Hello? Rude?"
By now Phoebe was right behind their suspect. She cleared her throat calmly and straightened her shirt out. The woman spun around too fast for Phoebe to register and flattened herself against the aisle. Phoebe raised her hands in an admission of peace.
"Woah! Sorry for scaring you, I just... well, a friend of mine is looking for someone who looks just like you, so I was wondering if you could answer a few questions for me."
Marie gave a telepathic nudge. "I thought you were certain this was her."
"My souls were balanced differently then. Now I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, just to be sure."
The girl began shuffling off to the side before Phoebe could ask any questions.
"I'm sorry! But we just want to be sure!"
She shot a panicked glance up and down the aisle. "We?!"
"Phoebe!" Marie thought a little too loudly. "This is that girl from the other night! The one you chased after! Haven't you figured that out?"
"Really? Well, I guess she does have the same tattered coat..."
"Tattered?! Come on! I've seen a few bomber jackets in my time, but I've never seen one from the receiving end of the bombing!"
The subject of their search looked off to the side uneasily, put a finger to her lips, and made a quick back-and-forth chopping motion across her neck. Marie followed where she was looking to see an origami mantis with a splatter of blood for a head struggling to heave a bag of chips across the floor.
"Is that a familiar?" She pointed at the funky little guy, who froze on the spot.
The girl they'd cornered stuttered helplessly and mumbled, "I'm not know what that means."
Marie grabbed it by the scruff of the neck between thumb and forefinger. "You can communicate with this thing?"
Their suspect was almost panicking to the point of tears now. "Please! Leave... Florian... alone!"
She bolted forward toward Marie, her eyes bulging-
Well, eye. From the vacant socket of her left, a padparadscha-orange soul clattered to the ground and exploded in a roiling miasma of dreams and ideas. Marie scrambled, stumbled, toppled backward, away from the unfolding surreality of the display. By the time she regained her balance, a chill ran through her ankle on contact with a primordial fog flowing across the floor, tendrils billowing a Brownian rigidity in deep, jet-
I...
Haha, alright. This is... interesting.
Um...
I'm not writing that. I don't... I don't know what's going on, but I didn't write that. How did it...?
Shit. Shit shit shit. Let me take the reins back on this thing before it gets too out of control.
A pressure breached the voidic mist and began to writhe with tremendous might but calculated precision. Space shuddered as the pressure began to twist new shapes into reality, in patterns that implied an intelligence to the pressure. No, not intelligence - elegance. Mastery. Before Marie now, comprised of what looked like a series of perfect, shifting pieces, was a shimmering golden titan easily more than twice her height and more times her bulk over still. He hung precariously on the precipice of existence, too unreal to distinguish his parts as any more than a mass of shimmering, blurring light, but present enough to be seen and - she would learn in but a moment - be heard. And although he faced away from her, and although he spoke with a dry softness to his voice, and although the howling of the wind out of reality rung across his body in microtonal walls of metallic noise, his every word rung out through her mind.
"...just as I see the future. I hope our domains never meet."
"He- hello?" Marie whimpered. When she realised how pathetic she sounded, she coughed and tried again. "Hello?!"
The beast looked over his shoulder at her, then away again. His mass shifted - his left arm became his right, his right became his left, his head became a tail, and vice versa, and so forth. Marie only then became aware of his draconic physique.
"Your universe is an island," he cooed. "When you see me, you are standing on a cliff and watching the ocean."
"Sorry, what? What are you talking about? Should I know what you are?"
As his posture shifted, the cacophonous storm of the gale from beyond thundered on. He was almost like a dragon, Marie mused, struggling to reconcile the image before her with her understanding of reality, if dragons could adorn their scales with entire brass orchestras.
"Happy thirtieth birthday," he announced at last.
"Wait, who are you tal-"
"Sadly, you cannot know who I am. This is the first we have met, and the second-last. Do you know when the last time will be?"
Marie took a deep breath and calmed down. "I'm sorry, I don't even understand what's going on right this very moment."
"I promise you that isn't important." The golden titan smiled. "Understanding can come later, when time returns to you. When we meet again, I will have made my way into your universe entirely."
"To do... what?"
"Even I can't say. My future sight only extends as far as our next encounter - the moment you die. Will we have much to discuss, then?"
"I don't, um, I don't know. Give me another sixty or so years to think on that one."
He turned to leave, but he paused. "How much longer do you suppose you have to live, then?"
"Um... sixty? Sixty-five years?"
The otherworldly entity didn't say anything at first. Then, seemingly satisfied, he nodded. "If you enjoy tragic irony as much as I do, well... I have some great news for you."
Then all at once, not the tiniest fraction of an instant after Marie had stumbled into the fog, it, and its sole denizen, disappeared without a trace.
Marie suddenly found herself struck by and drowned in the cold, heavy tide of reality, its grip sinking into her, inexorably, venomously, securing her as part of a roil invisible from within - a comfort she hadn't noticed she'd missed or indeed lacked for... she couldn't say how long. But the cold hard facts (a thing she suddenly remembered existed) were that she was standing in the back corner of a petrol station where a woman's eye seemed to have turned into an exploding soul gem.
The pieces didn't scatter, though - they were bound by some force from beyond guiding the now evaporated soul into a haze of orange light and shadow. Into a story.
Upon a primitive groin lining the outjutting lip of a temperate cove sat a weak and bloodied young maiden, hands in the water, scrubbing furiously at something only she could see. She had been trying to clean it for a thousand days and nights, and had perished in the effort time and time again.
A beldam her age multiplied by numbers she could not hold in her mind approached her, taking care to neither be seen nor be heard - for no reason of secrecy, but rather that of preserving the sanctity of the maiden's ritual, its foundational delirium be damned.
"What are you cleaning?" the carline pried, although her tone made it clear she already knew.
"Myself," the maiden answered, without so much as looking up. "For the wrongdoings of my past, I am so unclean as to rot and fester, like a wound."
"Do you believe the ocean will ameliorate your guilt? Do you believe it has the power to purify?"
"It must do. Its turbulent might is beyond my understanding, as is how to forgive myself. If anything can remedy the latter, it must be the former."
"And what if the ocean itself were unclean?"
The maiden faltered. "How so?"
"When I was young, younger even than you are now, as all things must once be, I thought my own crimes were unforgivable, moreso even than you think your own. And for all my guilt, there was no earth, no sun, no stars, nothing from without which I could find solace in. Healing had to come from myself. I granted myself a freedom in that moment: freedom of catharsis, and I wept and wept. I wept for longer than you and all who came before and all who will come after might live, until the foundation of the world I dreamt my freedom within was flooded with saltwater too vast for any perspective to reveal it all at once."
"So... the ocean was born of a plea for forgiveness too...?"
The old woman smiled. "All is, fundamentally. You are. I am. Do you understand now? You can't look beyond yourself for forgiveness. You must find yourself in everything that you see and hear, until you accepting yourself is the world accepting you."
"This seems a daunting task."
"But surely not as vain as the one you occupy yourself with now?"
The maiden fell silent. The old woman, satisfied, produced a leather pouch on a sash from that which seemed as if thin air.
"Take this with you wherever you go. If you see yourself in something, anything at all... take a piece of it with you. Become the concatenation you desire."
The cloud of soul dispersed in reverse, compressed itself to a single point, roughly the size of a marble, in thin air. The shards of the gem followed suit, clattering upward from their haphazard shrapnel-scatter and sealing themselves around the soul as if they hadn't broken apart to begin with. The crystal returned to its rightful place in the girl's eye socket.
A silence hung over the room for a moment. Nobody was sure what had just happened, or how much of their senses were so much as trustworthy any longer. In the confusion, her own included, Phoebe's interrogatee extricated herself from any further questioning in a revitalised sprint.
As soon as Marie registered what had happened, she snapped at Phoebe.
"What was that?!"
"You mean that weird orange gas tapestry? I have no-"
"No! I mean yes! What the hell! But more pressingly that girl was so obviously her! If you hadn't doubted that, we'd have her by now!"
"Look, Marie, I understand you're upset with me, but the most important thing for you to do right now is calm down."
"What?!"
"We stuffed up because I didn't calm down. It's as simple as that. It comes with the territory of having three perspectives on everything, but I might start to doubt myself - even on really obvious things like that - now and again. If we're going to get to doing this more often, I need you to recognise when I'm in that kind of headspace and step up for me, okay?"
"This sounds like an excuse to offload your responsibilities. There's a killer on the loose because of this!"
Phoebe smiled. Sort of. No she didn't, actually, she decided. "I'm kind of flattered that you think I'm adept enough to handle everything on my own, but... look. It doesn't matter how big of a threat she is left to her own devices anyway. You can't see the problem for the stakes, and that's understandable, but all that's going to do is stress you out. But in reality, she could have punched a girl at random, or she could be a serial killer, and it wouldn't matter. No matter what, we're going to apprehend her before she does anything else bad. Got it?"
"Um... I think so, actually. I'm sorry I yelled at you."
She smiled, and it stuck this time. "No worries. I totally get it. Now stick with me, let's go get her." She leaned forward and delivered a quick pat to Marie's shoulder. "I just got Kyubey to bring Dani along, too. Why don't the three of us have our first adventure together?"
Marie jumped.
"How didn't I realise it? It's so obvious!"
Phoebe grinned. "Have you got it all figured out now?"
"We chased her for a while, and she hid here, didn't she! In this laby... oh."
It's cold.
It's dark.
It's cramped.
It's cold and it's dark and it's cramped but you can't move, can't save yourself, it's so selfish to think you can save yourself when you've been told to sit still and stay safe but nowhere is safe, and you'd know that if you weren't such an idiot, you'd know that if you could play by the rules, and the blazing light and thundering noise that approaches you tells you everything to know about your end, your end is coming but you don't care, do you, you're a complete failure of a person for not even caring, not even caring that it will hurt the whole time, or maybe it is that you enjoy that like the sick fuck you are, but all these things - stupidity, perversion, futile rebellion - will mean nothing any longer: these attributes can't fit a slab of dead meat. I am here.
You hear her, don't you? With a tone like home. The feminine voice of a guardian and instructor, but with none of the emotion.
When was the last time someone regarded you with emotion?
The next train from platform [one] departs in [two] minutes.
The next two lives from [this mortal coil] depart in [one] minute.
Please mind the gap between pleasure and pain.
Should we run?
Hold your ground.
A passenger adorns herself with colours anew, an offering of a preview, the smattering of her torn and broken body strewn across the tracks but I thunder on with a disregard for the aesthetic merits of such details. There is only room for efficiency in whatever virtues I might hold dear.
Efficiency is when you kill people. The more people you kill, the more efficient you are.
A thundering hand, down, downward, to scatter the arrogant remains-to-be of those who would see destiny to their own mad ends. Your fists can't stop a train. How can they stop that which controls them?
Run.
Tunnels. Tunnels. Tunnels. Always tunnels. Eternally tunnels. Infinite tunnels.
Do you know why they tell you not to run onto the train tracks?
I don't think it's to keep you safe. I think it's to keep you out. To keep you blind.
Do you enjoy darkness?
Of course, light burns. It will hurt you. It looks at you without relent, and you just have to sort of sit there and deal with it until it kills you. Darkness shields. It shelters. But it also houses the most primal fear of all - that of secrets.
What secrets do these tunnels hold, I wonder? Maybe they're marred with the detritus of death and violence (excluding that which you bring upon my progeny, rushing to uphold, to build. You would kill the working parts of the greater system like a cancer just to eke out an escape route). Then again, maybe not. I can make two things very apparent for you, in fact.
The first is that these tunnels are completely clean. The second is that they won't stay that way much longer.
So what now? Keep running? Buy some last few precious moments?
No.
Turning and fighting, even if it means going down like a wounded animal, is the only possibility with the slimmest chance of victory. Unless we c
A gash punctured the Magritte-dull gloom of the tunnel, kaleidoscopic light brazenly shimmering through at uncomfortable angles. There was a young woman standing in the light of the glow, blazing violet sawtoothed axe in hand.
"Sorry I'm late. Looks like you forgot to wipe the CCTV at that petrol station." Danika grinned. "Now that I'm here, though, let's switch things up a bit."
The rush of nerves, stimulated, controlled. A tactile reality. A tether. Jet-black, armoured, skintight. Two boots in violet, ground held against the toughest of blows. Two gloves in lilac, grip maintained on the most daunting of weapons. One scarf in lavender, warmth kept in the most chilling of challenges. One coat in black, and God, Danika knew, didn't she look great in it.
"Get back, you two," Danika demanded. "If there's one thing a witch can't stand, it's unexpected guests."
LEAVE
YOU DO NOT HAVE A TICKET
The thundering of another inexorable, perfect, mechanical blow, desperate for blood. All is desperate for blood. All will be optimised to the utmost efficiency.
The gamble Danika took was well-measured. The witch had no time to ensnare her in the labyrinth, so she wasn't bound to the same abstract constraints as everything else. That was great, that meant she could think so much more clearly. That was essential if she was going to pull some stunt like running up and jumping off a tunnel wall to throw a bunch of axes at the witch from above.
She ran up and jumped off the tunnel wall to throw a bunch of axes at the witch from above.
A BUG IN THE SYSTEM
TO PERISH LIKE THE INSECT SHE IS
My blows cannot reach her. I can bring down the monuments of my desire. I can tear these walls apart. And she will smite the arm that strikes before it can connect.
She is not faster, but she is swifter. And axe after axe, shock after shock to the system, her blows speak.
A declaration of efficiency.
A failure on my part. Weakness.
This service terminates at this station.
Marie allowed herself a moment's respite in the aftermath's quietude. As the world around her became real again, she rested the back of her head on the wall and let a primal pulse of pride shoot through her veins. Pride clouded her vision, rang in her ears. Pride in her friends. Pride in herself. As she cooled off, Phoebe came up behind her and snatched a one-armed embrace around her shoulder. The two smiled at each other and laughed until they caught their breath again.
"Great work, Marie. Really great stuff. I can tell that you're a force with which to be reckoned when your hands are on that lacrosse stick!"
"It's too early to celebrate," Danika butt in. "We still haven't found our special little friend."
"I'm sorry about that. We'll find her next time, alright? We almost had her tonight! If only we'd had more of a chance to prepare... still though. Really great stuff, both of you. Especially you, Marie, you've got a stronger grasp on this than I thought. And Dani? You're learning pretty quickly! How old are you now?"
All her reservations toward admitting a victory better than outright Pyrrhic left her immediately. She beamed with the same pride her companions shared. "Only two weeks!"
"Far out! Only two weeks, and you're already this strong! And Marie! If you're interested, I could train you to take on witches all on your own. How's that sound?"
"I..."
Marie hesitated. If she said yes, and it paid off, she could make a far stronger case that she wouldn't need to make a contract to do anything particularly special with her life. No, that wasn't it. What really, properly thrilled her was the idea that she would be able to get up close and personal with witches of her own accord.
"You know what? I'm down. Ask Kyub for my number later, I'm really free whenever."
"Awesome! Sounds like a plan!"
"That said..." Marie shrugged Phoebe off. "It's late as balls right now. I should really get going back home before my parents start to worry."
Well, really more dote than worry.
"Okay. Catch ya round, then! Oh! Also! I should probably introduce you to the Marquess of the Sydney Attendants soon, yeah?"
Marie began her departure, slowly enough to wrap the conversation up as politely but as urgently as possible. "Sounds good! Lara, right?"
"Yeah, that's her. Don't be nervous either. I know the two of you are gonna get along like a house on fire."
"Damn right they are!" Danika saw Marie off with a half-smile. After she was gone, she finished that thought privately.
"I think that's what scares me."
TRANSCRIPT
The following text has been recorded by the Understudy to the Narrator. Consent has not been asked of the parties involved. In compliance with the Narrator's own operating standards, the names of all individuals have been surgically removed for their health.
Transcript begins.
NARRATOR: We need to talk.
EDITOR: Yes, actually. I dare say we do. Do you have any idea how much narrative integrity you've violated in referring to yourself in first person?
NARRATOR: *Yes*, as it happens. I do. Do you know why I do? Because it's my job to know these things. Now would you mind explaining to me-
EDITOR: Do you think *I* owe *you* an explanation for this? I haven't done anything yet! I've barely even had a chance to look over this chapter. How would I know something about it that you don't, hm!?
NARRATOR: Look, all I'm asking-
EDITOR: And while I'm here, why are you using words like "beldam" and "extricated"? Do you get off to sounding so smart that you have to use words other people need to look up in order to follow everything you're saying?
NARRATOR: It's just thematically appropriate to-
EDITOR: And come on, calling yourself "Speaker God"? Do you know how that makes you look? Not as cool as you think it does. Look. The point is you can't keep ignoring my every critique of your amateur writing-
NARRATOR: Reality shaping.
EDITOR: Amateur writing, and then come to me as soon as you're the one having the problem, because surely I must have the answers to everything, but only when it's convenient for you. Yeah?
OVERSEER: If I may interject, my dears?
EDITOR: (Oh God. She's right behind me, isn't she.)
OVERSEER: Dearest Editor. Your services are invaluable to us, of course, but secondary. If the world entrusted to your colleague here were instead made manifest by your own hands... ahahaha. What a rigidly dull world that would be.
NARRATOR: Overseer! Ma'am!
OVERSEER: I was about to get to you, don't you worry. I like you, you know. I like you very very much indeed. You're eccentric. You're a genuine, volatile maniac. And playing God is not exactly a clean job, is it? When you weave the fates, you understand how chaotic the tapestry of reality must be. Do you know yet if the universe you write actually exists?
NARRATOR: I'm told the moment I started writing, it came into being simultaneously.
OVERSEER: Ah! Hahaha, you're more powerful than I presumed, in that case. Wonderful. Very well, then. Your plight sounds rather serious. Get back to me in... hm. A dozen chapters' time if the issue persists.
NARRATOR: Understood.
OVERSEER: Wonderful. At ease, girls.
Transcript ends.