The assault starts when five black VTOL gunships hone in on the compound, completely undetected by the base's radar system. That's the first thing the guards see, five gunships dropping out of the air right on top of the landing pad, hoverdrives alight.

"Hehe," Nea hears Kisha chuckle. "Yeah, they're panicking. Air traffic control's trying to raise the alarms – Aaaand I blocked those. Shut down their comms – They aren't getting any messages out while I'm in their system. Just gonna switch those IFF protocols around now, should only take a few seconds…"

"Great. Sis?" Nea murmurs as she fingers her rifle.

"Going to town. Cover me," Lea replies, and through her scope Nea watches as her sister creeps through the compound, sneaking up on a group of hastily assembled guards rushing through the base towards the landing pad.

Lea rises out of cover like some vengeful ghost, hoists her shotgun with one hand, draws her thermal blade with the other, and blows a guard's head off even as she impales another, carving through the hapless goon like a Mega-Christmas Nuturkey. And that's when the massacre begins. Lea lays about with shotgun and sword, a whirling dervish of violence and death.

Nea finds the rich phantom taste of blood fill her mouth as Lea slaughters her way through Mendesdyn's security force. Adrenaline that's not hers' courses through her system, a satisfying high brought about by the mental connection the twins share.

"Sis, when did we turn into combat junkies?" Nea finds herself pondering.

"Duh, when we gave our bodies to mistress Alice and she turned us into sexy, deadly catgirls. Why shouldn't we feel good slaughtering these worthless bugs? It's what our mistress made us for. C'mon sis, keep up," Lea chides as she whips one of her arms around to place a panicking Mendesdyn guard in a stranglehold, before flexing her elbow just so and snapping his neck with a wet crack that echoes through Nea's own ears.

"Mmh, you do look sexy…" Nea purrs before swiveling her rifle about. "Hold on, lemme get the next group…"

Nea sights through her rifle, targets, and fires. Rounds rated for anti-vehicle work begin to pop human skulls with pinpoint position, and Nea finds a dark delight beginning to well up within her body from the sight. Head after head disappears in a mess of torn fabric, shattered plastic, and gore as Nea works her sniper rifle, pausing only to adjust her aim and reload and soon another group of Mendesdyn guards has been turned into meat.

Lea's probably onto something here. Why should Nea feel bad about killing a bunch of worthless peons, not even fit to lick the dirt off mistress Alice's boots, when the opposite makes so much more sense? When it feels so good for Nea to be fulfilling her purpose in life, to be carrying out the tasks she was reborn to perform.

Ah, the only thing that'd be better is if Lea was in bed with Nea right now… Or maybe if they were both in bed with mistress Alice…! Wait, hold on -

"Sis, your thoughts are leaking," Nea grumbles through her mental link with Lea as she targets a drone the guards have somehow managed to launch, nasty hovering thing that it is. An anti-material round cores the worthless thing and it falls out of the air, crushing a group of guards in a spray of blood.

"… Those are your horny thoughts," Lea protests as she throws a brace of grenades. Nea idly watches the explosions from her sniper's perch. Ooh, pretty, like fireworks…

Not as pretty as her twin, though. Unbidden, an image of Lea's naked body fills Nea's mind, the seductive visage of Lea giving Nea a saucy wink as she dives between Nea's legs and-

Nea only just manages to shoot the next guard she sees in the chest instead of a clean headshot, blowing a gaping hole through the entirety of his torso.

"No, these are definitely your horny thoughts, stop it," Nea replies, feeling a bit cross.

"Fine..."

The facility's automated turrets activate at that point, popping up from recessed nodes. Machine-gun fire sprays down entire groups of guards. Heavier autocannons annihilate heavier vehicles and mech suits. Automated SAM launchers fire, targeting and destroying Mendesdyn craft.

And then the rest of the maids join the fray. From her vantage point, Nea watches several kill teams of maids march into the thoroughly mauled compound, passing by destroyed security barriers, groups of slaughtered guards, and a plethora of flaming wreckage.

All in all, it took ten minutes of vicious fighting to clear out the ground level of this facility. All that's left now is to breach the lower levels, which shouldn't be too difficult.

"I'm gonna fall in with the rest of the girls. You coming, Nea?" Lea asks.

"Yeah, yeah. On my way," Nea replies as she begins packing her rifle.

--

Lea lets her twin's mental voice fade away before turning to the group of Alice's maids who are accompanying her on this raid.

"Patty, Betty, go set up the breaching charges. Everyone else, get in position. Kisha?"

"Just get me into their network and I'll kill the power when you say when, Lea," Kisha replies easily.

Good, good. Lea turns towards the last member of the group. And probably the deadliest.

"And our vanguard's going to be…"

Sveta Stassov, Primal Huntress, snorts as she leans against the pillar. The corrupted Magical Girl lets out an annoyed sigh as she fixes Lea with a weak glare.

"Sis, c'mon…" Kisha tsks disapprovingly over the comms.

"Kisha, I'm only here because you asked," Primal Huntress grumbles. "But fine, fuck it. Let's do this shit. I'm not slowing down for any of you though, got it?"

"Yes ma'am," Lea nods. "I don't think slowing down's strictly necessary though."

Because a group like this is probably overkill as it is. Every single one of Alice's maids has been enhanced to a superhuman level. Lea and Nea have been enhanced even further, and they have magical support in the form of Primal Huntress. A bonafide Magical Girl, inexperienced though she may be.

Lea's seen the same newsfeeds anyone living in Terminus City has, and she knows what Magical Girls are capable of. By herself, Sveta could have probably soloed half of this facility's security force before getting taken out. With support?

Yeah, these Mendesdyn goons don't stand a ghost chance. Everything's going to go paws-itively purr-fect, as Lea's sister might say.

"Alright then. If you wouldn't mind…?" Lea gestures to the door, and Primal Huntress sighs as she takes up a position right in the open. After placing the appropriate breaching charges, the other maids file off to the side.

"Alright, breaching in three, two, o-" A loud scream cuts off Lea's countdown, and the catgirl frowns. The scream's followed by multiple squelching noises, gunfire, the sound of pitched combat. Lea sniffs at the air as the fresh scent of blood wafts through her nostrils.

"Uh…" One of the maids, Sarah, raises her hand like a schoolgirl being asked a question. "… Did we already send in a team? Because it sounds like someone's already in there, killing their dudes. You know, more than we did."

"Kill-teams, sound off," Nea orders over the comms, picking up on her twin's unease.

"Kill-team One, we're in their admin building. Nothing here but office supplies and filing cabinets."

"Kill-team Two, we knocked out a lot of their test subjects and we're loading them onto the trucks."

"Kill-team Three, sabotaging their vehicle pool."

"Kill-team Four. Landing pad, guarding the choppers."

"And we're Kill-team Five, so…" Lea trails off, and finds herself fingering her weapons as an ominous chill radiates down her spine.

Okay, wow, that is not good. What the heck's going on?

Something thumps against the locked security door with a colossal crashing noise, and Lea takes a quick step back as the meter-thick slab of metal visibly dents.

Well.

… That's not good.

"… Firing positions. Around the door. Primal Huntress, vanguard position. Kisha, cameras?" Lea rattles off as the maids scramble for cover, training their guns on the door.

"Still air-gapped. I have no idea what's going on in there."

That same thing slams against the security door again, leaving another dent. Lea twitches as the hair on the back of her neck stands on end.

"Betty, blow the breaching charges. Light up whatever tries to charge out. Use our heaviest ordnance if we have to."

"Yes, boss," Betty chimes out before fiddling with her detonator.

"Sis, we could use some of the other teams here," Lea messages her twin.

"I'm routing them your way." Nea replies.

"Good. I don't like this."

"… Me neither."

The breaching charges go off then, blasting the security doors off their hinges, and Lea rises out of cover to begin unloading her shotgun into the cloud of dust left in the blast's wake. She's joined by the rest of her team. Rifles crack out, sub-machinegun fire chatters. Lea's ears twitch as she hears bullets ping off of something in the dust.

Or rather, someone. With Lea's enhanced vision she can see someone stepping through the withering hail of firepower without a care in the world.

Oh boy, what the hell even is this?

Primal Huntress grunts, raises her bow, and unleashes her magic. Mana arrows thunder forth, magical energy bolts capable of pitting reinforced concrete.

The magic doesn't bounce off the silhouette, just barely visible in the lingering dust cloud. It's absorbed. Nullified, dissipated entirely. Primal Huntress lowers her bow and blinks.

"What the fuck?!"

"… Call the gunships, Nea, call the gunships now-" Lea manages to get out before the damn science experiment Mendesdyn Security was working on steps fully into view, and things go straight to hell.

--

You're Alice Takanashi.

And currently, you're walking through the ruins of a secret Mendesdyn research facility, accompanied by your maids. All your maids. So many adorable, cute, gorgeous maids with pretty cat ears, ooh these good girls have done such a good job. Even now you can see groups of maids picking through the wreckage of the base, looting everything that isn't bolted down… And then coming back with bolt cutters so they can loot the things bolted down.

Laptops, hard disk drives, lab equipment, the corpses of the Mendesdyn guards, all palletized then piled onto armored trucks your maids brought specifically so they could loot all the things.

The smile on your face dims as you catch sight of a group of maids who've clearly been put through the wringer. Groaning kitties covered with bloodied bandages hastily hauled onto stretchers and taken to the VTOLs.

Your smile morphs into a frown when you realize the injured maids you keep passing by are missing limbs. And the ones who aren't are cut up with… Are those thermal katana wounds?!

And your mood seriously takes a turn for the worse when you see your darling junior, Sveta Stassov, laid up in her own cot covered in wounds and looking extremely pissed off and frustrated.

Kisha trembles by your side, and you touch the poor dear's head. She insisted on making this little sojourn with you when she heard about how hurt her sister was, and well… You had to allow it.

"Sis!" Kisha blubbers as she runs over to Sveta, practically tripping over her feet. "Sis, oh my god, you're hurt-"

"I'm fine, it's just a few cuts and scrapes. I got away pretty damn lightly all things considered. Some of the maids didn't."

And that little reminder's enough to make you, well. Pretty goshdarned irritated! Irrationally so, really. You should've expected something like this to happen. You were willingly sending your maids into a dangerous place. Injuries, wounds, pain. These are all part of the battlefield, a little pain's to be expected.

And it's not like you can't fix your pets. As long as their brains are intact and it hasn't been too long, it's not too much of a problem to fix them up. Flesh has always been your canvas, and you're woman enough to admit that you're an elegant master when it comes to fixing cute girls up~!

But the irritation remains. The irritation comes because you're self-aware enough to admit that you're a bit of a possessive monster when it comes to that which you hold dear. These are your maids that got hurt. Your precious dears, your playthings who you've personally customized, your pets. They belong to you. How dare some worthless, nameless bitch lay their filthy hands on the things that belong to you and hurt them so-

"Mistress? Are you alright?" Lupe asks, snapping you out of your little reverie. You turn to face your adjutant, feeling a bit sheepish.

Whoops, got a little carried away there...

"Hmm? Oh yeah, I will be," you say, battering down the waves of black irritation emanating from the core of your being. At least nobody died, apart from the Mendesdyn peons who got in your way. But corporate garbage hardly counts in the first place unless they're working for you or for your love's corporation. "Just checking, none of the maids are in critical condition right now?" You ask your adjutant.

"No, mistress. They're all stable for now," Lupe bows her head.

That's what you figured, but it's still a bit of a relief to hear. Phew…!

"Mmh. You two, Lea, Nea," you eye your twin assassin catgirls, coaxing them closer with one of your fingers. "Come here."

The twins sidle closer to you, looking fairly nervous. You don't blame them. On the one hand, they managed to raid this facility. You're coming away from this raid with a plethora of stolen information you'll have to go through later.

But on the other hand, there's a serious problem on your hands now. Because it turns out, this facility was experimenting on Magical Girls!

And one of their test subjects broke loose and did a runner right as your maids began to assault the compound. Talk about absolutely horrid timing.

"There aren't any signs of this… Test subject that got away?" You ask, turning to face Lea. The catgirl positively quails underneath your gaze.

"… No, mistress, we haven't been able to track her. She's… If you saw the images we captured, she's heavily augmented so…"

"So you think she's got stealth hardware on her chassis," you sigh, raising a hand to massage your temples.

Because of course, this darn corporation didn't stop at experimenting on Magical Girls. You skimmed through some of the files Kisha retrieved on the way here.

No, this compound was dedicated to figuring out how Magical Girls worked, which became increasingly obvious to you as you skimmed through the files. And how did the researchers here go about acquiring magical test subjects? Why, they made their own by torturing them into existence.

It's a well-known phenomenon that most Magical Girls pact when they go through heightened states of emotion. So, in an attempt to industrialize the process, these nincompoops decided to start kidnapping girls off the street and torture them into Pacting.

Ignoring how that's not how Pacting works in the slightest, it is entirely arbitrary; industrial torture happens to be an entirely stupidly inefficient way of producing Magical Girls, and the only reason they managed to get one viable test subject Magical Girl was simply due to the sheer volume of girls this facility was 'processing' on a regular basis.

Thousands, tens of thousands of poor, cute girls consigned to an ignominious end. You'll fully admit you're a horrible monster with no regard for human life, and even you're appalled by the sheer… Waste this facility represents.

The pointless, soulless corporate cruelty of it all.

Of course, the idiocy didn't stop there. The idiot researchers in charge here decided to take their only test subject and chrome her up to the gills with so many implants it's a miracle the added neural stress didn't cause her to go completely insane. Of course, this stupid corporation would do such a horrible, stupid thing. Giving your test subject military-grade weapons after torturing her and expecting things not to go wrong is just…

Gah. If your maids hadn't gone in and shot the guards, if this escapee hadn't murder-blended the researchers in the laboratory… Frankly, this entire situation pisses you off so much you almost want to delve back into necromancy so that you can raise these idiots from the dead and take your sweet time killing them slowly and painfully again.

What the heck were these fools thinking?!

That's what's been dropped into your lap like a bag of flaming shit from these Mendesdyn moron researchers. The rotten fruit of all their wasteful, pointlessly cruel experimentation, ordered by soulless corporate managers and carried out by spineless corporate lackeys. Because their test subject managed to escape into the woods.

She blew right past Lea, Nea, and the kill teams of maids you assembled. Had a brief fight with Primal Huntress before managing to break free. And now, Mendesdyn's mad science project's on the run, probably making a beeline towards the city.

This is a problem. And not just because Mendesdyn Security will be looking to get her back. No, it's a problem because you now know more about Operation Titanomachy.

Operation Titanomachy's an experimental Anti-Magical Girl weapons program.

And this test subject's the product of one of the research groups under Operation Titanomachy's aegis.

And considering how Mendesdyn Security had people watching your love, Kaina, Infinity Princess, well. It doesn't take a genius to put two and two together.

Frankly, you're pretty sure Kaina could body any project these idiots send her way because your love's just that awesome and powerful, but you don't want things to get to that point. Kaina shouldn't have to sully her dainty, perfect hands with the filth these disgusting mongrels are trying to stain her with.

No, no. It's probably best to handle this yourself. To take care of this colossal mess by yourself, just like taking out the trash.

The only question is how…