Chapter 014 Part 1:
Copy-Copy Dance!
(or that part where the side characters explain the main character's ability and go NANI?!)
When D said she would perform a 'sex affirming surgery', Kazuho expected her copying things around in a moment and calling it a day.
When D took an hour to make Magne's face not grow easily visible hair, she realized that maybe it wasn't as easy as she initially thought.
And when D did do it in a moment, suddenly there was a lump in the woman's stomach and she began screaming.
Now, the logical thing would have been calling a hospital immediately, you know, like a regular person. However, in her misguided mind, she trusted her captain to somehow solve this, which she could have done. She simply had to stop the new copy and everything would be fine and dandy.
Then her captain took a kitchen knife and opened the woman like a pig ready to be butchered. Everyone's screams were answered with a 'it's fine it's fine' from her as she cut and weaved her knife around her patient's insides.
Pop Step somehow heard this despite the cacophony of screeches and decided, incorrectly, to still trust her, if from a distance. D could technically heal any wound as long as she touched you before you got the injury and a minute hadn't passed since then. So, maybe she wanted to correct something before quickly closing the wound with a healthy copy?
So, in trance, she ignored the victim's screams as she passed around tools for D to inflict pain onto her. She knew that wasn't what she was doing, but it certainly felt like it. Koichi continued to scream in the background while holding their victim down, but she tried to ignore that too.
Then a minute passed, and they still had a bleeding patient on a wooden table cursing like a sailor incoherently. So she tried in desperation to take the knife away from D so she wouldn't make it worse, only to accidently cut some parts in the struggle before giving up after she realized she was the one making it even worse.
After backing off with D continuing to say 'it's fine it's fine', she considered calling an ambulance to fix whatever D was trying to do. She just couldn't comprehend how D could do something like this, take such a risk… if she did this wrong that woman would die, so how…?
Then she smacked her face as she realized her captain could do a full-body copy of someone healthy on someone injured, take them to a hospital and then undo it so real doctors could fix it. Literally anyone near her couldn't die if they let her help before it was too late.
It was still disturbing how she could ignore the pleading shouting of Magne or how she wielded the knife with so much confidence despite constantly overshooting or outright missing what she was trying to cut, but then again, Magne was struggling while being held down by Koichi, which wasn't helping a lot.
She wasn't sure why Koichi kept helping, but she decided to join him in restraining Magne so it would go faster and with less mistakes. As she struggled to do so, all her sympathy for the woman evaporated as she kept hitting her in the face. All her thoughts of anesthesia went from relieving the patient's pain to preventing the brute from moving. She would never admit she breathed a sigh of relief when D punched Magne in the face and knocked her out.
It went smooth sailing from there as D finally could cut without worry. Pop Step refused to look in that general direction, blindly passing tools with her eyes closed. Apparently, D knew how to sew and was good at it, which was a relief because she didn't know how and Koichi went green at the idea of helping despite fixing his hoodies constantly. Of course D didn't just sew together the parts but also used some copies to connect the separated bits, but she wanted to connect them just in case.
Pop Step was fine without really knowing what exactly went on with their patient, as long as she ended up healthy. However, she did have a few words with D to NOT do that again after choking her for a bit. Luckily for her heart, D agreed, saying she learnt a lot from the experience and probably could do it without opening up their next customer. Pop Step shuddered at the idea of going through that hundreds of time in the next two weeks and gave her thanks to whatever deity gave her this mercy.
Still the question of why didn't they buy strong anesthetics remained. It's illegal to buy something too potent without a receipt, yeah, but she was certain that the old man could have gotten something to prevent this from happening in the first place. At least she knew to stock up just in case there is a next time.
It was as the woman regained consciousness that she approached Koichi.
"Hey, we're leaving now, unless you want to stay and watch the fight?" God knows she didn't trust D to keep it a clean and simple spar right now, so a spotter would do wonders to keep both idiots alive, as long as it wasn't her.
"Eh, why would I leave?" he asked, full of innocent wonder.
Kazuho didn't deign to answer that question, knowing it would answer itself in short, which only took some minutes to prove her right.
"I am gonna enjoy this so much." Magne said with forced calm, barely restraining herself from starting the fight.
Pop Step kept a carefully blank face at that salacious statement, though her eyebrow twitched as D was proven right in her assessment of the masochist. She was thankful she hadn't made a bet with her, though maybe she should have done one with Koichi? Never mind, doesn't really matter now.
"Because they will most likely tear the clothing off each other at the least, and I don't want to see if they take it further." she informed him with a blush as she went for the exit, the man hurrying to follow her.
"Ah, shouldn't we stay here then, to make sure nothing happens?" he countered as he reached her and stood in her way.
"I trust the Okama King to manage to fend off any uncivilized actions towards her person." she continued while trying to walk around him. "Her highness shouldn't go picking fights with masochists if she values her chastity so much, and I… I really don't want to see something like that from the outside… living it once… was enough." She shook her head from the memories. "I trust her to be strong enough to defend herself, or kill herself before it happens by complete accident."
"Yeah, I was more worried about Magne?" he awkwardly said while rubbing the back of his head.
"…Why?" she edged out.
"Well-"
"Dismemberment is allowed, right?" D chirped innocently, as if asking for the weather.
Koichi was only a little smug at Pop Step's sigh of resignation as she remembered that Camilia was a menace to society before turning around and walking back to strangle a certain someone.
"Aren't I supposed to be the D expert?" she muttered under her breath as she marched with a little too much force to her stomps. (She ignored the creeping feeling up her spine, or the ghost of a giggling in her ear she couldn't begin to fathom where it came from.)
"Well, maybe I actually did some spars with her, just a tiny little bitsy?" he explained with growing nervousness.
Pop Step stopped in her tracks and stared at The Crawler, who was being too fidgety for the content of his words. She looked into his eyes and he averted them while playing with his hands like a chastised child who knew he did something wrong but didn't want to admit it.
"K-Crawleeeeeer, something to share?" she asked while crossing her arms and tapping her foot, having learnt from her captain that treating morons who just did dumb stuff like children was the correct answer, despite whatever their actual age was.
"Hehe, see, you know how she just asked if dismemberment was allowed?" he managed to get out while visibly sweating buckets.
She did not bother to answer, simply arching her eyebrow judgmentally.
"It may, perhaps, be possible that, in a hypothetical scenario that is strictly hypothetical and has no relation to any real event that has ever happened, we sparred a bit while Sensei watched." Kazuho nodded, despite learning nothing as he repeated himself. "Well, in such an imaginary instance… she didn't ask."
Pop Step's thoughts screeched to a halt as the implications hit her, only to quickly scan Koichi to confirm that yes, he still had all four limbs attached, which meant nothing as D could reattach them after tearing them off or maybe even give him new ones. 'Urges to strangle a child intensifying…'
"She didn't do it though!" he quickly added when he saw her expression, before sheepishly smiling. "Not for a lack of trying, mind you, it's just hard to dismember someone with only your bare hands since she wasn't allowed to copy my Quirk… but she did dislocate my shoulder pretty easily."
"…how." She said in incredulity, merely stating her shock before expanding her inquiry in a rush as Koichi opened his mouth to answer. "No, literally, how? She's in a four-year-old body and she never got into a fight until a month ago when she suddenly manifested in that body with a brand new Quir-ability. How did a complete amateur who is more likely to injure herself than her opponent manage to dislocate your arm?! If she did it with Slide and Glide I could understand, but on her own? You fight Villains and train with the old man daily!"
"She's pretty good?" he offered while shrugging.
Before she could question his statement, D began… dancing?
She was jumping from side to side, landing on one foot each time, while clapping her hands above her head, lowering the arms when she finished a jump and rising them when she performed another. Jump to the right, bend her body, rise her arms to clap her hands and lower them. Jump to the left, bend her body, rise her arms to clap her hands and lower them. D was smiling through the entire process, never taking her eyes off Magne, who also didn't understand what was happening. Koichi, however, had a knowing look.
As D got into the rhythm, she started clapping louder, the sound of her feet echoing in the room farther than before. Only then did Kazuho notice how the girl wasn't wearing any footwear, and as she looked she realized how her feet were… growing when hitting the concrete, and shrinking when leaving the ground. Looking at the hands, she saw how they also enlarged when striking each other, and became smaller when she lowered them. Obviously D was partially copying Magne's appearance but… she felt she was missing something, besides the obvious question of why D was doing it in the first place.
Her dance got weirder as she copied more of Magne, her entire leg growing in size before hitting the ground and getting smaller as soon as it left it. Both her arms went well over her head as she clapped due to their growth, yet D still maintained her balance despite bending to the side with such a weight. The claps of her hands and feet grew louder, making more noise than they normally should.
Her dance didn't grow faster or slower, always maintaining the same initial pace of more or less four seconds between each clap, and D eventually had to stop when her minute of copying Magne's body was up, though her expression didn't change-no, her grin seemed to grow wider somehow as she taunted Magne with her finger, beckoning for her to approach if she dared.
"…Koichi? …What did I just watch?" she asked the man, who didn't look perturbed by the silent performance.
"Oh? Yeah, she does that before a fight." He dismissed nonchalantly, before beginning to explain when she grabbed his ear and pulled. "Ah, I guess she does it to get a feel of the new limbs for her fighting style?"
"Her fighting style," she deadpanned, "The fighting style of someone who fought for less than a month at best, less than a week being generous, and maybe a full day collectively when speaking realistically."
"Yeah, you know? Si-"
"What?!" D shouted as Magne refused to engage. "Afraid already?! You barely glimpsed at my Size-Changing Brawling! Come on peasant, I want to punch someone who won't dodge like The Crawler!"
"Yeah, that." he said while nodding in her direction as Magne tried to psych herself up.
"…pretending that D invented an entire fighting style while I wasn't looking, that still doesn't explain whatever she did before."
"I think she invented it in our spar." Koichi helpfully added. "And you know how she takes a little time to make a copy instantaneous and painless?" She nodded. "Well, that time is one second, and if she's trying to do a simultaneous copy, that time exponentially grows. So, 1 second, then 3, then 6, and 10, to 15, followed by 21, only to go 28, and continue to 36, to reach 45, and finally end in 55, which makes ten simultaneous copies with a five second window after she touches something before her minute is up."
"Still not explaining the dance, though weirdly informative in other areas."
"I think it's to practice minimizing the times between each copy? Oh, and to train her reflexes. She's doing it with the less time possible between copies while at the same time dismissing the ones already present. It also lets her know the length of her new limbs by creating a copy before her foot reaches the ground until she gets it just right where the new foot is on the ground naturally and making that really impressive clap. Too soon and her new copied leg is still descending and thus making a normal noise, and too late and her foot just smashes itself against the concrete, which is… sometimes really gory if she's particularly slow."
Pop Step… kinda understood the explanation, which was good enough for her. Three seconds for the two simultaneous arms, and one for the leg, making a four second dancing loop of… something.
"That sounds really overcomplicated and unnecessarily precise for a dance with extremely painful consequences… though I guess it's good for training her ability." She observed, watching as Magne took out a giant piece of metal and readied herself. "How long did she practice to get the rhythm that close?"
"Mm? Like, three?" he said while shrugging
Pop Step frowned at the non-answer.
"Three what? Days? Or did you train with her for weeks without me noticing?" she wondered out loud as she watched the two opponents about to begin their fight.
"No, three." he clarified while shaking his head.
Pop Step frowned harder, before exhaling at Koichi's… Koichiness.
"Three hours?" she asked with incredulity, not really believing D could get it so easily.
"Pop Step, it took three tries." He explained in exasperation, completely missing how she whipped her head around to look him in shock. "One where she did it early and said it didn't feel right; one where she overshot, messing up her foot and obviously not being right either; and then doing it just like she did it now."
That's…
"…That's impossible." Kazuho muttered to herself, before repeating it out loud. "That's impossible."
"Well, that's what happened, so-"
"No, you don't understand, I'm not saying you're lying, I'm saying that it is literally impossible for her to get the hang of her powers so quickly!" She explained while pointing at him. "I get that every Quirk comes with some instinct on how to use it, but when she copies yours she doesn't know how to really use it because she never practiced with it, she can't do complex tricks because she lacks years of experience which you have!"
"But it's her power she's using to do the dance," Koichi pointed out.
"But it's her power she's using to do something in an incredibly precise way that she would need to practice countless times to achieve once, much less do it repeatedly without apparent effort!" Kazuho countered frantically, needing to express her denial of D just pulling that off so he could understand how unlikely that was. "And she's doing it with less of a month of experience of using that power, and managed to achieve perfection of that trick in three tries! It's like asking someone who grew a tail recently to do a complex maneuver again and again without mistakes, kids who manifested their Quirk don't have that level of control, hell, adults who don't use their Quirks often don't have that casual precision!"
"But she isn't an actual kid, so maybe her maturity helps?"
"It's worse, late bloomers whose Quirks manifest in adulthood have even worse control, having grown too used to how their body normally operated that the new instinct isn't as present as it would normally be in children! D's an even worse case because she's also in a completely new body too, it's a miracle she can even walk normally now that I think about it!"
Finally, what she was trying to say got through his skull as his eyes grew wide and mouth opened in shock.
"I forgot, she didn't have the Quirk she has now in her previous life!" he whisper-shouted as he connected the dots. "Does that mean she lied about that? Or she practiced in secret?"
Pop Step wasn't sure herself, and while she wanted to believe that D, however unlikely, was a prodigy over her lying to them, she knew her too well to realize that she was too dumb for that title, she would be an idiot savant at best. However, even geniuses don't just get it in their third try in less than a minute.
"…Yes, she probably trained in secret as a surprise." Kazuho reluctantly admitted as her thoughts jumped from place to place, though the answer felt incomplete, if not outright wrong.
Despite the fight having already started, her mind was too busy trying to understand the puzzle in front of her to pay any attention. She didn't like the picture she was forming, and while catching her captain in a lie was bad and making her wonder how much D had possibly lied about…
…Kazuho feared the picture which formed when taking everything D said as the truth, with the implications it carried.
Chapter 014 Part 2:
A fight between women
(or D is still her own moronic self)
Camilia smiled at Magne while posing like Hancock, taunting the woman who refused to make the first move. She would continue doing the Copy-Copy Dance, but she ran out of time. It was weirdly relaxing and natural to do it, so it was a shame she could only perform it for a single minute at a time.
Finally, the woman couldn't take it anymore and sprinted towards her, giant piece of metal in hand and ready to clobber her. She smiled wider while actually taking a fighting stance, she needed to dodge and then touch her again to renew her powers.
It was with the most unearned confidence that she dodged the telegraphed overhead swing, only for her body to stop and reverse her momentum as the weapon attracted her body towards it. D barely had time to think 'Magnetism, duh' before being hit in the back of the head and brought to the ground, her chin hitting the concrete.
She tried to get up, but the weight of the weapon in the back of her skull prevented her from doing so, and Magne was too far for D to touch her in her struggles. The metal shifted as it slowly crept down, encompassing her back and forcing her arms backwards with its attracting force, then further down as D lost the ability to move her legs freely.
As the metal was lifted, D went along with it stuck in place. She stared upside down at the smug woman who was holding her weapon high with her two arms and mouth about to open, so she answered before she could ask.
"I'm not giving up," she informed her casually.
The woman only smirked before striking the ground with her weapon, which unfortunately had D underneath it. She was crushed between the two, and while she didn't have a lot of experience, she felt like she broke a rib or twenty. She coughed blood against the concrete before being lifted against her will again.
Magne continued to smirk, so D spat blood in her face. To her credit, the woman didn't drop the weapon in shock like she planned, but then again, she was wearing glasses and it hadn't gotten any in her eyes. The third strike against the earth was expected, though it still hurt. The pain wasn't unbearable, which just went to show how awesome she was, or how she got a concussion. It could even be both, really. She felt her mouth flowing with blood as her face received the most of the impact, so she decided to spit on Magne again
As she was lifted for the four time, she did so, not expecting anything to happen but feeling vindictive pleasure while she tried to formulate a plan. However, her ingenious plan worked as she fell, this time not being swung down but simply falling due to gravity. She heard Magne curse, but D couldn't really do anything from her place in the ground, stuck staring at the floor.
While trying to decipher what had happened and preparing to spit at the woman again, her tongue passed through her teeth and… found some empty spots. Oh, she had spit her tooth at the woman… just like she planned all along! Now, the question was if she had launched them with such force against her glasses that she broke them, or if the teeth had simply fallen in her eyes behind them. The latter was preferable, because extracting the glass from her eyes to heal her would be a pain, and she wasn't sure if 'permanently' blinding her opponent counted as dismemberment. Maybe if she tore off her eyes it did?
She wiggled with the piece of metal while Magne continued shouting expletives in the background until she was on her side, if still stuck. She couldn't really crane her neck, but thankfully she didn't see any broken glass in her immediate surroundings, she wouldn't want to accidently roll into them…
And now she had a very dumb idea that might just work. Deciding it wasn't worse than cubic giraffe, she tried to wiggle on top of the piece of metal… and continue to roll onto the other side. And under it, which hurt mind you, and into the side she first started and on and on as she began rolling like an uneven wheel.
Her face didn't appreciate the constant hits against the ground, but D was moving away from the Magne-Magne Fruit's range, if slowly. It wasn't all that big of a range, which made her plan feasible. And so, she rolled, sometimes getting looks of her opponents or Pop Step and The Crawler, the first with hands on her face and the latter with expressions too complex for her to decipher in the second it took her to roll.
Her cunning plan was interrupted when she saw blood in her way, followed by getting her face into the puddle while she rolled. Then she did it again, and again, and again, and continued to do so as she couldn't stop her momentum. She expected at some point to stop splashing against the mysterious puddle, but while some parts were drier, the puddle just… Kept. On. Going.
She would never admit she was getting dizzy, but her stomach did complain. Also, her lungs didn't appreciate having her ribs gently stabbing them each time she hit the ground, but that was her lungs' problem, not hers. (She ignored a small voice in her head that sounded awfully similar to the pink demon screeching how she was a moron)
Eventually, she managed to stop. Well, someone's foot stopped her as they kicked the piece of metal, but that was semantics. Looking up, which now she was stuck doing, she saw… absolutely nothing, on account of her face being marred in blood and dirt. She tried to blink it away, but she couldn't-no wait, there's some new liquid in her face that's helping her. After enough blinking she saw Magne with her intact glasses on, alongside a lot of blood she wiped out in her white t-shirt looming over her.
…Magne just spat on her eyes, didn't she?
"Thank you!" D chirped happily, because Shanks taught her better than caring about petty things like that, especially when the insult actually helped her.
She ignored Magne despite the funny face she was making and through the corners of her eyes, D noticed a… circle of blood, and only now realized that an uneven object rolling around would go in circles. She would have never gotten far enough but she still believed her plan had merit, she just didn't think of any yet.
Oh hey, Pop Step didn't leave! And she was making a funny face too! And Koichi was next to her, probably wincing at her bloody smile with a few missing teeth, so she copied her mouth from a minute ago into her current one. As soon as she dropped it she would still miss the teeth, but it was nothing that a little milk couldn't fix.
At least she thought so, there were some theories around of how Luffy subconsciously used his Devil Fruit powers to create a field around him where cartoon logic applied, and since he knew milk was good for the bones and the teeth were made of bone, then drinking milk made people around him grow missing teeth as long as they believed that would happen. After all, Brook was the most common case and he had some screws loose in his brain… but wait, he doesn't have any brains!
"Hididididi-ugh, skull joke!" she laughed, the concussion and the pierced lungs not really helping.
And now everyone was staring at her, which was fair, she hadn't said the joke out loud. But it was rude to stare, so she wouldn't share it with them. Instead, she tried to turn her head towards Magne's leg, which was holding the metal rod and preventing her from rolling in circles. Unfortunately, being stuck to a magnet prevented things such as turning her neck or moving in general.
…So she stuck her tongue out and licked her trousers. Magne recoiled from the contact, but D had already copied the Magne-Magne Fruit (through clothing, she might add, which she wasn't sure worked), and made the piece of metal repel Magne instead of attract D. And since now it was both repelling and attracting, both forces cancelled out each other. She had expected to be launched into the ceiling considering her luck, but it simply let go instead, which was… disappointing for D, despite this option being less painful for her.
Rolling out of Magne's following stomp, this time without a giant lump of metal stuck to her back, she tried to get to her feet only to fall as her chest loudly complained in agony. So, first drop the copied ability, copy with her own DF Magne's healthy appearance, realize she still has her kid's mouth so drop it and copy Magne's mouth, then get up, and voila! In three seconds she was just in time to avoid another swing of her weapon, this time with a wide margin to avoid being stuck again.
"Hidi! You're strong!" she complimented the woman, though it may also be that she was a dumbass who didn't take her as seriously as she should have.
"What does it take to kill you?!" Magne shouted as she continued wildly swinging, yet D now knew to keep her distance.
"Destroying my brain? I think I could get better from anything else, really," she wondered out loud, seriously thinking about the subj-and another missed attack, oooh, sneaky!
She barely avoided that last one by dropping her copy and growing smaller, and after she copied Magne's appearance again she realized her minute was up, so she couldn't do it again afterwards. Still, Camilia didn't like playing defensively, she was getting nowhere! Things had to change.
So she did the obvious hit and tanked a hit in the chest. She was almost knocked off her feet, and she certainly lost her breath and maybe got a few more broken bones, but while grappling a weapon out of someone's hand required you to get a hold of it, the nice thing about Magne was that you didn't, you just got stuck.
After planting her feet, she tugged the weapon away from the woman, taking advantage of having the same body, and thus strength, as her. However, Magne didn't let go, and D didn't plan for this eventuality. They were both struggling to shake off the other, but D was still stuck to it and the magnetic woman seemed to have forgotten this fact, so D did the nice thing and kicked her shins to copy her DF, followed by also making the metal attract her too, so now they were both stuck together.
Before the woman could realize what D had done, she stopped tugging and let Magne get the weapon. Not expecting the sudden lack of resistance, she hit herself in the chest with one end, which then got stuck there. So she tried to repel it, except D was attracting it, which cancelled it out and let her opponent get her hands off to claw at the copy woman. D, in her brilliance after connecting the dots, decided that dropping the giant piece of metal to defend herself was too hard and she could simply repel it too, while both were still holding it, to 'see what happens'. In her mind, this would simply separate them.
Apparently, the repelling strength did not remain the same or multiply by two because of this, but actually went square. This meant that, rather than push off the women with a lot of strength, the force ripped out D's arms and slightly caved in Magne's chest.
Camilia would have screamed, except she could do this nifty thing where she dropped the copy and suddenly she had arms, though she still had ribs piercing her chest, so she did a copy of Magne's body again before the accident and she was fine, though her shins did hurt a little.
And thus, she prepared herself for the fight to continue!
Chapter 014 Part 3:
My Dream-Dream
…Magne, on the other hand, wasn't a cheating bastard and had to deal with suddenly not being able to breath for some seconds as she hit the ground. She struggled to get up, her chest burning, yet she simply couldn't do it. She fell to the ground again, no longer able to support her weight while cursing herself.
As the woman lifted her gaze to look at her opponent, she saw a mirror of herself playing around with her weapon, before throwing it behind her back with a heave like yesterday's garbage and smiling down on her.
She… she couldn't lose like this, she told herself as she tried to make her arms support her weight.
It wasn't about anger anymore… and it hadn't been completely from the start, she thought as her hands trembled yet not faltering under her.
She… she just…
"I… I can't… just… accept it!" she muttered while she knelt, her head against the ground.
Just a bit more…!
"It's not fair!" she shouted as she managed to slowly rise, only for her leg to fail and almost fall before she regained her balance. "You can't just… just… do it!"
Her vision wavered, she didn't think she hit her head that hard against the concrete, but it didn't matter. She couldn't accept it.
"You can't just… come into my life like that and just grant it!" she screamed at the woman in front of her who was wearing her face in a twisted mockery as she finally stood.
Magne tried to take a step towards her, but she fell again. Still she crawled with her hands towards the woman who dared do this to her.
"I worked my ass off for this! I did for my entire life!" she cried out as her arms dragged her forward, despite how it was worsening the pain in her chest. "Every day I dreamt of finally achieving it!"
The damn bastard still had that same grin, or at least she thought so, her vision was clouded and she couldn't see, but still she continued her struggle.
"So why?!" she asked, not really sure of what she was asking, "Why…? Why does it hurt…?"
She couldn't stop the tears and she wasn't even sure of why she was crying. She wanted to blame the pain in her chest, but even that pain wasn't clear on why it was happening. It was the same thought over and over again, why? Why did it hurt? Why was she trying to continue the fight? Why, why, why?
Her questions and misery were interrupted when she felt a hand rubbing her head. She looked up, only for the copy woman to clear her tears off with that same smile, if a little more strained. Yet, she was still smiling and it hurt.
"Yeah, can't say I didn't feel the same when I got here," the Okama King began, "For someone else to just, grant your dream… Even if you're happy it came true, it feels like they're stomping all over your efforts, doesn't it? Especially when they do it for free, not even recognizing all the struggles you went through to get to that point."
She… she couldn't make her mouths form words, so she nodded instead.
"And you must feel worse than I did since you hurt me before I helped you." Another nod. "Sooo… you tried to fight me to prove your worth?" A shake. "To prove you deserved it?" A nod. "Hidi, well… can't say I wouldn't do the same. But guess what?"
Magne looked towards her copy… and that smile shined brighter than she had ever seen before in the mirror, and she wished she could smile like that so easily.
"If you want to prove you deserve it, why not take my crown for a bit?" she offered with an extended hand. "If you don't feel like you deserve to have your dream come true just yet, maybe helping other people like you achieve their dreams will make you feel better? That way you're putting in work to convince yourself it wasn't that easy or for free. Make you work for it."
Magne… knew that it was a dumb idea to accept. Her mess of emotions were illogical and would probably pass with enough time. Working to pay off a debt that didn't exist made no sense, she would be doing what amounted to volunteer work, her, a villain! She had no obligation to accept, hell, the Okama King said so herself! Her mind listed off every little thing that explained why she shouldn't do it…
"Ok," she accepted the offered hand and stood proudly on her feet, letting the Okama King help her carry the weight.
…but her heart screamed she had to accept, and so she did.
(D, again, wins the fight through sheer luck, not even getting to show off her brand new fighting style, while Kazuho theorizes in the background.)
