CHAPTER 17: Excess of Intellect
"Nanaka Tokiwa! Konoha Shizumi!" Homura Akemi charged into the restaurant's backrooms and called out the two magical intruders by name. She'd only met them a few times prior, first during Walpurgisnacht, and then at Mami's meetings. "State your reason for this invasion of our hunting territory!" But she knew enough about the pair to understand they only respected those who could back strong words with equivalent action. "Or I'll report this incident to Mami Tomoe!"
"Grrrrah! Ooof! Unnnnngh!" Homura followed the pained sounds of an adult male being assaulted near the meat freezer. As she ran she passed by the unconscious body of the very waitress who had served their meals minutes earlier. More alarmingly, there was also an undischarged Beretta 98 handgun on the floor beside her.
"Wha- Hrrrrrrrrck!" And just like that, Homura found herself pinned to a wall, with Konoha administering the chokehold while the shorter Nanaka restraining her left arm and buckler. The two were quite the battle pairing, having already deduced Homura's weakness.
"Shhhhhhhhhhh!" Nanaka hushed with a raised finger to her wolf mask. "We'll warn you once. Do not speak our names from here on!" Nanaka was the first to release her grip on Homura. But for Konoha to follow suit it took a light nudge to the rib from her comrade.
"This is a mission to liberate one of our own," Konoha disclosed. "Either join us as Mitakihara's operative, or get the hell out of our way and never dare show your face to me again!" Even partially concealed behind the stylized eye holes of a Kitsune mask, Homura could tell through her gaze Konoha was rearing to be kicking ass and taking names. And that Homura would be the first up if she didn't accept her 'invitation'.
"Shit!" Homura relented with an English vulgarity. "Alright, fine. I'm in." She was also all too aware of the greater stakes, that to decline and walk away would undermine their confidence in Mami. Which, in turn, would all but brick their budding intercity alliance. "But before I take another step, brief me of what I need to know."
"Earlier today, one of Fox's team was kidnapped, tossed into an unmarked van and transported to your city," Nanaka detailed. She fished through a duffel bag.
"Via Wolf's lieutenant, we learned there exists an offshoot sect of Yakuza who engage in a disgustingly revolting form of child trafficking," Konoha exposited. "And that one of their probable hideouts is fronted by this eating establishment in Mitakihara." She formed her weapon and began knocking on the walls with it.
"And you fear she's already been victimized by them?" Homura pressed. "Thus your urgency?" Still, even with the evidence of guns in a place they didn't belong, something felt amiss regarding their conclusion. "But how could a bunch of gangster goons capture and contain a magical girl?"
"The element of surprise and sheer brute force, I surmise." Nanaka extracted a similar-looking red and white dog mask. "Put this on. Best we could find on such short notice." She helped fasten it to Homura's head. "Your codename henceforth is 'Shiba Inu'."
"How come you guys get a generic species name, but I'm a diminutive breed?" Homura complained.
"Would you rather we called you 'Dog'?" Konoha retorted.
"Objection withdrawn." Homura uttered. She too was now knocking on walls searching for a concealed entry point. At least, that's what she assumed the other two were searching for. "Over there." But going about the room she noted an incongruity with the overall layout. "The molding at the bottom of that wall doesn't line up properly with its adjacent pieces." There were times she considered ceasing the magical enhancement she made to her sight and going back to wearing glasses. "And those skid marks indicate a disproportionate level of foot traffic." But here she was thankful for keeping the enhancement.
"Mmmhmmm…" Konoha pounded hard enough to hear the reverberating clang of metal behind it. "Excellent call." She lodged her butterfly staff underneath a small gap at the bottom "A little help here?"
"Hnnnnnngh!" Both Nanaka and Homura inserted their slender fingers and lifted. The phony wall promptly retracted up, revealing an elevator door.
"Since we're not sensing a Soul Gem, it's likely she's being held much lower down," Nanaka noted, prying it open with her blade and exposing the shaft and cables.
"Looks like we're standing atop a pretty extensive facility," Homura leaned in and looked. "I count at least a dozen stops below us. I trust you two have a gameplan?"
"Start from the lowest depths of hell, find her then fight our way up," Konoha leapt for a cable and slid down it like a rope. "And woe to all who dare oppose us."
'We'd best limit our verbal interactions from here on, Shiba Inu,' Nanaka descended next. 'And do our best to bridle Fox's burgeoning fury.'
"Greeeeat," Homura muttered, drawing a Desert Eagle from her buckler before taking the plunge. Once she landed atop the elevator's roof she cocked it. Nanaka went to work slicing it open like a tin can with her katana, and they jumped into it.
"Freeze!" A commanding male voice flanked by three greeted them in the corridor on reveal. "Don't mo-" He did not finish his ultimatum before being rushed and beaten upside the head by Konoha.
"Open f-" Nor could his subordinate issue any warning, as Nanaka drew her blade and sliced the barrel off his assault weapon. "Aaaaaack!" Then she neutralized him by butting his forehead with her hilt.
"Retreat! Call in ba- Auuuuugh!" The third fellow was taken out by a swift heel kick from Homura. She opted to go hand-to-hand the moment she took full notice of the group's equipment and attire.
"Unnnnnnf!" The fourth guy was promptly disarmed and bounced from the ceiling to the floor.
"Tell us where you keep your captives!" Konoha demanded with her deathgrip close to crushing the poor man's larynx.
"Ptui!" But the young man did not show fear. Instead, he spit on her mask.
"Grrrrrrrrrr!" And for that sleight, Konoha was ready to end him.
"Wait!" Homura intervened before she committed the heinous act. For her good deed, Homura found herself on the receiving end of a most venomous glare. "Something's not right here."
'What do you suspect, Shiba Inu?' The much more even-tempered Nanaka telepathically lent an ear. Her light touch to Konoha's shoulder was also enough to make the young woman let up. Their prey passed right out from a lack of oxygen.
'Wolf, I've raided Yakuza hideouts. Those lowlifes don't come equipped with padded helmets or tactical gear.' Homura picked up the automatic rifle and stuffed it inside her buckler. 'Or these fully automatic rifles.' In a prompt switchover she pulled out a grenade launcher.
"Enemy contact!" The next wave came calling. "Open fire!"
"Shit!" Homura hit the deck, pulled the trigger and blew two tear gas-loaded canisters their way.
"Masks on! Masks on!" Their opposition stopped firing to don the extra protection. Unfortunately for them, the opening was ample time for Konoha and Nanaka to charge in and lay the beatdown.
'They also don't make a habit of carrying gas masks either." Homura relieved each of the fallen men of their armaments. But the last gun she took was of a special significance. 'This thing's an FN P90. A specially-manufactured NATO tool, not a black market commodity!'
'An 'effin' P90? What the hell are you getting at?' Konoha blew away the gas with a twirl of her staff and cleared the corridor.
'This place has to be a government operation of some kind," Homura warned. 'Either JSDF or…'
"Get down!" Nanaka shoved her associates to the floor. "Ungh!" While she was felled by bullets whipping and tearing into her flowery magenta kimono.
"Wolf!" Konoha shouted. Two men had appeared and fired from behind them.
"Guuuuuaah!" Homura knocked one down by bouncing a fired canister of his body armor. Then she took out the other one with a rocketing screw kick to the stomach.
"You're hurt!" Konoha saw splotches of red dripping from Nanaka's sleeves.
"A flesh wound," Nanaka insisted. "I don't even feel it."
"Even so," Konoha placed her hand above the injury. In a simple vaporous puff, Nanaka's skin was mended.
'You're a healer?' Homura asked, her eyes keeping watch for more attackers.
'In training,' Konoha messaged. 'A recent recruit in my squad is teaching me. I've progressed to the point where I can fix minor bumps and scrapes without too much exertion.'
'We need to keep moving, Fox.' Nanaka insisted. 'Shiba Inu, by what you speak, you sound as if you have some experience navigating man made labyrinths such as this one.'
'I've also raided and pillaged some military installations for supplies on occasion,' Homura divulged. 'But very late at night with an additional advantage I no longer possess.'
'Even so you have am amount of expertise that we do not. I feel that if we're to both locate our objective and make it out unscathed, then our chances are better with you taking point.'
"Very well," Homura agreed aloud. 'They're obviously not coming at us from the elevator. Which means the complex has one, more likely two or three stairway access points.' She resumed talking telepathically. 'And if this is a government facility as I suspect, then the law would mandate they install an emergency staircase with a detailed floor plan from level to level.'
'Right.' Nanaka nodded. 'That's the move. First locate the emergency stairs, and get better oriented.'
'It goes without saying, but they're gonna fight us nearly every step of the way.' Homura added. 'Tempting as it may be to plow them, we mustn't escalate. There is to be no use of lethal force.' She turned towards Konoha. "Okay?"
"Tch!" Konoha scowled. 'No guarantees.'
"Whoops." Junko stopped the young lady from taking an erroneous step. "Security camera. Right there." She pointed at it in the corner on the level above.
"What do we do?" The girl, still wrapped in a straightjacket, fretted.
"Ever tried dancing before?" Junko asked rhetorically. "Keep acting like you're keeping me controlled through eye contact. We'll both go up in sync, one step at a time, moving sidestep while facing one another." Junko went first with a demonstration while keeping the firearm pressed to her temple. "Like this. And step." She'd switched the safety on, at least she believed so. "And step." Hoped not to test it here. "And step."
"And step." The girl repeated cautiously. "And step." From her overall gait, Junko could tell this girl was the sort who would tiptoe along narrow walkways and embankments with her arms stuck pretending to be a graceful gymnast, another unnerving similarity to her daughter. "And s- Step." And that she was having trouble coping with her appendages so greatly restricted.
"Oooooooof!"
"Unnnngghh!"
"Gaaaaaaah!"
"Mind if I hang on to this?" Homura confiscated another P90 from a defeated soldier. "I'll be taking those too." She also relieved him of all his extra magazine clips.
'Do you have to deprive every single one of them of their armaments?' Konoha impatiently snapped. 'It's slowing us down too much!'
'And should they come to, they won't have anything on hand with which to threaten us.' Nanaka defended Homura's methods. 'It's savvy.'
"You! Over there! Hal- Aaaauuuuuagh!" Their next challenger was taken out by a well-placed flash grenade.
'That door over there looks much different from the rest!' Nanaka spotted. 'Painted Red.'
'AKA the universal color of emergency access points.' Homura added. 'Proceed.'
"Aaaand step." Something was wrong with her. She was wobbly, and had trouble keeping eye contact with Junko. Which was a problem, because they hadn't cleared the camera's viewfield yet. "Aaaaaaand steehhhhhh…"
"You okay, kiddo?" Junko verbally prodded. But it was clear she was fading. "Hey! Hey, stay with me!" But Junko was powerless to do more than watch her topple over, lest she blow the whole scheme.
"Oh my gosh!" A young woman's voice echoed from above. "Ayame!" A figure came down so fast it practically blew Junko backwards against the white brick wall. "Ayame! Speak to me!" The girl had collapsed into a pair of taller and much more nimble arms.
"Wha-" Before Junko could process the sight she just witnessed, she found herself tossed against the opposing railing with bits and pieces of the security camera raining down on her nanoseconds after hearing a deafening gunshot sound off.
"What have you people done to her?" The incensed voice threateningly asked, revealing herself to be a young lady in a most peculiar combination of revealing cosplay and a store-bought novelty kitsune mask.
"Nothing!" Junko confessed. "I was trying to help her escape!" Once she finally regained her bearings and her wits, she was flanked by another girl in a tattered kimono behind a wolf mask, plus a third girl in more low-key uniform garb and a doggie mask, whose overall stature gave Junko a dizzying pause.
"Hand over your weapon," Kimono girl commanded. Junko passed it over to her, who in turn passed it along to the third girl.
"Turn around!" The Third Girl instructed in a gruff, guttural tone that was very obviously intended to disguise how she really sounded. "Keep your hand where we can see them!" But all it was really doing was calling attention to itself. "Don't turn your back!" And she was going to some odd lengths just to not let Junko get a better look at her.
"She- She's not breathing!" The First Girl exclaimed. "I- I can't feel her pulse!" She sounded like she was in a state of barely controlled panic.
"There's a defibrillator stored next to the fire extinguisher two floors down," Junko said. She too was quite disturbed by the sight of the girl splayed unmoving on those wide concrete steps. "And I've had some first aid training. If you'd just-"
"What? What do you mean she can't be more than a hundred meters from her Soul Gem?" The First girl suddenly exclaimed. To Junko's ears it should've hit as a non sequitur. "Th- That's cruel! Even for that fucking rat, that's-"
"Do you mean that freaky fabergé egg that glows?" But to their apparent distress she wasn't ignorant. While to Junko's prying senses, it appeared as though they were having whole conversations with nothing but a silent exchange of looks and expressions.
"Eyes front!" The gruff tryhard girl barked.
"Who took it, and where'd they go?" Tattered Kimono girl demanded.
"Uhhhhmmmm," Junko paused. She was torn. It was one thing to help a little missy in distress, quite another to be aiding and abetting what was technically a troika of terrorists. Worse than fired, she'd have her home repossessed, her husband jailed and her kids taken away. Her employers had that kind of power. "If I tell you, will you let me go?" The line and what constitutes crossing it wasn't exactly covered as a part of her training phase either.
"How about we slay you if you don't tell us?" The tallest and most ostentatiously dressed one threatened.
"Fox." The girl holding Junko's gun tried tempering her compatriot's rage. And in doing so, neglected to alter her voice. Not that Junko required the additional clue.
"Fine." Their magenta themed cohort agreed. "But you're sticking around as collateral, until we track it down." Even though she looked to be the youngest, at least she was reasonable and behaving like she'd attended a lesson or two in Negotiation 101.
"I suppose, " Junko agreed. "A bunch of white-coated scientists were examining it in a room three floors below." She revealed. "That was at least ten minutes ago. You can bet they're carting it away as we chatter."
"Then we'd best get moving," Little Miss Negotiation Expert concluded. "Let's fly!" She and the tallest one hopped right over the railing. But their darker-toned companion halted and froze upon climbing one step up.
"Gaaawd, damn it!" She pounded her fist on it in anger before getting off in an incensed huff.
"Problem?" Junko raised an intrigued brow.
"No." She huffed. "Hands together." She requested, her faux gravelly voice cracking a little under the stress. Junko watched her pull a set of zipties from her sleeve and approach. But in the act of complying, her nose caught the scent of something pungent and particular.
"Wow. How'd you get a set of those things?" Junko attempted to strike up a Q and A session.
"Come along." But she was resisting the bait. Much like another certain taciturn teen Junko knew. "We're going all the way up."
"You gonna be giving that gun back to me after this is through?" Junko side eyed her firearm in the girl's mitts. "It's my first." She fished again. "I'd hate to have to go through the embarrassment of requisitioning a new one or training with a different model."
"Hmph," She snorted, stuffing Junko's gun up her sleeve, then foisting the unconscious girl's body over her shoulder, lifting with surprisingly little difficulty.
"So why should she need some shiny rock over heart resuscitation and some CPR?" Junko hoped a more earnest question would get something out of her. "What's she need it for?"
"To live." She spoke succinctly. "Now stay quiet or risk being shot by some gung-ho grunt."
"Gee, so nice that you care." Junko carefully followed stair by stair until she was practically close enough to feel the girl's long, flowing black locks in her face. And in so doing, she got a more conclusive whiff of that alien odor. It was strong, it was familiar, and it was definitely emanating from her.
"Stop hovering so close!" She warned. "Stop staring!"
"I'm sorry," Junko apologized. "It's just… You absolutely reek of Resplendence!"
Rena Minami heard a knock on the magic-gated entry point behind her. "Not now Kaede!" The knocking happened again, this time a sequenced one, a quick knock, followed by two quicker knocks, two hard knocks, a pause, then two quick hard knocks. That signified that it was from Ryo, which annoyed Rena, because that code was only supposed to be done whenever she was officially acting on behalf of her and Rena's secret Oriko Society leader. "Oh, for crying out loud, Ryo-" She hustled over and opened it, only to find a surprise waiting to greet her. "Oh. You." It wasn't Ryo, but rather Oriko's handpicked Torchbearer in the flesh.
"Hiyaa, LuLa!" The young lady presented a smile while twiddling her thumbs and index fingers. "RiRi's out there keeping watch." She had a book tucked underneath her armpit.
"Nevermind the nicknames. What're you here for?" Rena asked in a hush-hush tone. "Kaede hasn't seen you, has she?"
"Nah, your little cinnamon roll's deep asleep over on that couch," She invited herself inside the containment room, her magical girl wardrobe concealed underneath a long, lavender cloak, which upon Rena's closer inspection turned out to be a high-priced bath robe. "She's a lil' cutie, that one! So peaceful and innocent-looking, with that snuggly doll of hers." She tugged down her hood and revealed the rest of her face. "I can see why you wanna look out for her."
"You didn't answer my other question." Rena stepped aside so her guest could better see the sight unfolding in the room before them. The quartet of Momoko, Leila, Manaka and Mitama the Coordinator were standing hand-in-hand and frozen in place around the sphere-confined Tsuruno, everyone's skin, clothes and forms were as white as marble. Their only sign of color and life came from their respective Soul Gems on their bodies, each pulsing and flickering like an evening campfire. "Does that book of Oriko's contain anything that'll help us out at all?"
"Prophet Oriko was many things, a visionary, a genius, a trailblazer, and a very tortured mind," She set the book on the table and opened it. "She tended to veil her prophecies behind esoteric phrasing, coded messages, linguistic changeups and lotsa flowery prose. Only those in the know would make heads or tails of it. That's why it took me so long even though her passage about it was scribbled right on the back of page twenty-four here." She licked her finger and turned to the page in question. "See what I mean?"
"Uh-huh. It looks like utter nonsense to me," Rena mumbled in agreement. "Is that a star? How're you supposed to pronounce a star?"
"That just marks it as something for my special attention," The girl explained. "As she knew that I used to mark the notes I'd pass to my bae with 'em."
"So you've read through it?" Rena cocked her head to one side in an impatient manner. "What's it saying we should do?"
"Well, it doesn't say we should do anything specific really. For Oriko seemed convinced that spelling events out beat by beat would only cause them to be locked in place and unchangeable, which was the last thing she wanted to happen for us," She elaborated. "Her writings are supposed to serve as more of an opinionated guidebook, with oblique warnings and passing references to all the little forks we'll face in the roads ahead."
"Tch!" Rena grimaced. "You'd better not have come all this way just to tell me there's nothing you can do to help, otherwise-"
"Hey, easy!" The Torchbearer cut her off. "I'm not here to be the bearer of bad news, okay?" She grabbed Rena by the upper arms and shook her a little. "I came because in Oriko's passages she warned that the gifts from those Mitakihara girls are not going to put a definite end to the witch system and drive all magical baddies to extinction. She believed they'll adapt, and find new ways to feast off human emotional energy and grow into things we can neither fathom nor fight." Rena was shaken hard enough that it caused her chest to bounce around in her tube-topped magical girl outfit. "Tonight I think we're witnessing one such evolution occur right before our eyes. And if it's not smothered in the cradle here, it might just supersede us on the ol' food chain."
"Woah. Crap." Rena jerked herself away from the girl's clutches. She did not appreciate being so casually manhandled. "She at least had enough unfrayed brains left to tell us what we're up against, right?" Or rather, girl-handled. Even if it was by someone who was only trying to be upbeat in the face of a perilous predicament.
"From the tainted heart of the Winchester Playhouse it arose, inflicted by the rabid sheepdog's dying bite; a formless, shapeless eidolon of intelligence latent within the souls of the brave, the bold, the acute and obtuse alike," She quoted. "It shall not be content to subsist as a great plaga upon our kindred; no, nor can its appetite for despair be sated by emulating Walpurgisnacht's supernatural devastation; nay, its abiding ambition is to exact vicious vindictive vengeance upon Who; but what, where, when, how or why are questions not meant for mere mortals to deliberate."
"Ehhhh?" Rena could only make a confused grunt and shrug.
"You see here? She put specific words into other languages, as if to highlight them as clues. This one up here is Greek, while this later descriptor is Spanish but I believe traces its roots back to Latin, while these two other words here and here," she pointed at them. "They're written in that strange runespeak that Oriko discovered and deciphered inside witch labyrinths." She expounded. "Uhm, anyway, as inventive as The Coordinator's pow-wow circle is, I'm worried she's approaching it wrong in treating it like a spirit exorcism when going by Oriko's crumbs I think it's something more akin to a contagious illness." She spelled out. "And if that's true, then exposing it to four more live souls like this is in actuality providing it with four more potential carriers!"
"Damn it!" Rena hustled over to Momoko and tried to tug her away from the circle. "Momoko! Wake up!" But it was no use. "Momoko!" She was a statue. "You're playing right into its hands!"
"Girl means a lot to you, doesn't she?" The Torchbearer waved her hand in front of Momoko's unresponsive gaze.
"Pfffft! No!" Rena snorted back a surge of sadness and tears down her throat. An outburst of emotion not made because of her own fears nor for Momoko's sake, but from the thought of Kaede facing tragedy so soon after facing truth. The poor thing would snap like a twig from the weight of it. "She's a nosy, pushy, talky sibling wannabe to me!" She fibbed. "But to Kaede, she's the whole world." She followed with a fact.
"Ah, I see." She nodded. "Lucky thing this cutie came prepared, eh?" She took a pair of shiny gemstones out of her robe pocket. "Gimme your hand!"
"What?" Rena understood the implicit order. "Why?" It didn't mean she would go along with it without some pushback.
"Cute as my wonderful face is, your mentor and these two have never seen it before, so they've got no reason to trust anything I say or do once I go in," She explained. "But if I do it with your power looking like you, things'll have a better chance of going smoother."
"But you just told me they put themselves in danger doing this in the first place, and now you want to be its next potential victim?"
"Ahh, but this cutie's got an advantage these girls don't, you see?" She winked one eye and looked at Rena with the other through the prism of a tiny yellow diamond between her fingers. "Oriko's later musings claim this thing takes refuge within the untapped recesses of a person's soul, but in my special self's case, there's no vacancy, because my bae's already residing within me, which ought to make me immune."
"You've got no way of knowing that for sure!" Rena exclaimed. "Honestly, I-" She hesitated to say the next part out loud. She and Ryo sometimes exchanged texts after meetings, debating whether or not this leader of theirs really did have the specter of a boy lingering behind those soft eyes of hers. And she was the skeptic. "I'm not sure I believe the voice inside your head is…" Her voice trailed. "The person you believe it is." She phrased her concern as diplomatically as her confrontational personality would allow.
"Awwwwww, you think I'm crazy, do you?" She pouted. "Boo-Hoooo!" She whined in a dejected, yet somehow bubbly and cloying tone.
"No no, not crazy per se," Rena walked it back. "I just think you have a vivid imagination. And that can be a totally normal way to cope with loss." Rena said. "Or so my teacher in Health Class says."
"Oh." The young lady nodded in understanding. "Mmmmmmaybe there's some way I can prove my wish was realsies to you?" She asked in a manner that struck Rena's ear as more of a proposal.
"Oooooh boy." Rena nervously folded her arms. "Whaddaya want out of me?"
"Weeeeeellllll," Her index finger tickled the part of her face below her lips and above her chin. "I know that I can exchange my magic exchanging powers with another girl, but I've always been curious to know if I could also swap around something else inside me as well."
"Which is?" Rena mouthed out a question she already knew she was going to regret asking.
"Him!" She squeaked. "He's been cooped up inside me so long, he says he's starting to feel as if he's a prisoner. But if I can put him inside you," She suggested. "Combined with your shapeshifting ability, he'd have a body of his own again." She beamed a smile as if it were the bestest idea anyone's ever conceived. "Even if it's for juuuuust a teeeeensy tiny little while!"
"Nnnnnope!" Rena's folded arms snapped to a negative cross pose. "No way! Not gonna be some stir-crazy boy's meat puppet! That's just… Ewwwwwww!"
"Aw, c'mooooon!" She moaned. "Don't tell me you've never used your power to revive the image of a lost loved one in your life before? Just so you could make a new memory of them? Have ya'?"
"Well, I uh-" Rena lapsed for a moment. She had indeed done it before and done so for a reason. Her late grandmother used to bake her favorite kind of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. But after she passed, the cookies never tasted quite the same. Even knowing the recipe by heart, every attempt at replicating those beloved treats resulted in something going awry. Either she burned them, undercooked them, didn't use enough sugar, used too much, forgot to check the expiration date on the dough, or had to settle for an off-brand oatmeal. It was aggravating. But one try, one time, baking all alone, her other family out for the weekend, with all the right ingredients in order, other variables double checked, she indulged in a nostalgic little whim and saw her smiling grandma's reflection on the baking tray. And as luck would have it, that was the one time her cookies turned out perfect. So good, her proud grandmother's face even provided her with enough willpower to spare a few of those cookies for Kaede. "Wait, we're veering off course here!" She was snapped from her momentary space-out by the sight of Momoko's ongoing one. "Didn't you just claim your boyfriend would protect you from whatever's trying to infect them? If you pumped him into me, what by your logic would stop it from infecting you"
"Darn, that's a really good point," She smacked her forehead with her open palm as she thought for a moment. "Well, I was gonna help them out with this help I've got in my hands here, but what if you could help me in helping them out with all this help I've got with me instead?"
"I… Don't follow?" Rena cocked her head and squinted her eyes.
"To tell you the truth," The Torchbearer put her backhand to her inner cheekbone and tilted her upper body towards Rena's ear. "His smarts have always been the extra spark that fuels the billions of synapses inside my genius brain. While me, the cutie patootie is little better than our operation's grace and beauty!"
"So what the hell are you good for?" The frustrated Rena circled back to a rephrase of her original question.
"Well, if you don't trust me to help you get your mentor out of this jam, then maybe you should trust yourself to do it… And trust the help my bae can provide you?"
"Next we'll tighten up the screws under this part." Yachiyo, Felicia, Sana and Kyubey looked on as The young Time Lady put the finishing touches on her latest makeshift invention. "Press the power button, boot past the new BIOS." In record time she had jerry-rigged a connection from a wired-up pasta strainer strapped atop Iroha's head to an input-output jack located at the base of her mechanized friend Hitomi's neck, to a hub module that was a modified video game console, with a series of network cables leading all the way to a terminal located underneath her ship's main control system. "And she's about ready to take the wheel."
"How much longer do we gotta keep these thingies on our heads?" Felicia was barely holding back her urge to scratch and peel at the thin golden strips stuck to her temples like adhesive bandages.
"Until my TARDIS's Security and Tactical support AI can generate suitable reproductions of us to aid those girls keeping the Cybermen stalled and their leader preoccupied in dreamland." Sayaka stated. "It's done rendering our basic avatars, but in the meantime we've gotta keep providing it active samples of our brain wave patterns while we're undertaking our missions out here."
"And you're going to leave the task of safeguarding these girls' minds up to an old gaming machine?" Yachiyo uttered with a skeptical expression as she gently slid Sana's curly locks aside to help apply two patches to the side of her head.
"The routine is running through it like an immersive VR video game," Sayaka clarified. "Little white machine, broadcasting the dreams, now literally. So the Cybermen can't stop it with another feedback surge transmitted through communications interlink." She typed in a set of additional instructions via a wireless keyboard. "And the revised termination code can only be performed by our party host." She hit the 'Enter' key and slid the device away along the smooth floor, where it rested beside the paralyzed Cyberman's bulbous head.
"You won't be taking over or enslaving this world, Touka." Iroha Tamaki repeated, her eyes rolling back and drifting into a trance. "You can't do it, because that's what I wished for in my contract with Kyubey!" The magical girls collectively gave Kyubey a distrustful side-eyed glance.
"And telling them that is going to stop those meanie robots from taking over the whole world?" Sana waved a curious, gloved hand in front of Iroha's unresponsive gaze.
"As far as their dataset tells them, a magical girl's wish becomes an immutable fact of reality, so once their recalculations conclude that even trying to conquer Earth would be fruitless, they'll abandon it and fall back to their secondary objectives." Sayaka stepped over to the exit, slowly ratcheted open the door and peeked out. "Which is to conserve energy, fortify what they currently control and establish contact with the wider Cyber Collective out in deep, deep space." Beyond the heaps of slain Cybermen strewn about the corridor rang the clanging of feet in retreat. "So our goals here are threefold: Liberate Nemu, whose Soul Gem from what we observed is quickly teetering on the brink." She snapped her fingers and pointed at a pair of smartphones sitting on a bookshelf.
"Here you go." Sana picked them up and trotted over.
"Thanks," Sayaka pointed her glow-tipped saber at the devices and pressed a button on the side. "Second, we've gotta eliminate the energy source that's made this entire operation of theirs possible. Which means, I'm sorry to say, killing the witch at the center of it all."
"That'll be my burden," Yachiyo stepped up and took one of the reprogrammed phones. "Mifuyu's cry is the entire reason I came."
"Take this one," Sayaka tossed the other into Felicia's hands. "I've turned them into a radar that's pinging the magical entities active deeper inside the labyrinth. Logically, if this louder one over here is the witch, then the weaker one there would have to be Nemu."
"Gotcha!" Felicia looked at the screen. "We'll save Nemu! Just leave it to us!" She offered a firm and confident salute with one hand while grabbing Sana's arm with the other. "Right?" Sana agreed to partake with a much more meeker smile and wave.
"And finally, we make sure they don't get in touch with the other Cybermen across the cosmos," Sayaka took the first steps out. "Which means finding and dealing with their ringleader." Her arm stuck out her tool and with a whizzing sound it scanned the vicinity. "Dibs on that."
"You do realize you are about to slay a twelve year old whose cardinal sin is desperately wanting to survive, right?" Yachiyo reminded her with a candid remark.
"The bright-eyed good girl in me is hoping Iroha can reason with whatever ember of humanity is left in her," Sayaka said. "Or that the surgery isn't so extensive that my healing magic can't do something for her." She added. "But the realist in me… Is ready to carry that weight on my conscience."
"Good, I'm glad." Yachiyo split off and headed down the corridor. "Because I couldn't trust you if that wasn't the case. But," she turned one last time, hand signaling to the two younger ladies that the coast was clear. "What'll happen to that poor robotized girl in there, should you prevail?"
"I don't know."
"So you were our estranged Big Sis, Iroha Zeta." Touka the Cyber Regina stated back inside the digital daydream. "That checks with my probability estimates. But to be systematic I made sure to track down every Iroha Tamaki within a one hundred kilometer radius and convert each in sequence by proximity."
"Those unfortunate girls," Nemu quietly uttered in disapproval.
"I made a selfish mistake once before, when I didn't keep in touch with you guys after losing Ui," Iroha apologized to the pair. "You wouldn't've done what you did if I'd been there, and I wouldn't've fallen into the rut that made me lose hope." She loaded the crossbow attached to her wrist and directed it at Touka.
"Proverbial water under the bridge," Touka replied in a clinical and rather dismissive tone. "For without your all-too-human cowardice, I would not have come to see the ultimate folly of emotions." She nudged the back of her costumed acolyte with her umbrella handle. "Nor would I have utilized the experience to capitalize on a chance to craft my own ultimate friend, one who matches myself in raw intelligence, Nemu in resourcefulness, Ui in patience and yourself in determination, but with none of the drawbacks that stem from the frailty of the human condition, and all of the loyalty that comes with being a Cyberman."
"Remaking a person without their humanity isn't making anything but a Franstein's Monster!" Hitomi was the first to resume hostilities, lunging at Gamma and tackling it with a force that wasn't possible in the physical constraints of reaility.
"Delete! Delete! Delete!" The surrounding Cybermen immediately reacted by attacking the rest.
"No, you won't!" Iroha launched her shot, which landed at Touka's feet and exploded in a burst of pink light. From that seed burst into the sky a thousand arrows made of pink light.
"Why do you resist?" Touka bunny-hopped out of the way, opening her umbrella and using it as a shield. "Can you not see that our goal is to expedite the evolution and empowerment of all humankind?"
"People don't like to be told what to do, Touka!" Iroha loaded and fired an arrow that struck into the umbrella. "They don't like to be told who they should be, either. Or what they should need or want! They want the freedom to explore their purpose in life themselves!"
"Freedom is irrelevant. Self determination invariably leads to gradual systemic rot and inevitable failure." Touka struck back, expelling a wall of flames from her parasol ala a flamethrower. "Recent experiments with representative government aside, humanity has historically operated at its most efficient under authority-driven planned societies." she buttressed her defenses behind a shield of red transparent ones and zeroes. "And to be accepted as the leader of our newly-incorporated Cyber society, I must acquire that Codex!" Iroha hid from the flames behind the protection of her cloak.
"Unnnnnnnnnnnngh!" Gamma crashed hard through the side of a virtual concrete structure. Even though it had the means to disregard any digital damage incurred from harm in this dreamscape, Gamma still let out a verbal expression of its displeasure.
"Who are you?" Its opponent charged. "Who?"
"I am Unit One Zero Two, codename Gamma." It replied, even though it was under no obligation to.
"No!" When it recovered it found itself enmeshed within a wooden box containing fine granular-sized silicate particulates. Surrounding it was an assortment of equipment designed for the purpose of a human juvenile's physical exercise. One such object, a chute with a slippery bed in which said individuals slid, was painted white and labeled 'Kamihama General Hospital.' "This is where you first met your little cousin. He was born eight weeks premature and had to stay in an incubation chamber." Gamma stood up and readied its weapon. "Seven years old and couldn't understand why you weren't allowed to hold the new baby you came so far to visit." Its foe telegraphed an impending offensive maneuver by raising her scythe. "So you cried for an hour non stop right in that swing set." But Gamma did not counterattack. Too distracted by her words, Gamma responded with a blocking attempt that couldn't stop the tip of the blade from slicing clean into an unprotected juncture between its upper left appendage and neck.
"Auuugggh!" Gamma made another noise that was not cataloged in its sound banks. "Error!" It was leaking an unidentified viscous red fluid, and the leakage was adversely affecting the way its left appendage could move.
"But of course you don't remember any of that. You don't even know what tears are or why we cry them, do you?" The female fighting it bucked it again with a foot to its chest, knocking it not to the ground but instead sending it straight out of the dream's cyberspace boundary. "So what right do you have to look the way you do?" She shouted as Gamma tumbled down into a million beams of bright rainbow light that stretched across all corners of the electromagnetic spectrum. "I'm me! You hear meeee?" Her voice echoed. "IIIIII'm meeeee!"
"Delete! Delete! Delete!" Additional waves of Cybermen infiltrated their private battleground. "Primary target acquired!" They had their sights trained on Nemu, at their leader's behest.
"Nemu!" Iroha dove in and scooped the girl into her arms.
"Projective calculations indicate Nemu's magical output should not be decaying at such an advanced rate now minus her manifested support duo," Touka noted. "Such contrary data suggests an additional factor is at play."
"She's fading because she's sad to see you and I fighting like this," Iroha dabbed away a tear of Nemu's with the cuff of her glove. "She probably blames herself for turning you into a monster, too."
"It is more likely that foolish AI of hers bound my Codex to her soul and maintaining the data tranche is causing her strain," Touka took to the air and pounced. "If her goal was to avert a conflict, then they should not have purloined it in the first place." Her assault was blocked by an interloper with a halberd.
Gamma found itself flailing about in an abstract space, surrounded by rapidly moving and spinning images of faces and places, of encounters and events.
"The first tooth I lost happened while I was trying to ride a bicycle. I crashed." Its rival narrated. "The pain scarred me so much I was too scared to try it again that day." The girl popped into view stepping through a digitized image of a two wheeled transportation vehicle. "I always wanted to learn. But after I transferred over to public school my parents made me take all these stupid extracurricular private classes, and I never had the time for it." Gamma did not know why this individual would be telling it such information, when they were supposed to be engaged in combat. "Piano lessons," Gamma dodged a falling heavy musical instrument. "Four different dance instructors," Across Gamma's viewfield flashed four distinctive humans, three dark-haired females and one male wearing a piece of headwear it identified as a beret, although the file that specified such a piece of not relevant data should not have existed and was drawing a needless amount of processing effort. "Why'd they force me to perform at all those dull Tea Ceremonies?" The untraced sound of cracking porcelain distracted it. Was her strategy to induce an information overload?
"Input error!" Gamma declared in its mounting disorientation.
"Heeyaaaaawwwwggh!" On cue the girl came at Gamma with her weapon. Still trying to devine this human's overarching strategy, Gamma opted to remain on the defensive. It parried her kinetic wind-up spin attack, but couldn't approximate the timing of each strike to the nanosecond and thus was unable to formulate an effective counter. "They'd never indulge me in what I wanted, but would constantly insist I do the things that would make me stand out as a student, as a child, as a girl!" There didn't seem to be a readily predictable rhythm to her charges at all. "But you don't know what it's like to want something, do you? Because you're so programmed and proper, you'll never want anything, just do as you're told, who only lives to serve those who made you!" Gamma sensed that sharpened blade making contact again, slicing follicles from the top of its primary appendage. A fortuitously timed duck was all that spared it from fatal damage. Was it a tactical mistake to choose not to wear that thick piece of silver headwear?
"Delete! Delete! Delete!"
"Let me carry Nemu," The Avatar of Yachiyo recommended. "You should prioritize engagement with The Cyber Regent."
"O- Okay," Iroha made the hand off. While she was well aware of Sayaka's switcheroo, she was a little hesitant to entrust an algorithmic ally with a real life. "Keep her comfy, and don't let those scary things touch her."
"We shall do all we can," It assured her.
"Second simulation termination attempt failed," A Cyberman Adjutant informed its commander. "Abort? Retry? Fail?"
"Retry," The Cyber Regina ordered. "Always retry." She crossed her arms and tapped her toe in a show of impatience, a behavioral holdover from her days as an organic being. "Their only logical endgame is the elimination of our energy sources. Assign Units One Zero Three and One Zero Four to Unit One Zero Zero. Deploy all active CBX Units plus One Zero One to our host." She watched Iroha scramble for safety from a spot on high.
"It's not real. It's a video game. Gotta stay focused," Iroha told herself in a breathy pant. "Gotta buy time for Nemu's sake! Aiiyeee!" She yelped when she saw the very next thing around the corner.
A towering, silver-skinned metal man lumbered her way. "Delete! De-" Iroha blasted an arrow through its black eye indent.
"Whew!" Iroha wiped away some sweat pooling above her brows. Learning to shoot on the fly, searching for cover, and getting winded and sweaty. "Gotta help for as long as I can!" The workout sure was way more intense than what that girl in blue had pitched. "Huuuuuuup!" She leapt over a chasm, turned and and fired an explosive bolt at two others giving chase. Upon detonation they tumbled into the abyss below.
"There is a certain poetic appropriateness to your particular armament of choice." She heard a lecturing voice tell her upon landing on the other side. "As we are indeed more vulnerable to low technology implements than the weapons of contemporary civilization, due to the inherent incalculability of melee fighting."
"Touka!" Iroha gasped. The girl she once knew as a friend was flanked by another pair of Cybermen. Without provocation Iroha took aim and fired at the mechanical duo.
"Humanity is at this moment at a crucial evolutionary crossroads." She continued explaining, snapping her fingers and manifesting fresh replacements. "Either it leaves this rocky cradle behind as it gets warmer and grows depleted of resources or it does not and faces inexorable decline and extinction." They took a singular step in Iroha's direction and were promptly eliminated. And all it elicited from their leader was a sly smirk. "I do recall discussions with Nemu regarding any theoretical cosmic pushback from our impending wish. I told her there would of course be consequences, but that magic would in due course be revealed as just another one of the cosmic forces, thus not beyond our brains' scope of understanding and eventual control."
"I don't understand what you're trying to say." Iroha unloaded more rounds into some encroaching Cybermen. But when it came to pointing her tips at the root cause of her struggle, she could only bring herself to firing warning shots and other deliberate misses.
"What I am saying is that akin to the Newtonian principle of every action having an equal but opposite reaction, every magical girl's wish is one day fated to be negated by an equivalent counterforce." And the Cyber Regina had figured out as much, which was why she didn't flinch at the notion of this girl pointing a loaded crossbow at her. "So one cannot help but wonder if, in the hastily-considered act of saving Earth and its inhabitants from my benevolent takeover, in the long run you have only sabotaged their chances of survival." The next arrow zipped past and grazed the large black bow in her hair.
"Delete! Delete! Delete!"
Gamma now found itself in the confines of a facility constructed to facilitate commerce and trade. It was surrounded by items designed for the purpose of entertaining preadolescents. Some were miniaturized forms of transportation equipment, others were non-harmful versions of primitive weapons, while on the other side featured such things as small facsimile humans made of plastic and anthropomorphized animals. All irrelevant information, yet it knew what these things were.
"Look at him!" Its co-belligerent tossed one such plaything its way. Gamma caught it in one hand with little effort. "Remember him?" A curious attack strategy, as impact would not have done damage. "The toy in your hand, dummy!" She commanded in such a way that forced Gamma into compliance.
"Ursidae," Gamma identified it in monotone. The exact species was indeterminate. It was composed of such fabric materials as plush, wool and plastic pellets.
"Not a clue nor a care about good ole friend Worthington Bear, huh?" Its combat counterpart spoke from beyond its dimly-illuminated surroundings.
"'Friend'?" Gamma repeated, confused. It had heard that term used in the context of describing living individuals before, but never assigned to an inanimate object. Could it be a sign of this female's further divorce from all logical actions?
"Well I know his whole silly backstory. He's a visitor from Paraguay. Dreamed of traveling the world until he got hurt in a hiking accident. Now he's holed up in a toy store seeking a companion to help ferry him along on his next leg of the journey. I remember him looking so lonely scrunched in the back of that toy shelf. He was cute and I was lonely too. So I snatched him up and rushed him home."
"You are in error." Gamma retorted. "That bioform is not native to that region of the globe."
"Tch! Way to miss the darn point!" Like a rocket she and her scythe came out screaming. "Huuuuuurrrraaaagh"! Their two blades swung once, twice, then came together with a heavy clang on the third time. Gamma's foe took this momentary stalemate as another chance to lean in and address it directly. "Can you not appreciate anything cute? Do you lack the capacity to see a small piece of yourself in something else?"
"Unnnnnppphh!" Gamma's olfactory appendage bore the brunt of a sudden cranium-to-cranium impact. It started leaking more of that strange, thick red liquid.
"If I'm my memories, my knowledge, my thoughts, my feelings, and my connections," The girl had been damaged by the impact as well. She was rubbing her hand around a spot above her right eye. "If I'm everything that makes me me, then what are youuuu?"
"I am-" Gamma stopped itself as the drippage had entered its virtual oral cavity. "I am Enhanced Biomechanical Lifeform- Urrhhk!" An additional appendage inside said cavity detected the leakage and provoked a verbal reaction. The sensation was thoroughly unpleasant. "Unit One Zero Two, Code-"
"No!" The human socked it in an unexpectedly sensitive spot located underneath the upper body and just above the torso. "You're not!" Gamma could not make sense of how injuries it experienced in this artificial world could be having a greater effect on its combat performance than the much more concrete and extensive damage it endured back in the real world. "Sorry!"
"Very well. If you are going to treat me as your villain, Big Sis," The Cyber Regina clapped twice. "I may as well embrace the part. All spare Units, engage designation Iroha Zeta."
"Delete! Delete! Delete!" Out of nowhere a large, green jewel-topped shield got in the way of their barrage of energy blasts.
"Over here, Miss Tamaki!" The digitally recreated Sana waved a signal for Iroha to follow. Not far behind were the representations of Felicia and Yachiyo, with the weakened Nemu in Yachiyo's firm and caring arms.
"She has programmed her hench-machines to self-replicate inside our simulation at an exponential rate," The Yachiyo avatar observed. "Which means for every unit we defeat, two more appear in its place, and for every four, spawn an additional sixteen."
"So should we give up trying to fight them off, and focus on evasion, protecting these two and hiding?" The Pseudo-Sana inquired.
"No, what we should do is smash, smash, smash, smash, and smash until they reboot so many times their cyber circuits crash and burn all at once!" The imitation Felicia was anxious to take the offensive approach, much like her flesh and blood counterpart.
"So you guys are all her ship trying to think of what to do next?" Iroha tried to lift Nemu's spirits by taking her loose, limp hand as they fled.
"Correct." Yachiyo confirmed. "But our NPC personality profiles are being reconfigured and individualized to correlate with their brain wave patterns."
"Yiiiipes!" Iroha ducked a stray laser blastthat went whizzing above her hood.
"Back off!" Felicia retaliated by smacking a big rock at the culprit with her hammer like a driver to a golf ball.
"Touka," Iroha called out. "Do you remember that time you turned Ui's toy choo-choo into a real steam locomotive, and it wound up setting fire to Nemu's book collection?" She wasn't giving up on appealing to the girl's humanity yet.
"Vaguely," The Cyber Regina's voice thundered above. "I was attempting to craft a perpetual motion machine. From a small-scale technical demonstration my invention had the potential to change the world."
"But all you did was ruin Ui's gift and Nemu's belongings, and hurt your friendships," Iroha retorted. "Don't you see? You're doing the same thing now as you did then! You're taking things precious to others and using them for selfish ends!"
"Ui's train was but one of an entire line of unit models. Not irreplaceable. While Nemu's books contained no information that was not already duplicated onto superior storage media. Nothing but combustible materials were lost." Touka excused. "In my calculations I justified that their own fondness for me as a peer would lead to an eventual reconciliation." She hovered her way down to Iroha's level in a controlled descent using her umbrella as a spinning helicopter blade. "Which it soon did. In my humble observation, sentimental attachments to personal items and relationships have been a hindrance to true technological progress, a weakness I am working towards eliminating." She touched down right in Iroha and the others' path.
"But your personal attachment to me was the reason you brought me here in the first place," Iroha tried another appeal. "Going by the way you put things, then you made a mistake when you did that." She loaded her crossbow and once again took aim at the diminutive Cyber Regent.
"Yes," She agreed to Iroha's huge surprise, which gave her pause. "I made an error."
"Delete! Delete! Delete!" The Cybermen's collective chant telegraphed their movements toward blocking the group in.
"One possible way we could disrupt their correlative maneuverings would be to take out their leader in a decapitation strike," Yachiyo's reproduction suggested. "Shoot her."
"I-" Iroha's mounted crossbow shook atop her wrist. "Y- You're sorry?"
"Sorry!" Gamma's biological opponent repeated that word upon inflicting another punishing hand-delivered blow. "It won't matter what you see, where you go, what you do or how much raw information you cram into those microchips of yours." Their virtual arena kept shifting and reshaping and resetting things around them. Now they were trading blows in an educational setting, a room with transparent walls made of acrylic glass and pupil sitting stations that retracted into the floor. "Without a mind or a will or a life of your own, you're nothing." But Gamma was unable to accomplish much when it came to landing a counter-hit. "Nothing but an empty vessel!"
"Error!" Gamma feebly squealed, tripping over the partially stuck-out armrest of one seat and tumbling hard into the custom-paneled walls. "Experiencing systemwide disrupt- Aaaaaaaah!" The sound of its cranium striking the glass did not register but the impact and unpleasant sting did, and everything around it went into a disorienting spin.
"Disrupted?" Its rival finished its verbalized thought. "Now you know what I'm going through!" By the moment Gamma was able to find some semblance of a reorientation, their backdrop had been altered again. Now they were in an entertainment venue, center stage of a performance hall. "I was abducted without even knowing what was happening to me, tortured then transformed, all the while having someone else keep the wool pulled over my eyes!" Numerous vague silhouette shapes of humanoid beings sat watching in the seats facing them. "I don't want to become part of anyone's resistance, nor some machine queen, I just wanted to help Iroha escape and after that maybe pick up the pieces of the wreckage of my life." They had no additional features and thus no optical appendages, yet somehow they were making Gamma wearier by their mere presence alone. "But then I saw into her mind. I picked up on all the doubts she had as to whether anyone's miracle or magic would be able to fix me, my real body being sequestered inside some physics-defying crystal. Dang it! Dang it! Dang it!" And Gamma found the hot white beaming spotlights to be a most overwhelming distraction, too. "And to you all this is just going through one ear and straight out the other, isn't it?"
"Input overload," Gamma obliviously declared. "Cannot comply with the Cyber Regent's set instructions! Defaulting to self-protect mode!"
"I don't know if it's too late to save me from being stuck this way forever like she worries it is." Gamma's dewy, dollfaced opponent summarily disarmed it with a hooking swipe of her scythe, shook her head and knocked the hapless Cyberman backwards with a high knee kick to its chest. "But I do know I can't be moping about it here in fantasyland while there's people who still need me to do whatever I've got to do out there." They were whisked to yet another new location, a domestic dormitory, where Gamma's tumultuous tumble was arrested by a cushioned and decorated mattress. "And if you're gonna go on just doing as you're told, never speaking out, never questioning things or thinking for yourself, just being a robot, then I'm sorry… You have no reason to be at all!" Gamma laid there frozen and helpless, as its attacker's curved blade loomed large above the green jewel on its chest, ready to deliver a swift, decisive coup de grâce.
"I am…" Gamma searched its memory banks for a word sufficient to describe the electrochemical rush and electronic overclocking that was on the brink of entirely paralyzing it in the face of what it was anticipating. It was about to experience another abrupt and possibly permanent cessation of operations in a matter of uncountable microseconds. The unit did not wish to go through that most traumatic and unprocessable experience a second time. "Error!" In self-protect mode, it could think of only one last recourse to avert such a catastrophic system-wide failure.
"Kiiiiiiiyyaaaaaahhhhh-"
"Waaaaaaaaaahhhhh-"
"Uaaaaaaaaahhhhhck!" A splash of that thick fluid splattered up and sprayed their faces. Her blade, towering so intensely over it just a moment before, fell limp to the floor. "I d-" She choked, noticing the jagged dagger Gamma thrust into her gut. Then she dropped like a stone to the bed's opposite side. "I don't- Uhck!" Without any logical justification for why, Gamma reached out its armor-clad hand to grab hers. "Don't understand!" With a feeble little tug she managed to take it and pull the stupefied Gamma down on top of her. "Y- You- You''re crying!" Gamma's visual senses were being blurred and obscured by gobs of clear liquid, dripping like precipitation onto its fatally wounded rival's visage. "Wh- What's it mean that I'm dying but you're the one crying?"
"Does not compute." Gamma responded in unintentional agreement. It was searching for a way to stop the bleeding and close her gaping wound, even though it was the one responsible for causing it, and they were cutthroat adversaries not minutes earlier. It was victorious. So why was it reacting like it was the defeated one?
"H- Ha- Haaaa- Auuuggh!" She forced a fit of laughter out of her pained insides. "Y- You're r- Really an innocent, aren't you? Sh- She kept the wool over your eyes." Her shaking hand grabbed at something near Gamma's neck and yanked at it. "Luh- Look!"
"Circular gemstone," Gamma identified the object she took. "Emerald."
"N- Nooooo," She reached for the jewel adorning the bloodied bowtie around her neck. "Suh- Silly! D- Do you seeeee?"
Gamma acknowledged their apparent indistinguishability with an indifferent nod. "Irrelevant." It was much more concerned with providing medical aid, even though it could not articulate a reason why.
"Looooooook!" Her pale, trembling hand lifted off the stained carpet, curled her digits and pointed at something in the corner. Gamma acquiesced to a singular peek. But that was all it took. For in that corner sat a reflective surface, which Gamma identified as a mirror. But of more interest to it were the two individuals reflected on its digital surface.
"I- I- I-" Gamma was beset by another disorienting malfunction. While in that nebulous void space with its creator, The Cyber Regent informed Gamma that it was on an unconscious level projecting a female image which was a residual holdover of its former identity. "Do not. Understand?" Whose facial avatar just happened to be an absolute match with hers.
"Now do you seeeeee?" The fallen girl breathed. "You. Are. Meeeeee!"